"The Desert Lich" by Frank Belknap Long

Published in 1924

Is this story Long being a misogynist, or Long criticizing a certain religion for being misogynistic? Hmmm...

This clearly isn't set in the Arabian Desert, as low temps would rarely get below 50F (10C) at the coldest. Chilly, but not deathly freezing cold. And you can forget about the Sahara. But even just a little bit further north like the Syrian desert it can get to near freezing during the winter, as can the Kavir Desert in Iran. Get into Central Asia and western China and now we're talking! Deserts like Karakum or Taklamakan or the Gobi can all can get far below freezing, and would still be dominated by Islamic peoples. So we're probably somewhere in Central Asia for this story.

Red hair is another hint we are in Central Asia. The Udmurt people in central Russia, close to the border with Kazakhstan, are particularly noted for an unusually high percentage of red-heads. Thus the Aral Karakum desert seems like a really high probability for the setting of this story, possibly the Ryn Desert. Something in that ballpark. (I learned about the Udmurt people only just six months ago. I never would have imagined that information would be useful to me in any way ever. Yet here we are. HA!)

The two-humped (i.e. Bactrian) camel is another hint as to being in Central Asia, as that is the only place in the world where they occur.

100 feet = 30 meters

20 by 20, i.e. 20 feet, so 6x6 meters

The picture used is an illustration for the story in "Weird Tales" by Andrew Brosnatch

A few spots of dodgy editing in the text I'm reading from. I've had that complaint about quite a few of the books I've read from. I haven't noticed bad editing before in reading more classic type literature from the big name publishing houses like Penguin Books or Bantam, for example, but it seems to plague these small, indie publishing houses. *sigh*