Oman on the Persian Gulf from El Katar to Ras Musendum and was, even
as early as Ptolemy’s day, inhabited by wild, lawless Arabs. On his
map of Arabia they are named _Ichthiophagoi_, or fish-eaters. Niebuhr
wrote of this part of Oman, “Fishes are so plentiful upon the coast
and so easily caught, as to be used not only for feeding cows, asses,
and other domestic animals, but even as manure for the fields.” Sir
John Malcolm, in his quaint sketches of Persia wrote forty years ago:
“I asked who were the inhabitants of the barren shore of Arabia that we
saw. He answered with apparent alarm, ‘they are of the sect of Wahabees
and are called Jowasimee. But God preserve us from them, for they are
monsters. Their occupation is piracy, and their delight murder, and to
make it worse they give you the most pious reasons for every villainy
they commit. They abide by the letter of the sacred volume, rejecting
all commentaries and traditions. If you are their captive and offer
all to save your life they say, No! It is written in the Koran that it
is not lawful to plunder the living; but we are not prohibited from
stripping the dead—so saying they knock you on the head.’”
Thanks to English commerce and gunboats these fanatic Wahabis have
become more tame, and most of them have long given up piracy and turned
to pearl-diving for a livelihood. Hindu traders have settled among
them, foreign commerce reaches their bazaars, and the black tent is
making room for the three or four important towns of Dabai, Sharka, Abu
Thubi and Ras-el-Kheima, with growing population and increasing wealth.
The cape of Musendum and the land back of it, called Ras-el-Jebel is
very mountainous, but beyond Ras-el-Kheima, the coast is low and flat
all the way up the gulf. The villages are all built near the entrance
of salt-water creeks or marshes, which serve as harbors at high-tide.
For the most part the coast is unfertile, but near Sharka there are
palm-groves, and further inland are oases. The islands off this coast
are most of them uninhabited.
The Batina coast is the exception to all the maritime plains that
surround so large a part of the peninsula; in western and eastern
Arabia these low sandy plains are nearly barren of all vegetation, but
here extensive date plantations and gardens extend almost to the very
ocean beach. Back of the rising plain are the lofty ranges of Jebel
Akhdar. This fertile coast begins at Sib, about twenty-five miles from
Muscat, and extends for 150 miles to the neighborhood of Khor Kalba
with an average width of about twelve miles. It has many towns and
villages; the principal ones are the following. Sib is a scattered town
chiefly built of mat-huts with two small detached forts. It has a very
small bazaar, but extensive date-groves and gardens. Back of Sib on the
way up the coast one sees the great bluff of Jebel Akhdar, 9,900 feet
high, and visible over 100 miles out at sea. Barka has a lofty Arab
fortress, but for the rest mat-huts among date-plantations characterize
its general appearance. Large quantities of shell fish are collected
and sent inland; the bazaar is good and some Banian traders are settled
here. Passing several islands the next town is Suaik. After it the
larger town of Sohar, with perhaps 4,000 people. This town is walled
with a high fort in the middle, the residence of the Sheikh. A high
conical peak, of light color, rises conspicuously about twelve miles
west of the town, and with the surrounding date gardens and other trees
makes a pretty picture, altogether more green than one would expect on
Arabian coasts. Beyond Sohar the chief villages are, in order, Shinas,
Al Fujaira, Dibba. The two latter are already beyond the Batina and are
between the high cliffs and the deep sea.
Going from southeast Muscat down the coast toward Ras-el-Had we
first pass the little village of Sudab and Bunder Jissa. The latter
is of interest as the place the French were trying to acquire for a
coaling-station from the Sultan of Muscat last year. It has a good
anchorage, is only five miles from Muscat, and an island precipice,
140 feet high, guards the entrance. After this, Karyat, Taiwa, Kalhat
and smaller villages passed, we reach Sur. This large, double town is
situated on a khor or backwater, with two forts to the westward. The
inhabitants, numbering perhaps 8,000, consist of two clans of the Bni
Bu Ali and the Bni Janaba, often at feud with each other. The country
inland is partly cultivated and date groves abound. Sur has always been
a place of trade and enterprise and its buggalows visit India, Zanzibar
and the Persian Gulf. The people are all bold sailors since many
generations. But Sur also has the unenviable reputation of being even
now the centre of illicit slave-trading. Beyond Sur is the headland of
Jebel Saffan and Ras-el-Had, the easternmost point of Arabia, almost
reaching the sixtieth degree of longitude.
For a knowledge of the coast beyond Ras-el-Had we are indebted to the
papers of Assistant Surgeon H.J. Carter in the journal of the Bombay
branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.[29] The two great Arab tribes
that dwell on this coast are the Mahrah and the Gharah; the former
really belong to Hadramaut, but the boundaries drawn on the maps are
purely artificial and have no significance. Neither tribe is dependent
on the Oman Sultan or acknowledges any allegiance to him. The Mahrah
are descended from the ancient Himyarites and occupy a coast-line of
nearly 140 miles from Saihut to Ras Morbat; their chief town is Damkut
(Dunkot) on Kamar bay. In stature the Mahrahs are smaller than most
Arabs, and by no means handsome; in their peculiar mode of Bedouin
salutation they put their noses side by side and breathe softly! They
subsist by fishing and are miserably poor; their plains, mountains
and valleys, except close to Damkut, are sandy and barren. Religion
they have scarcely any, and Carter says that they do not even know the
Moslem prayers, and are utterly ignorant of the teachings of Mohammed.
Their dialect is soft and sweet, and they themselves compare it to
the language of the birds; it is evidently a corrupted form of the
ancient Himyaric and therefore of great importance in the study of
philology.[30]
The Gharah tribe inhabit the coast between Moseirah island and the
Kuria-Muria islands. Their country is mountainous and cavernous and
consists of a white stratified limestone formation 4,000 or 5,000 feet
above the sea-level. The upper part of the mountains are covered with
good pasturage and their slopes with a dense thicket of small trees
among which frankincense and other gum trees are plentiful. The whole
tribe are _troglodytes_, “cave-dwellers,” since nature gives them
better dwellings than the best mud-hut, and cooler than the largest
tent of Kedar. They are largely nomadic, however, and shift from cave
to cave in their wanderings. Their wardrobe is not an incumbrance as
it consists of a single piece of coarse blue cotton wrapped around
the loins like a short kilt. The women wear a loose frock of the same
texture and color with wide sleeves, reaching a little below the knee
in front and trailing on the ground behind; the veil is unknown.
Children go about entirely naked. Both men and women tattoo their
cheeks. For weapons they have swords, spears, daggers, and matchlocks.
Their food consists of milk, flesh and honey with the wild fruits of
the mountains.
This entire region has been justly celebrated for honey since the days
of the Greek geographers who enumerate honey and frankincense as its
chief products. The wild honey of South Arabia collected from the rocks
and packed in large dry gourds, is fit for an epicure. On Ptolemy’s map
of Arabia the region inland from this coast is called _Libanotopheros
Regio_, the place of incense; and by Pliny is termed _regio thurifera_,
the region of frankincense. From the earliest times this has been the
country that produces real frankincense in abundance. Once its export
was a source of wealth to the inhabitants, for incense was used in
the temples of Egypt and India as well as by the Jews, and by all
the nations of antiquity. So important was this commerce in the early
history of the world that Sprenger devotes several pages in his Ancient
Geography of Arabia to describing the origin, extent, and influence of
frankincense on civilization. The Arabs were then the general transport
agents between the east and the west, _i.e._, India and Egypt. The
Queen of Sheba’s empire grew rich in frankincense-trade; she brought
to Solomon “spices in abundance,” nor was there “any such spice” or
brought in “such abundance” as that which Queen Sheba gave to Solomon.
(B.C. cir. 992.)
The rise of Islam, the overthrow of the old Himyarite kingdom, the
discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, all these
coöperated to destroy the ancient importance and prosperity of Southern
Arabia. At present, frankincense is still exported, but not in large
quantities. The gum is procured by making incisions in the bark of the
shrub in May and December. On its first appearance it comes forth white
as milk, but soon hardens and discolors. It is then collected by men
and boys, employed to look after the trees by the different families
who own the land on which they grow.
[Illustration: A BRANCH OF THE INCENSE TREE.]
IX
THE LAND OF THE CAMEL
“To see real live dromedaries my readers must, I fear, come to
Arabia, for these animals are not often to be met with elsewhere,
not even in Syria; and whoever wishes to contemplate the species
in all its beauty, must prolong his journey to Oman, which is for
dromedaries, what Nejd is for horses, Cashmere for sheep, and Tibet
for bulldogs.”—_Palgrave._
All Oman, but especially the region just described, is called among the
Arabs _Um-el-ibl_, “mother of the camel.” Palgrave, Doughty and other
Arabian travellers agree that the Oman dromedary is the prince of all
camel-breeds, and Doughty says they are so highly esteemed at Mecca as
to fetch three times the price of other camels.
Unless one knows something about the camel one can neither understand
the Arab nor his language; without the camel, life in a large part of
Arabia would at present be impossible; without the camel the Arabic
language would be vastly different. According to Hammer Purgstall, the
Arabic dictionaries give this animal 5,744 different names; there is
not a page in the lexicon but has some reference to the camel.
The Arabs highly value the camel, but do not admire its form and shape.
There is an Arab tradition, cited in Burton’s “Gold Mines of Midian,”
to the effect that when Allah determined to create the horse, He called
the South Wind and said, “I desire to draw from thee a new being,
condense thyself by parting with thy fluidity.” The Creator then took
a handful of this element, blew upon it the breath of life, and the
noble quadruped appeared. But the horse complained against his Maker.
His neck was too short to reach the distant grass blades on the march;
his back had no hump to steady a saddle; his hoofs were sharp and sank
deep into the sand; and he added many similar grievances. Whereupon
Allah created the camel to prove the foolishness of his complaint. The
horse shuddered at the sight of what he wanted to become, and this is
the reason every horse starts when meeting its caricature for the first
time. The camel may not be beautiful, (although the Arabic lexicon
shows that the words for “_pretty_” and “_camel_” are related) but he
is surpassingly useful.
This animal is found in Persia, Asia Minor, Afghanistan, Beluchistan,
Mongolia, Western China, Northern India, Syria, Turkey, North Africa
and parts of Spain, but nowhere so generally or so finely developed
as in Arabia. The two main species, not to speak of varieties, are
the Southern, Arabian one-humped camel and the Northern, Bactrian
two-humped camel. Each is specially adapted to its locality. The
Bactrian camel is long-haired, tolerant of the intense cold of the
steppes and is said to eat snow when thirsty. The Arabian species is
short-haired, intolerant of cold, but able to endure thirst and extreme
heat. It is incredible to Arabs that any camel-kind should have a
double hump. A camel differs from a dromedary in nothing save blood
and breed. The camel is a pack-horse; the dromedary a race-horse. The
camel is thick-built, heavy-footed, ungainly, jolting; the dromedary
has finer hair, lighter step, is easy of pace and more enduring of
thirst. A caravan of camels is a freight-train; a company of Oman
_thelul_-riders is a limited express. The ordinary caravan travels
six hours a day and three miles an hour, but a good dromedary can
run seventy miles a day on the stretch. A tradesman from Aneyza told
Doughty that he had ridden from El Kasim to Taif and back, a distance
of over 700 miles, in fifteen days! Mehsan Allayda once mounted his
dromedary after the Friday midday prayer at El-Aly and prayed the next
Friday in the great Mosque at Damascus about 440 miles distant. The
Haj-road post-rider at Ma’an can deliver a message at Damascus, it is
said, at the end of three days; the distance is over 200 miles.
The Arabs have a saying that “the camel is the greatest of all
blessings given by Allah to mankind.” One is not surprised that the
meditative youth of Mecca who led the camels of Khadiyah, to Syria and
back by the desert way, should appeal to the unbelievers in Allah and
His prophet in the words, “_And do ye not look then at the camel how
she is created?_” (Surah lxxxviii. 17 of the Koran.)
To describe the camel is to describe God’s goodness to the
desert-dwellers. Everything about the animal shows evident design. His
long neck, gives wide range of vision in desert marches and enables him
to reach far to the meagre desert shrubs on either side of his pathway.
The cartilaginous texture of his mouth, enables him to eat hard and
thorny plants—the pasture of the desert. His ears are very small, and
his nostrils large for breathing, but are specially capable of closure
by valve-like folds against the fearful Simoon. His eyes are prominent,
but protected by a heavy overhanging upper-lid, limiting vision upward
thus guarding from the direct rays of the noon sun. His cushioned feet
are peculiarly adapted for ease of the rider and the animal alike.
Five horny pads are given him to rest on when kneeling to receive a
burden or for repose on the hot sand. His hump is not a fictional but a
_real_ and acknowledged reserve store of nutriment as well as nature’s
packsaddle for the commerce of ages. His water reservoirs in connection
with the stomach, enable him when in good condition to travel for
five days without water. Again, the camel alone of all ruminants has
incisor-teeth in the upper jaw, which, with the peculiar structure of
his other teeth, make his bite, the animal’s first and main defence,
most formidable. The skeleton of the camel is full of proofs of design.
Notice, for example, the arched backbone constructed in such a way
as to sustain the greatest weight in proportion to the span of the
supports; a strong camel can bear 1,000 pounds’ weight, although the
usual load in Oman is not more than 600 pounds.
The camel is a _domestic_ animal in the full sense of the word,
for the Arabian domicile is indebted to the camel for nearly all it
holds. All that can be obtained from the animal is of value. Fuel,
milk, excellent hair for tents, ropes, shawls and coarser fabrics are
obtained from the living animal; and flesh-food, leather, bones and
other useful substances from the dead. Even the footprints of the camel
though soon obliterated, are of special value in the desert. A lighter
or smaller foot would leave no tracks, but the camel’s foot leaves
data for the Bedouin science of _Athar_—the art of navigation for the
ship of the desert. Camel tracks are gossip and science, history and
philosophy to the Arab caravan. A camel-march is the standard measure
of distance in all Arabia; and the price of a milch-camel the standard
of value in the interior. When they have little or no water the
miserable nomads rinse their hands in camel’s water and the nomad women
wash their babes in it. Camel’s-milk is the staple diet of thousands in
Arabia even though it be bitter because of wormwood pasturage.
As to the character of the camel and its good or evil nature
authorities differ. Lady Ann Blunt considers the camel the most abused
and yet the most patient animal in existence. Palgrave, on the other
hand, thus describes the stupidity and ugly temper of the beast: “I
have, while in England, heard and read more than once of the docile
camel. If docile means stupid, well and good; in such a case the camel
is the very model of docility. But if the epithet is intended to
designate an animal that takes an interest in its rider so far as a
beast can, that obeys from a sort of submissive or half fellow-feeling
with its master, like the horse and elephant, then I say that the camel
is by no means docile, very much the contrary. He will never attempt
to throw you off his back, such a trick being far beyond his limited
comprehension; but if you fall off, he will never dream of stopping for
you; and if turned loose it is a thousand to one he will never find
his way back to his accustomed home or pasture. One only symptom will
he give that he is aware of his rider, and that is when the latter is
about to mount him, for on such an occasion, instead of addressing him
in the style of Balaam’s more intelligent beast, ‘Am not I thy camel
upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day?’ he
will bend back his long snaky neck toward his master, open his enormous
jaws to bite, if he dared, and roar out a tremendous sort of groan, as
if to complain of some entirely new and unparalleled injustice about
to be done him. In a word he is from first to last an undomesticated
and savage animal rendered serviceable by stupidity alone. Neither
attachment nor even habit can impress him; never tame, though not
wide-awake enough to be exactly wild.” We can bear witness that the
camels we have ridden in Hassa and Yemen were altogether more kindly
than the ugly creature of Palgrave.
The chief authorities on the interior of Oman were, until recent date,
Niebuhr, Wellsted (1835), Whitelock (1838), Eloy (1843) and Palgrave,
(1863). Palgrave, however, only visited the coast and his account of
the interior and its history is pure romance. Later travellers have
visited the chief cities of Jebel Achdar and corroborated the accuracy
of Lieutenant Wellsted in his “Travels in Arabia.” Unfortunately
Wellsted’s acquaintance even with colloquial Arabic was very limited
and he frankly avows that he encountered serious difficulties in
understanding the people. “Wellsted’s map,” says Badger, “is the only
one of the province which we possess drawn up from personal observation
and ... it affords little or no certain indication of the numerous
towns and villages beyond the restricted routes of the travellers. It
is remarkable and by no means creditable to the British Government in
India, that, notwithstanding our intimate political and commercial
relations with Oman, for the last century, we know actually less of
that country beyond the coast than we do of the Lake districts of
Africa.”[31] Badger wrote in 1860, but although Colonel Miles and
others have visited the region of Jebel Achdar, all the country beyond
is still largely _terra incognita_. No one has ever made the journey
beyond the range of mountains or solved the mystery of Western Oman,
which is still a blank on the best maps; nor do we know anything of the
land 100 miles southwest of Muscat, save by Arab hearsay.
The highlands of Oman may be divided into three districts; _Ja’alan_
from Jebel Saffan to Jebel Fatlah on the east. _Oman_ proper on the
Jebel Achdar, and _Ez-Zahirah_ on the eastern slopes of Jebel Okdat.
The most populous and fertile district is that of Jebel Achdar which
is also the best known. The fertility of the whole region is wonderful
and in striking contrast with the barren rocks of so large a part of
the coast. With a semi-tropical climate, an elevation of 3,000 to 5,000
feet and abundant springs the wadys and oases of Oman have awakened the
delight and amazement of every traveller who has ventured to explore
them. Water, the one priceless treasure in all Arabia, here issues
in perennial streams from many rocky clefts and is most carefully
husbanded by the ingenuity of the people, for wide irrigation, by means
of canals or watercourses called _faluj_. Wellsted thus describes
these underground aqueducts: “They are as far as I know peculiar to
this country, and are made at an expense of labor and skill more
Chinese than Arabian. The greater part of the surface of the land being
destitute of running streams on the surface, the Arabs have sought in
elevated places for springs or fountains beneath it. A channel from
this fountain-head is then, with a very slight descent, bored in the
direction in which it is to be conveyed, leaving apertures at regular
distances to afford light and air to those who are occasionally sent
to keep it clean. In this way the water is frequently conducted for
a distance of six or eight miles, and an unlimited supply is thus
obtained. These channels are about four feet broad and two feet deep
and contain a clear, rapid stream. Most of the large towns or oases
have four or five of these rivulets or _falj_ (plural _faluj_) running
into them. The isolated spots to which water is thus conveyed, possess
a soil so fertile that nearly every grain, fruit or vegetable, common
to India, Arab or Persia, is produced almost spontaneously; and the
tales of the oases will be no longer regarded as an exaggeration, since
a single step conveys the traveller from the glare and sand of the
desert into a fertile tract, watered by a hundred rills, teeming with
the most luxurious vegetation.”
The chief caravan routes inland start from the coast, at Sohar through
Wady-el-Jazy, at Suaik through Wady Thala, at Barka or Sib through Wady
Mithaal and Wady Zailah (alternative routes) at Matra, by the same, and
at Sur through Wady Falj. On the eastern side of the mountain range the
chief towns are Rastak, Nakhl and Someil. On the farther side we have
Tenoof, Behilah and Nezwa, all large towns well-watered. “Between these
fertile oases one travels[32] sometimes an entire day through stony
wady, or over volcanic rock, climbing a difficult mountain pass, or
crossing a wide sea-like desert, without seeing a habitation or meeting
a fellow-creature except an occasional caravan. Their rifles are swung
over the shoulders of the riders, and their wild song keeps time with
the slow tread of the camels....
“From Nakhl it is a long day’s journey to Lihiga at the foot of Jebel
Achdar. Two other beautifully situated mountain villages, Owkan and
Koia are in close proximity. Here, as well as on the mountains, dwells
a tribe of hardy mountaineers, the Bni Ryam. In features and habits
this tribe is quite distinct from the other Oman tribes. All over these
mountains the people lead a peaceful life, and the absence of fire-arms
was noticeable in comparison with the valley tribes, where each man
carries his rifle, often of the best English or German pattern.
“From Lihiga we began the ascent, and after a half-a-day of most
difficult climbing, reached the top of the pass at noonday, my
barometer registering 7,050 feet. Here on a level projecting rock,
which afforded a splendid extended view of the Wady Mestel, where
dwell the Bni Ruweihah, we had our lunch, and were glad to slake our
thirst out of the goatskin the guide carried on his shoulder. From
the top of the pass we descended to the level table-land at a height
of 6,200 feet, and at sunset reached the ideally beautiful village of
Sheraegah. It is in a circular ravine several hundred feet in depth,
and like a huge amphitheatre where grow in terraces, apples, peaches,
pomegranates, grapes and other temperate products in rich profusion.
Ice and snow are frequently seen here during the winter, and in summer
the temperature registers no higher than 80°F. In March we had a
temperature of 40°, and enjoyed a huge fire in the guest-room where a
hundred Arabs came to visit us, and entertained us with the recitation
of Arabic poetry. Such an opportunity was not to be neglected, and
they, as an agricultural people, were interested in the parable of the
Sower and the explanation....
[Illustration: TENOOF FROM THE EAST.
From a pencil sketch by Peter J. Zwemer.]