THE AKABA
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 Excelsus of Pliny,[8] which shuts off the Hadhramout,
where once flourished the frankincense and the myrrh.
Words cannot express the desolate aspect of this vast table-land, Akaba
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 rain-water, 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 Akaba is exclusively Bedou property, and
wherever a little herbage 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 Mahri 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
odoriferous 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 Hadhramout (the later
form of the ancient name Hazarmaveth), 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 Hadhramout almost entirely by the land
caravan-route, as there is absolutely no trace of great antiquity to be
found along the coast-line, whereas the Wadi Hadhramout itself and its
collateral branches are very rich in remains of the ancient Himyaritic
civilisation.
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 Akaba 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 travelled
northwards across the plateau. Our first stage was Haibel Gabrein. This
is, as it were, the culminating point of the whole district; it is 4,150
feet above the sea. From it the table-land slopes gently down to the
northward towards the main valley of the Hadhramout, and eastwards
towards the Wadi Adim. After two days more travelling we approached the
heads of the many valleys which run into the Hadhramout; the Wadis Doan,
Rakhi, Al Aisa, Al Ain, Bin Ali, and Adim 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, for we found that, with the
exception of the Wadi Adim, all the valley heads we visited were nearly
of uniform height with the main valley, and had a wall of rock
approaching 1,000 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 Hadhramout
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 Hadhramout 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
centre. 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 myrrh trees through countless generations has done much
to alter the character of this Akaba, and has contributed to the gradual
silting up of the Hadhramout 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
1892-93; there is the same arid coast-line 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 Mareb and other tributaries of
the Nile, and in the case of this Arabian plateau into the Hadhramout.
Only Abyssinia has a more copious rainfall, which makes its plateau more
productive.
It had not been our intention to visit the Wadi Al Aisa, but to approach
the Hadhramout by another valley called Doan, parallel and further west,
but our camel-men would not take us that way, and purposely got up a
scare that the men of Khoreba at the head of Wadi Doan 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 seyyids having started from Khoreba[9] to meet
and repel us, Mokaik's father had left home to help us. As we had now
abandoned Khoreba, Mokaik said he was anxious to hurry off to meet his
father and prevent a hostile collision. Mokaik was told _he_ could not go
as he was responsible for our safety, but that some others might go.
'No,' said Mokaik, 'they cannot be spared from the camels; we will get
two men from the village.' My husband agreed to this, but when Mokaik
proposed that my husband should at once pay these men, he told Mokaik
that he must pay them himself, as he was paid to protect us. This attempt
at extortion having failed, we passed a peaceful night and subsequently
found Mokaik's father, Suleiman Bakran, 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 skilfully engineered footpath. The sun's rays,
reflected from the limestone cliffs, were scorchingly hot. The camels
went a longer way round, nearer the head of the valley, but, so difficult
was our short cut 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 Doan, we found ourselves encamped hard by the
village of Khaila, the head-quarters of the Khailiki tribe, within a
stone's throw of Mokaik'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 Khoreba,
and why the old woman and her story had been produced.
We thought Mokaik 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 Khaila to photograph a
castle adorned with horns, but were driven away; too late, for the
picture had been taken.
During the two days we encamped at Khaila 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 Khaila was carried about in the arms of the women and
children who owned them, all the time of our sojourn, in the hopes of
selling them. They, at least, were glad of our departure.
Not far from Khaila, we saw a fine village which we were told was
inhabited by Arabs of pure blood, so we sent a polite message to the
seyyid, or head-man 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 the
Wadi Al Aisa we gave the abode of this hospitable seyyid a wide berth,
particularly as the soldiers told us it was not safe, for the Arabs meant
to kill us.
Leaving Khaila, where we remained two nights and saw the New Year in, we
passed a good many towered villages: Larsmeh 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 Khaila; five miles
more brought us to Sief, 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 colour as the rocks behind them,
they lose their effect. The rich have evidently recognised 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
round 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
opprobrious 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; they are 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 Hadhramout, and looks as if the
fashion had not changed since the days when Hazarmaveth the Patriarch
settled in this valley and gave it his name.[10] The tall tapering straw
hat worn by these women when in the fields contributes with the mask to
make the Hadhrami females as externally repulsive as the most jealous of
husbands could desire.
I am pretty sure that this must be the very same dress which made such an
unfavourable impression upon Sir John Maundeville, when he saw 'the foul
women who live near Babylon the great.' He says: 'They are vilely
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 peplos, when the arms are extended, stretch from
finger-tip to finger-tip, 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 peplos.
There are a great many Arabs at Sief, a most unhealthy, diseased-looking
lot. They are of the yellow kind of Arab, with Jewish-looking faces.
Saleh retired into Sief on our arrival, and we saw him no more till 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 Lazenby's potted meat, adorned with a
picture of a sheep, a cow, and a pig, as a proof that we lived on pork,
whereas we had none 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's 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 Sief 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 set off early next morning for Hagarein. We passed after one hour
Kaidoun, with its own private little valley to the west, a tributary of
the main one, which in this part is called Wadi Kasr. There is the grave
of a celebrated saint, and a very pious seyyid, 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 honour by
the merchants there. Then we passed several other villages, including
Allahaddi and Namerr. It was at the _ziaret_ or pilgrimage to the grave
in Kaidoun that Herr von Wrede, who was disguised, was discovered to be a
Christian and forced to turn back.
The town of Hagarein or Hajarein is the principal one in the collateral
valleys, and is built on a lofty isolated rock in the middle of the Wadi
Kasr, about twenty miles before it joins the main valley of the
Hadhramout. With its towers and turrets it recalled to our minds as we
saw it in the distance certain hill-set, mediæval villages of Germany and
Italy. Here a vice-sultan governs on behalf of the Al Kaiti family, an
ill-conditioned, extortionate individual, whose bad reception of us
contributed to his subsequent removal from office. Internally Hagarein 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 camel-men 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: Pliny, xii. 14, 52: 'In medio Arabiae fere sunt Adramitae
pagus Saboraeum in monte excelso.']
[Footnote 9: The town of Khoreba, in the Wadi Doan, may represent the
town of Doan itself mentioned by Hamdani, the Thabanê of Ptolemy, which
Pliny calls Toani. The name Khoreba signifies ruins.]
[Footnote 10: Gen. x. 26.]