[11]Pliny, vi. 28, § 161: 'Mellis ceraeque proventu.'
[11]Pliny, vi. 28, § 161: 'Mellis ceraeque proventu.'
[11]Pliny, vi. 28, § 161: 'Mellis ceraeque proventu.'
On January 17 we started from Al Koton with only seven of our camels and two of the sultan's packed with forage, to be away several days. The sultan wished to lend his horses, but my husband refused. However, he had to ride one, a grey, for fear of giving offence, and this was given to him as a present afterwards, and he rode it whenever the rocks allowed till we reached the coast. We eventually sent this horse, Zubda (butter), and my Basha back to their respective donors, though they really expected us to take them to Aden. We had two men of the Nahad tribe as oursiyara.
Our start took a very long time, for the sultan, attended by many people, came a mile on foot. We travelled four hours and a half, partly through land that would have been cultivated had there been rain, and partly through salt desert, till we turned north-west into the Wadi Ser, where there is a sandy desert. From the entrance to Wadi Ser we could see Shibahm in the distance, an unpromising looking spot among sandhills. We were all able to find shelter at Hanya under an enormous thornyb'domtree covered with fruit, and we felt like birds out of a cage, for we never could walk out at Al Koton without a crowd, and the greasiness and spiciness of the food was beginning to pall. We had a delightful camp, but had to be very careful not to drop things in the sand, as they so quickly disappeared. Wehad a new man called Iselem, who was to take care of the horses, pluck chickens, and help in pitching the camp. His wonder at the unfolding and setting up of the beds, chairs, &c., was great. There was also an old man called Haidar Aboul. He and one of the soldiers could talk Hindustani, so with Imam Sharif's help we were somewhat independent of Saleh, though we had thought it necessary to bring him, to keep him from working us harm.
We continued our way up the Wadi Ser for about five hours and camped at Al Had in a field near a house, close to some high banks which radiated intense heat, and suffered the more that we had to wait a long time for the tea that we always had with our luncheon, as our water had been stolen in the night. We always tried to save some to carry on and start with next day, fearing we might fare worse in the next place we came to.
The well at this spot is the last water in this direction, for we were reaching the confines of the great central desert. Wadi Ser, being such a waste of sand, is very sparsely populated. The Bedouin here, like the Turkomans, live in scattered abodes, little groups of two or three houses dotted about, and solitary homesteads. It belongs to the Kattiri tribe, who are at war with the Yafei. They once owned Sheher and Makalla and took Al Koton, but in a war in 1874 the Yafei were supported by the English; hence their friendship for England. The animosity still continues and there is little intercourse between Siwoun and Shibahm, though only twelve miles apart. The Kattiri have more of the Bedou about them and the Yafei have more of the Arab. Oursiyarwas twenty-five dollars.
The people were preparing for rain, which may never come; they had had none for two years, but if they get it every three years they are satisfied, as they get a sufficient crop. As it comes in torrents and with a rush, each field isprovided with a dyke and a dam, which they cut to let the water off. This dyke is made by a big scraper, like a dustpan, calledmis'hap, harnessed by chains to a camel or bullocks. The camel goes over the existing bank and when the dustpan reaches the summit the men in attendance upset the surface sand or soil, that has been scraped off, and carry the scraper down. When this is done the field is lightly ploughed; there is nothing more to do except to sit and wait for rain. We saw signs of great floods in some parts.
Whenever we found ruins still visible in or near the Hadhramout we found them on elevated spots above the sand level, from which we may argue that all centres of civilisation in the middle of the valleys lie deeply buried in sand, which has come down in devastating masses from the highland and the central desert. The nature of the sand in this district is twofold. Firstly we have theloessor firm sand, which can be cultivated; and secondly the disintegrated desert sand, which forms itself into heaps and causes sandstorms when the wind is high.
The mountains diminish in height the farther north one goes. The character of the valleys is pretty much the same as that of those to the south of the main valley, only they are narrower and much lower, and thus the deep indenture of the valley system of the Hadhramout gradually fades away into the vast expanse of the central desert.
The wazir had been given a bag of money to buy fowls and lambs for us, but Saleh came and said, 'The wazir wants some money for a lamb,' so it was sent and returned. It had not been asked for and caused some offence, but that odious little wretch only wished to make mischief.
The Bedouin are rather clever at impromptu verses, and when we were in Wadi Ser they made night hideous by dancing in our camp. The performers ranged themselvesin two rows, as in Sir Roger de Coverley; time is kept by a drum and by perpetual hand-clapping and stamping of the feet, whilst two men execute elaborate capers in the centre, singing as they do so such words as these: 'The ship has come from Europe with merchandise; they shot at the minaret with a thousand cannon.' Bedouin women also take part in these dances, and the Arabs think the dances very impious; it was very weird by the light of the moon and the camp-fire, but wearisome when we wanted to sleep, particularly as they kept it up till after we were all astir in the morning, yelling, bawling, singing, and screeching, Iselem being the ringleader. The ground was shaken as if horses were galloping about. A Bedou was playing a flute made of two leg-bones of a crane bound together with iron.
At a distance of half an hour from our camp there is a stone with an inscription. This was visited on the day of our arrival, but we went again next day that I might photograph it, very difficult in the position in which it is. It is a great rough boulder about 10 feet high, that has slipped down from the mountain, with large rough Sabæan letters just punched on the surface, of no depth, but having a whitish appearance. The letters run in every direction—sometimes side by side, sometimes in columns.
The central and most important word which my husband was able to make out, with the help of Professor Hommels' admirable dictionary of hitherto ascertained Himyaritic words, isMasabamor Caravan road. The stone seemed to be a kind of sign-post; for as the old Bedou sheikh who was with us said, there was in olden days, about 500 years ago, a caravan road this way to Mecca, before the Bahr-Safi made it impassable. The Bahr-Safi is a quicksand, north of Shabwa, but none of those present had been there, and they all laughed at Von Wrede's story of King Safi and his army being engulfed in it.
The Bedou sheikh with his retinue came to see that we took no treasure out of the stone. There are a good many old stones built into the side of the stream-bed. Having taken a copy and a photograph, which my husband sent later to Dr. D. H. Müller, in Vienna, to decipher, we departed. We were told that the Wadi Ser goes four hours from that stone to the great desert.
We then turned back and followed ourkafilato Alagoum, at the junction of Wadi Ser and the Wadi Latat, about two hours' journey. Alagoum is a large cluster of high houses, surrounded by stables and houses excavated in the sandhills, where the inhabitants and their cattle live in hot weather. This is quite an idea suited to the Bedouin, who live in caves, when they can find them. The Bedouin in Southern Arabia never have tents.
We found that Saleh had joined the camel-men in resisting our own people, who wanted to encamp under trees. They had unloaded in the open and Saleh and Iselem had then retired into the village till the tents were pitched, so, as we were to remain in this place two days, we had them moved. We had by this time some of the Kattiri tribe with us assiyara.
At Al Garun the Wadi Ser is entered by a short collateral valley called the Wadi Khonab, in which valley is the tomb of the prophet Saleh, one of the principal sacred places of the district. Kabr Saleh is equally venerated with the Kabr Houd, also called the tomb of the prophet Eber (for, from what we could gather from the statements of intelligent natives, Eber and Houd are synonymous terms) which is to be found in the Tamimi country further up the main valley.
The prophet Houd was sent to reclaim the tribe of Ad. The Mahra tribe are descended from a remnant of the Addites, as also are the Hadhrami, according to the legends.Once a man named Kolabeh, when seeking for camels came upon the beautiful garden of Irem-Dhatul-Imad, which is supposed to have been in the desert near Aden; he found and brought away a priceless jewel which came into possession of the first Ommiad Caliph Nourrijaht. Those who embraced Islamism on the preaching of the prophet Houd were spared, but the rest either were suffocated by a stifling wind or survived in the form of apes, whose descendants still inhabit Jebel Shemshan at Aden.
A remnant are also said to have fled to the Kuria Muria Islands.
We again met with considerable opposition from the Bedouin and our escort when we proposed to visit the Kabr Saleh next day. However, this was overcome by threats of reporting the opposition to Sultan Salàh on our return to Al Koton. So next morning we started. The sultan of Shibahm's people were just as anxious to go as we were, for they were delighted to get the chance of making this pilgrimage to so holy a place, which being in an enemies' country they could not have done but for our escort.
A short ride of two hours brought us nearly to the head of the Wadi Khonab, and there, situated just under the cliff, in an open wilderness, is the celebrated tomb. It consists simply of a long uncovered pile of stones, somewhat resembling a potato-pie, with a headstone at either end, and a collection of fossils from the neighbouring mountains arranged along the top. Hard by is a small house where the pilgrims take their coffee, and the house of the Bedou mollah, who looks after the tomb, is about a quarter of a mile off. Beyond this there is no habitation in sight. A more desolate spot could hardly be found. The tomb is from 30 to 40 feet in length, and one of the legends concerning it is that it never is the same length, sometimes being a few feet shorter, sometimes a few feet longer. The Bedouin haveendless legends concerning this prophet. He was a huge giant, they said, the father of the prophet Houd, or Eber; he created camels out of the rock, and hence is especially dear to the wandering Bedou; and he still works miracles, for if even unwittingly anyone removes a stone from this grave, it exhibits symptoms of life, and gives the possessor much discomfort until it is returned. Once a domed building was erected over the tomb, but the prophet manifested his dislike of being thus inclosed and it was removed.
Men are said to go blind if they steal anything connected with the tomb; once a man took a cup from the coffee-house, unaware of the danger he incurred, tied it to his girdle, and carried it off. It stuck to him till he restored it. Another man took a stone away and gave it to his children to play with, but it hopped about till taken back again.
At the time of theziaraor pilgrimage which takes place in November, crowds of Bedouin, we were told, come from all the valleys and hills around to worship. All our men treated the grave with the greatest respect, and said their prayers around it barefoot.
I do not know what they would have done to Imam Sharif if he had not comported himself as the others did, so that wretched man had to walk barefoot all round on the sharp stones, and thus we obtained the measurements. He got dreadfully pricked by thorns and coveted the fossils very much. The stones of which the tomb is composed are about the size of cannon-balls, and look just as if newly put together and quite weedless. People stroke the upright stone at the head and then rub their hands on their breast and kiss them, and do the same at the foot. The wazir would have led us up close to it; but the Bedouin hated our being there at all, and would by no means let us sleep there, as we wished to do. We overheard our horrid little Saleh Hassan telling the bystanders that we live on pork.
When we first got there, we were permitted to approach within a few yards of the tomb, so that we saw it very distinctly; but when, after eating our luncheon, and taking a siesta under a tree, we again advanced to inspect it, the Bedou mollah attacked us with fierce and opprobrious language, and, fearing further to arouse the fanaticism of these wild people, we speedily mounted our horses and rode away.
We hoped to be able to visit Kabr Houd, the tomb of Nebi Saleh's son, in the main valley, but, as it will appear, we were to be disappointed. I am told, on reliable Arab authority, that it is similar in every way to the Kabr Saleh—just a long pile of stones, about 40 feet in length, uncovered, and with its adjacent mosque. These two primitive tombs of their legendary prophets, zealously guarded and venerated by the Bedouin, are a peculiar and interesting feature of the Hadhramout. It is a curious fact that when one turns to the tenth chapter of Genesis (the best record we have of the earliest populations of our globe) we find the patriarchal names Salah, Eber, and Hazarmaveth (which last, as I previously stated, corresponds to Hadhramout) following one another in their order, though not in immediate sequence. I am at a loss to account for these names being still venerated by the Bedouin, unless one admits a continuity of legendary history almost too wonderful to contemplate, or else one must consider that they were heathen sites of veneration, which have, under Moslem influence, been endowed with orthodox names. Certain it is that these tombs in the midst of the wilderness are peculiarly the property of the Bedouin, and, though visited, and to a certain extent venerated, by the Arabs, the latter do not attach so much importance to them as they do to the tombs of their own walis or saints, which are always covered tombs, near or in the centre of the towns. Another curious point I maymention in connection with these tombs is that the Arab historian, Yaqut, in his 'Mu'gam,'[12]tells us of a god in the Hadhramout, called Al Galsad, who was a gigantic man; perhaps this god may have some connection with the giant tombs of Saleh and Eber. Also Makrisi, who wrote in the tenth century,a.d., speaks of a giant's grave he saw near Shabwa.
Near Al Agoum we saw a quantity of very ancient stone monuments, situated on slightly elevated ground, above the sand. At first we imagined them to be tombs, but on closer inspection we discovered that the erections, which are large unhewn ones of the cromlech type, are decorated inside with geometric patterns somewhat similar to those we found in the Mashonaland ruins, and therefore my husband was more inclined to believe they were originally used for religious purposes. There are traces of letters above the pattern. The buildings are about 20 feet square and several are surrounded by circular walls. They are apparently of extreme antiquity, and doubtless far anterior in date to any other Himyaritic remains that we saw in the Hadhramout.
The wazir joined us as usual on our return from Kabr Saleh, as we sat outside our tent in the moonlight with Imam Sharif and the Indian interpreters, and we had a pleasant evening. We were perfectly charmed to see great preparations for sleep going on among the Bedouin. We thought they really must be tired after dancing the whole night and walking the whole day. They were busy putting themselves to bed in graves which they dug in the loose dust, not sand; turbans, girdles, and so forth being turned into bedclothes. Just as they were still Iselem began capering about and they all got up shouting and screaming, but the wazir, seeing my distress, with the greatest difficulty quieted them, as he did when they broke out again at three o'clock in the morning.
It took us six hours the following day to ride back to Al Koton, where, not being expected, we could not get a meal of even bread, honey, and dates for about an hour and a half, and then had to wait till we were very sleepy indeed for supper. We endured great hunger that day.
Salim-bin-Ali, the other wazir, had not come with us because he was not well. The day of our reception, in curvetting about, he fell from his horse and had suffered various pains ever since.
The sultan had had another stone brought for us from Al Gran; we did not care to take this away as it had very little writing on it, only [Symbol: See page image] (al amin, to the protection). It is circular, 1 foot 4½ inches in diameter, 2½ inches high, made of coarse marble. We saw a similar circular stone at Raidoun.
The wildest reports were going about as to the water-stone we already had. It was almost the cause of an insurrection against the sultan of Shibahm. They said 'It was very wrong to give that stone to a "gavir"'—as they call us (for all thek's are pronouncedg)—'only think of our carelessly letting him have it. The Englishman has taken fifteen jewels of gold and gems out of it,' and named a high value.
'You are sure of this?' said the sultan to the ringleader.
'Oh, yes! quite certain!' he said.
So the sultan led him to our room, where the stone was, and said:
'Do you know the stone again? Look closely at it. Has anything happened to it but a washing?'
The man looked extremely small. They said my husband's only business was to extract gold from stones. It is extraordinary how widespread this belief is. It is firmly rooted in Greece. Many a statue and inscription hasbeen shivered to atoms because of it, and our interest in inscriptions was constantly attributed to a wish to find out treasure. We once saw two men in Asia Minor industriously boring away into a column—to find gold they told us. They already had made a hole about 8 inches deep and 4 or 5 inches wide. They think that the ancients had a way of softening marble with acid.
We had again at this time a great many patients; for, as we really had effected some cures the first time we were at Al Koton, our fame had spread. We always had Matthaios and Imam Sharif to help us to elicit the symptoms, and also to consult with as to the cures, because some remedies which suit Europeans were by no means suited to the circumstances of our patients. For instance, the worst coughs I ever heard were very prevalent, but it would be useless to ask the sick to take a hot footbath and stay in bed. The one blue garment, which in different shapes was all the men and women wore, was little protection from the chill of the evening. The women's dresses were always hanging off their backs; and the men, who had each two pieces of thick blue cotton about 2 yards long by 1½ yard wide, with fringes half a yard long, wore one as a permanent petticoat and the other as a girdle by day and when cold as a shawl, often put on in a very uncomfortable way—thrown on in front and left hanging open behind—forming no protection to the back of the lungs.
The poor little baby, aged fifteen months, of the Wazir Salim-bin-Abdullah was brought shrieking in agony, gnawing hard at its emaciated little arms, and all covered with sores. Our hearts were wrung at this wretched sight and we longed to help; we even thought of giving it part of a drop of chlorodyne much diluted, but, fortunately for us, dared not do so, for my husband said to them, 'I do not think the child will live long.' It mercifully was released ina few hours. Then an old man came who 'had a flame in his inside.' My husband examined him and decided that he had an abscess, and, to please him, gave him a dessertspoonful of borax and honey, which he swept up with his finger, and I suppose it did relieve him, for after some minutes he said: 'The fire is gone out.'
It grieved us sorely when poor souls came to us so hopefully and so confident of help, with a withered arm or an empty eye-socket. Some with less serious complaints than these last we recommended to go to Aden hospital, a building of which we never thought at that time we should be inmates ourselves. We found the ladies, to whom a plentiful supply of violent pills had been administered, were better, but the sultan, who had an attack of indigestion, had to be taken in hand at once by us doctors. His wife required a tonic, so we got out some citrate of iron and quinine, a bright, shiny, greenish-yellow, flaky thing, which Imam Sharif assured us would be more beneficial and better liked if shown and admired as gold; so after some conversation about pious frauds, I packed the medicine up neatly and wrote in ornamental letters 'Golden Health Giver,' and this name being explained and translated gave great satisfaction. We were glad to be able to give the kind sultan a new bottle of quinine—more acceptable than gold.
While we were away Mahmoud had found two little hedgehogs. One was dead and stuffed; the other we kept alive for some time and it always liked to creep into my clothes and go to sleep—I suppose because I never teased it. In the little book of directions for zoological collectors we saw, that 'little is known of the reproduction of lizards, so special attention is to be paid,' &c. Mahmoud had brought me two little fragile eggs to keep, about half an inch long, and I had put them in a match-box with tow and packed them in my trunk, and on my return to Al Koton Ifound two little lizards about 1¼ inch long, one alive and the other dead. Both had to be pickled, as we did not understand how to bring so small a lizard up by hand. They proved to be new to science, as was also a large lizard we had found near Haura, whose peculiarity is that he has no holes along his legs to breathe by, like other lizards. His name isAporosceles Bentii. The first lizard's egg I had I was determined should not slip through my fingers; but alack! and well-a-day! my fingers slipped through it.
In the meantime we were terrible bones of contention, and had the Wadi Hadhramout all by the ears. We were very anxious indeed as to whether we could proceed any farther or should have to go back, and whether we could do either safely. We wanted to go right along the Wadi Hadhramout and to see Bir Borhut or Barahout, asolfatareas far as we could make out, but Masoudi in the tenth century speaks of it as the greatest volcano in the world, and says that it casts up immense masses of fire and that its thundering noise can be heard miles away. On the heights near is much brimstone, which the Bedouin find useful for gunpowder. They consider this place is the mouth of hell and that the souls of Kafirs go there. In Iceland there is similar accommodation for those souls. Von Wrede thinks it was the Fons Stygis of Ptolemy, but M. de Goeje thinks that Ptolemy alluded to some place farther west and south of Mareb. Certainly the position given by Ptolemy does not coincide with that of Bir Borhut.
From 'Arabian Society in the Middle Ages,' by S. Lane-Poole, I take the following notices of this place:—
El Kaswini says of Bir Borhut: 'It is a well near Hadhramout and the Prophet (God bless and save him) said "In it are the souls of infidels and hypocrites." It is an Addite well in a dry desert and a gloomy valley, and it is related of Ali (may God be well pleased with him) that hesaid, "The most hateful of districts to God (whose name be exalted) is the valley of Barahout, in which is a well whose waters are black and fœtid, where the souls of infidels make their abode."'
El Asmaï has narrated of a man of Hadhramout that he said: 'We find near Barahout an extremely disgusting and fœtid smell, and then news is brought to us of the death of a great man of the chiefs of the infidels.'
Ajaïb el Makhloukàt also relates that a man who passed a night in the valley of Barahout said: 'I heard all night (exclamatives) of "O Roumèh! O Roumèh!" and I mentioned this to a learned man and he told me that it was the name of the angel commissioned to keep guard over the souls of the infidels.'
Bir Borhut is not far from Kabr Houd, which is said by some to be even longer and wider than Kabr Saleh. The route lies through the territory of the Kattiri, and the Yafei are quite ignorant of it; it would be quite unsafe for them to go to the sea along the valley, and they always use the road over the tableland. The Kattiri tyrannise over the sultan of Siwoun and are enemies to the sultan of Shibahm; beyond them are the Minhali, who are also enemies; then the Amri and the Tamimi, who are friendly, and then come the Mahri. The sultan told us that not even he could prevent us going along thekafilapath, but we should not be admitted into any villages and should probably be denied water. One source of enmity between the Kattiri and the Yafei is, I believe, a debt which the Kattiri owe and will not pay. The sultan of Siwoun borrowed three lacs of rupees from the grandfather of the present sultan of Makalla; he would not repay them, so after much squabbling the case was referred to the English at Aden, who, after duly considering the papers, gave Makalla and Sheher (bombarding them first) to the Yafei.
In answer to the seven letters there was nothing from the sultan of Siwoun, and the sultan of Terim sent a verbal answer—'Do as you please,' taking no responsibility—to which Sultan Salàh replied, 'I have sent you a letter, send me a letter.' The sheikh of the Kattiri tribe came to Al Koton and said he would take us, but on January 23 we heard that the sultan of Siwoun had made a proclamation in the mosque there, forbidding the people to admit the unbelievers to the town. Though we could easily go by thekafilaroad, leaving the town of Siwoun two miles on one side, the sultan deemed it wiser for us not to attempt it, as brawls might arise, the two tribes being at war; so we then decided to mount on to the akaba, pass the inhospitable Siwoun and Terim, and reach the friendly Tamimi tribe. The Kattirikabila, or tribe, really came to Siwoun to be ready for us, but the seyyids had collected a large sum of money and bribed the sultan to send them away.
We were hoping to get off to Shibahm, but as the sultan was neither well nor in a very good humour, we had to resign ourselves to settling down in Al Koton in all patience. He said he must accompany us, as he could not depend on his wazirs for they were too stupid.
My husband and I were always occupied. He used to sketch in water-colours, and I had plenty of work developing photographs in a delightful little dark room, where I lived and enjoyed as many skins of water as I could use, till I had to stop and pack my celluloid negatives like artificial flowers, for they curled up and the films contracted and split, from the alkaline water. I had to put glycerine on them when I reached Aden. Our botanist nearly died of dulness and impatience; Mahmoud was quite contented to sit quite still, and I do not think the Indian servants minded much. Poor Imam Sharif used to gaze up at half a dozen stars from a yard, but he dared not venture on the roof to see more.
We took a stroll with the sultan one day, no crowd being allowed, and remarked how many things were grown for spices, those spices which were becoming rather wearisome to us. There waszamouta, an umbelliferous plant, the seed of which is used in coffee, andhabat-assobafor putting in bread; coriander, chili, fennel, andhelf, a plant very like tall cress, which is used in cookery and also raw, and which we liked as a salad; alsoattar, a purple creeping bean, very pretty and good to eat. There was also another low-growing bean,brinjol(egg plant), cucumber, water-melon, henna, and indigo. The sultan has besides a private inclosure where he has some lime-trees, not our kind of lime-tree of course, but the one which bears fruit; and I must not forget cotton, from which the place originally took its name, as it is abundant in a wild state.
At last another polite letter came from the Kattiri, and a letter from the sultan of Terim. 'I have both your lettersand you can do as you like, my answer is the same.' This did away with all hope of progress in that direction.
Our spirits, however, were much cheered by hearing that the sultan had received a letter from a seyyid at Meshed (probably the nice one who had been in India and had leprosy in his legs), telling him how very badly the sultan of Hagarein had behaved about us. As this was spontaneous, we hoped that the negotiation our sultan was going to undertake about our making excavations at Meshed, Raidoun, or Kubar al Moluk (for some part of the ruins is called Tombs of the Kings), would turn out successfully. The sultan of Hagarein was summoned to Al Koton, but we were away before he came. I believe in the end he was turned out of his place, former misdeeds counting against him.
[12]II., 100.
[12]II., 100.
[12]II., 100.
On January 25 we started for Shibahm, carpets having been sent forward the day before. The sultan was to follow us in a day or two, when some sheikhs had been to see him. We started at 8.30 and were at Shibahm in four hours. We had eleven camels only, three horses, and the donkey. We travelled, as soon as we left Al Koton, through sand nearly all the way. We passed the tall white dome of Sheikh Aboubekr-bin-Hassan's tomb, near which the ruling family are buried if the seyyids permit. They are all-powerful, and the sultan can do nothing in this respect without them—not even be buried in his own family tomb. There is a well beside the tomb, or rather the kind of building from which water is obtained in the open valleys. This consists of a small white building 8 or 9 feet square, with a dome resting on an open pattern composed of a herring-bone course of bricks; a little wooden ladle, 4 or 5 inches wide, stands in one of the little openings to dip out the water, which would otherwise evaporate. They drink out of the ladle, and fill the water-skins and the drinking trough for animals, which stands always near. They would never let us drink from the ladles.
As we neared Shibahm we passed through a good deal of ground that had once been irrigated, but it had had its ups and downs, and was now abandoned. First there had been plenty of soil and the palm-trees were planted in it. Thenthe wind had denuded the roots, some of which had been banked up and walled in with stones; others were standing on bare roots, but at this time the sand was burying the whole place. There were high drifts against many of the walls and among the trees.
Shibahm is twelve miles distant from Al Koton, and is one of the principal towns in the Hadhramout valley. It is built on rising ground in the middle of the narrowest part of the valley, so that no one can pass between it and the cliffs of the valley out of gunshot of the walls. This rising ground has doubtless been produced by many successions of towns built of sun-dried bricks, for it is the best strategical point in the neighbourhood.
Early Arab writers tell us that the Himyaritic population of this district came here when they abandoned Shabwa, early in the Christian era. We succeeded, however, in finding evident traces of an occupation of earlier date than this, both in a seal, which is described further on, and in an inscription in which the name Shibahm occurs, and which certainly dates from the third centuryb.c.Even if Shibahm were not the site of the original capital it must always, centuries before our era, have been a place of considerable importance as the centre of the frankincense trade, for here must have been made up the caravans which brought the spices westward by the great frankincense road across Arabia. The caravans take twenty-five days on the journey to Saihut, and five to Makalla; they go also to Nejd, but we could not find out how long they take.
Shibahm is now the property of the sultan of Makalla, but was administered by his cousin Salàh, who received 40,000 rupees a year for the purpose. It is now three hundred years since these Yafei left their old home and came to settle in the Hadhramout. They were then a wild predatory race, plundering caravans; now they have becomepeaceable and rich. They still remain close friends with the Yafei farther west, but are quite independent of them. It is the maintenance of a residence for the Nizam of Hyderabad, and their constant communication with India, that has doubtless made all the difference between the Yafei tribe and others. Building seems to have been their mania. The sultan of Shibahm has numbers of houses at Al Koton and Shibahm, and he was intending to spend 20,000 rupees in rebuilding his father's house, for the castle at Al Koton is not his own but Government property, and the strip of land across the valley, part of it sandy, goes with it. He was buying up land for himself in the Wadi Al Ain and elsewhere. He told us his father left eleven million rupees to divide among his numerous progeny.
Relationships in that family must be a trifle confused. Manassar of Makalla had married two sisters (both now dead) of his cousin Salàh. Salàh had married two of Manassar's sisters. A daughter of Salàh's married Manassar, and another of them was married to one of Manassar's sons, and Manassar's brother Hussein of Sheher married, or was married to, a third daughter of Salàh. Apparently the same complications existed in the generation before this, but into them it is impossible to go. As in India, the favourite marriage that a man can make is to marry his 'uncle's daughter.' Possibly the fact that property goes from brother to brother till a whole generation is dead, instead of from father to son, has something to do with this arrangement.
The town of Shibahm offers a curious appearance as one approaches; above its mud brick walls, with bastions and watch towers, appear the tall houses of the wealthy, whitewashed only at the top, which make it look like a large round cake with sugar on it. Outside the walls several industries are carried on, the chief of which is the manufacture of indigo dye. The small leaves are dried in the sun and powdered, and then put into huge jars and filled with water. Next morning these are stirred with long poles, producing a dark-blue frothy mixture; this is left to settle, and then the indigo is taken from the bottom and spread out on cloths to drain; the substance thus procured is taken home and mixed with dates and saltpetre. Four pounds of this indigo to a gallon of water makes the requisite and universally used dye for garments, the better class of which are calendered by beating them with wooden hammers on stones. This noise was a great mystery to us till we traced our way to it and found out what it was. They used also to beat the dried leaf of a kind of acacia calledkharrad, and, when pounded, make of it a paste which has a beautiful pea-green appearance; it is used for giving a polish to leather.
A SABÆAN ALTAR
A Sabæan Altar
Another industry carried on outside Shibahm is rope-making out of the fibres of the fan palm (saap) which grows wild in the narrower valleys; the leaves are first left to soak in water, and then beaten till the fibres separate. Yet another is that of making lime for whitewash kilns—it is curious to watch the Bedouin beating the lime thus produced with long sticks, singing quaint little ditties as they thump, in pleasant harmony to the beating of their sticks.
We entered the town by some very sloping steps, which led through the gateway, passing some wells and the indigo dyers outside; also some horrible pools where they had put the little fish that the camels eat, to drain the oil from them. We entered a sort of square, having the castle on the right-hand side and a ruined mosque in front of us. This huge castle was built by the grandfather of the Sultan Manassar, sultan of Makalla, but, owing to some difference about his wives, he left the two topmost stories unfinished. No one lives in it, so we had the whole of this immense pile of buildings to ourselves. It belongs to Manassar. It islarger than Al Koton by far, and that is also exceeded in size by Haura. It is a most imposing structure and much more florid than the others. The gateway is a masterpiece of carving in intricate patterns. On entering this you turn sharp to the right up a shallow staircase, protected from without, but exposed to fire from the inmates of the castle. The pillars in the lofty rooms are beautifully carved. All the windows are filled with pretty fretwork; bolts, doors, and window frames are also carved. The huge doors are carved on one side only, the outer one, and inside they are rough and ill-grained and splashed with whitewash. There are pretty dado patterns round the walls; and the staircase, as in the other castles, has numerous doors for defence, usually put in the middle of the flights. Shooting-holes are in every direction. We established ourselves in a room about 30 feet by 25 feet, and used to go up and dine in one of the unfinished rooms at the top where there was a little bit of roof and where the cooking was done. We generally thought it wise to dine in our grill-room, in order to have our food hot. We all greatly enjoyed the works of our own cooks, provisions being supplied to us.
We overlooked a huge puddle into which the surrounding houses drain, and it is a proof of the scarcity of water in this part of Arabia, that they carefully carry this filthy fluid away in skins to make bricks with, even scraping up the remaining drops in the pool with their hands. In fact, it scarcely ever rains in the Hadhramout.
From the roof of our lofty castle we had an excellent view straight down the broad Hadhramout valley, dotted with towns, villages, palm groves, and cultivation for fully thirty miles, embracing the two towns of Siwoun and Terim, ruled over by the two brother sultans of the Kattiri tribe. Close to Shibahm several collateral valleys from north and southfall into the Hadhramout, and a glance at the map made by our chartographer, Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur, will at once show the importance of this situation.
Shibahm is the frontier town of the Yafei tribe, the Kattiri occupying the valley about two miles to the east, and these two tribes are constantly at war. Sultan Salàh's big standard was in one of our dwelling-rooms ready to be unfurled at a moment's notice. He has cannons on his walls pointed in the direction of his enemy—old cannons belonging to the East India Company, the youngest of which bore the date of 1832. From the soldiers we obtained a specimen of the great conch shells that they use as trumpets in battle, and which are hung to the girdle of the watchmen, who are always on the look-out to prevent a surprise.
The Kattiri are not allowed to stay in the town at night, for we heard that seven months before some of them were detected in an attempt to blow up the palace with gunpowder. There was a fight also, about a quarter of a mile outside the town, in which five Kattiri and seven Yafei were killed. There are three or four armed soldiers to protect Shibahm, the sultan has erected bastions and forts all about it, and the walls are patrolled every night.
There are many ruined houses in the plain, relics of the great war forty years ago, when the Kattiri advanced as far as Al Koton and did great damage. The sultan of Siwoun was invited, with seven sheikhs, to the palace of Shibahm on friendly terms and there murdered in cold blood, while forty of his followers were killed outside.
The inhabitants of Shibahm were not at all friendly disposed to us. On the day of our arrival my husband ventured with two of the sultan's soldiers into the bazaar, and through the narrow streets; but only this once, for the people crowded round him, yelled at him, and insulted him, trying their best to trip him up and impede his progress; hewas nearly suffocated by the clouds of filthy dust that the mob kicked up, and altogether they made his investigations so exceedingly disagreeable that he became seriously alarmed for his safety, and never tried to penetrate into the heart of Shibahm again. On the whole I should accredit Shibahm with a population of certainly not less than six thousand souls: there are thirteen mosques in it, and fully six hundred houses, tall and gaunt, to which an average population of ten souls is but a moderate estimate. The slave population of Shibahm is considerable; many slaves have houses there, and wives and families of their own. The sultan's soldiers are nearly all slaves or of slave origin, and one of them, Muoffok, whose grandfather was a Swahili slave, and who had been one of our escort from Makalla, took us to his house, where his wife, seated unveiled in her coffee corner, dispensed refreshments to quite a large party there assembled, whilst Muoffok discoursed sweet music to us on a mandoline, and a flute made out of the two bones of an eagle placed side by side.
Taisir and Aboud were also abiding in Shibahm. Taisir when he met us, on the minute asked for bakhshish, saying he had been ill when we parted and had had none though we had sent it to him. Oh! there was such kissing of hands! so we thought it politic to love our enemy and gave him a present. The Wazir Salim-bin-Ali had travelled with us to take care of us in the absence of his master.
Once the Arabs had a good laugh at the expense of three members of our party. One morning our botanist went forth in quest of plants and found a castor-oil tree, the berries of which pleased him exceedingly. Unwilling to keep so rare a treat for himself, he brought home some branches of the tree, and placed the delicacy before two of our servants, Matthaios and, I am glad to say, Saleh, who also partook heartily. Terrible was the anguish of the twovictims, which was increased by the Arabs, veritable descendants of Job's comforters, who told them they were sure to die, as camels did which ate these berries. The botanist did not succumb as soon as the others, who, not believing he had eaten any berries himself, vowed vengeance on his head if they should recover, and demanded that, to prove his innocence, he should eat twelve berries in their presence. To our great relief the botanist was at last seized with sickness, and thereby proved his guiltlessness of a practical joke; three more miserable men I never saw for the space of several hours. However, they were better, though prostrate, next day, and for some time to come the popular joke was to imitate the noises and contortions of the sufferers during their anguish.
In consequence of the enmity manifested towards us we were even debarred from walking in that interesting though smelly part, just outside the town under the walls with the well, the brick-works, the indigo, the oil-making, the many lime-kilns, the armourers, and all the industrious people of the town.
We used to take the air on the roof in the evening; there were no mosquitos, but we were never so persecuted with flies. Fortunately our castle was near the wall, for to dwell in the narrow, tortuous, dirty streets must be fearful—most likely the dust does much to neutralise the evils of the defective drainage. The houses are very high and narrow and built of mud brick (kutcha), which is constantly though slowly powdering away. There are many houses in ruins.
We had two or three days of slight cold. The temperature was 62° (F.) in the shade, and it was so cloudy that we expected rain, but none came.
Saleh managed to get ten rupees from my husband, who refused any more, though he brought a piece of cloth which he said he wished to buy from the sultan. The money wasonly wanted for gambling. He went to Imam Sharif and said, 'How is this that Mr. Bent, who at first was like my brother, now is quite changed?' Imam Sharif said, 'If he was kind to you when you were a stranger, and now that he knows you is different, there must be some reason for it.' 'What have I done?' 'You know best,' said Imam Sharif, 'and I advise you to beg pardon.' Saleh exclaimed, 'And you, who are a Moslem, take part against me with these Christians!' This is the keynote of his conduct to us.
We rode two hours one day, without Saleh, to a place called Kamour, on the southern side of the valley, where there is an inscribed stone at the mouth of a narrow slit or gorge leading to the akaba. The words thereon were painted light red, dark red, yellow, and black, and scratched. The decipherable words 'morning light' and 'offerings' point to this having been a sacred stone when sun worship was prevalent. The letters are well shaped, some letters being strange to us. The writing isboustrephedon, which means that it runs backward and forward like an unbroken serpent, each line being read in an opposite direction to that preceding or following it. There is no difficulty in seeing this at a glance, as the shapes of the letters are reversed; for instance, if this occurred in English the two loops of a B would be on the left, if the writing were to be read in that direction, [Symbol: See page image]. The Greek name comes from this style of writing being originally likened to cattle wandering about. This at once relegates it, according to the best authorities, to at least the third century before Christ, and we were forcibly reminded of the large stone in the ruins of Zimbabwe and its similar orientation.
We heard of a cave with an inscription in it in the Kattiri country, about six miles off, almost in sight. We longed 'to dance on Tom Tiddler's ground' and make a dash for it, but the forfeits we might incur deterred us,being our lives. The wazir said he would try to arrange for this, but that, even if the seyyids consented, we must take forty soldiers, well armed, pay them as well assiyarto the Kattiri, pay the expenses of thesiyara, and take as short a time about the business as possible.
On the 27th we heard that some of the tribe of Al Jabber, descended from Mohammed's great friend of that name, had passed Shibahm for Al Koton to fetch us, but there was no news of the Minhali or of the Tamimi.
It was said that the Jabberi could not take us over their highland, past the Kattiri and into the Tamimi country, without consulting the Kattiri, who sometimes help them in their wars. It must be remembered that the Kattiri Bedouin were for us (no doubt in view of the payment ofsiyar), while the seyyids and Arabs of that tribe at Siwoun, and their friends at Terim, were against us.
I need not say we were weary of this indecision, so we sent a letter to the sultan of Shibahm by a messenger saying, 'We have been here three days; what are we to do next?' and planned that Imam Sharif should ride over next day, as he could communicate 'mouth to mouth' with the sultan in Hindustani.
We had one consolation in our imprisonment, for the seal of Yarsahal, which has been mentioned before, was brought to us. The stone is in brown and white stripes, and the setting is very pretty. It had been in the bezel of a revolving ring. We began bargaining for it at once, my husband offering ten rupees for the stone and ten for the golden setting, but the seyyid who brought it said it was the property of a man in Siwoun, who wished to keep it for his children, and he must take it back to him. My husband said 'he should like to look at it very quietly by himself and think over the stone,' and therefore asked the seyyid to remain outside the door for a few minutes. I quickly utilised this quiettime to make an impression with sealing-wax, in case we never saw the seal again. In two hours the seyyid appeared again, and said he had had a letter from Siwoun (twenty-four miles off), saying the (imaginary) owner would not part with it under thirty rupees, but he very soon took twenty and laughed most heartily when I said if I had known how near Siwoun was I would have gone myself.
This seal is of particular interest, for on it were the words 'Yarsahal, the Elder of Shibahm'; and in an inscription published by M. Halévy, we have the two Yarsahals and various members of this family described as vassals of the King of the Gebaniti. Now Pliny says that the capital of the country was Thumna; this is quite correct and was confirmed by the seal, for Thumna was the capital of the Gebaniti, who were a Himyaritic tribe, west of the Hadhramout. It is therefore an additional confirmation of the accuracy of the ancient geographers concerning this district.
In old days Shabwat, as it is called in inscriptions, or Sabbatha, Shaba, and Sabota, as it is written in the ancient authors, was the capital of the country. Hamdani tells us in his 'Geography of the Arabian Peninsula' that there were salt works at Shabwa, and 'that the inhabitants, owing to the wars between Himyar and Medhig, left Shabwa, came down into the Hadhramout and called the place Shibahm, which was originally called Shibat.' Times are much changed since Shabwa was a great town, for from all accounts it is now quite deserted save for the Bedouin, and is six days from good water; the water there is salt and bitter, like quinine, the sultan said. The Bedouin work the salt and bring it on camels, as is mentioned by Makrisi. The effect of salt is traceable in the water of all the wells in the main valley. We would gladly have gone into Shabwa, but it was obviously impossible.
There was a great deal of gun-firing when the Jabberi went by with the sheikh of the Kattiri, and our next interest was a letter from Al Koton, saying 'that the Tamimi, who had sworn on their heads and their eyes to do so, had never appeared, and that the Jabberi wanted 110 dollars, exclusive of camel hire, to go with us, the camels only to go a short distance, and then we must change. What did we wish to do?'
Of course we could not start without providing camels for our onward way, so this answer was sent back: 'We have not come to fight; we do not much care when we go, and we await the advice of the sultan when he comes to-morrow.'
Saleh was quite delighted, but we thought any direction would be good for our map and we still had hopes of digging near Meshed, though we began to have fears that a repulse eastward would strengthen the hands of our enemies westward.
On January the 29th a letter was brought to us by the wazir and the governor of the town, attended by Saleh, more pleased than ever. They said the letter had arrived last night and it was to say that the sultan's pain had increased, so he could not come to-day, and adding what we already knew as to the three neighbouring tribes.
We had a council of three, and feeling that the journey to Bir Borhut was out of the question, we determined to beat what we hoped would be a masterly retreat, so the wazir and the governor were summoned and the following answer was sent:
'We cannot understand the letters of the sultan, having no means of communicating with him privately. Therefore we will return to Al Koton to-morrow, and see him face to face.'
The servants were all quite delighted at this, for Salehtold them the letter was to say we and the soldiers were all going to be murdered.
We had stayed five days in Shibahm, and on the first three had taken sundry walks in the neighbourhood, but during the last two we never ventured out, as the inhabitants manifested so unfriendly a disposition towards us. After the Friday's prayer in the mosque, a fanatical mollah, Al Habib Yaher-bin-Abdullah Soumait, alluded to our unwelcome presence, and offered up the following prayer three times: 'O God! this is contrary to our religion; remove them away!' and two days afterwards his prayer was answered. This very gentleman had not long before been imprisoned for praying to be delivered from the liberal-minded Sultan Salàh, but the people had clamoured so much that he was released.
As we halted at the well outside the town, whilst the various members of our caravan collected, we overheard a woman chide a man for drawing too much water from the well, to which he replied, 'We have to wash our town from the infidel this day.' Needless to say we gladly shook the dust of Shibahm off our feet, and returned to the flesh-pots of Al Koton with considerable satisfaction. Of a truth, religion and fanaticism are together so deeply engrained in the Hadhrami, that anything like friendly intercourse with the people is at present next to impossible.
Religion is the moving spirit of the place; without religion the whole Hadhramout would have been abandoned long ago as useless, but the inhabitants look upon it as the most sacred spot on earth, Mohammed having been born in Arabia, and hence their objection to its being visited by unbelievers. The Shafi sect prevails to the exclusion of all others. The men go in crowds to India, Batavia, and elsewhere, sometimes remaining absent twenty years from their wives and families, and indeed we were told of onecase in which a husband had been away for forty years. They return at last to spend their gains and die in their native sanctity.
We reached Al Koton on January 30, and found our friend the sultan very well indeed. We had begun to suspect we were being deceived as to his illness, for when the wazir and Saleh, who seemed in league together, heard the seyyid son-in-law, who came straight from Al Koton soon after the letter, telling us that the sultan was much better, they looked disconcerted, whispered together, and the wazir said, 'You should not talk of what you know nothing about.'
We were most anxious to learn all that had gone on in our absence, and what arrangements had been made. It seemed to be considered a mistake our ever having gone to Shibahm, but I do not think it was. Had we not gone we should never have seen that fine and interesting town, and assuredly not have obtained King Yarsahal's seal.
The sultan told us there had been a great uproar about us, and all the Yafei tribe were now considered Kafirs. The Kattiri absolutely refused the Jabberi leave to conduct us, and the Nahadi, through whose lands we had passed from Hagarein, said that if they had known how the Kattiri would treat us, they would have treated us just the same. It would be madness to go to Shabwa, as we should, even if we could get there, be only further hemmed in; the Wadi bin Ali was closed to us, the Nahadi were between us and Meshed; nevertheless, the sultan had actually sent a man to ask if we could dig there a few days, he camping with us. Our very faint hope of this was only founded on the fact that the seyyids of Meshed are at enmity with those of Siwoun.
On February 1, the Tamimi sent to say they had really started to fetch us, but the Kattiri told them they would declare war on them unless they retired.
The following evening we were thrown into some excitement by the arrival of the sultan in our room with seven letters, the general tenor of which was that eight of the Tamimi had come, with thesiyaraof four Amri only, and nosiyaraof Kattiri, as far as Siwoun, and asked to be passed on, but that the Kattiri refused them safe conduct; they asked the sultan of Shibahm to go to Shibahm and arrange for them to reach us. They proposed that we should, without touching Shibahm, turn into the very next wadi and go up on to the akaba; the men who went with us were to stay with us all the way to the coast. The sultan promised to keep hostages till his returning soldiers told of our safety. We had another council with Imam Sharif. We counted up our dollars, for we had to live on our money-bags till we reached the sea, and determined to reach Bir Borhut if we could, saying nothing to the servants to upset their minds till all was settled.
The sultan went away to Shibahm the next day, and, as usual, the women became very noisy, and during his absence we were close prisoners, on account of our fear of being mobbed. The Indian party were generally looked upon as Jews.
In the evening the sultan came back, telling us that the Tamimi wished to bring 400 soldiers unpaid (?) and to take us through their country, but the Kattiri were too strong for them. They said, 'One man came disguised to see us (Herr von Wrede), one man came undisguised (Herr Hirsch), and now a party has come. Next time it will be a larger one still, and then it will be all over with the sacred valley of the Hadhramout.' Saleh, meanwhile, was doing all he could to annoy us. When we were talking over our difficulties with Imam Sharif, he strutted in with a bill for the camels. My husband said:
'It is already paid.'
'I shall see about others then,' Saleh said.
'They are ordered already.'
'Your groom, Iselem, will not go with you,' said Saleh.
So I told him, 'He won't get the chance; we would not have him if we were paid, and though we have paid him beforehand, we willingly lose our money.'
'I must, then, speak to the sultan about him, for you.'
I said, 'The sultan has decided what he will do with him, and I don't think he will like it.'
'Haidar Aboul will not go with you.'
This made us very angry, as we had seen that Saleh had been tampering with him, lending him his donkey and his sandals when he walked, and whispering with him. He tried to separate everyone from us. Haidar had promised to go with us all the way, and later Imam Sharif brought him to me when I was at home alone, and made him repeat his promise, and assurance that he had never told Saleh he would not go.
Saleh also wanted money, but was refused; he got 100 rupees a month, and 200 were prepaid at Aden. He gambled, and my husband wished to keep the contents of our money-bags for our own use. We calculated that at the cheapest, for soldiers andsiyaraand camels, Bir Borhut would cost 130l.Saleh had put all the servants in a most terrible fright, and a soldier had told them that if we went beyond Shibahm we should all be killed, and that we should find no water by the way. So we had to explain to them the plan of going by Wadi bin Ali, and to comfort them as well as we could. These people never seem to think that we value our own lives as much as they do theirs.
Meshed was also closed against us. The sultan of Siwoun and the seyyids had sworn on the Koran not to let us proceed on our journey; the Kattiri had also sworn and sent messages to the Tamimi of Bir Borhut, the Jabberi of Wadi bin Ali, and the Nahadi, and they were all against us.
We had another day of anxiety and uncertainty as to when we should really start, as the camels were not collected till late. We watched eagerly from our tower, counting them as they arrived by twos and threes.
We were rather in despair as as we sat dining in a yard, for at this time we were started with our own cookery, and dined near the kitchen, which Matthaios had been able to make in an arched recess of the inclosure, where there were high hills of date-stones, kept to be ground to paste for cattle-food.
He could not be allowed to defile a Mohammedan kitchen.
After a very few minutes, however, my husband had an idea, which was to go to Sheher somehow, and turn up inland from thence; there were plenty of Tamimi there to help us, and we could thus get to the east side of the Kattiri. Saleh was to know nothing till all was settled.
February 7 was a very weary day of waiting; for we had mended and cleaned everything we possessed, and we packed and hoped the camels would come, expecting to be off on the morrow, but it was not till evening that people, I cannot remember of what tribe, came to bargain with us, and the bargaining continued next morning; so we made all baggage ready to be tied into bundles, for we had no doubt we should start on the 8th at latest.
First they said we must go by the Wadi al Ain, their own home, and this we knew was that they might blackmail us; but they told us it was from want of water on the high ground, over which we must travel for six days, and that we must take two camels for water. Then they said we should take seventeen days in all, and were to pay for twenty at more than double the usual fare. We should have to go back on our old road as far as Adab, then three days in the Wadi al Ain region, the same road near Haibel Gabrein, go on to Gaffit, and thence turn eastward to Sheher.
We were perfectly horrified at this plan; the price was great, and the sultan seemed not to think it possible to go against the Bedouin; but far worse in our eyes was the thought of our map, as we should see no new country, instead of taking a turn or a climb that would have added miles to it.
They left us, and we were sitting on our floor in the deepest depths of dark despair, when news came that these camel-men, having made a fresh plan for more extortions,i.e.that there was to be no limit to the number of camels, save their will in loading them, the sultan, being indignant, was thinking of sending for other men.
When we heard that we roused up and concocted a new plan, which was to send for the sultan and ask him to get the Jabberi, and make them take us by the Wadi bin Ali; so he came and agreed to this. We were not to go so long over the highland, but to go up and down at least twice, which would suit us and our map. The sultan told us we should find running water, and that it was a shorter way to Sheher.
Besides this, there lurked in the background, not to be revealed till the last moment, a design to get the Tamimi to come to a place in Wadi Adim and take us to Bir Borhut, a name truly terrible to Matthaios and the Indian servants.
We were in high spirits, and agreed that no matter what our fate might be we were having a delightful evening. Truly I think the pleasures of hope are not sufficiently appreciated, for even if your hopes are never realised the hoping has been a great happiness. On the 8th those extortionate men of Wadi al Ain sent to say they would take us by the Wadi bin Ali, turning out of Wadi Hadhramout at Al Gran, crossing the Wadis bin Ali and Adim, and reaching Sa'ah, where we could branch off for Bir Borhut. This offer was declined, for we were watching and waiting for the Jabberi;and at night we heard that the brave Jabberi were at Shibahm, whereas our messenger had been sent to Wadi bin Ali. They said they wondered at not hearing from us, as the sultan had engaged their camels and promised to let them know when they would be wanted. It was a great mystery to us why the Wadi al Ain people had ever been sent for.
The Jabberi thus defied the Kattiri: 'As sure as we come from Jabberi fathers and Jabberi mothers, we will take these people safely to Bir Borhut; and as sure as you come from Kattiri fathers and Kattiri mothers, you may do your worst but still we will keep them safe'; to which the Kattiri replied: 'We do not wish to make war on you, and we do not care where you take them so long as it is not into our country.'
As soon as we had finished our breakfast next day, a message came to say our horses were ready, and we were to go and drink coffee at a little tower the sultan has in the plain. Most of the party walked. There were only horses for five; a donkey carried a water-skin, and our donkey, Mahsoud, carried halters for every animal. There were the two wazirs, the son-in-law, the sultan of Haura, and a good many servants with carpets for us to sit on, and a teapot. We sat there for about two hours doing nothing but look at the green, an occupation for which this house is expressly built. A gun announced the arrival of the men of Al Jabber, and the sultan sent a man to kill a goat and receive them.
Our great joy at their coming was nothing compared to our extreme satisfaction at parting with them later on.
I cannot say much for my skill as a physiognomist, for I have it recorded that I liked the looks of our Mokadam (that is chief of ourkafila, or leader) Talib-bin-Abdullah, son of the Jabberi sheikh, and that I did not care for thelooks of our new groom, Salem. I was quite wrong in both cases. There were also Saleh-bin-Yamani and another Jabberi. We were certainly, this time, to start next day, but with another change in our route, I believe on account of water. Instead of going by Al Gran, we were to go by Wadi Manwab, retracing our steps as far as Furhud.
Very early in the morning Imam Sharif came to us and told us that the Jabberi had not sufficient camels with them and that we must take camels of Mandob the first day or two, and that others would meet us in the Wadi bin Ali, so there was little hope of a move that day. The Jabberi afterwards said the Mandob way was much the longest, so we changed again.
We delayed several days longer at Al Koton, hoping against hope that the sultan of Terim would grant us permission to pass through his territories, that we might prosecute our journey.