MASKAT AND THE OUTSKIRTS
I never saw a place so void of architectural features as the town of
Maskat itself. The mosques have neither domes nor minarets--a sign of the
rigid Wahabi influence which swept over Arabia. This sect refuse to have
any feature about their buildings, or ritual which was not actually
enjoined by Mohammed in his Koran. There are a few carved lintels 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 lattice-work 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 Maskat 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 sweetmeat called _halwa_, it
is just as well not to watch it being made there, for niggers' feet are
usually employed to stir it, and the knowledge of this is apt to spoil
the flavour. Most of the town is now in ruins. Fifty 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 Moslem
towns picturesque, namely the minaret; the mosques of the Ibadhuyah 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 Ibadhuyah'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 Moslem 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 scepticism is rife. The
devout followers of Mohammed look upon them much as Roman Catholics look
on Protestants, and their 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 Bahrein. Some
of these coffee-pots are very large. An important sheikh, or the mollah
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 sheaths
adorned with filigree silver, to which is usually attached, by a leather
thong, a thorn extractor, an earpick, 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; formerly many gold daggers were manufactured at
Maskat 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, for Maskat, like Aden, is one of the most
cosmopolitan cities of the East. Here, as in El Matra, you find Banyans
from India, Beluchi from the Mekran 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 Maskat 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 at 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 by is a stagnant
pool into which is cast all the offal 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 vapours. Consequently, Maskat 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 _buttra_, not unlike the masks
worn with a 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 learnt that an enterprising German firm had made a
lot of these _buttra_ for sale amongst the Maskat women; but the shape
being not exactly orthodox, the women will not buy them, so the owners of
these unsaleable 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's liberality is
greatly imposed on.
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 Paradise valley and see the favourable side of Maskat. There
the sleepy noise of the wells, the shade of the acacias and palms, and
the bright green of the lucerne fields, refreshed us, and we felt it hard
to realise 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 Maskat in search of a livelihood. Most of these are Beluchi from
the Mekran 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 camelthorn
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
Bedouin incursions, and a few comfortable little villas built by Banyan
merchants, where they can retire from the heat and dust of Maskat.
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
Bahrein, 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 _cols_
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 Bedouin. The views over Maskat and the
sea are charming, but one view to the south will be for ever 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 Sedad, amongst the reed houses of which are
many palm-trees and a thick palm garden belonging to Sayid Yussuf, which
gives the one thing wanting to views about Maskat, namely, a mass of
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 colouring of this view is
superb.
From Sedad one can take a boat and row round the headlands back to
Maskat. 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 bittern. In a small cove,
called Sheikh Jabar, half-way between Sedad and Maskat, 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 gunboats which have
been stationed at Maskat. Among them is the grave of Bishop French, who
came to Maskat 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 Maskat lies the town of El Matra, the commercial
centre of the kingdom of Oman. It would be the seat of government also
were 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 favourable the canoe owners drive a rattling trade. The
canoes, which they call _houris_, are hollowed out of a tree trunk,
double-prowed, and with matting at the bottom. They are not very stable
and make one think unpleasantly of sharks.
You pass the Fahl, or Stallion Rock, in the harbour, a name constantly
given by Arabs to anything large and uncanny looking, and turning sharp
round a rocky corner you see before you El Matra.
The town is governed by a _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 each 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 condign punishment on disturbers of the
peace, in which cases the innocent more frequently suffer than the
guilty.
The Monday's market is filled with quaint countryfolk, bringing in
baskets of fruit and wearing the upper garment of red cotton and the
large white girdle and turban.
At El Matra 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
Maskat. In a nice-looking house by the shore dwelt Dr. Jayakar, an Indian
doctor, who had lived for twenty-five years at Maskat, combining the post
of British Vice-Consul with that of medical adviser to the few Europeans
who dwell there. He said he preferred Maskat 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 call 'whabba,' and which he affirmed is the coney 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 El Matra when you are ill at Maskat; 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 El Matra are pleasant gardens, watered by irrigation,
which produce most of the fruit and vegetables consumed in these parts.
During our fortnight's stay at Maskat in 1895, we frequently in the
evening coolness rowed about the harbour 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 harbour 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 Maskat as it exists to-day, 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.
[Illustration: MAP OF
HADRAMUT.
Surveyed by Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur.
to illustrate the explorations of
M^r. J. THEODORE BENT.
_Stanford's Geog.^l Estab.^t, London_
London: Smith, Elder & Co.]
THE HADHRAMOUT