Khemed

Khemed
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General location of Khemed
The Adventures of Tintin location
Other name(s)	Emirate of Khemed
Created by	Hergé
Genre	Comic strip
Type	Emirate
Ruler	Emir Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab
Ethnic group(s)	Bedouin Arab
Notable locations	Wadesdah (capital)
Language(s)	Arabic
Currency	dirham

Khemed is a fictional country in The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It is an Arab emirate located on the shores of the Red Sea and has been compared to Jordan, with its Emir resembling the Hashemite kings and the character Mull Pasha corresponding to the British General Glubb Pasha.

The name means "got it!" in Marols, the Brussels Flemish dialect. The names of many people and places in the country are based on Marols phrases.

Hergé's stories place the Arab Emirate Khemed somewhere on the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, near Saudi Arabia. More precisely, the state is outside the Gulf of Aqaba, being an enclave in what is now Saudi Arabia. According to the narrative in Land of Black Gold, the capital is less than one day's journey by car from the port, which in the original serialization in Le Petit Vingtième (1939–40) and Tintin magazine (1948–50) is referred to as the oil port of "Caiffa". In the first album edition (1950) it is clearly identified with Haifa (so stated by the Lieutenant of the Speedol Star) and is fictionalized as "Khemikhal" ("Khemkhah" in French) in editions from 1971 on. Another mentioned city includes Tel El Esdi, which is a small, rural town in Khemed.

The capital is on the shore of the Red Sea halfway between Aqaba and Jeddah, as is clear in the map prepared by Hergé for The Red Sea Sharks.

The region is subject to the Khamsin, a burning sandstorm which blows from the Egyptian desert towards Palestine. Foreign correspondents covering Khemed are based in Beirut and a regular air service (formerly by DC3) links Beirut to the emirate's capital. In Khemed one can find ruins, mistaken by Haddock as Roman, but actually from the Nabataean civilization, like those in Petra, Jordan.