 CHAPTER IV On two separate occasions we visited Muscat. The first time was in 1889 on our way to Persia, and the second in 1895, when we were starting for Dofar, on the journey which I shall describe later. On each occasion we had to reach it by way of India, for like all the rest of the Persian Gulf Muscat is really an outlying portion of our Indian Empire. By just crossing a range of mountains in Persia, you cross the metaphorical watershed between our India and foreign offices. At Shiraz you hesitate between India and England. You ask the question, shall I send my letters via Bombay or via Russia? You hasten to get rid of your rupees, for this is the last place where their merit is recognized. North of Shiraz you are in a distinctly foreign country. Our officials hail from the foreign office and belong to the legation of Tehran. You are no longer under British protection, you are in the dominions of the Shah. But so long as you were on the shores of the Gulf you are, so to speak, in India. The officials receive their pay in degenerate rupees instead of pounds sterling, they live in bungalows, they talk of tiffin, and eat curry at every meal. We keep a British ship of war in the Gulf. We feel that it is a matter of the first importance that those countries should remain under our protection, and that the Turks should not build forts at Fow and otherwise interfere with our trade in the Karun, and that no other power should have a foothold thereon. The last generation talked much about a Euphrates Valley Railway, with its terminus at Kuwait. We now hear a great deal about the opening up of the Karun. But it is the lordship of the Gulf which is the chief matter of importance just at present both for India and for ourselves. In this district, Muscat is the most important point. The kingdom of Oman, of which it is nominally the capital, commands the entrance to the Gulf. In the ninth century of the Christian era ships trading from Sharif to China took in water at Muscat from the wells which still supply the town. Between Aden and the Persian Gulf it is the only harbor where ships of any size can find anchorage, and it may in fact be said to play much the same part with respect to the Persian Gulf that Aden does to the Red Sea. In many other ways the places are strikingly similar. They are both constructed on arid volcanic rocks which produce the smallest amount of verger and reflect the greatest amount of heat. Water in both of them is the scarcest of commodities. Of all places in the world Muscat has the reputation of being the hottest, facing as it does the Indian Ocean, and protected from every cooling breeze by rugged volcanic hills, without a blade of cultivation upon them, and which reflect and intensify the scorching rays of the burning sun. Aden is said to have but a piece of brown paper between it and the infernal fires. Muscat would seem to want even this meager protection, and gives, as a Persian poet has expressed it, to the panting-center a lively anticipation of his future destiny. The approach to the cove of Muscat is highly striking. Many colored volcanic rocks of fantastic form protect the horseshoe-shaped harbor, while it's behind the white town, as far as the eye can reach, stretch deeply serrated arid mountains which culminate in the heights of Jebel Akhtar, or the Green Mountains, some fifty miles as the crow flies inland, reaching an elevation of nine thousand feet. We were told that snow sometimes falls in the wintertime on Jebel Akhtar, and it rejoices in a certain amount of verger from which it derives its name. This range forms the backbone of Oman, and at its foot lie Neswa and Rostock, the old capitals of the long line of Imams of Oman, before Muscat was a place of so much importance as it is at present. The streams which come down from these mountains nowhere reach the sea, but are lost in the deserts, and nevertheless in some places they fertilize oases in the Omani desert, where the vegetation is most luxuriant and fever very rife. Grapes grow on the slopes of Jebel Akhtar, and the inhabitants, despite the strictures of Muhammad, both make and drink wine of them, and report says, how far it is true I know not, that the Portuguese exported thence the vines to which they gave the name of Muscatel. The inhabitants of this wild range are chiefly Bedou and pastoral, and it is from this quarter that the trebles which beset the poor sultan, Faisal, generally eminy. The harbour of Muscat is full of life. The deep blue sea is studded with tiny craft, canoes painted red, green and white, steered by paddles, swarm around the steamer, fishermen paddling themselves about on a plank or two tied together, or swimming astride of a single one, hawk their wares from boat to boat. The oars of the larger boats are generally made with a flat circular piece of wood fastened on to a long pole, and are really more like paddles than oars. In the northern corner lie huddled together large dowes, which, during the northeast monsoons, make the journey to Zanzibar, returning at the change of the season. Most of these belong to Banyan merchants in Muscat, and are manned by Indian sailors. Next to them is the small steamer Sultania, which was presented by the sultan of Zanzibar to his cousin, Sultan Turkey, of Muscat, now a perfectly useless craft, which cannot even venture outside the harbour by reason of the holes in its side. From its mast floats the red banner of Oman, the same flag that Arab boats at Aden fly. It was originally the banner of Yemen, to which place the Arabs who rule in Oman trace their origin. Before early in our era, according to Arab tradition, Oman was colonized and taken possession of by descendants of the old hemorrhoids of Yemen. The shore of the town is very unpleasant, reeking with smells, and at low tide lined with all the refuse and awful of the place. At high tide, shoals of fish come in to feed on this refuse, and in their train follow immense flocks of seagulls, which make the edge of the water quite white as they fly along and dive after their prey. Here and there, out of the sand, peep the barrels of some rusty old cannon, ghostly relics of the Portuguese occupation. In the middle of the beach is the sultan's palace, but it is immeasurably inferior to the new residency of the British political agent, which stands at the southern extremity of the town, just where it can get all the breeze that is to be had through a gap in the rocks opening to the south. Here we were most hospitably entertained by Colonel Hayes Sattler on our second sojourn. Even in this favored position, the heat in summer is almost unendurable, making Muscat one of the least coveted posts that the Indian government has at its disposal. The cliffs immediately round the town are of a shiny schist, almost impossible to walk upon, and reflect the rays of the sun with great intensity. On either side of the town stand two old Portuguese forts, capped up and manned by the sultan's soldiers. In them are still to be seen old rusty pieces of ordinance, one of which bears a Portuguese inscription with the date 1606, and the name and arms of Philip III of Spain. Also the small Portuguese chapel in the fort is preserved and bears the date of 1588. These are the principal legacies left to posterity by those intrepid pioneers of civilization in a spot which they occupied for nearly a century and a half. These forts testify to having been of great size and strength in former times, and show considerable architectural features and the traces of a luxuriant and opulent population. With regard to the ancient history of Oman there is little known. The empire of the Hemurites, which filled Yemen and the Hodgermount Valley with interesting remains, does not appear to have extended its sway so far eastward. No Sabean remains have as yet been found in Oman, nor are there any that I have heard of further east than the Frankincense country of the far, over six hundred miles west of Muscat. Neither Ptolemy nor the author of the Periplus gives us any definite information about the existence of a town in the harbor of Muscat, and consequently the first reliable information we have to go upon is from the early Arabian geographers. From Taurisi we learn that Sobar was the most ancient town of Oman, but that in his day Muscat was flourishing, and that in old times the China ships used to sail from there. Oman was included in Yemen by these earlier geographers, doubtless from the fact that Arabs from Yemen were its first colonizers. But all that is known with any certainty is that from the ninth century A.D. a long line of Imams ruled over Oman, with their capitals at Nezva or Rostock, at the foot of Jebel-Orthar. This title, by which the Arab rulers were known, had been conferred on the Arab rulers of Oman for centuries, and signifies a sort of priest-king like Melchizedek, to whom curiously enough is given the same title in the Quran. The election was always by popular acclamation, and in as much as the Omani do not recognize the two Imams who immediately succeeded Mohammed but chose their own, they form a separate sect. In olden days the men of Oman were called outsiders by their Mohammedan brethren, because they recognized their own chiefs solely as the head of their own religion, and are known otherwise as the Ibadiyat or Ibaduya, followers of Abdallah bin Ibad, as distinct from the Shi'ites and Sunni, between which sects the rest of Islam is pretty equally divided. Internessing wars were always rife amongst them, but at the same time these early Omani had little or no intercourse with the outer world. Of the internal quarrels of the country, the Omani historian Salid bin Rajiq has given a detailed account, but for the rest of the world they are of little interest. In those days Oman seems to have had two ports, Suhr and Calhat on the Indian Ocean, which were more frequent than Muscat. Marco Polo, 1280 AD, calls the second Kalati in his journal, and describes it as a large city in a gulf called also Kalatu, and the Omani paid tribute to the melloc or king of Hormuz for many generations, but with the rise of Muscat, Suhr and Calhat declined. Oman first came into immediate contact with Europeans in the year 1506, when Albuquerque appeared in Muscat harbor bent on his conquest of the Persian Gulf, and with the object not even yet accomplished of making a route to India by way of the Euphrates Valley. From Albuquerque's commentaries we get a graphic description of the condition of the country when he reached it. At first the Arabs were inclined to receive the Portuguese without a struggle, but, taking courage from the presence of a large army of Bedouin in the vicinity, they soon showed treacherous intentions toward the invaders, so that the Portuguese admiral determined to attack the town and destroy it, and the commentator states that, within were burned many provisions, thirty-four ships in all, large and small, many fishing-barks, and an arsenal full of every requisite for shipbuilding. After affecting a landing the Portuguese ordered three gunners with axes to cut the supports of the mosque, which was a large and very beautiful edifice, the greater part being built of timber finally carved, and the upper part of stucco, and it was accounted a propitious miracle by the Portuguese that the men who performed this deed were not killed by the falling timber. Mascot was then burnt and utterly destroyed, and, having cut off the ears and noses of the prisoners, he liberated them. The commentator concludes his remarks on Mascot as follows. Mascot is of old a market for carriage of horses and dates. It is a very elegant town with very fine houses. It is the principal entrepôt of the kingdom of Ormuz, into which all the ships that navigate these parts must of necessity enter. The hundred and forty years during which the Portuguese occupied Mascot and the adjacent coast town was a period of perpetual trouble and insurrection. The factory and forts of Jalali and Marani were commenced in 1527, but the forts in their present condition were not erected till after the Union of Portugal and Spain in 1580. The order for their erection came from Madrid, and the inscription bears the date 1588. Not only were the Arabs constantly on the lookout to dislodge their unwelcome visitors, but the Turks attacked them likewise, with the navy from the side of the Persian Gulf, and the naval victory gained by the Portuguese off Mascot in 1554 is considered by Turkish historians to have been a greater blow to their power than the better known battle off Preveza in 1538, where Doria defeated Barbarossa and obliged Suleiman to relinquish his attempt on Vienna. When after the Union of Portugal with Spain the colonial activity of the former country declined, the colonies in the Persian Gulf fell one by one into the hand of the Persians and the Arabs. Out of the kingdom of Oman they were driven in 1620 and confined to the town of Mascot by the victorious Imam, Nasser bin Murshid, during whose reign of 26 years the legend is told that no man in Oman died a natural death. Two years later they were also driven from Mascot itself, and those two forts, Jalali and Marani, which they had built, the last foothold of the Portuguese on the Omani territory were taken from them. The historian Suleil tells the amusing story of the final fall of Mascot into the hands of the Arabs. The Portuguese governor Pereira was deeply enamored of the daughter of a Banyan merchant of Mascot. The man at first refused to let him have his daughter, but at length consented, on condition that the wedding did not take place for some months. Pereira was now entirely in the hands of the Banyan and did everything he told him, so the crafty Indian communicated with the Arabs outside Portuguese territory, telling them to be ready when due notice was given to attack the town. He then proceeded to persuade Pereira to clean out the water tanks of the fort, and to clear out the old supplies of food preparatory to revictualing them. Then when the forts were without food and water, and finally having damped all the powder, he gave notice to the Arabs, who attacked and took the town on a Sunday evening when the Portuguese were carousing. Captain Hamilton gives another account in his travels, beginning of footnote 7, Pinkerton, volume 8, end of footnote 7, and tells us that the Arabs were exasperated by a piece of pork wrapped up in paper being sent as a present to the Imam by the governor, Pereira, and he also adds that the Portuguese were all put to the sword safe 18, who embraced Mohammedanism, and that the Portuguese cathedral was made the Imam's palace, where he took up his residence for a month or two every year. Since those days, these two forts have been regularly used by rival claimants to the sovereignty of Oman as convenient points of vantage from which to pepper one another, to the infinite discumprature of the inhabitants beneath. The departure of the Portuguese did not greatly benefit the Omani. Writing in 1624 to the East India Company, Thomas Carriage speaks of Muscat as a beggarly poor town, and, or moose, he says, is become a heap of ruins. At last, in 1737, owing to the jealousies of the rival Imams, Said and Ibn Murshad, Muscat, was taken by the Persians. They were, however, soon driven out again by Ahmenbid Sayyid, or Saoud, a man of humble origin but a successful general. As a reward for his services he was elected Imam in 1741, and was the founder of the dynasty which still rules there. The successors of Ahmenbid Sayyid found the obligations of being Imam, and the oath which it entailed to fight against the Enfadel both awkward and irksome, so his grandson, Saoud, who succeeded in 1779, never assumed the title of Imam, but was content with that of Sultan, and consequently the Imamate of Oman has, with one short exception, been in abeyance ever since. Under the first rulers of this dynasty, Oman became a state of considerable importance. During the reigns of Sultan Saoud and his son, Sultan Saoud Sayyid, a large part of the Arabian mainland was under the rule of Oman, as also Bahrain, Hormuz, LaRige, Qisham, Bandar Abbas, many islands in their pearl fisheries, and Linga, also a good part of the coast of Africa, and it was they who established the alliances with England and the United States. The first political relations between the East India Company and the ruler of Oman took place in 1798, the object being to secure the alliance of Oman against the Dutch and French. A second treaty was made two years later, and it was provided in it that an English gentleman of respectability, on the part of the honourable East India Company, should always reside at the port of Muscat. An English gentleman of respectability has consequently resided there ever since, and from the days of Sultan Sayyid has become the chief factor in the government of the place. Sultan Sayyid bin Sayyid stands out prominently as the great ruler of Oman, and under his rule Oman and its capital, Muscat, reached the greatest pitch of eminence to be found in all its annals. He ascended the throne in 1804 and reigned for fifty-two years. He found his country in dire distress at the time of his accession, owing to the attacks of the fanatical Wahhabi from Central Arabia, who had carried their victorious arms right down to Muscat, and had imposed their bigoted rules and religious regulations on the otherwise liberal-minded Mohammedans of Eastern Arabia, with Turkish aid on the one hand and British support on the other, Sultan Sayyid succeeded in relieving his country from these terrible scourges, and drove them back into the central province of Nejd, from which they had carried their bloodthirsty and fanatical wars over nearly the whole of the peninsula, and when all fear from the Wahhabi was over, Sultan Sayyid extended his conquests in all directions. He occupied several points on the Persian Gulf and the opposite coast of Baluchistan, and materially assisted the Indian government in putting down the piracy which had for long closed the Gulf to all trade, and finally in 1856 he added the important Arab settlement of Mumbasa in Zanzibar on the African coast to his dominion. During this long reign Muscat prospered exceedingly. It was the great trade center for the Persian Gulf, and as much as it was a safe depot, where merchants could deposit their goods without fear of piracy, vessels going to and from India before the introduction of steam used frequently to stop at Muscat for water. As a trade center in those days it was almost as important as Aden, and with the Indian government Sultan Sayyid was always on most friendly terms. When Sultan Sayyid died, the usual dispute took place between his successors. England promptly stepped in to settle this dispute, and with the foresight she so admirably displays on such occasions she advocated a division of Sayyid's empire. Zanzibar was given to one claimant, Oman to the other, and for the future Oman and Sultan Turkey remained under British protection. Since the death of Sultan Sayyid the power of Oman has most lamentably gone down, partly owing to the very success of his attempts to put down piracy. This followed by the introduction of steam has diminished the importance of Muscat as a safe port for the merchants to deposit their wares. It is also partly due to the jealousies which prevail between the descendants of Sayyid who rule in Zanzibar and in Muscat. Paul Grave in 1863 describes Muscat as having 40,000 inhabitants. There are probably half that number now. The Sultan of Zanzibar has to pay an annual tribute of 40,000 crowns to his relative of Muscat in order to equalize the inheritance, and this tribute being a constant source of trouble, of late years he has taken to urging the wild Bedouin tribes in Oman to revolt against the present, rather weak-minded Sultan who reigns there. He supplies them with the sinews of war, namely money and ammunition, and the insurrection which occurred in February 1895 was chiefly due to this mode of power. One of his sisters married a German, the English conniving in her escape from Zanzibar in a gunboat. On her husband's death her elder brother having in the meantime also died, she returned to Zanzibar thinking her next brother, the present Sultan, to be of a milder disposition, but he refused to take any notice of her and her children. The present ruler of Muscat, Sultan Faisal, is a grandson of Sultan Sayyid and son of Sultan Turkey by an Abyssinian mother. Since his accession in 1889 he has been vacillating in his policy. He has practically had but little authority outside the walls of Muscat, and were it not for the support of the British government and the proximity of a gunboat he would long ago have ceased to rule. When we first saw him in 1889 he was but a beardless boy timid and shy, and now he has reached man's estate. He still retains the nervous manner of his youth. He lives in perpetual dread of his elder brother Mahmood, who, being the son of a Negres, was not considered a suitable person to inherit the throne. The two brothers, though living in adjacent houses, never meet without their own escorts to protect them from each other. The way in which Faisal obtained possession of the Sultan's palace on his father's death to the exclusion of his brother is curious. Faisal said his grief for his father was so great that his feelings would not admit of his attending the funeral, so he stayed at home while Mahmood went, who on his return found the door locked in his face. The palace is entered by a formidable looking door, decorated with large spiked bosses of brass. This opens into a small court which contained at the time of our first visit the most imposing sight of the place, namely the lion in his cage to the left, into which Faisal was in the habit of introducing criminals of the deepest dye, to be devoured by this lordly executioner. The door to this cage of death is another, a low probationary cage, which, when we were there, contained a prisoner stretched out at full length, for the cage is too low to admit of a sitting posture. From this point he could view the horrors of the lion's cage, so that during his incarceration he might contemplate what might happen to him if he continued, on liberation, to pursue his evil ways. Another door leads into a vaulted passage full of guards, through which we passed and entered into an inner court with a pool in the center and a wide cloister around it supporting a gallery. Sultan Faisal was then a very young man, not much over twenty. He was greatly interested in seeing us, for we were the first English travellers who had visited him since his accession. We caught sight of him peeping at us over the balcony as we passed through the courtyard below, and we had to clamber up a ladder to the gallery, where we found him ready to welcome us. He seized our hands and shook them warmly, and then led us with much effusiveness to his hawa, a long room just overhanging the sea, which is his reception and throne room. Here were high cane-bottom chairs round the walls, and at one end a red chair, which is the throne. Just over it were hung two grotesque pictures of our queen and the prince consort, such as one could buy for a penny at a fair. Here looked upon his objects of great value here, and act as befitting symbols of our protectorate. The imam fed us with sweets and coffee, asked us innumerable questions, and seemed full of boyish fun. Certainly with his turban of blue and red-checked cotton, which would have been a housemaid's duster at home, his faded greenish-yellow cloak fastened round his slender frame by a red girdle. He looked anything but a king. As we were preparing to depart, the young monarch grew apparently very uneasy, and impatiently shouted something to his attendants, and when the servant came in, Faisal hurried to him, seized four little gilt-bottles of a tar of roses, thrust two of them into each of our pockets, and with some compliments as to our queen having eyes everywhere, and Faisal's certainty that she would look after him, the audience was at an end. John Faisal was a complete autocrat as far as his jurisdiction extended. At his command a criminal could be executed either in the lion's cage or in a little square by the sea, and his body cut up and thrown into the waves. The only check upon him was the British resident. His father, Turkey, not long before, sewed up a woman in a sack and drowned her, whereupon a polite message came from the residency requesting him not to do such things again. Hence young Faisal dared not to be very cruel. To offend the English would have been to lose his position. His half-brother, Mahmoud, whose mother was a Swahili, lives next door to his brother, Sultan Faisal, in the enjoyment of a pension of six hundred dollars a month. The uncles, however, are not so amenable. The eldest of them, according to Arabian custom, claimed the throne and had collected an army amongst the Bedouin to assert his claims, and was then in possession of all the country, with the exception of Muscat and Almatra. For Faisal had no money, and hence he could not get his soldiers to fight. But then it had been intimated to Faisal that in all probability the English would support his claims if he conducted himself prudently and wisely. So there was every likelihood that in due course he would be thoroughly established in the dominions of his father. When we visited the town for the second time, an even more serious rebellion was impending. The Bedouin of the interior, under Sheikh Saleh, having attacked Muscat itself, the Sultan and his brother, who hastily became friends, retired together to the castle, and the town was given up to plunder. There were dead bodies lying on the beach, and but for the kindness of Colonel Hay Sadler, the British resident. There would have been difficulties in the fort as regards water. They relied principally on HMS Sphinx, which lay in the harbor to protect British interests and to maintain Sultan Faisal in his position. This state of terror lasted three weeks, when the rebels, having looted the bazaars and wrecked the town, were eventually persuaded to retire, free and unpunished, with a considerable cash payment, probably intending to return for more when the cooler weather should come and the date harvest be over. With the consent of, and at the request of, the Indian government, Sultan Faisal has imposed additional heavy duty on all the produce coming in from the rebel tribes, that he may have a fund from which to pay indemnities to foreigners who suffered loss during the invasion. A good many Banyan merchants, British subjects, suffered losses, and their claim alone amounted to one hundred and twenty thousand rupees. As a natural result of this disaster and its ignominious termination, Sultan Faisal's authority at the present moment is absolutely nil outside the walls of Miskat in Almatra, and he is still in a state of declared war with all the Bedouin chiefs in the mountains behind Miskat. A few British subjects were scared but not killed, and as all was over in a few weeks no one thought much more about it except those more immediately interested, and few paused to think what an important part Miskat has played in the opening up of the Persian Gulf and the suppression of piracy, and what an important part it may yet play should the lordship of the Persian Gulf ever become a Cassus Belly. Although Miskat has been under Indian influence for most of this century it has laterally gone down much in the world. The trade of the place has well nigh departed, and with a weak sultan at the head of affairs confidence will be long in returning. Unquestionably our own political agent may be said to be the ruler in Miskat, and his authority is generally backed up by the presence of a gunboat. There is also an American consul there, who chiefly occupies himself in trade and steamer agencies, and in 1895 the French also sent a consul to inquire into the question of the slave trade, which is undoubtedly the burning question in Arabia. While St. England has been doing all she can to put slavery down, it is complained that much is carried on under cover of the French flag obtained by Arab dows under false pretexts from the French consul resident in Zanzibar. Sultan Faisal remonstrated with France on this point, and the appointment of a consul is the result. The great reason for our unpopularity in Arabia is due without doubt to our suppression of this trade. Slavery is inherent in the Arab. He does as little work as he can himself, and if he is to have no slaves nothing will be done and he must die. In other parts of South Arabia, Yemen, the Hadramal, the Mahara country, and afar, slavery is universal, and there is no doubt about it the slaves are treated very well and live happy lives. But here in Oman, under the very eye of India, slavery must be checked. Our gunboat, the Sphinx, goes the ground of the coast to prevent this traffic and human flesh, and frequently slaves swim out to the British steamer and obtain their liberty. This naturally makes us very unpopular in Sur, where the Geneva tribe have their headquarters, the most inveterate slave traders of southern Arabia. The natural result is that whenever they get a chance, the Geneva tribe loot any foreign vessel wrecked on their shores and murdered the crew. In the summer of 1894, however, a boat was wrecked near Hubat al-Hashish, containing some creoles from the Seychelles Islands, after being driven for forty-five days out of their course by southeast monsoons, during which time three or four of them had died. The survivors were much exhausted, but the Bedouin treated them kindly, for a wonder, and brought them safely to Muscat. For doing this they were handsomely rewarded by the Indian government, though they had kept possession of the boat and its contents, nevertheless they had saved the lives of the crew, and this, being a step in the right direction, was thought worthy of reward. The jealousies, however, of other tribes were so great that the rescuers could not return to their own country by the land route, but had to be sent to Sur by sea. Faisal has had copper coins of his own struck, of the value of a quarter Anna. On the obverse is a picture of Muscat and its forts, around which in English runs the legend, Sultan Faisal bin Turki Sultan and Imam of Muscat and Oman, and on the reverse is the Arab equivalent. He has also introduced an ice factory, which, however, is now closed, and he wished to have his own stamps, principally with a view to making money out of them, but our agent represented to him that it was beneath the dignity of so great a Sultan, to make money in so mean a way, and the stamps have never appeared. Sultan Faisal had done much in the last few years since our first visit to modernized his palace. British influence has abolished many horrors and cruelties, and the lion having died has not been replaced. For the Indian government the question of Muscat is by no means pleasant. For, should any other power choose to interfere and establish an influence there, it would materially affect the influence which we have established in the Persian Gulf. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of Southern Arabia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Southern Arabia by James and Mabel Bent. Chapter 5. Muscat and the Outskirts. I never saw a place so void of architectural features as the town of Muscat itself. The mosques have neither domes nor minarets, a sign of the rigid Wahhabi influence which swept over Arabia. This sect refused to have any feature about their buildings or ritual which was not actually enjoined by Muhammad in his Quran. There are a few carved lentils and doorways, and the bazaars are quaintly pretty. But beyond this the only architectural features are Portuguese. All traces of the Portuguese rule are fast disappearing, and each new revolution adds a little more to their destruction. Three walls of the huge old cathedral still stand, a window or two with latticework carving after the fashion of the country are still left, but the interior is now a stable for the Sultan's horses and the walls are rapidly crumbling away. The interior of Muscat is particularly gloomy. The bazaars are narrow and dirty and roofed over with palm matting. They offer but little of interest. And if you are fond of the Arabian sweet-meat called Halwa, it is just as well not to watch it being made there. Renegar's feet are usually employed to stir it, and the knowledge of this is apt to spoil the flavor. Most of the town is now in ruins. 50 years ago the population must have been nearly three times greater than it is now. There is also wanting in the town the feature which makes most Muslim towns picturesque, namely the minaret, the mosques of the Ibadia sect being squalid and uninteresting. At first it is difficult to distinguish them from the courtyard of an ordinary house, but by degrees the eye gets trained to identify a mosque by the tiny substitute for a minaret attached to each, a sort of bell-shaped cone about four feet high, which is placed above the corner of the enclosing wall. I have already mentioned the Ibadia's views with regard to the Imams. I believe they hold also certain heterodox opinions with regard to predestination and free will, which detach them from other Muslim communities. At any rate they are far more tolerant than other Arabian followers of the Prophet, and permit strangers to enter their mosques at will. Tobacco is freely used by them, and amongst the upper classes skepticism is rife. The devout followers of Muhammad look upon them much as Roman Catholics look on protestants, and the position is similar in many respects. As elsewhere in Arabia coffee is largely consumed in Oman, and no business is ever transacted without it. It is always served in large copper coffee pots of the quaint shape which they use in Bahrain. Some of these coffee pots are very large. An important sheikh or the mullah of a mosque, whose guests are many, will have coffee pots two or three feet in height, whereas those for private use are quite tiny, but the bird-like form of the pot is always scrupulously preserved. The bazaars of Oman do not offer much to the curio hunter. He may perchance find a few of the curved Omani daggers with handsome sheets adorned with filigree silver, to which is usually attached, by a leather thong, a thorn extractor, an ear-pick, and a spike. The belting, too, with which these daggers are attached to the body, is very pretty and quite a specialty of the place. Formally many gold daggers were manufactured at Muscat and sent to Zanzibar, but of late years the demand for these has considerably diminished. The iron locks in the bazaars are very curious and old-fashioned, with huge iron keys which push out the wards, and are made like the teeth of a comb. These locks are exceedingly cumbersome and seem to me to be a development of the wooden locks with wooden wards found in the interior of Arabia. Some of them are over a foot long. I have seen a householder after trying to hammer the key in with a stone at last in despair climb over his own garden wall. Perchance a shark-skin or wooden buckler may be picked up from a Bedou from the mountains, and there are chances of obtaining the products of many nationalities. From Muscat, like Aden, is one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the East. Here, as in Almatra, you find Banyans from India, Beluchi from the Macron Coast, Negroes from Zanzibar, Bedouin, Persians from the Gulf, and the town itself is even less Arab than Aden. The ex-prime minister's house, which occupies a prominent position in the principal street, is somewhat more Oriental in character than most, and possesses a charmingly carved projecting window which gladdens the eye, and here and there in the intricacies of the town one comes across a carved door or a carved window, but they are now few and far between. The suburbs of Muscat are especially interesting. As soon as you issue out of either of the two gates which are constructed in the wall, shutting the town off from the outer world, you plunge it once into a new and varied life. Here is the fish and provision market, built of bamboos, picturesque, but reeking with horrible smells and alive with flies. Hard buy is a stagnant pool into which is cast all the awful and filth of this disgusting market. The water in the pool looks quite putrid, and when the wind comes from this quarter no wonder it is laden with fever germs and mephitic vapors. Consequently Muscat is a most unhealthy place, especially when the atmosphere is damp and rain has fallen to stir up the refuse. The women with their mask veils called butra, not unlike the masks worn with the domino, pleased us immensely so that we sought to possess a specimen. They brought us several, which however did not quite satisfy us. And afterwards we learned that an enterprising German firm had made a lot of these butra for sale amongst the Muscat women. But the shape being not exactly orthodox, the women will not buy them. So the owners of these insalable articles are anxious to sell them cheap to any unsuspecting traveller who may be passing through. Outside the walls the sultan is in the habit of distributing two meals a day to the indigent poor, and inasmuch as the Omani are by nature prone to laziness, there is but little doubt that his highness' liberality is greatly imposed upon. In the market outside the walls we lingered until nearly driven wild by the flies and the stench, so we were glad enough to escape and pursue our walk to the Peritice Valley and see the favourable side of Muscat. There the sleepy noise of the wells, the shade of the acaches and palms, and the bright green of the Lucerne fields refreshed us, and we felt it hard to realize that we were in arid Arabia. As you emerge you come across a series of villages built of reeds and palm branches and inhabited by members of the numerous nationalities who come to Muscat in search of a livelihood. Most of these are Baluchi from the Mechron Coast and Africans from the neighbourhood of Zanzibar. The general appearance of these villages is highly picturesque, but squalid. Here and there palm trees, almond trees, and the ubiquitous camel-thorn are seen interspersed amongst the houses. Women in red and yellow garments, with turquoise rings in their ears and noses, peep at you furtively from behind their flimsy doors. And as you proceed up the valley you find several towers constructed to protect the gardens from bedwind incursions, and a few comfortable little villas built by Banyan merchants, where they can retire from the heat and dust of Muscat. The gardens are all cultivated, with irrigation, and look surprisingly green and delicious in contrast with the barren, arid rocks which surround them. The wells are dug deep in the centre of the valley, in the bed of what elsewhere would be a river, and are worked by a running slope and bullocks who draw up and down skin buckets, which, like those in Bahrain, empty themselves automatically into tanks connected with the channels, which convey the water to the gardens. After walking for a mile or two up this valley, all traces of life and cultivation cease, and amidst the volcanic rocks and boulders, hardly a trace of vegetable life is to be seen. It is a veritable valley of desolation, and there are many such in waterless Arabia. By ascending paths to the right or to the left of the valley, the pedestrian may reach some exquisite points of view. All the little calls or passes through which these paths lead are protected at the summit by walls and forts. Not strong enough, however, as recent events have shown, to keep off the incursions of the bedwind. The views over Muscat and the sea are charming, but one view to the south will be forever impressed on my mind, as one of the most striking panoramas I have ever seen. When the summit of a little pass on the south side of the valley is reached, after a walk of about two miles, you look down through a gateway over the small valley and fishing village of Sadad, amongst the reed houses of which are many palm trees, and a thick palm garden belonging to Sayed Yusuf, which gives the one thing wanting to view about Muscat, namely, a massive green to relieve the eye. A deep inlet of the sea runs up here with its blue waters, and beyond stretch into illimitable space, the fantastic peaks of the Oman Mountains, taking every form and shape imaginable. These are all rich purples and blues, and the coloring of this view is superb. From Sadad, one can take a boat and row round the headlands back to Muscat. The promontories to the open sea are very fine. Beetling cliffs of black, red, and green volcanic rocks, and here and there stand up rocky islets, the home of the Cormorant and the Bitterne. In a small cove, called Zhekh Jabar, halfway between Sadad and Muscat, and accessible only by boat, for none but the most active of the natives can scale the overhanging rocks, is a tiny strand which has been chosen as the Christian burial place. There are not very many graves in this weird spot, and most of them are occupied by men from the gun-boats which have been stationed at Muscat. Among them is the grave of Bishop French, who came to Muscat some years ago with the object of doing missionary work amongst the Omani, but he fell a sacrifice to the pernicious climate before he had been long at his post, and before he had succeeded in making any converts. About three miles from Muscat lies the town of Almatra, the commercial center of the kingdom of Oman. It would be the seat of government also, where it not exposed to the southern winds. The journey is nearly always made by sea. It takes much longer to go by land, for a ridge of hills has to be crossed. In a canoe it is only half an hour's paddle, and when the weather is favorable, the canoe owners drive a rattling trade. The canoes, which they call Huris, are hollowed out of a tree-tronk, double-proud, and with matting at the bottom. They're not very stable, and make one think unpleasantly of sharks. You pass the Fahal, or Stalian, rock in the harbor, a name constantly given by Arabs to anything large and uncanny-looking, and turning sharp around a rocky corner you see before you Almatra. The town is governed by Wali, chosen by the Imam, and in the bazaars may be seen in hopeless confusion banyans from India, Omani, Bedouin, Persians, and Jews. These nationalities have eached their separate wards for living in, walled off to keep them from perpetual brawls, and they only meet one another in the bazaars, where the eye of the bazaar master is upon them, ready to inflict condine punishment on disturbors of the peace, in which cases the innocent more frequently suffer than the guilty. The Monday's market is filled with quaint country folk, bringing in baskets of fruit and wearing the upper garment of red cotton and the large white girdle and turban. At Almatra live most of the richest merchants, and it is the point from which all the caravan roads into the interior start. It, too, has a Portuguese castle, and presents a much more alluring frontage than Muscat. In a nice-looking house by the shore, dwelt Dr. Jayakhar, an Indian doctor, who had lived for twenty-five years at Muscat, combining the post of British vice-consul with that of medical advisor to the few Europeans who dwell there. He said he preferred Muscat to any other place in the world, and hoped to end his days there. He was a great naturalist, and his house was filled with curious animals from the interior, and marvels from the deep. He showed us specimens of a rabbit-like animal, which the Arabs called Wahabba, and which he affirmed is the cony of the Bible, and of the Oryx, which lives up on the Jebel-Akhdar. It has two straight horns, which for one instant, and from one point of view when it is running, sideways look like one. And some say the fact gave rise to the mythical unicorn. It is, to say the least of it, a great disadvantage to have your medical man at Almatra when you are ill at Muscat. If the weather is stormy, boats cannot go between the two places. There is a troublesome road across the headland by which the doctor can come, partly by water, and partly on foot, in case of dire necessity. But the caravan road entirely by land goes a long way inland and would take the medical man all day to traverse. Behind Almatra are pleasant gardens, watered by irrigation, which produce most of the fruit and vegetables consumed in these parts. During our fortnight stay at Muscat in 1895, we frequently in the evening coolness rode about the harbor and examined its bays and promontories. The energetic crews of numerous gunboats of various nationalities stationed here at different times have beguiled their time by illuminating the bare cliffs with the names of their ships in large letters done in white paint. French, Russian, Italian, and German names are here to be read, but by far the largest number are in English. The rocks at the mouth of the harbor are literally covered with delicious oysters, and one of our entertainments was at low tide to land on these rocks and get our boatmen to detach as many of the shellfish as we could conveniently consume. Such is Muscat as it exists today, a spot which has had a varied history in the past, and the future of which will be equally interesting to those who have any connection with the Persian Gulf. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Southern Arabia This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Southern Arabia by James and Mabel Bent Chapter 6 Mukalla After our journeys in South Africa and Abyssinia, it was suggested to my husband that a survey of the Hadramout by an independent traveler would be useful to the government. So in the winter of 1893-1894, we determined to do our best to penetrate into this unknown district, which, anciently, was the center of the Frankincense and Mer trade, one of the most famed commercial centers of R.B. The Blessed, before Mohammedan fanaticism blighted all industries and closed the peninsula to the outer world. In the proper acceptation of the term, the Hadramout at the present time is not a district running along the southeast coast of Arabia between the sea and the central desert, as is generally supposed. But it is simply a broad valley, running for 100 miles or more parallel to the coast, by which the valleys of the high Arabian table-land discharge their not abundant supply of water into the sea at Sehut, towards which place this valley gradually slopes. There is every reason to believe that, anciently, too, the Hadramout meant only this valley. We learned from hymnoretic inscriptions that five centuries B.C. the name was spelt by the hymnars as it is now, namely T.M.R.D.H. Beginning of Reader's Note, Symbol, See Page Image, End of Reader's Note, and meant in that tongue the enclosure or valley of death, a name which in Hebrew form corresponds exactly to that of Hazar Mavith, of the tenth chapter of Genesis, and which the Greeks, in their usual slipshod manner, occasioned by their inability, as is the case still, to pronounce a pure H, converted into Chathormite, a form which still survives in the Italian word Chitrame, or pitch. Owing to the intense fanaticism of the inhabitants, this main valley has been reached only by one European before ourselves, namely Erlio Hirsch in 1893. In 1846 Van Gheede made a bold attempt to reach it, but only got as far as the collateral valley of Doan. My husband and I were the first to attempt, in the latter part of 1893 and the early part of 1894, this journey without any disguise, and with a considerable train of followers. And I think, for this very reason that we went openly, we made more impression on the natives, and were able to remain there longer and see more than might otherwise have been the case, and to establish relations with the inhabitants which, I hope, will hereafter lead to very satisfactory results. Having arrived at Odin with letters of recommendation to the resident from the Indian government and the India office, besides private introductions, we were amazed at all the difficulties thrown in our way. It quite appeared as if we had left our native land to do some evil deed to its detriment, and we were made to feel how thoroughly degrading it is to take up the vocation of an archaeologist and explorer. Many strange and unexpected things befell us, but the most remarkable of all was that when a certain surgeon captain asked for leave to accompany us, it was refused to him on the ground that Mr. Theodore Bentz's expedition was not sanctioned by government, in spite of the fact that the Indian government had actually placed at my husband's disposal a surveyor, Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur. We had no assistance beyond two very inferior letters to the sultans of Makhalla and Shahar, which made them think we were people of the rank of merchants, they afterwards said. Imam Sharif has traveled much with Englishmen, so he speaks our language perfectly. And having a keen sense of humor, plenty of courage and tact, and no Mohammedan prejudices, we got unsplendedly together. He was a very agreeable member of the party. My husband paid all his expenses from Keta via Bombay, with three servants, including their tents in Camp Equipage, and back to Keta. Our party was rather a large one, for besides ourselves and our faithful Greek servant, Matthäus, who has accompanied us in so many of our journeys, we had with us not only the Indians, but a young gardener from Q, William Lunt by name, as botanist, and an Egyptian named Mahmood Bayoumi, as naturalist, sent by Dr. Anderson, whose collections are now in the British Museum of Natural History at South Kensington. The former was provided with all the requisites for digging up forest trees, and Mahmood had with him all that was necessary for pickling and preserving large mammals, for no one knew what might be found in the unknown land, and many were the volunteers to join the party as hunters, who promised to keep us in game, whereas if they had come they would only have found reptiles. An interpreter was recommended to us by the native political agent at Aden, Salih Mohammed Jaffer, Khan Bahadur, a certain Salih Hassan. He proved to be a fanatical Muslim, whose only object seemed to be to terrify us and to raise enemies against us, in order to prevent our trampling the holy land where Mahmood was born. Throughout our journey he was a constant source of difficulty and danger. Our starting point for the interior was McKella, which is 230 miles from Aden, and is the only spot between Aden and Muscat, which has any pretensions to the name of port. The name itself means harbour. It is first mentioned by Ibn Mujahwur, Hamdani calls it al-Asa-lahsa, and Masoudi gives the name as lahsa. The harbour is not available during the southwest monsoon, and then all the boats go off to Ra'as-Burum or the basalt head. Here we were deposited in December 1893 by a chance steamer, one which had been chartered and on which for consideration we were allowed to take passage. I took turns with the captain to sleep in his cabin, but there was nothing but the duck for the others. Immediately behind the town rise grim arid mountains of a reddish hue, and the town is plastered against this rich-tinged background. By the shore, like a lighthouse, stands the white minaret of the mosque, the walls and pinnacles of which are covered with dense masses of sea birds and pigeons. The gate of this mosque, which is really nearly in the sea, is blocked up by tanks so that no one can enter with unwashed feet. Not far from this rises the huge palace where the sultan dwells, reminding one of a white washed mill, white, red, and brown are the dominant colors of the town, and in the harbor the Arab dowels with fantastic sterns, rock too and fro in the unsteady sea, forming altogether a picturesque and unusual scene. Beyond the beb-asab or huts were dwelled the Bedouin who come in from the mountains. They are not allowed to sleep within the town. There is a praying place just outside the gate. In the middle of the town is a great cemetery full of tamarisks and containing the sacred tomb of the sainted Weli Akhub in the center. We were amused by a dance at a straight corner to the beating of drums. It consisted of a hot, seething mass of brown bodies writhing about and apparently enjoying themselves. Stone tobacco pipes are made here of a kind of limestone, very curly silver powder flasks rather like nautilus shells and curious guns without stocks. The Bedouin women wear tremendously heavy belts and very wide brass armlets. Their faces are veiled with something like the Yashmak of Egypt, but it is of plain blue calico, a little embroidered. M'kella is ruled over by a sultan of the al-Qa'iti family whose connection with India has made them very English in their sympathies, and his majesty's general appearance with his velvet coat and jubilant daggers is far more Indian than Arabian. Really, the most influential people in the town are the money grabbing parses from Bombay, and it is essentially one of those commercial centers where Hindustani is spoken merely as much as Arabian. The government of the country is now almost entirely in the hands of the al-Qa'iti family, which at present is the most powerful family in the district and is reputed to be the richest in Arabia. About five generations ago, the Sayids of the Abu Bakr family, at that time the chief Arab family at the Hadramout, who claimed descent from the first of the Khalifes, were at variance with the Bedou tribes, and in their extremity they invited assistance from the chiefs of the Yefah tribe, who inhabit the Yefah district to the northeast of Aden. To this request the al-Qa'iti family responded by sending assistance to the Sayids of the Hadramout, putting down the troublesome Bedou tribes and establishing a fair amount of peace and prosperity in the country. Though even to this day the Bedouin of the mountains are ever ready to swoop down and harass the more peaceful inhabitants of the towns. At the same time the al-Qa'iti family established themselves in the Hadramout, and for the last four generations have been steadily adding to the power thus acquired. Maqalla, Shahr, Shibam, Hawura, Hagarain, all belong to them, and they are continually increasing, by purchase, the area of their influence in the collateral valleys, building substantial castles, and establishing one of the most powerful dynasties in this much-divided country. They get all their money from the straight settlements, for it has been the custom of the Hadrami to leave their own sterile country to seek their fortunes abroad. The Nizam of Hyderabad has an Arab regiment composed entirely of Hadrami, and the Sultan Nawazjung, the present head of the al-Qa'iti family, is its general. He lives in India and governs his Arabians possessions by deputy. His son Ghaleb ruled in Shahr, his nephew Manasser, who receives a dollar a day from England ruled in Maqalla, and his nephew Salih ruled in Shibam, and the governors of the other towns are mostly connections of this family. The power and wealth of this family are almost the only guarantee for peace and prosperity in an otherwise lawless country. The white palace of the Sultan Manasser is six stories high, with little carved windows and a pretty sort of cornice of openwork bricks, unbaked, of course, saved by the sun. It stands on a little peninsula, and like Riviera towns has pretty coast views on either side. The Sultan received us with his two young sons, dressed up in as many fine clothes as it was possible to put on, and attended by his vizier, Abdul Khaliq. No business was done as to our departure, but only compliments were paid on both sides. After we had separated, presents were sent by us, loaves of sugar being an indispensable accompaniment. The so-called palace in which we were lodged was next to the mosque and close to the bazaar. The smells and noise were almost unendurable, so we worked hard to get our preparations made and to make our sojourn here as short as possible. This palace was a large building. A very dirty staircase led to a quantity of rooms, large and small, inhabited in rather a confusing manner, not only by our own party, but by another. And to get at our servants we had to pick our way between the prostrate forms of an Arabian gentleman and his attendants. We were the first arrivals, so we collected from the various rooms as many bits of torn and rotten old matting as we could find, to keep the dust down in our own room, which was about forty feet long by thirty feet wide, so very much covered with dust that no pavement could be seen without digging. It would have been necessary to have seven maids with seven brooms to sweep for half a year before they could have cleared that room. Windows were all round, unglazed of course, and quite shudderless. We set out our furniture and had plenty of room to spread the baggage round us. An enormous packing case from Q Gardens had little besides a great fork in it, so that case came no farther. Another case, to which the botanist had to resort constantly, had always to be tied up with rope, as it had neither lock nor hinges. We were six days at McKella arranging about camels and safe conduct and wondering when we should get away. So of course we had plenty of time to inspect the town, which on account of the many parcies had quite an Indian air in some parts. Sometimes one comes upon a deliciously scented part in the bazaars where myrrh and spices, a tar of roses, and rose-leaves are sold in little grimy holes almost too small to enter. But for the part near the fish market I can only say that awful stenches prevail, and the part where dates and other fruits are sold is almost impassable from flies. For our journey inland we were entrusted by the Sultan to a tribe of Bedouin and their camels. Makhayek was the name of Armaqadim, or headman, and his tribe adjoiced in the name of Khayliki. They were tiny spare men, quite beardless, with very refined gentle faces. They might easily have been taken for women so gentle and pretty were they. They were naturally dark and made darker still by dirt and indigo. Their long, shaggy hair was twisted up into a knot and bound by a long-plated leather string, like a boot lace, which was wound round the hair and then two or three times round the head, like the fillet worn by Greek women in ancient times. They were naked save for a loincloth and the girdle to which were attached, their brass powder flasks, shaped like a ram's horn, their silver cases for flint and steel, their daggers, and their thorn extractors, consisting of a picker and tweezers fastened together. They are very different from the stately Bedouin of Syria and Egypt in our, both Astor, religion, and physique, distinctly an aboriginal race of southern Arabia, as different from the Arab as the Hindu is from the Anglo-Saxon. Our ideas as to Bedouin and Bedouin, which latter word we never heard while we were in southern Arabia, were that they were tall, bearded men, not very dark in color, and our imaginations connected them with hospitality and much clothes. None of these characteristics are found among the Bedouin of this district. Bedouin is not a word in use, but Bedouin, for both singular and plural. They speak of themselves as El Bedouin, and when they have seen us wondering at some strange custom they have said apologetically, ah, Bedou, Bedouin. I have heard them address a man whose name they did not know, Ya Bedouin. I mean to use Bedouin for singular and Bedouin for plural. Besides the Bedouin we were accompanied by five soldiers, Muafakal Buriti, Tessir Fahari, Buriki, and an old man. For the twenty-two camels we paid one hundred and seventy-five dollars to Hagarain, a journey we were told of twenty days. It would have been useless to have had riding camels, as one could get no faster than the baggage in soldiers, and traveling so far daily and up such rocks one had to go at foot pace. We should have had to wait longer at McKellow while more camels were collected, and the more camels you have, the farther they stray when food is scarce, and the more chance there is of the annoyance of waiting for lost camels to be found, and sometimes found too late to start that day. We need not have had twenty-two camels, and once later all the baggage was sent on ten, but this was to suit the purposes of the Bedouin. Before proceeding further with our journey, I will here say a few words concerning the somewhat complex body politic of this portion of Arabia, the inhabitants of which may be divided into four distinct classes. Firstly, there are numerous wild tribes of Bedouins scattered all over the country, who do all the carrying trade, rear and own most of the camels, and possess large tracts of country, chiefly on the highlands and smaller valleys. They are very numerous and powerful, and the Arabs of the towns are certainly afraid of them, for they can make traveling in the country very difficult, and even blockade the towns. They never live intense as do the Bedouin of northern Arabia. The richer ones have quite large houses, whilst the poorer ones, those in Shabbat and the Wadi-Adim, for instance, dwell in caves. Secondly, we have the Arabs proper, a decidedly later importation into the country than the Bedouin. They live in and cultivate the lands around the towns. Many of them carry on trade and go to India and the straits settlements, and some of them are very wealthy. They also are divided into tribes. The chief of those dwelling in the Hadramount are the Yefei, Qatiri, Minhali, Amr and Tamimi. The Bedouin reside amongst them, and they are constantly at war with one another, and the complex system of tribal union is exceedingly difficult to grasp. Thirdly, we have the Sayids and Sharifes, a sort of aristocratic hierarchy, who trace their descent from the daughter and son of the prophet. Their influence in the Hadramount is enormous, and they fan the religious superstition of the people, for to this they owe their existence. They boast that their pedigree is purer than that of any other Sayid family, even the nose of Mecca and Medina. Sayids and Sharifes are to be found in all the large towns and considerable villages, and even the Arab sultans show them a marked respect and kiss their hands when they enter a room. They have a distinct jurisdiction of their own, and most disputed points of property, water rights and so on are referred to their decision. They look with peculiar distrust on the introduction of external influence into their sacred country, and are the obstructionists of the Hadramount, but at the same time their influence is decidedly towards law and order in a lawless land. They never carry arms. Lastly we have the slave population of the Hadramount, all of African origin, and the freed slaves who have married and settled in the country. Most of the tillers of the soil, personal servants, and the soldiers of the sultans are of this class. CHAPTER VII Our Departure Into The Interior NEVER shall I forget the confusion of our start. Mokheik and ten of his men appeared at seven in the morning of the day before in our rooms, with all the lowest beggars of Mekella in their train, and were let loose on our seventy packages like so many demons from Jehennem yelling and quarreling with one another. First of all, the luggage had to be divided into loads for twenty-two camels. Then they drew lots for these loads with small sticks. Then they drew lots for us riders. And finally we had a stormy bargain as to the price, which was finally decided upon when the vizier came to help us, and ratified by his exchanging daggers with Mokheik, each dagger being presented on a flat hand. In the bazaars bargains are struck by placing the first two fingers of one contractor on the hand of the other. All that day they were rushing in and weighing, and exhorting us to be ready be times in the morning, so we were quite ready about sunrise. We felt worn and weary when a start was made at two o'clock, and our cup of bitterness was full when we were deposited, bag in baggage, a few hundred yards from the gate, and told that we must spend the night amidst a sea of small fish drying on the shore, and surrounded on all sides by dirty bedou huts. These fish, which are rather larger than sardines, are put out to dry by thousands along this coast. Men feed on them, and so do the camels. They make lamp-oil out of them. They say the fish strengthens the camels back, and they consider it good for camels to go once a year to the sea. Large sacks of them are taken into the interior as merchandise. They are mixed with small leaves like box, and carried in palm-leaf sacks, about three feet wide and one-and-a-half feet high, and the air everywhere is redolent of their stench. At this point we had the first of many quarrels with our camelmen. We insisted on being taken two miles farther on away from the smells. Nothing short of threats of returning and getting the sultan to beat them and put them in prison enabled us to break through the conventional Arab custom of encamping for the first night outside the city gates. However we succeeded in reaching Bahrain, where white wells are placed for the benefit of wayfarers. And there, beneath the pleasant shade of the palm trees, we halted for the remainder of the day and recovered from the agonies of our start. Among the trees was a bungalow belonging to the sultan, where we had hoped to have been able to sleep. But it was pervaded by such a strong smell of fish that we preferred to pitch our tents. Between this place and McKella all is arid waste. But near the town, by the help of irrigation, bananas and coconut trees flourish in a shallow valley called the beginning of light. There are numerous fortresses about Bahrain, so the road is now quite safe for the inhabitants of McKella. The sultan has done a good deal to repress the Bedouin who used to raid right into the town. He crucified many of them. We took a couple of hours over our start next day, the Bedouin again quarreling over the luggage, each trying to scramble for the lightest packages and the lightest riders. They tried to make me ride a camel and give up my horse to my husband. As he was so tall he could obtain neither a horse nor a donkey, so had per force to ride a camel. He had been able to buy a little dark donkey for Imam Sharif, and the sultan gave me a horse, but all the rest were on camels. I thought I should enjoy riding by the camels and talking to everyone, but my hopes were not carried out. The difficulty of passing the strings of camels was enormous. The country was so very stony that if you left the narrow path it took a long time to pick your way. I used to start first with Imam Sharif, and then my horse at foot pace got so far ahead that the soldier said we cannot guard both you and the camels. I had then to pull in the horse with all my might. Sometimes I went on with Imam Sharif, one soldier and a servant carrying the plane table. He used to go up some hill to survey, and I of course had to climb too for safety. I had to rush down when I saw our kafila coming and mount to keep in front. If I got behind the camels were so terrified that they danced about and shed their loads, and I was cursed and sworn out by their drivers. We stopped three hours at Basra, ten miles, where there are a few houses, water, and some cultivation, and where the camels were suddenly unloaded without leave. And there was a great row, because we moved the soldier's guns from the tree, the shade of which we wish to have ourselves. We again threatened to return, but at last, as Taysir fortunately could speak Hindustani, he could make peace, and they ended by kissing hands and saying, Salaam, peace. The sun was setting when we reached a sandy place called T'chum, another five miles on, where we camped near some stagnant water. We had to wait for the moon to find our baggage and get out the lantern. We had traveled over almost leafless planes, save that they had little patches of misambryanthemum, and the inevitable balloon shrub, Mathar. Rising and starting by moonlight on Christmas morning, we stopped in Wedi Rafit, Mathar, a very pretty side valley with warm water and palm trees, and what looked like a grassy sword near the water, but which really consisted of a tiny kind of palm. The camelmen wanted to pass this place and camp far away on the stones, sending skins for water, but somehow my husband found this out after we had passed Wedi Rafit and managed to carry off the camels, tied tail after tail to his own camel, so the bedwin had to follow unwillingly. We gave them some presents, saying it was not an everyday occurrence, but that this was a great feast with us. So we made friends. The bedwin wore very unruly about the packing. We could not get our most needful things kept handy, and they liked to pack our bread with their fish and the water skins anywhere among our bedding. Mukkei did not seem to have much authority over the various owners of the camels, and they were always quarreling among themselves. Robbing each other of light loads and leaving some heavy thing that no one wished for lying on the ground, this often occasioned repacking. They had, for each camel, a stout pair of sticks with strong ropes attached, and having bound a bundle of packages to each stick, two men lifted them and wound the ropes round the sticks over a very tiny pack saddle and a mass of untidy rags. When we arrived, they liked to simply loose the ropes from the sticks and let the baggage clatter to the ground and lead away the camels. As they would not be persuaded to sort the things, and as twenty-two camels cover a good deal of space, it was like seeking the slain on a battlefield when we had to wonder about having every bundle untied. Three days camel riding up one of the short valleys which lead towards the high table land offered little of interest beyond arid igneous rocks and burnt up sand-covered valleys with distorted strata on either side. Here and there where warm volcanic streams rise out of the ground, the wilderness is converted into a luxuriant garden in which palms, tobacco, and other green things grow. One of the scrub trees which clothe the wilderness is called by the Arabs, Urak, and is used by them for cleaning their teeth. It amused us to chew this as we went along. It is slightly bitter, but cleans the teeth most effectually. There's also a poisonous sort of cucumber called by the Arabs medec-dac. They clean out the inside and fill the skin with water which they drink as a medicine. At Siba, which we reached after a very hot ride of twelve or thirteen miles, we found water with scores of camels lying round it, for there were two or three other calfulas, or caravans, beside our own. It was dreadfully cold that night and we could not get at our bag of blankets. Next we entered the narrow tortuous valley of Hawwuri, which ascends toward the highland in which the midday heat was intense, and at our evening halts we suffered not a little from camel ticks which abound in the sand, until we learned to avoid old camping grounds and not to pitch our tents in the immediate vicinity of the wells. We encamped in a narrow, stony riverbed between walls of rock, near a little village called Tahaya. There's a good deal of cultivation about. The closeness of the situation made the smell of the dried fish we carried for the camels almost unbearable. These sacs are stretched open in the evening and put in the middle of a circle of camels, their masters often joining in the feast. One of the men was attacked by fever, so he was given quinine, and his friends were told to put him to bed and cover him well. When we went to visit him later, we found him quite contented in one of these fish sacs. His head in one corner and his legs all doubled up and packed in. Only a bare brown back was exposed, so we had a few of the camel's rags thrown on his back, and he was well next day. We went on 10 miles to Al-Rail, rising to an altitude of two thousand feet above the sea level. This word, Rail, begins with the Arabic Ghain, which is a soft sound between R and G. There are two villages near the head of the Wadi-Hawwadi, where there is actually a Ghail, that rare phenomenon in Arabia, a rill or running stream. Here the Bedouin inhabitants cultivate the date palm and have green patches of Lucerne and grain, very refreshing to the eye. We had come up one of the narrowest of gorges, but with hundreds of palm trees around Al-Rail the first of the two villages, which is in the end of the Wadi-Hawwadi. It is an uninteresting collection of stone huts, with many pretty little fields, and maiden hair fern overhanging the wayside. There are little enclosures with walls around them and small stones in them, on which they dry the dates before sending them to Aden. The Rocky Riverbed itself is waterless, the Ghail being used up in irrigation. At Al-Bata, which is just above the table-land, we actually encamped under a spreading tree, a wild, unedible fig called Luthba by the Arabs, a nickname given to all worthless idle individuals in these parts. Bedouin women crowded around us, closely veiled in indigo dyed masks, with narrow slits for their eyes, carrying their babies with them in rude cradles resembling hencoops, with a cluster of charms hung from the top, which has the twofold advantage of amusing the baby and keeping off the evil eye. After much persuasion we induced one of the good ladies to sit for her photograph or rather to sit still while something was being done which she did not in the least understand. There is very good water at Al-Bata and so much of the kind of herbs that camels like that we delayed our departure till eight, shivering by a fire in longing is ardently for the arrival of the sun as we should for his departure. The road had been so steep and stony that the camel riders had all been on foot for two days. I am sure that except near a spring no one dropped from the skies would dream he was in Arabia the happy. It is hard to think that the stony and the desert must be worse. End of Chapter 7 Southern Arabia by James and Mabel Bent Chapter 8 The Aqaba Having left these villages behind us we climbed rapidly higher and higher until at an elevation of over 4,000 feet we found ourselves at last on a broad level table land stretching as far as the eye could reach in every direction. This is no doubt the Maratha Mountains of Ptolemy the Mons ex-Gelsus of Pliny Beginning of Footnote 8 End of Footnote 8 Which shuts off the Hadramout were once flourished the frankincense and the myrrh. Words cannot express the desolate aspect of this vast table land, Aqaba or the going up as the Arabs call it. It is perfectly level and strewn with black lumps of basalt, looking as though a gigantic coal scuttle had been upset. Occasionally there rises up above the plain a flat-topped mound or ridge some 80 feet high the last remnant of a higher level which is now disappearing. There is no sign of habitation. Only here and there are a few tanks dug to collect the rainwater if any falls. These are protected or indicated by a pair of walls built opposite one another and banked up on the outer side with earth and stones like shooting butts. The Aqaba is exclusively Bedou property and wherever a little urbage is to be found there the nomads drive their flocks and young camels. Of the frankincense which once flourished over all this vast area we saw only one specimen on the highland itself though it is still found in the more sheltered gullies and farther east in the mehri country there is I understand a considerable quantity left. We were often given lumps of gum arabic and myrrh is still found plentifully. It is tapped for its odiferous sap. It is a curious fact that the Somali come from Africa to collect it going from tribe to tribe of the Bedouin and buying the right to collect these two species sometimes paying as much as fifty dollars. They go round and cut the trees and after eight days return to collect the exuded sap. In ancient times none but slaves collected frankincense and myrrh. This fact taken probably with the meaning of the name Hadermaut the later form of the ancient name Hazermavith gave rise to the quaint Greek legend that the fumes of the frankincense trees were deadly and the place where they grew was called the valley or enclosure of death. From personal observation it would appear that the ancients held communication with the Hadermaut almost entirely by the land caravan route as there is absolutely no trace of great antiquity to be found along the coastline whereas the Wadi Hadermaut itself and its collateral branches are very rich in remains of the ancient hemmuritic civilization. Though we were always looking about for monuments of antiquity the most ancient and lasting memorial of far past ages lay beneath our feet in that little narrow path winding over Acaba and Wadi and polished by the soft feet of millions of camels that had slowly passed over it for thousands and thousands of years. We found the air of the table land fresh and invigorating after the excessive heat of the valleys below. For three days we traveled northwards across the plateau. Our first stage was Hebel Gabrin. This is as it were the culminating point of the whole district. It is four thousand one hundred and fifty feet above the sea. From it the table land slopes gently down to the northward towards the main valley of the Hadermaut and eastwards towards the Wadi Adam. After two days more traveling we approached the heads of the many valleys which run into the Hadermaut. The Wadi's Duaen, Raqi, Al-Aisa, Al-Ain, Bin Ali and Adam all start from this elevated plateau and run nearly parallel. The curious feature of most of these valleys is the rapid descent into them. They look as if they had been taken out of the high plateau like slices out of a cake. They do not appear to have been formed by a fall of water from this plateau. In fact it is impossible that a sufficient force of water could ever have existed on this flat surface to form this elaborate valley system. In the valleys themselves there is very little slope. Where we found that with the exception of the Wadi Adam all the valley heads we visited were nearly of uniform height with the main valley and had a wall of rock approaching one thousand feet in height eaten away as it were out of the plateau. We were therefore led to suppose that these valleys had originally been formed by the action of the sea and that the Hadramout had once been a large bay or arm of the sea which as the waters of the ocean receded leaving successive marks of many strands on the limestone and sandstone rocks which enclosed them formed an outlet for the scanty water supply of the southern Arabian highlands. These valleys have in the course of ages been silted up by sand to a considerable height below which water is always found and the only means of obtaining water in the Hadramout for drinking purposes as well as for cultivation is by sinking wells. The water of the main valley is strongly impregnated with salt but is much sweeter at the sides of the valley than in the center. No doubt this is caused by the weight of the alkaline deposits washed down from the salt hills at Shabwa at the head of the main valley. The steep reddish sandstone cliffs which form the walls of these valleys are themselves almost always divided into three distinct stories or stratifications which can be distinctly seen on the photographs. The upper one is very abrupt the second slightly projecting and more broken and the third formed by deposit from above. The descent into the valley is extremely difficult at all points paths down which camels can just make their way have been constructed by the Bedouin by making use of the stratified formation and the gentler slopes but only in the case of the Wadi Adim of all the valleys we visited is there anything approaching a gradual descent. It appears to me highly probable that the systematic destruction of the frankincense and mercheries through countless generations has done much to alter the character of this akaba and has contributed to the gradual silting up of the Hadramout and its collateral valleys to which fact I shall again have occasion to refer. The aspect of this plateau forcibly recalled to our minds that portion of Abyssinia which we visited in 1892 through 1893. There is the same arid coastline between the sea and the mountains and the same rapid ascent to a similar absolutely level plateau and the same draining northwards to a large river bed in the case of Abyssinia into the valleys of the Marib and other tributaries of the Nile and in the case of this Arabian plateau into the Hadramout only Abyssinia has a more copious rainfall which makes its plateau more productive. It had not been our intention to visit the Wadi al-Isa but to approach the Hadramout by another valley called Doin parallel and further west but our camelmen would not take us that way and purposely got up a scare that the men of Khureba at the head of Wadi Doin were going to attack us and would refuse to let us pass. A convenient old woman was found who professed to bring this news a dodge subsequently resorted to by another Bedou tribe which wanted to govern our progress. The report brought to us as from the old woman was to this effect. A large body of sheikhs and sayyids having started from Khureba beginning of footnote nine the town of Khureba in the Wadi Doin may represent the town of Doin itself mentioned by Hamdani the Thobani of Ptolemy which Pliny calls Tawani the name Khureba signifies ruins end of footnote nine. To meet and repel us Mokeik's father had left home to help us as we had now abandoned Khureba Mokeik said he was anxious to hurry home to meet his father and prevent a hostile collision. Mokeik was told he could not go as he was responsible for our safety but that some others might go. No, said Mokeik, they cannot be spared from the camels we will get two men from the village. My husband agreed to this but when Mokeik proposed that my husband should at once pay these men he told Mokeik that he must pay them himself as he was paid to protect us. This attempted extortion having failed we passed a peaceful night and subsequently found Mokeik's father Soleiman Bakron safe at home which he had never thought of leaving. Our first peep down into the Wadi al-Aisa towards which our Bedouin had conducted us was striking in the extreme and as we gazed down into the narrow valley with its line of vegetation and its numerous villages we felt as if we were on the edge of another world. The descent from the table land to the Wadi is exactly 1,500 feet by a difficult but very skillfully engineered footpath. The sun's rays reflected from the limestone cliffs were scorchingly hot. The camels went a longer way round near the head of the valley but so difficult was our shortcut that they arrived before us and the horse and the donkey. Having humbly descended into the Wadi al-Aisa because we were not allowed to go by the Wadi Doran we found ourselves encamped hard by the village of Kheila the headquarters of the Kheiliki tribe within a stone's throw of Mokeik's father's house and under the shadow of the castle of his uncle the sheikh of the tribe. These worthies both extorted from us substantial sums of money and sold us food at exorbitant prices and so we soon learnt why we were not permitted to go to Khereba and why the old woman and her story had been produced. We thought Mokeik and his men little better than naked savages when on the plateau but when we were introduced to their relatives and when we saw their castles and their palm groves and their long line of gardens in the narrow valley our preconceived notions of the wild homeless bedou and his poverty underwent considerable change. We climbed up the side of the valley opposite Kheila to photograph a castle adorned with horns but were driven away too late where the picture had been taken. During the two days we encamped at Kheila we were gazed upon uninterruptedly by a relentless crowd of men women and children. It amused us at first to see the women here for the most part unmasked with their exceedingly heavy girdles of brass, their anklets of brass half a foot deep, their bracelets of brass, their iron nose rings and their massive and numerous earrings which tore down the lobe of the ear with their weight. Every bedou, male or female, has a ring or charm of cornelian set in base silver and agates and small tusks also set in silver. The root with which the women paint themselves yellow is called Shubab. It is dried and powdered, it only grows when there is rain. The whole of the poultry at Kheila was carried about in the arms of the women and children who own them all the time of our stajern in the hopes of selling them. They, at least, were glad of our departure. Not far from Kheila we saw a fine village which we were told was inhabited by Arabs of pure blood, so we sent a polite message to the Sayyid or headman of the place to ask if we might pay him our respects. His reply was to the effect that if we paid thirty dollars we might come and pass four hours in the town. Needless to say we declined the invitation with thanks, and on the morrow when we marched down to the Wadi al-Aisa we gave the abode of this hospitable Sayyid a wide berth, particularly as the soldiers told us it was not safe, for the Arabs meant to kill us. Leaving Kheila, where we remained two nights and saw the new year in, we passed a good many towered villages. Larzma was one, Hadouf another, also Subak and others. We passed the mouth of the Wadi Doan which runs parallel to Wadi al- Aisa and has two branches, only the largest having the name Doan. The mouth is about three miles below Kheila, five miles more brought us to Sleif where we halted for a night. It is also inhabited by pure Arabs who treated us with excessive rudeness. It is a very picturesque spot perched on a rock, with towers and turrets constructed of sun-dried brick. Only here, as elsewhere in these valleys, the houses being so exactly the same color as the rocks behind them, they lose their effect. Their rich have evidently recognized this difficulty and whitewash their houses, but in the poorer villages there is no whitewash and consequently nothing to make them stand out from their surroundings. One can pretty well judge of the wealth of the owners of the various towers and castles by the amount of whitewash. Some have only the pinnacles white, and some can afford to trim up the windows and put bands around the building. At Sief several men came once or twice and begged my husband to let me go out that the women might see me, but when I went out they would not allow me to approach or hold any intercourse with the Arab women, using appropriate epithets when I tried to make friendly overtures, with the quaint result that whenever I advanced towards a group of gazing females they fled precipitately like a flock of sheep before a collie-dog, so we discovered that it was the men themselves who wished to see me. These women wear their dresses high in front, showing their yellow painted legs above the knee, and long behind there of deep blue cotton decorated with fine embroidery and patches of yellow and red sewn on in patterns. It is the universal female dress in the Hadramout, and looks as if the fashion had not changed since the days when Hazer Mavith, the patriarch, settled in this valley and gave it his name. Beginning of footnote 10. Genesis, 10, 26. End of footnote 10. The tall, tapering straw hat worn by these women, when in the fields, contributes with the mask to make the Hadrami females as externally repulsive as the most jealous of husband's could desire. I am pretty sure that this must be the very same dress which made such an unfavorable impression upon Sir John Mondeville, when he saw the foul women who live near Babylon the Great. He says, they are vile arrayed. They go barefoot and clothed in evil garments large and wide, but short to the knees, long sleeves down to the feet like a monk's frock, and their sleeves are hanging about their shoulders. The dress is certainly wide for the two pieces of which it is composed exactly like the Greek peplis, when the arms are extended, stretch from fingertip to fingertip, so when this dress is caught into the loose girdle far below the waist, it hangs out under the arms and gives a very round-backed look, as is the case with the peplis. There are great many Arabs at Sif, a most unhealthy disease-looking lot, there of the yellow kind of Arab, with Jewish looking faces. Saleh retired into Sif on our arrival, and we saw him no more until we started next day. He was a very useless interpreter. He used to like to live in the villages, saying he could not bear to live in the camp, of such unbelievers as we were, and used to bring his friends to our kitchen and show them some little tins of lasin-bees potted meat, adorned with a picture of a sheep, a cow, and a pig, as a proof that we lived on pork, whereas we hadn't on with us. He always tried to persuade the people that he was far superior to any of us, and when places had to be made amongst the baggage on the camels, for my husband and the servants to ride, he used to have his camel prepared and ride on, leaving some of the servants with no seat kept on the camels for them. My husband cured him of this, for one morning, seeing Saleh as bedding nicely arranged, he jumped on to the camel himself and rode off, leaving Saleh an object of great derision. Once we got down into the valley, we had to ride very close together for safety, and I found it most tiresome making my horse, Basha, keep pace with the camels. The people at sea were so disagreeable that I told Saleh to remind them that if our queen wanted their country, she would have had it long before we were born, and that they were very foolish to fear so small an unarmed party, who had only come to pass the winter in a country warmer than their own. At the same time, unless we had been quite confident that our safety was well secured from behind, such a party with a woman among them would never have come. We sat off early next morning for Hagarayn. We passed after one hour Qaidun with its own private little valley to the west, a tributary of the main one which in this part is called Wadi Qasar. There is the grave of a celebrated saint and a very pious Sayyid, called al-Habid Taha Ali al-Hadad, abides near it. He never goes out of his house, but is so much revered that many thousands of dollars are sent him from India and other parts. And when his son visited Aden, he was received with great honor by the merchants there. Then we passed several other villages, including al-Hadi and Nemr. It was at the Ziyaret or pilgrimage to the grave in Qaidun that Ervan Ghayda, who was disguised, was discovered to be a Christian and forced to turn back. The town of Hagarayn or Hagarayn is the principal one in the collateral valleys and is built on a lofty, isolated rock in the middle of the Wedi Qassar, about 20 miles before it joins the main valley of the Hadramaut. With its towers and turrets, it recalled to our minds as we saw it in the distance certain hill-set medieval villages of Germany and Italy. Here a vice sultan governs on behalf of the al-Kati family, an ill-conditioned extortionant individual whose bad reception of us contributed to his subsequent removal from office. Internally Hagarayn is squalid and dirty in the extreme. Each street is but a cesspool for the houses on either side of it and the house allotted to us produced specimens of most smells and most insects. The days of rest we proposed for ourselves here were spent in fighting with our old camelmen who left us here in fighting with the new ones who were to take us on to the main valley and in indignantly refusing to pay the sultan the sum of money which our presence in his town led him to think it his right to demand.