THE CITY OF SHIBAHM
On January 25 we started for Shibahm, carpets having been sent forward
the day before. The sultan was to follow us in a day or two, when some
sheikhs had been to see him. We started at 8.30 and were at Shibahm in
four hours. We had eleven camels only, three horses, and the donkey. We
travelled, as soon as we left Al Koton, through sand nearly all the way.
We passed the tall white dome of Sheikh Aboubekr-bin-Hassan's tomb, near
which the ruling family are buried if the seyyids permit. They are
all-powerful, and the sultan can do nothing in this respect without
them--not even be buried in his own family tomb. There is a well beside
the tomb, or rather the kind of building from which water is obtained in
the open valleys. This consists of a small white building 8 or 9 feet
square, with a dome resting on an open pattern composed of a herring-bone
course of bricks; a little wooden ladle, 4 or 5 inches wide, stands in
one of the little openings to dip out the water, which would otherwise
evaporate. They drink out of the ladle, and fill the water-skins and the
drinking trough for animals, which stands always near. They would never
let us drink from the ladles.
As we neared Shibahm we passed through a good deal of ground that had
once been irrigated, but it had had its ups and downs, and was now
abandoned. First there had been plenty of soil and the palm-trees were
planted in it. Then the wind had denuded the roots, some of which had
been banked up and walled in with stones; others were standing on bare
roots, but at this time the sand was burying the whole place. There were
high drifts against many of the walls and among the trees.
Shibahm is twelve miles distant from Al Koton, and is one of the
principal towns in the Hadhramout valley. It is built on rising ground in
the middle of the narrowest part of the valley, so that no one can pass
between it and the cliffs of the valley out of gunshot of the walls. This
rising ground has doubtless been produced by many successions of towns
built of sun-dried bricks, for it is the best strategical point in the
neighbourhood.
Early Arab writers tell us that the Himyaritic population of this
district came here when they abandoned Shabwa, early in the Christian
era. We succeeded, however, in finding evident traces of an occupation of
earlier date than this, both in a seal, which is described further on,
and in an inscription in which the name Shibahm occurs, and which
certainly dates from the third century b.c. Even if Shibahm were not the
site of the original capital it must always, centuries before our era,
have been a place of considerable importance as the centre of the
frankincense trade, for here must have been made up the caravans which
brought the spices westward by the great frankincense road across Arabia.
The caravans take twenty-five days on the journey to Saihut, and five to
Makalla; they go also to Nejd, but we could not find out how long they
take.
Shibahm is now the property of the sultan of Makalla, but was
administered by his cousin Salàh, who received 40,000 rupees a year for
the purpose. It is now three hundred years since these Yafei left their
old home and came to settle in the Hadhramout. They were then a wild
predatory race, plundering caravans; now they have become peaceable and
rich. They still remain close friends with the Yafei farther west, but
are quite independent of them. It is the maintenance of a residence for
the Nizam of Hyderabad, and their constant communication with India, that
has doubtless made all the difference between the Yafei tribe and others.
Building seems to have been their mania. The sultan of Shibahm has
numbers of houses at Al Koton and Shibahm, and he was intending to spend
20,000 rupees in rebuilding his father's house, for the castle at Al
Koton is not his own but Government property, and the strip of land
across the valley, part of it sandy, goes with it. He was buying up land
for himself in the Wadi Al Ain and elsewhere. He told us his father left
eleven million rupees to divide among his numerous progeny.
Relationships in that family must be a trifle confused. Manassar of
Makalla had married two sisters (both now dead) of his cousin Salàh.
Salàh had married two of Manassar's sisters. A daughter of Salàh's
married Manassar, and another of them was married to one of Manassar's
sons, and Manassar's brother Hussein of Sheher married, or was married
to, a third daughter of Salàh. Apparently the same complications existed
in the generation before this, but into them it is impossible to go. As
in India, the favourite marriage that a man can make is to marry his
'uncle's daughter.' Possibly the fact that property goes from brother to
brother till a whole generation is dead, instead of from father to son,
has something to do with this arrangement.
The town of Shibahm offers a curious appearance as one approaches; above
its mud brick walls, with bastions and watch towers, appear the tall
houses of the wealthy, whitewashed only at the top, which make it look
like a large round cake with sugar on it. Outside the walls several
industries are carried on, the chief of which is the manufacture of
indigo dye. The small leaves are dried in the sun and powdered, and then
put into huge jars and filled with water. Next morning these are stirred
with long poles, producing a dark-blue frothy mixture; this is left to
settle, and then the indigo is taken from the bottom and spread out on
cloths to drain; the substance thus procured is taken home and mixed with
dates and saltpetre. Four pounds of this indigo to a gallon of water
makes the requisite and universally used dye for garments, the better
class of which are calendered by beating them with wooden hammers on
stones. This noise was a great mystery to us till we traced our way to it
and found out what it was. They used also to beat the dried leaf of a
kind of acacia called _kharrad_, and, when pounded, make of it a paste
which has a beautiful pea-green appearance; it is used for giving a
polish to leather.
[Illustration: A SABÆAN ALTAR]
Another industry carried on outside Shibahm is rope-making out of the
fibres of the fan palm (_saap_) which grows wild in the narrower valleys;
the leaves are first left to soak in water, and then beaten till the
fibres separate. Yet another is that of making lime for whitewash
kilns--it is curious to watch the Bedouin beating the lime thus produced
with long sticks, singing quaint little ditties as they thump, in
pleasant harmony to the beating of their sticks.
We entered the town by some very sloping steps, which led through the
gateway, passing some wells and the indigo dyers outside; also some
horrible pools where they had put the little fish that the camels eat, to
drain the oil from them. We entered a sort of square, having the castle
on the right-hand side and a ruined mosque in front of us. This huge
castle was built by the grandfather of the Sultan Manassar, sultan of
Makalla, but, owing to some difference about his wives, he left the two
topmost stories unfinished. No one lives in it, so we had the whole of
this immense pile of buildings to ourselves. It belongs to Manassar. It
is larger than Al Koton by far, and that is also exceeded in size by
Haura. It is a most imposing structure and much more florid than the
others. The gateway is a masterpiece of carving in intricate patterns. On
entering this you turn sharp to the right up a shallow staircase,
protected from without, but exposed to fire from the inmates of the
castle. The pillars in the lofty rooms are beautifully carved. All the
windows are filled with pretty fretwork; bolts, doors, and window frames
are also carved. The huge doors are carved on one side only, the outer
one, and inside they are rough and ill-grained and splashed with
whitewash. There are pretty dado patterns round the walls; and the
staircase, as in the other castles, has numerous doors for defence,
usually put in the middle of the flights. Shooting-holes are in every
direction. We established ourselves in a room about 30 feet by 25 feet,
and used to go up and dine in one of the unfinished rooms at the top
where there was a little bit of roof and where the cooking was done. We
generally thought it wise to dine in our grill-room, in order to have our
food hot. We all greatly enjoyed the works of our own cooks, provisions
being supplied to us.
We overlooked a huge puddle into which the surrounding houses drain, and
it is a proof of the scarcity of water in this part of Arabia, that they
carefully carry this filthy fluid away in skins to make bricks with, even
scraping up the remaining drops in the pool with their hands. In fact, it
scarcely ever rains in the Hadhramout.
From the roof of our lofty castle we had an excellent view straight down
the broad Hadhramout valley, dotted with towns, villages, palm groves,
and cultivation for fully thirty miles, embracing the two towns of Siwoun
and Terim, ruled over by the two brother sultans of the Kattiri tribe.
Close to Shibahm several collateral valleys from north and south fall
into the Hadhramout, and a glance at the map made by our chartographer,
Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur, will at once show the importance of this
situation.
Shibahm is the frontier town of the Yafei tribe, the Kattiri occupying
the valley about two miles to the east, and these two tribes are
constantly at war. Sultan Salàh's big standard was in one of our
dwelling-rooms ready to be unfurled at a moment's notice. He has cannons
on his walls pointed in the direction of his enemy--old cannons belonging
to the East India Company, the youngest of which bore the date of 1832.
From the soldiers we obtained a specimen of the great conch shells that
they use as trumpets in battle, and which are hung to the girdle of the
watchmen, who are always on the look-out to prevent a surprise.
The Kattiri are not allowed to stay in the town at night, for we heard
that seven months before some of them were detected in an attempt to blow
up the palace with gunpowder. There was a fight also, about a quarter of
a mile outside the town, in which five Kattiri and seven Yafei were
killed. There are three or four armed soldiers to protect Shibahm, the
sultan has erected bastions and forts all about it, and the walls are
patrolled every night.
There are many ruined houses in the plain, relics of the great war forty
years ago, when the Kattiri advanced as far as Al Koton and did great
damage. The sultan of Siwoun was invited, with seven sheikhs, to the
palace of Shibahm on friendly terms and there murdered in cold blood,
while forty of his followers were killed outside.
The inhabitants of Shibahm were not at all friendly disposed to us. On
the day of our arrival my husband ventured with two of the sultan's
soldiers into the bazaar, and through the narrow streets; but only this
once, for the people crowded round him, yelled at him, and insulted him,
trying their best to trip him up and impede his progress; he was nearly
suffocated by the clouds of filthy dust that the mob kicked up, and
altogether they made his investigations so exceedingly disagreeable that
he became seriously alarmed for his safety, and never tried to penetrate
into the heart of Shibahm again. On the whole I should accredit Shibahm
with a population of certainly not less than six thousand souls: there
are thirteen mosques in it, and fully six hundred houses, tall and gaunt,
to which an average population of ten souls is but a moderate estimate.
The slave population of Shibahm is considerable; many slaves have houses
there, and wives and families of their own. The sultan's soldiers are
nearly all slaves or of slave origin, and one of them, Muoffok, whose
grandfather was a Swahili slave, and who had been one of our escort from
Makalla, took us to his house, where his wife, seated unveiled in her
coffee corner, dispensed refreshments to quite a large party there
assembled, whilst Muoffok discoursed sweet music to us on a mandoline,
and a flute made out of the two bones of an eagle placed side by side.
Taisir and Aboud were also abiding in Shibahm. Taisir when he met us, on
the minute asked for bakhshish, saying he had been ill when we parted and
had had none though we had sent it to him. Oh! there was such kissing of
hands! so we thought it politic to love our enemy and gave him a present.
The Wazir Salim-bin-Ali had travelled with us to take care of us in the
absence of his master.
Once the Arabs had a good laugh at the expense of three members of our
party. One morning our botanist went forth in quest of plants and found a
castor-oil tree, the berries of which pleased him exceedingly. Unwilling
to keep so rare a treat for himself, he brought home some branches of the
tree, and placed the delicacy before two of our servants, Matthaios and,
I am glad to say, Saleh, who also partook heartily. Terrible was the
anguish of the two victims, which was increased by the Arabs, veritable
descendants of Job's comforters, who told them they were sure to die, as
camels did which ate these berries. The botanist did not succumb as soon
as the others, who, not believing he had eaten any berries himself, vowed
vengeance on his head if they should recover, and demanded that, to prove
his innocence, he should eat twelve berries in their presence. To our
great relief the botanist was at last seized with sickness, and thereby
proved his guiltlessness of a practical joke; three more miserable men I
never saw for the space of several hours. However, they were better,
though prostrate, next day, and for some time to come the popular joke
was to imitate the noises and contortions of the sufferers during their
anguish.
In consequence of the enmity manifested towards us we were even debarred
from walking in that interesting though smelly part, just outside the
town under the walls with the well, the brick-works, the indigo, the
oil-making, the many lime-kilns, the armourers, and all the industrious
people of the town.
We used to take the air on the roof in the evening; there were no
mosquitos, but we were never so persecuted with flies. Fortunately our
castle was near the wall, for to dwell in the narrow, tortuous, dirty
streets must be fearful--most likely the dust does much to neutralise the
evils of the defective drainage. The houses are very high and narrow and
built of mud brick (_kutcha_), which is constantly though slowly
powdering away. There are many houses in ruins.
We had two or three days of slight cold. The temperature was 62° (F.) in
the shade, and it was so cloudy that we expected rain, but none came.
Saleh managed to get ten rupees from my husband, who refused any more,
though he brought a piece of cloth which he said he wished to buy from
the sultan. The money was only wanted for gambling. He went to Imam
Sharif and said, 'How is this that Mr. Bent, who at first was like my
brother, now is quite changed?' Imam Sharif said, 'If he was kind to you
when you were a stranger, and now that he knows you is different, there
must be some reason for it.' 'What have I done?' 'You know best,' said
Imam Sharif, 'and I advise you to beg pardon.' Saleh exclaimed, 'And you,
who are a Moslem, take part against me with these Christians!' This is
the keynote of his conduct to us.
We rode two hours one day, without Saleh, to a place called Kamour, on
the southern side of the valley, where there is an inscribed stone at the
mouth of a narrow slit or gorge leading to the akaba. The words thereon
were painted light red, dark red, yellow, and black, and scratched. The
decipherable words 'morning light' and 'offerings' point to this having
been a sacred stone when sun worship was prevalent. The letters are well
shaped, some letters being strange to us. The writing is _boustrephedon_,
which means that it runs backward and forward like an unbroken serpent,
each line being read in an opposite direction to that preceding or
following it. There is no difficulty in seeing this at a glance, as the
shapes of the letters are reversed; for instance, if this occurred in
English the two loops of a B would be on the left, if the writing were to
be read in that direction, [Symbol: reverse B]. The Greek name comes from
this style of writing being originally likened to cattle wandering about.
This at once relegates it, according to the best authorities, to at least
the third century before Christ, and we were forcibly reminded of the
large stone in the ruins of Zimbabwe and its similar orientation.
We heard of a cave with an inscription in it in the Kattiri country,
about six miles off, almost in sight. We longed 'to dance on Tom
Tiddler's ground' and make a dash for it, but the forfeits we might incur
deterred us, being our lives. The wazir said he would try to arrange for
this, but that, even if the seyyids consented, we must take forty
soldiers, well armed, pay them as well as _siyar_ to the Kattiri, pay the
expenses of the _siyara_, and take as short a time about the business as
possible.
On the 27th we heard that some of the tribe of Al Jabber, descended from
Mohammed's great friend of that name, had passed Shibahm for Al Koton to
fetch us, but there was no news of the Minhali or of the Tamimi.
It was said that the Jabberi could not take us over their highland, past
the Kattiri and into the Tamimi country, without consulting the Kattiri,
who sometimes help them in their wars. It must be remembered that the
Kattiri Bedouin were for us (no doubt in view of the payment of _siyar_),
while the seyyids and Arabs of that tribe at Siwoun, and their friends at
Terim, were against us.
I need not say we were weary of this indecision, so we sent a letter to
the sultan of Shibahm by a messenger saying, 'We have been here three
days; what are we to do next?' and planned that Imam Sharif should ride
over next day, as he could communicate 'mouth to mouth' with the sultan
in Hindustani.
We had one consolation in our imprisonment, for the seal of Yarsahal,
which has been mentioned before, was brought to us. The stone is in brown
and white stripes, and the setting is very pretty. It had been in the
bezel of a revolving ring. We began bargaining for it at once, my husband
offering ten rupees for the stone and ten for the golden setting, but the
seyyid who brought it said it was the property of a man in Siwoun, who
wished to keep it for his children, and he must take it back to him. My
husband said 'he should like to look at it very quietly by himself and
think over the stone,' and therefore asked the seyyid to remain outside
the door for a few minutes. I quickly utilised this quiet time to make
an impression with sealing-wax, in case we never saw the seal again. In
two hours the seyyid appeared again, and said he had had a letter from
Siwoun (twenty-four miles off), saying the (imaginary) owner would not
part with it under thirty rupees, but he very soon took twenty and
laughed most heartily when I said if I had known how near Siwoun was I
would have gone myself.
This seal is of particular interest, for on it were the words 'Yarsahal,
the Elder of Shibahm'; and in an inscription published by M. Halévy, we
have the two Yarsahals and various members of this family described as
vassals of the King of the Gebaniti. Now Pliny says that the capital of
the country was Thumna; this is quite correct and was confirmed by the
seal, for Thumna was the capital of the Gebaniti, who were a Himyaritic
tribe, west of the Hadhramout. It is therefore an additional confirmation
of the accuracy of the ancient geographers concerning this district.
In old days Shabwat, as it is called in inscriptions, or Sabbatha, Shaba,
and Sabota, as it is written in the ancient authors, was the capital of
the country. Hamdani tells us in his 'Geography of the Arabian Peninsula'
that there were salt works at Shabwa, and 'that the inhabitants, owing to
the wars between Himyar and Medhig, left Shabwa, came down into the
Hadhramout and called the place Shibahm, which was originally called
Shibat.' Times are much changed since Shabwa was a great town, for from
all accounts it is now quite deserted save for the Bedouin, and is six
days from good water; the water there is salt and bitter, like quinine,
the sultan said. The Bedouin work the salt and bring it on camels, as is
mentioned by Makrisi. The effect of salt is traceable in the water of all
the wells in the main valley. We would gladly have gone into Shabwa, but
it was obviously impossible.
There was a great deal of gun-firing when the Jabberi went by with the
sheikh of the Kattiri, and our next interest was a letter from Al Koton,
saying 'that the Tamimi, who had sworn on their heads and their eyes to
do so, had never appeared, and that the Jabberi wanted 110 dollars,
exclusive of camel hire, to go with us, the camels only to go a short
distance, and then we must change. What did we wish to do?'
Of course we could not start without providing camels for our onward way,
so this answer was sent back: 'We have not come to fight; we do not much
care when we go, and we await the advice of the sultan when he comes
to-morrow.'
Saleh was quite delighted, but we thought any direction would be good for
our map and we still had hopes of digging near Meshed, though we began to
have fears that a repulse eastward would strengthen the hands of our
enemies westward.
On January the 29th a letter was brought to us by the wazir and the
governor of the town, attended by Saleh, more pleased than ever. They
said the letter had arrived last night and it was to say that the
sultan's pain had increased, so he could not come to-day, and adding what
we already knew as to the three neighbouring tribes.
We had a council of three, and feeling that the journey to Bir Borhut was
out of the question, we determined to beat what we hoped would be a
masterly retreat, so the wazir and the governor were summoned and the
following answer was sent:
'We cannot understand the letters of the sultan, having no means of
communicating with him privately. Therefore we will return to Al Koton
to-morrow, and see him face to face.'
The servants were all quite delighted at this, for Saleh told them the
letter was to say we and the soldiers were all going to be murdered.
We had stayed five days in Shibahm, and on the first three had taken
sundry walks in the neighbourhood, but during the last two we never
ventured out, as the inhabitants manifested so unfriendly a disposition
towards us. After the Friday's prayer in the mosque, a fanatical mollah,
Al Habib Yaher-bin-Abdullah Soumait, alluded to our unwelcome presence,
and offered up the following prayer three times: 'O God! this is contrary
to our religion; remove them away!' and two days afterwards his prayer
was answered. This very gentleman had not long before been imprisoned for
praying to be delivered from the liberal-minded Sultan Salàh, but the
people had clamoured so much that he was released.
As we halted at the well outside the town, whilst the various members of
our caravan collected, we overheard a woman chide a man for drawing too
much water from the well, to which he replied, 'We have to wash our town
from the infidel this day.' Needless to say we gladly shook the dust of
Shibahm off our feet, and returned to the flesh-pots of Al Koton with
considerable satisfaction. Of a truth, religion and fanaticism are
together so deeply engrained in the Hadhrami, that anything like friendly
intercourse with the people is at present next to impossible.
Religion is the moving spirit of the place; without religion the whole
Hadhramout would have been abandoned long ago as useless, but the
inhabitants look upon it as the most sacred spot on earth, Mohammed
having been born in Arabia, and hence their objection to its being
visited by unbelievers. The Shafi sect prevails to the exclusion of all
others. The men go in crowds to India, Batavia, and elsewhere, sometimes
remaining absent twenty years from their wives and families, and indeed
we were told of one case in which a husband had been away for forty
years. They return at last to spend their gains and die in their native
sanctity.
We reached Al Koton on January 30, and found our friend the sultan very
well indeed. We had begun to suspect we were being deceived as to his
illness, for when the wazir and Saleh, who seemed in league together,
heard the seyyid son-in-law, who came straight from Al Koton soon after
the letter, telling us that the sultan was much better, they looked
disconcerted, whispered together, and the wazir said, 'You should not
talk of what you know nothing about.'
We were most anxious to learn all that had gone on in our absence, and
what arrangements had been made. It seemed to be considered a mistake our
ever having gone to Shibahm, but I do not think it was. Had we not gone
we should never have seen that fine and interesting town, and assuredly
not have obtained King Yarsahal's seal.
The sultan told us there had been a great uproar about us, and all the
Yafei tribe were now considered Kafirs. The Kattiri absolutely refused
the Jabberi leave to conduct us, and the Nahadi, through whose lands we
had passed from Hagarein, said that if they had known how the Kattiri
would treat us, they would have treated us just the same. It would be
madness to go to Shabwa, as we should, even if we could get there, be
only further hemmed in; the Wadi bin Ali was closed to us, the Nahadi
were between us and Meshed; nevertheless, the sultan had actually sent a
man to ask if we could dig there a few days, he camping with us. Our very
faint hope of this was only founded on the fact that the seyyids of
Meshed are at enmity with those of Siwoun.
On February 1, the Tamimi sent to say they had really started to fetch
us, but the Kattiri told them they would declare war on them unless they
retired.
The following evening we were thrown into some excitement by the arrival
of the sultan in our room with seven letters, the general tenor of which
was that eight of the Tamimi had come, with the _siyara_ of four Amri
only, and no _siyara_ of Kattiri, as far as Siwoun, and asked to be
passed on, but that the Kattiri refused them safe conduct; they asked the
sultan of Shibahm to go to Shibahm and arrange for them to reach us. They
proposed that we should, without touching Shibahm, turn into the very
next wadi and go up on to the akaba; the men who went with us were to
stay with us all the way to the coast. The sultan promised to keep
hostages till his returning soldiers told of our safety. We had another
council with Imam Sharif. We counted up our dollars, for we had to live
on our money-bags till we reached the sea, and determined to reach Bir
Borhut if we could, saying nothing to the servants to upset their minds
till all was settled.
The sultan went away to Shibahm the next day, and, as usual, the women
became very noisy, and during his absence we were close prisoners, on
account of our fear of being mobbed. The Indian party were generally
looked upon as Jews.
In the evening the sultan came back, telling us that the Tamimi wished to
bring 400 soldiers unpaid (?) and to take us through their country, but
the Kattiri were too strong for them. They said, 'One man came disguised
to see us (Herr von Wrede), one man came undisguised (Herr Hirsch), and
now a party has come. Next time it will be a larger one still, and then
it will be all over with the sacred valley of the Hadhramout.' Saleh,
meanwhile, was doing all he could to annoy us. When we were talking over
our difficulties with Imam Sharif, he strutted in with a bill for the
camels. My husband said:
'It is already paid.'
'I shall see about others then,' Saleh said.
'They are ordered already.'
'Your groom, Iselem, will not go with you,' said Saleh.
So I told him, 'He won't get the chance; we would not have him if we were
paid, and though we have paid him beforehand, we willingly lose our
money.'
'I must, then, speak to the sultan about him, for you.'
I said, 'The sultan has decided what he will do with him, and I don't
think he will like it.'
'Haidar Aboul will not go with you.'
This made us very angry, as we had seen that Saleh had been tampering
with him, lending him his donkey and his sandals when he walked, and
whispering with him. He tried to separate everyone from us. Haidar had
promised to go with us all the way, and later Imam Sharif brought him to
me when I was at home alone, and made him repeat his promise, and
assurance that he had never told Saleh he would not go.
Saleh also wanted money, but was refused; he got 100 rupees a month, and
200 were prepaid at Aden. He gambled, and my husband wished to keep the
contents of our money-bags for our own use. We calculated that at the
cheapest, for soldiers and _siyara_ and camels, Bir Borhut would cost
130_l._ Saleh had put all the servants in a most terrible fright, and a
soldier had told them that if we went beyond Shibahm we should all be
killed, and that we should find no water by the way. So we had to explain
to them the plan of going by Wadi bin Ali, and to comfort them as well as
we could. These people never seem to think that we value our own lives as
much as they do theirs.
Meshed was also closed against us. The sultan of Siwoun and the seyyids
had sworn on the Koran not to let us proceed on our journey; the Kattiri
had also sworn and sent messages to the Tamimi of Bir Borhut, the Jabberi
of Wadi bin Ali, and the Nahadi, and they were all against us.
We had another day of anxiety and uncertainty as to when we should really
start, as the camels were not collected till late. We watched eagerly
from our tower, counting them as they arrived by twos and threes.
We were rather in despair as as we sat dining in a yard, for at this time
we were started with our own cookery, and dined near the kitchen, which
Matthaios had been able to make in an arched recess of the inclosure,
where there were high hills of date-stones, kept to be ground to paste
for cattle-food.
He could not be allowed to defile a Mohammedan kitchen.
After a very few minutes, however, my husband had an idea, which was to
go to Sheher somehow, and turn up inland from thence; there were plenty
of Tamimi there to help us, and we could thus get to the east side of the
Kattiri. Saleh was to know nothing till all was settled.
February 7 was a very weary day of waiting; for we had mended and cleaned
everything we possessed, and we packed and hoped the camels would come,
expecting to be off on the morrow, but it was not till evening that
people, I cannot remember of what tribe, came to bargain with us, and the
bargaining continued next morning; so we made all baggage ready to be
tied into bundles, for we had no doubt we should start on the 8th at
latest.
First they said we must go by the Wadi al Ain, their own home, and this
we knew was that they might blackmail us; but they told us it was from
want of water on the high ground, over which we must travel for six days,
and that we must take two camels for water. Then they said we should take
seventeen days in all, and were to pay for twenty at more than double the
usual fare. We should have to go back on our old road as far as Adab,
then three days in the Wadi al Ain region, the same road near Haibel
Gabrein, go on to Gaffit, and thence turn eastward to Sheher.
We were perfectly horrified at this plan; the price was great, and the
sultan seemed not to think it possible to go against the Bedouin; but far
worse in our eyes was the thought of our map, as we should see no new
country, instead of taking a turn or a climb that would have added miles
to it.
They left us, and we were sitting on our floor in the deepest depths of
dark despair, when news came that these camel-men, having made a fresh
plan for more extortions, _i.e._ that there was to be no limit to the
number of camels, save their will in loading them, the sultan, being
indignant, was thinking of sending for other men.
When we heard that we roused up and concocted a new plan, which was to
send for the sultan and ask him to get the Jabberi, and make them take us
by the Wadi bin Ali; so he came and agreed to this. We were not to go so
long over the highland, but to go up and down at least twice, which would
suit us and our map. The sultan told us we should find running water, and
that it was a shorter way to Sheher.
Besides this, there lurked in the background, not to be revealed till the
last moment, a design to get the Tamimi to come to a place in Wadi Adim
and take us to Bir Borhut, a name truly terrible to Matthaios and the
Indian servants.
We were in high spirits, and agreed that no matter what our fate might be
we were having a delightful evening. Truly I think the pleasures of hope
are not sufficiently appreciated, for even if your hopes are never
realised the hoping has been a great happiness. On the 8th those
extortionate men of Wadi al Ain sent to say they would take us by the
Wadi bin Ali, turning out of Wadi Hadhramout at Al Gran, crossing the
Wadis bin Ali and Adim, and reaching Sa'ah, where we could branch off for
Bir Borhut. This offer was declined, for we were watching and waiting for
the Jabberi; and at night we heard that the brave Jabberi were at
Shibahm, whereas our messenger had been sent to Wadi bin Ali. They said
they wondered at not hearing from us, as the sultan had engaged their
camels and promised to let them know when they would be wanted. It was a
great mystery to us why the Wadi al Ain people had ever been sent for.
The Jabberi thus defied the Kattiri: 'As sure as we come from Jabberi
fathers and Jabberi mothers, we will take these people safely to Bir
Borhut; and as sure as you come from Kattiri fathers and Kattiri mothers,
you may do your worst but still we will keep them safe'; to which the
Kattiri replied: 'We do not wish to make war on you, and we do not care
where you take them so long as it is not into our country.'
As soon as we had finished our breakfast next day, a message came to say
our horses were ready, and we were to go and drink coffee at a little
tower the sultan has in the plain. Most of the party walked. There were
only horses for five; a donkey carried a water-skin, and our donkey,
Mahsoud, carried halters for every animal. There were the two wazirs, the
son-in-law, the sultan of Haura, and a good many servants with carpets
for us to sit on, and a teapot. We sat there for about two hours doing
nothing but look at the green, an occupation for which this house is
expressly built. A gun announced the arrival of the men of Al Jabber, and
the sultan sent a man to kill a goat and receive them.
Our great joy at their coming was nothing compared to our extreme
satisfaction at parting with them later on.
I cannot say much for my skill as a physiognomist, for I have it recorded
that I liked the looks of our Mokadam (that is chief of our _kafila_, or
leader) Talib-bin-Abdullah, son of the Jabberi sheikh, and that I did not
care for the looks of our new groom, Salem. I was quite wrong in both
cases. There were also Saleh-bin-Yamani and another Jabberi. We were
certainly, this time, to start next day, but with another change in our
route, I believe on account of water. Instead of going by Al Gran, we
were to go by Wadi Manwab, retracing our steps as far as Furhud.
Very early in the morning Imam Sharif came to us and told us that the
Jabberi had not sufficient camels with them and that we must take camels
of Mandob the first day or two, and that others would meet us in the Wadi
bin Ali, so there was little hope of a move that day. The Jabberi
afterwards said the Mandob way was much the longest, so we changed again.
We delayed several days longer at Al Koton, hoping against hope that the
sultan of Terim would grant us permission to pass through his
territories, that we might prosecute our journey.