On two separate occasions we visited Maskat. The first time was in 1889 on our way to Persia, and the second in 1895 when we were starting for Dhofar, on the journey which I shall describe later.
On each occasion we had to reach it by way of India, for like all the rest of the Persian Gulf Maskat is really an outlying portion of our Indian Empire. By just crossing a range of mountains in Persia you cross the metaphorical watershed between our India and Foreign Offices. At Shiraz you hesitate between India and England. You ask the question, 'Shall I send my letters vi Bombay, or vi Russia?' You hasten to get rid of your rupees, for this is the last place where their merit is recognised. North of Shiraz you are in a distinctly foreign country. Our officials hail from the Foreign Office and belong to the legation of Teheran. You are no longer under British protection, you are in the dominions of the Shah.
But so long as you are on the shores of the Gulf you are, so to speak, in India. The officials receive their pay in degenerate rupees instead of pounds sterling, they live in 'bungalows,' they talk of 'tiffin,' and eat curry at every meal.
We keep a British ship of war in the Gulf. We feel that it is a matter of the first importance that those countries should remain under our protection, and that the Turks should not build forts at Fao and otherwise interfere with our trade in the Karoun, and that no other power should have a foothold thereon. The last generation talked much about a Euphrates Valley Railway, with its terminus at Koweit; we now hear a great deal about the opening up of the Karoun, but it is the lordship of the Gulf which is the chief matter of importance just at present both for India and for ourselves.
In this district Maskat is the most important point; the kingdom of Oman, of which it is nominally the capital, commands the entrance to the Gulf. In the ninth century of the Christian era ships trading from Sherif to China took in water at Maskat from the wells which still supply the town. Between Aden and the Persian Gulf it is the only harbour where ships of any size can find anchorage, and it may, in fact, be said to play much the same part with respect to the Persian Gulf that Aden does to the Red Sea. In many other ways the places are strikingly similar. They are both constructed on arid, volcanic rocks, which produce the smallest amount of verdure and reflect the greatest amount of heat; water in both of them is the scarcest of commodities. Of all places in the world Maskat has the reputation of being the hottest, facing, as it does, the Indian Ocean, and protected from every cooling breeze by rugged volcanic hills, without a blade of cultivation upon them, and which reflect and intensify the scorching rays of the burning sun. Aden is said to have but a piece of brown paper between it and the infernal fires. Maskat would seem to want even this meagre protection, and 'gives,' as a Persian poet has expressed it, 'to the panting sinner a lively anticipation of his future destiny.'
The approach to the cove of Maskat is highly striking. Many-coloured volcanic rocks of fantastic form protect the horseshoe-shaped harbour, whilst behind the white town, as far as the eye can reach, stretch deeply serrated, arid mountains, which culminate in the heights of Jebel Akhdar, or the 'Green Mountains,' some fifty miles, as the crow flies, inland, reaching an elevation of 9,000 feet. We were told that snow sometimes falls in the winter-time on Jebel Akhdar, and it rejoices in a certain amount of verdure, from which it derives its name. This range forms the backbone of Oman, and at its foot lie Nezweh and Rostok, the old capitals of the long line of imams of Oman, before Maskat was a place of so much importance as it is at present. The streams which come down from these mountains nowhere reach the sea, but are lost in the deserts, and, nevertheless, in some places they fertilise oases in the Omani desert, where the vegetation is most luxuriant and fever very rife. Grapes grow on the slopes of Jebel Akhdar, and the inhabitants, despite the strictures of Mohammed, both make and drink wine of them, and report says (how far it is true I know not) that the Portuguese exported thence the vines to which they gave the name of muscatel. The inhabitants of this wild range are chiefly Bedou and pastoral, and it is from this quarter that the troubles which beset the poor sultan, Feysul, generally emanate.
The harbour of Maskat is full of life. The deep blue sea is studded with tiny craft: canoes painted red, green, and white, steered by paddles, swarm around the steamer; fishermen paddling themselves about on a plank or two tied together, or swimming astride of a single one, hawk their wares from boat to boat. The oars of the larger boats are generally made with a flat circular piece of wood fastened on to a long pole, and are really more like paddles than oars. In the northern corner lie huddled together large dhows, which, during the north-east monsoons, make the journey to Zanzibar, returning at the change of the season. Most of these belong to Banyan merchants in Maskat, and are manned by Indian sailors. Close to them is the small steamer Sultanieh, which was presented by the Sultan of Zanzibar to his cousin Sultan Tourki of Maskat, now a perfectly useless craft, which cannot even venture outside the harbour by reason of the holes in its side. From its mast floats the red banner of Oman, the same flag that Arab boats at Aden fly. It was originally the banner of Yemen, to which place the Arabs who rule in Oman trace their origin; for early in our era, according to Arab tradition, Oman was colonised and taken possession of by descendants of the old Himyarites of Yemen.
The shore of the town is very unpleasant, reeking with smells, and at low tide lined with all the refuse and offal of the place. At high tide shoals of fish come in to feed on this refuse, and in their train follow immense flocks of seagulls, which make the edge of the water quite white as they fly along and dive after their prey. Here and there out of the sand peep the barrels of some rusty old cannon, ghostly relics of the Portuguese occupation.
In the middle of the beach is the sultan's palace, but it is immeasurably inferior to the new residency of the British political agent, which stands at the southern extremity of the town, just where it can get all the breeze that is to be had through a gap in the rocks opening to the south; here we were most hospitably entertained by Colonel Hayes Sadler on our second sojourn. Even in this favoured position the heat in summer is almost unendurable, making Maskat one of the least coveted posts that the Indian Government has at its disposal. The cliffs immediately round the town are of a shiny schist, almost impossible to walk upon, and reflect the rays of the sun with great intensity.
On either side of the town stand two old Portuguese forts kept up and manned by the sultan's soldiers; in them are still to be seen old rusty pieces of ordnance, one of which bears a Portuguese inscription with the date 1606, and the name and arms of Philip III. of Spain; also the small Portuguese chapel in the fort is preserved and bears the date of 1588. These are the principal legacies left to posterity by those intrepid pioneers of civilisation in a spot which they occupied for nearly a century and a half. These forts testify to having been of great size and strength in former times, and show considerable architectural features, and the traces of a luxuriant and opulent population.
With regard to the ancient history of Oman, there is little known. The empire of the Himyarites, which filled Yemen and the Hadhramout valley with interesting remains, does not appear to have extended its sway so far eastward; no SabÆan remains have as yet been found in Oman, nor are there any that I have heard of further east than the frankincense country of Dhofar, over six hundred miles west of Maskat. Neither Ptolemy nor the author of the 'Periplus' gives us any definite information about the existence of a town in the harbour of Maskat, and consequently the first reliable information we have to go upon is from the early Arabian geographers.
From Torisi we learn that Sobar was the most ancient town of Oman; but that in his day Maskat was flourishing, and that 'in old times the China ships used to sail from there.'
Oman was included in Yemen by these earlier geographers, doubtless from the fact that Arabs from Yemen were its first colonisers; but all that is known with any certainty is that, from the ninth century a.d. a long line of imams ruled over Oman, with their capitals at Nezweh or Rostok, at the foot of Jebel Akhdar. This title, by which the Arab rulers were known, had been conferred on the Arab rulers of Oman for centuries, and signifies a sort of priest-king, like Melchisedek, to whom, curiously enough, is given the same title in the Koran. The election was always by popular acclamation, and inasmuch as the Omani do not recognise the two 'imams' who immediately succeeded Mohammed, but chose their own, they form a separate sect. In olden days the men of Oman were called 'outsiders' by their Mohammedan brethren, because they recognised their own chief solely as the head of their own religion, and are known otherwise as the Ibadiet or Ibadhuyah, followers of Abdullah-bin-Ibadh, as distinct from the Shiahi (Shiites) and Sunni, between which sects the rest of Islam is pretty equally divided. Internecine wars were always rife amongst them; but, at the same time, these early Omani had little or no intercourse with the outer world. Of the internal quarrels of the country, the Omani historian Salid-bin-Ragik has given a detailed account, but for the rest of the world they are of little interest. In those days Oman seems to have had two ports, Sur and Kalhat, on the Indian Ocean, which were more frequented than Maskat. Marco Polo, 1280 a.d., calls the second Calaiati in his 'Journal,' and describes it as 'a large city in a gulf called, also, Calatu,' and the Omani paid tribute to the melek or king of Hormuz for many generations, but with the rise of Maskat, Sur and Kalhat declined.
Oman first came into immediate contact with Europeans in the year 1506, when Albuquerque appeared in Maskat harbour bent on his conquest of the Persian Gulf, and with the object, not even yet accomplished, of making a route to India by way of the Euphrates valley. From Albuquerque's 'Commentaries' we get a graphic description of the condition of the country when he reached it.
At first the Arabs were inclined to receive the Portuguese without a struggle; but, taking courage from the presence of a large army of Bedouin in the vicinity, they soon showed treacherous intentions towards the invaders, so that the Portuguese admiral determined to attack the town and destroy it, and the commentator states that 'within were burned many provisions, thirty-four ships in all, large and small, many fishing barks, and an arsenal full of every requisite for ship-building.'
After effecting a landing, the Portuguese ordered 'three gunners with axes to cut the supports of the mosque, which was a large and very beautiful edifice, the greater part being built of timber finely carved, and the upper part of stucco,' and it was accounted a propitious miracle by the Portuguese that the men who performed this deed were not killed by the falling timber. Maskat was then burnt and utterly destroyed; and 'having cut off the ears and noses of the prisoners he liberated them.' The commentator concludes his remarks on Maskat as follows: 'Maskat is of old a market for carriage of horses and dates; it is a very elegant town, with very fine houses. It is the principal entrepÔt of the kingdom of Ormuz, into which all the ships that navigate these parts must of necessity enter.'
The hundred and forty years during which the Portuguese occupied Maskat and the adjacent coast town was a period of perpetual trouble and insurrection. The factory and forts of Jellali and Merani were commenced in 1527, but the forts in their present condition were not erected till after the union of Portugal and Spain, in 1580; the order for their erection came from Madrid, and the inscription bears the date 1588. Not only were the Arabs constantly on the look-out to dislodge their unwelcome visitors, but the Turks attacked them likewise, with a navy from the side of the Persian Gulf, and the naval victory gained by the Portuguese off Maskat in 1554 is considered by Turkish historians to have been a greater blow to their power than the better known battle off Prevesa in 1538, when D'Oria defeated Barbarossa and obliged Solyman to relinquish his attempt on Vienna.
When, after the union of Portugal with Spain, the colonial activity of the former country declined, the colonies in the Persian Gulf fell one by one into the hand of the Persians and Arabs.
Out of the kingdom of Oman they were driven in 1620, and confined to the town of Maskat by the victorious imam, Nasir-bin-Murshid, during whose reign of twenty-six years the legend is told that no man in Oman died a natural death. Two years later they were also driven from Maskat itself, and those two forts Jellali and Merani which they had built, the last foothold of the Portuguese on the Omani territory, were taken from them.
The historian Salil tells the amusing story of the final fall of Maskat into the hands of the Arabs. The Portuguese governor, Pereira, was deeply enamoured of the daughter of a Banyan merchant of Maskat; the man at first refused to let him have his daughter, but at length consented, on condition that the wedding did not take place for some months. Pereira was now entirely in the hands of the Banyan and did everything he told him; so the crafty Indian communicated with the Arabs outside Portuguese territory, telling them to be ready when due notice was given to attack the town. He then proceeded to persuade Pereira to clean out the water tanks of the fort, and to clear out the old supplies of food preparatory to revictualling them; then, when the forts were without food and water, and finally having damped all the powder, he gave notice to the Arabs, who attacked and took the town on a Sunday evening, when the Portuguese were carousing.
Captain Hamilton gives another account in his travels,[7] and tells us that the Arabs were exasperated by a piece of pork, wrapped up in paper, being sent as a present to the imam by the governor, Pereira, and he also adds that the Portuguese were all put to the sword, save eighteen, who embraced Mohammedanism; and that the Portuguese cathedral was made the imam's palace, where he took up his residence for a month or two every year.
Since those days these two forts have been regularly used by rival claimants to the sovereignty of Oman as convenient points of vantage from which to pepper one another, to the infinite discomfiture of the inhabitants beneath.
The departure of the Portuguese did not greatly benefit the Omani. Writing in 1624 to the East India Company, Thomas Kerridge speaks of Maskat as 'a beggarly, poor town,' and 'Ormusz,' he says, 'is become a heap of ruins.' At last, in 1737, owing to the jealousies of the rival imams, Seid and Ibn Murshad, Maskat was taken by the Persians. They were, however, soon driven out again by Ahmed-bin-Sayid, or Saoud, a man of humble origin but a successful general; as a reward for his services he was elected imam in 1741, and was the founder of the dynasty which still rules there.
The successors of Ahmed-bin-Sayid found the obligations of being imam, and the oath which it entailed to fight against the infidel, both awkward and irksome, so his grandson, Saoud, who succeeded in 1779, never assumed the title of imam, but was content with that of sultan, and consequently the imamate of Oman has, with one short exception, been in abeyance ever since.
Under the first rulers of this dynasty Oman became a state of considerable importance. During the reigns of Sultan Saoud and his son Sultan Saoud Sayid, a large part of the Arabian mainland was under the rule of Oman, as also Bahrein, Hormuz, Larij, Kishm, Bandar Abbas, many islands and their pearl fisheries, and Linga, also a good part of the coast of Africa; and it was they who established the alliances with England and the United States.
The first political relations between the East India Company and the ruler of Oman took place in 1798, the object being to secure the alliance of Oman against the Dutch and French. A second treaty was made two years later, and it was provided in it that 'an English gentleman of respectability on the part of the Honourable East India Company, should always reside at the port of Maskat.'
An English gentleman of respectability has consequently resided there ever since, and from the days of Sultan Sayid has become the chief factor in the government of the place.
Sultan Sayid-bin-Sayid stands out prominently as the great ruler of Oman, and under his rule Oman and its capital, Maskat, reached the greatest pitch of eminence to be found in all its annals. He ascended the throne in 1804, and reigned for fifty-two years.
He found his country in dire distress at the time of his accession, owing to the attacks of the fanatical Wahabi from Central Arabia, who had carried their victorious arms right down to Maskat, and had imposed their bigoted rules and religious regulations on the otherwise liberal-minded Mohammedans of Eastern Arabia. With Turkish aid on the one hand, and British support on the other, Sultan Sayid succeeded in relieving his country from these terrible scourges, and drove them back into the central province of Nejd, from which they had carried their bloodthirsty and fanatical wars over nearly the whole of the peninsula, and, when all fear from the Wahabi was over, Sultan Sayid extended his conquests in all directions. He occupied several points on the Persian Gulf and the opposite coast of Beluchistan, and materially assisted the Indian Government in putting down the piracy which had for long closed the Gulf to all trade; and finally, in 1856, he added the important Arab settlement of Mombasa and Zanzibar, on the African coast, to his dominion.
During this long reign Maskat prospered exceedingly. It was the great trade centre for the Persian Gulf, inasmuch as it was a safe depÔt, where merchants could deposit their goods without fear of piracy; vessels going to and from India before the introduction of steam used frequently to stop at Maskat for water. As a trade centre in those days it was almost as important as Aden, and with the Indian Government Sultan Sayid was always on most friendly terms.
When Sultan Sayid died, the usual dispute took place between his successors. England promptly stepped in to settle this dispute, and, with the foresight she so admirably displays on such occasions, she advocated a division of Sayid's empire. Zanzibar was given to one claimant, Oman to the other, and for the future Oman and Sultan Tourki remained under British protection.
Since the death of Sultan Sayid the power of Oman has most lamentably gone down, partly owing to the very success of his attempts to put down piracy; this, followed by the introduction of steam, has diminished the importance of Maskat as a safe port for the merchants to deposit their wares. It is also partly due to the jealousies which prevail between the descendants of Sayid who rule in Zanzibar and in Maskat. Palgrave in 1863 describes Maskat as having 40,000 inhabitants; there are probably half that number now.
The Sultan of Zanzibar has to pay an annual tribute of 40,000 crowns to his relative of Maskat in order to equalise the inheritance, and this tribute being a constant source of trouble, of late years he has taken to urging the wild Bedouin tribes in Oman to revolt against the present, rather weak-minded sultan who reigns there. He supplies them with the sinews of war, namely money and ammunition, and the insurrection which occurred in February 1895 was chiefly due to this motive power.
One of his sisters married a German, the English conniving at her escape from Zanzibar in a gunboat. On her husband's death, her elder brother having in the meantime also died, she returned to Zanzibar thinking her next brother, the present sultan, to be of a milder disposition, but he refused to take any notice of her and her children.
The present ruler of Maskat, Sultan Feysul, is a grandson of Sultan Sayid and son of Sultan Tourki by an Abyssinian mother. Since his accession, in 1889, he has been vacillating in his policy; he has practically had but little authority outside the walls of Maskat, and were it not for the support of the British Government and the proximity of a gunboat, he would long ago have ceased to rule. When we first saw him, in 1889, he was but a beardless boy, timid and shy, and now he has reached man's estate he still retains the nervous manner of his youth. He lives in perpetual dread of his elder brother Mahmoud, who, being the son of a negress, was not considered a suitable person to inherit the throne. The two brothers, though living in adjacent houses, never meet without their own escorts to protect them from each other.
The way in which Feysul obtained possession of the Sultan's palace on his father's death, to the exclusion of his brother, is curious.
Feysul said his grief for his father was so great that his feelings would not admit of his attending the funeral, so he stayed at home while Mahmoud went, who on his return found the door locked in his face.
The palace is entered by a formidable-looking door, decorated with large spiked bosses of brass. This opens into a small court which contained at the time of our first visit the most imposing sight of the place, namely the lion in his cage to the left, into which Feysul was in the habit of introducing criminals of the deepest dye, to be devoured by this lordly executioner. Opposite to this cage of death is another, a low probationary cage, which, when we were there, contained a prisoner stretched out at full length, for the cage is too low to admit of a sitting posture. From this point he could view the horrors of the lion's cage, so that during his incarceration he might contemplate what might happen to him if he continued, on liberation, to pursue his evil ways. Another door leads into a vaulted passage full of guards, through which we passed and entered into an inner court with a pool in the centre and a wide cloister around it supporting a gallery.
Sultan Feysul was then a very young man, not much over twenty. He was greatly interested in seeing us, for we were the first English travellers who had visited him since his accession. We caught sight of him peeping at us over the balcony as we passed through the courtyard below, and we had to clamber up a ladder to the gallery, where we found him ready to welcome us. He seized our hands and shook them warmly, and then led us with much effusiveness to his khawah, a long room just overhanging the sea, which is his reception and throne-room. Here were high, cane-bottomed chairs around the walls, and at one end a red chair, which is the throne; just over it were hung two grotesque pictures of our Queen and the Prince Consort, such as one could buy for a penny at a fair. They are looked upon as objects of great value here, and act as befitting symbols of our protectorate.
The imam fed us with sweets and coffee, asked us innumerable questions, and seemed full of boyish fun. Certainly with his turban of blue and red checked cotton (which would have been a housemaid's duster at home), his faded, greenish yellow cloak, fastened round his slender frame by a red girdle, he looked anything but a king. As we were preparing to depart the young monarch grew apparently very uneasy, and impatiently shouted something to his attendants, and when the servant came in, Feysul hurried to him, seized four little gilt bottles of attar of roses, thrust two of them into each of our pockets, and with some compliments as to our Queen having eyes everywhere, and Feysul's certainty that she would look after him, the audience was at an end.
Sultan Feysul was a complete autocrat as far as his jurisdiction extended. At his command a criminal could be executed either in the lion's cage or in a little square by the sea, and his body cut up and thrown into the waves. The only check upon him was the British Resident. His father, Tourki, not long before sewed up a woman in a sack and drowned her, whereupon a polite message came from the Residency requesting him not to do such things again. Hence young Feysul dared not be very cruel—to offend the English would have been to lose his position.
His half brother, Mahmoud, whose mother was a Swahili, lives next door to his brother, Sultan Feysul, in the enjoyment of a pension of 600 dollars a mouth. The uncles, however, are not so amenable. The eldest of them, according to Arabian custom, claimed the throne and had collected an army amongst the Bedouin to assert his claims, and was then in possession of all the country, with the exception of Maskat and El Matra, for Feysul had no money, and hence he could not get his soldiers to fight. But then it had been intimated to Feysul that in all probability the English would support his claims if he conducted himself prudently and wisely. So there was every likelihood that in due course he would be thoroughly established in the dominions of his father.
When we visited the town for the second time an even more serious rebellion was impending, the Bedouin of the interior, under Sheikh Saleh, having attacked Maskat itself. The sultan and his brother, who hastily became friends, retired together to the castle, and the town was given up to plunder. There were dead bodies lying on the beach, and but for the kindness of Colonel Hayes Sadler, the British Resident, there would have been difficulties in the fort as regards water. They relied principally on H.M.S. Sphinx, which lay in the harbour to protect British interests, and to maintain Sultan Feysul in his position.
This state of terror lasted three weeks, when the rebels, having looted the bazaars and wrecked the town, were eventually persuaded to retire, free and unpunished, with a considerable cash payment; probably intending to return for more when the cooler weather should come, and the date harvest be over. With the consent of, and at the request of, the Indian Government, Sultan Feysul has imposed additional heavy duty on all the produce coming in from the rebel tribes, that he may have a fund from which to pay indemnities to foreigners who suffered loss during the invasion. A good many Banyan merchants, British subjects, suffered losses, and their claim alone amounted to 120,000 rupees. As a natural result of this disaster and its ignominious termination, Sultan Feysul's authority at the present moment is absolutely nil outside the walls of Maskat and El Matra, and he is still in a state of declared war with all the Bedouin chiefs in the mountains behind Maskat.
A few British subjects were scared, but not killed, and as all was over in a few weeks no one thought much more about it except those more immediately interested, and few paused to think what an important part Maskat has played in the opening up of the Persian Gulf and the suppression of piracy, and what an important part it may yet play should the lordship of the Persian Gulf ever become a casus belli.
Although Maskat has been under Indian influence for most of this century, it has latterly gone down much in the world; the trade of the place has well-nigh departed, and with a weak sultan at the head of affairs, confidence will be long in returning. Unquestionably our own Political Agent may be said to be the ruler in Maskat, and his authority is generally backed up by the presence of a gunboat. There is also an American Consul there, who chiefly occupies himself in trade and steamer agencies, and in 1895 the French also sent a Consul to inquire into the question of the slave trade, which is undoubtedly the burning question in Arabia.
Whilst England has been doing all she can to put slavery down, it is complained that much is carried on under cover of the French flag, obtained by Arab dhows under false pretexts from the French Consul resident in Zanzibar. Sultan Feysul remonstrated with France on this point, and the appointment of a Consul is the result.
The great reason for our unpopularity in Arabia is due without doubt to our suppression of this trade. Slavery is inherent in the Arab; he does as little work as he can himself, and if he is to have no slaves nothing will be done, and he must die. In other parts of South Arabia—Yemen, the Hadhramout, the Mahra country, and Dhofar—slavery is universal; and there is no doubt about it the slaves are treated very well and live happy lives; but here in Oman, under the very eye of India, slavery must be checked. Our gunboat, the Sphinx, goes the round of the coast to prevent this traffic in human flesh, and frequently slaves swim out to the British steamer and obtain their liberty. This naturally makes us very unpopular in Sur, where the Jenefa tribe have their head-quarters, the most inveterate slave-traders of Southern Arabia. The natural result is that whenever they get a chance the Jenefa tribe loot any foreign vessel wrecked on their shores and murder the crew. In the summer of 1894, however, a boat was wrecked near Ghubet-el-Hashish, containing some creoles from the Seychelle Islands, after being driven for forty-five days out of their course by south-east monsoons, during which time three or four of them had died. The survivors were much exhausted, but the Bedouin treated them kindly, for a wonder, and brought them safely to Maskat. For doing this they were handsomely rewarded by the Indian Government, though they had kept possession of the boat and its contents; nevertheless, they had saved the lives of the crew, and this, being a step in the right direction, was thought worthy of reward.
The jealousies, however, of other tribes were so great that the rescuers could not return to their own country by the land route, but had to be sent to Sur by sea.
Feysul has had copper coins of his own struck, of the value of a quarter anna. On the obverse is a picture of Maskat and its forts, around which in English runs the legend, 'Sultan Feysul-bin-Tourki Sultan and Imam of Maskat and Oman,' and on the reverse is the Arab equivalent. He has also introduced an ice-factory, which, however, is now closed, and he wished to have his own stamps, principally with a view to making money out of them; but our agent represented to him that it was beneath the dignity of so great a sultan to make money in so mean a way, and the stamps have never appeared. Sultan Feysul had done much in the last few years, since our first visit, to modernise his palace. British influence has abolished many horrors and cruelties, and the lion having died has not been replaced.
For the Indian Government the question of Maskat is by no means pleasant, for, should any other Power choose to interfere and establish an influence there, it would materially affect the influence which we have established in the Persian Gulf.
CHAPTER V
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.
MAP OF HADRAMUT.
Map of Hadramut
Surveyed by Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur.
to illustrate the explorations of
Mr. J. THEODORE BENT.
Stanford's Geog.l Estab.t, London
London: Smith, Elder & Co.
nkincense trade, which still maintains itself here even more than in the Hadhramout. It is carried on by the Bedouin of the Gara tribe, who bring down the odoriferous gum from the mountains on camels. About 9,000 cwt. of it is exported to Bombay annually. Down by the coast at Al Hafa there is a square enclosure or bazaar where piles of frankincense may still be seen ready for exportation, miniature successors of those piles of the tears of gum from the tree-trunks which are depicted on the old Egyptian temple at Deir al Bahari as one of the proceeds of Queen Hatasou's expeditions to the land of Punt.
The actual libaniferous country is, perhaps, now not much bigger than the Isle of Wight, and in its physical appearance not unlike it, cut off from the rest of the world by a desert behind and an ocean in front. Probably in ancient days the frankincense-bearing area was not much more extensive. Claudius Ptolemy, the anonymous author of the 'Periplus,' Pliny, Theophrastus, and a little later on the Arabian geographers, speak of it, and from their descriptions there is no difficulty in fixing the limits of it, and its ruined towns are still easily identified.
After much tacking and flapping of sails we at last reached Al Hafa, where Wali Suleiman had his castle, only a stone's throw from the beach. Our landing was performed in small, hide-covered boats specially constructed for riding over the surf, and was not completed without a considerable wetting to ourselves and baggage. After so many preliminary discomforts a cordial welcome from the wali was doubly agreeable. He placed a room on the roof, spread with carpets, at our disposal, and he furnished our larder with a whole cow, and every delicacy at his command. The cow's flesh was cut into strips and festooned about in every direction, to dry it for our journey. Our room was, for Arabia, deliciously cool and airy, being approached by a ladder, and from our roof we enjoyed pleasant views over the fertile plain and the Gara mountains, into which we had now every hope of penetrating. We looked down into his courtyard below and saw there many interesting phases of Arab life.
Al Hafa is 640 miles from Maskat in one direction and 800 from Aden in the other; it is, therefore, about as far as possible from any civilised place. Nominally it is under the sultan of Oman, and I may here emphatically state that the southern coast of Arabia has absolutely nothing to do with Turkey—from Maskat to Aden there is not a single tribe paying tribute to, or having any communication with, the Ottoman Porte. Really Al Hafa and the Dhofar were ruled over autocratically by Wali Suleiman, who was sent out there about eighteen years before as governor, at the request of the feud-torn inhabitants, by Sultan Tourki of Maskat. In his small way Wali Suleiman was a man of great capacity; a man who has made history, and could have made more if his sphere had been larger. In his youth he was instrumental in placing Tourki on the throne of Oman, and after a few years of stern application to business he brought the bellicose families of the Gara tribe under his power; and his influence was felt far into the interior, even into the confines of Nejd. With a handful of Arabs and a badly armed regiment of slave origin he had contrived to establish peace and comparative safety throughout the Gara mountains and, thanks to him, we were able to penetrate their fastnesses. Wali Suleiman was a stern, uncompromising ruler, feared and respected, rather than loved.
The wali kept all his prisoners in the courtyard. When we were there he had twelve, all manacled, and reposing on grass mats at night. These were wicked Bedouin from the mountains, prisoners taken in a recent war he had had with the Mahri tribe, the casus belli being a find of ambergris which the Mahri had appropriated, though it had been washed up on the Dhofar coast. One prisoner, a murderer, whose imprisonment was for two years, was chained to a log of wood, and he laid his mat bed in a large stone sarcophagus, brought from the neighbouring ruins of the ancient capital of the frankincense country, and really intended for a trough. Another, convicted of stealing his master's sword and selling it to the captain of a dhow, had his feet attached to an iron bar, which made his locomotion exceedingly painful. A mollah prisoner was, owing to the sanctity of his calling, unfettered, and he led the evening prayers, and on most nights—for want of something better to do, I suppose—these prisoners of Wali Suleiman prayed and sang into the small hours of the morning. Day by day we watched these unfortunate men from the roof, and thought we had never seen so unholy a set of men, according to what we heard; they did not look so. Some were morose, and chewed the cud of their discontent in corners; the younger and better-looking ones were gallant, and flirted with the slave girls, helping them to draw up buckets from the well in the centre of the courtyard; the active-minded cut wood for the household, and walked about doing odd jobs, holding up the iron bar which separated their feet with a rope as they shuffled along, or played with the wali's little boy, five years of age, who rambled about among them.
Goats, kids, cocks, and hens, also occupied this courtyard, and the big, white she-ass, the only representative of the equine race as far as we could see in Dhofar, on which Wali Suleiman makes his state journeys to the various villages in his dominions along the coast, and which he kindly lent to me once when we went to visit the ruins.
The ladies of the wali's harem paid me frequent visits, and brought me presents of fruit and embarrassing plates of food, and substances to dye my teeth red (tamboul leaves and lime), but they were uninteresting ladies, and their conversational powers limited to the discussion of the texture of dresses and the merits of European underclothing. On the very first morning they appeared before I was up—that is about sunrise. As I had put them off the evening before, I dared not do so again. My husband sprang out of his bed and got out of their way. I managed to put on a jacket sitting up in bed, and then, finding time allowed, a skirt, and had just got my hair combed down when in they trooped. I knew my shoes and stockings would never be missed, so I felt quite ready for the visit. They wore bourkos on their faces, and had on a great deal of coarse jewellery with mock pearls and bad turquoises. Whenever they chose to come my husband had to depart, and I do not think he liked these interruptions.
We were much interested in the male members of the wali's family. His eldest son was paralysed and bedridden, and he had adopted as heir to his position in Dhofar a nephew, who lived in a separate wing of the castle, and had his separate harem establishment. Besides these the wali had two dear little boys, one of twelve and the other of eight, who constantly paid us visits, and with whom we established a close friendship. Salem, the elder, was a fair, delicate-looking boy, the son of a Georgian slave who was given to Wali Suleiman by Sultan Tourki of Oman. Some years ago she ran away with her boy to Bombay, but was restored to her husband, and now has been sent as a punishment to Zanzibar; she is a servant in the house of one of the princesses there. Salem would often tell us that his mother was coming back to him in a year or two, but we thought differently.
The tragedy connected with little Muoffok, the younger boy, a bright, dear little fellow, very much darker than his brother, in fact nearly black, is far more heartrending. About two years before, his mother, also a slave, an African, was convicted of misconduct, and on her was visited the extremest penalty with which the Arab law can punish a faithless wife. In the presence of a large assemblage, the unfortunate woman was buried up to the waist in the sand and stoned to death.
The poor little motherless fellows were constantly on the go, rushing hither and thither, playing with and petted by all; at one time they amused themselves with the prisoners in the courtyard, at another time they teased the Gara sheikhs who sat in the long entrance corridor, and then they came to torment us, until we gave then some trifle, which they forthwith carried off in triumph to show it to everybody. Both the little boys wore the large silver and gold daggers of Oman round their waists, and powder-flasks similarly decorated hung on their backs; and when dressed in their best silk robes on Friday, they were the most fantastic little fellows one could wish to see.
Wali Suleiman was, as I have said, an austere and unlovable man, but he was the man for his position: taciturn and of few words, but these always to the point. Before he would permit us to go forth and penetrate into the recesses of the Gara mountains, he summoned the heads of all the different families into which the tribe is divided to Al Hafa, and gave us into their charge, we agreeing to pay for their escort, their protection, and the use of their camels a fixed sum per diem in Maria Theresa dollars, the only coin recognised in the country.
Such palavering there was over this stupendous piece of diplomacy! Wali Suleiman and the Gara sheikhs sat for hours in solemn conclave in a palm-thatched barn about fifty yards distant from the castle, which takes the place of a parliament house in the kingdom of Dhofar. The wali, his nephew, and Arab councillors smoked their narghilehs complacently, whilst the Gara Bedouin took whiffs at their little pipes, which they cut out of soft limestone that hardens in the air, and all drank endless cups of coffee served by slaves in huge coffee-pots with long, bird-like beaks, and we looked on at this conference, which was to decide our fate, from our roof, with no small amount of impatience.
Before starting for the mountains we wandered hither and thither over the plain of Dhofar for some days, visiting sites of ruins, and other places of interest, and greatly admired the rich cultivation we saw around us, and the capacity of this plain for producing cotton, indigo, tobacco, and cereals. Water is on the surface in stagnant pools, or easily obtainable everywhere by digging shallow wells which are worked by camels, sometimes three together, and so well trained, that at the end of the walk they turn by themselves as soon as they hear the splash of the water into the irrigation channel, and then they walk back to fill the skin bucket again. The cocoanut-palm grows admirably here, and we had many refreshing draughts of the water contained in the nuts during our hot rides; and in pools beneath the trees the fibre of the nuts is placed to rot for making ropes, giving out an odour very similar to that of the flax-pits in the north of Ireland.
Between Capes Risout and Merbat we found the sites of ruined towns of considerable extent in no less than seven different points, though at the two capes where now is the only anchorage, there are no ruins to be seen, proving, as we afterwards verified for ourselves, that anchorage of a superior nature existed in the neighbourhood in antiquity, which has since become silted up, but which anciently must have afforded ample protection for the boats which came for the frankincense trade. At Takha, as we shall presently see, there was a very extensive and deep harbour, running a considerable distance inland, which with a little outlay of capital could easily be restored.
After a close examination of these ruined sites, there can be no doubt that those at spots called now Al Balad and Robat, about two miles east of the wali's residence, formed the ancient capital of this district. We visited them on Christmas Day, and were much struck with their extent. The chief ruins, those of Al Balad, are by the sea, around an acropolis some 100 feet in height. This part of the town was encircled by a moat still full of water, and in the centre, still connected with the sea, but almost silted up, is a tiny harbour. The ground is covered with the remains of Mohammedan mosques, and still more ancient SabÆan temples, the architecture of which—namely, the square columns with flutings at the four corners, and the step-like capitals—at once connects them architecturally with the columns at Adulis on the Red Sea, those of Koloe and Aksum in Abyssinia, and those described by M. Arnaud at Mariaba in Yemen.
In some cases these are decorated with intricate patterns, one of which is formed by the old SabÆan letters [Symbol: See page image] and X, which may possibly have some religious import. After seeing the ruins of Adulis and Koloe and the numerous temples or tombs with four isolated columns, no doubt can be entertained that the same people built them.
As at Adulis and Koloe there were no inscriptions which could materially assist us; this may be partly accounted for by the subsequent Mohammedan occupation, when the temples were converted into mosques, but besides this the nature of the stone employed at all these places would make it very difficult to use it for inscribing letters: it is very coarse, and full of enormous fossils.
This town of Al Balad by the sea is connected by a series of ruins with another town two miles inland, now called Robat, where the ground for many acres is covered with ancient remains; big cisterns and water-courses are here cut in the rock, and standing columns of the same architectural features are seen in every direction.
With the aid of Sprenger's 'Alte Geographie Arabiens,' the best guide-book the traveller can take into this country, there is no difficulty in identifying this ancient capital of the frankincense country as the Μαντειον Ἀρτἑμιδος of Claudius Ptolemy. This name is obviously a Greek translation of the SabÆan for some well-known oracle which anciently existed here, not far, as Ptolemy himself tells us, from Cape Risout. This name eventually became Zufar, from which the modern name of Dhofar is derived. In a.d. 618 the town was destroyed and Mansura built, under which name the capital was known in early Mohammedan times. Various Arab geographers also assist us in this identification. Yakut, for example, tells us how the Prince of Zufar had the monopoly of the frankincense trade, and punished with death any infringement of it. Ibn Batuta says that 'half a day's journey east of Mensura is Alakhaf, the abode of the Addites,' probably referring to the site of the oracle and the last stronghold of the ancient cult.
Sprenger sums up the evidence of old writers by saying that the town of Zufar and the later Mansura must undoubtedly be the ruins of Al Balad. Thus, having assured ourselves of the locality of the ancient capital of the frankincense country—for no other site along the plain has ruins which will at all compare in extent and appearance with those of Al Balad—we shall, as we proceed on our journey, find that other sites fall easily into their proper places, and an important verification of ancient geography and an old-world centre of commerce has been obtained.
The ruins at Al Balad and Robat were last inhabited during the Persian occupation, about the time of the Crusades, 500 of the Hejira. They utilised the old Himyaritic columns to build their mosques. Some of the tombs have beautiful carving on them.
In the ruins of one temple the columns were elaborately carved with a kind of fleur-de-lis pattern, and the bases decorated with a floral design, artistically interwoven.
I had dreadful difficulty with a photograph which I took of these columns. I developed it at night, tormented by mosquitoes, and in the morning it was all cracked and dried off its celluloid foundation. I put it in alum, and it floated off half an inch too large in both directions. If I had had a larger plate on which to mount it, it would have been an easy enough job, but I had not, so I was obliged to work it down on to the original plate with my thumbs. It took me seven solid hours, and I had to be fed with two meals, for I could never move my thumbs nor eyes off my work. I felt very proud that the cracks did not show when a magic-lantern slide was made from it.
There was a great deal of vegetation among the ruins. Specially beautiful was a very luxuriant creeper called by the inhabitants asaleb. It has a luscious, large, pear-shaped red fruit with seeds which, when bitten, are like pepper. It has large flowers, which are white at first, and then turn pink.
On our way home from Al Balad we stopped to rest under some cocoa-palms, and stones and other missiles were flung up by our guides, so the cocoanuts came showering down in rather a terrifying way. The men then stuck their ghatrifs in the ground and banged the nuts on them, and thus skinned them. Then they hacked at them with their swords till they cut off the tops like eggs, and we enjoyed a good drink of the water.
CHAPTER XIX
THE GARA TRIBE
We left Al Hafa on December 29, after waiting six days for camels. There was much difficulty in getting a sufficient quantity, and never before had camels been hired in this manner. It was hard to make the people understand what we meant or wished to do.
When at length the camels were assembled, they arrived naked and bare. There were no ropes of any kind, or sticks to tie the baggage to, no vestige of any sort of pack saddle, and we had to wait till the following day before a few ropes could be procured. A good many of our spare blankets had to be used as saddle-cloths, that is to say under the baggage; ropes off our boxes, straps, raw-hide riems that we had used in South Africa, and in fact every available string had to be used to tie it on, and the Bedouin even took the strings which they wear as fillets round their hair, to tie round the camels' necks and noses to lead them.
There was great confusion over the loading, as all that ever yet had been done to camels in that country was to tie a couple of sacks of frankincense together and hang them on. The camels roared incessantly, got up before they were ready, shook off their loads, would not kneel down or ran away loaded, shedding everything or dragging things at their heels. Sometimes their masters quite left off their work to quarrel amongst themselves, bawling and shouting. Though we were ready at seven, it was after midday before we were off, though Wali Suleiman himself superintended the loading.
Camels in Dhofar are not very choice feeders, and have a predilection for bones, and if they saw a bone near the path they would make for it with an eager rush extremely disconcerting to the rider. Fish, too, is dried for them and given them as food (called kei by the Gara and ohma by the Arabs), as also is a cactus which grows in the mountains, which is cut into sections for them. They are fine sturdy animals, and can go up and down hill better than any camels I have ever seen. The fertile Gara range is a great breeding place for camels, but as there is no commerce or communication with the interior, the Bedouin do not make much use of them themselves, but sell them to their neighbours, who come here to purchase.
My husband, Imam Sherif and I had each a seat on a separate loaded camel, with our rezais or lahafs—thick cotton quilts—on the baggage; six of the servants rode in pairs while one walked, all taking turns. We went about eight miles westward the first day and considered it a wonderfully good journey. We stopped at the edge of the plain, about half a mile from the sea at Ras Risout, where some very dirty water was to be obtained under a rock.
We passed some ruins with columns four miles west of Al Hafa at Aukad.
The approach to the mountains is up narrow gulleys full of frankincense-trees.
We had a stormy and quarrelsome start next day, after a delay caused by my husband's camel sitting down constantly and unexpectedly, and a stoppage because two possible enemies being descried it was deemed needful to wait till all the camels came up that we might keep together. When they arrived we waited so long that we got up, told them that we did not want to be kept all day on the road, and began to mount our camels, saying we would return to the wali at Al Hafa. In the end they began quarrelling with each other and made peace with us, and next we set off to a place farther north than they had before intended, where there was good water in a small amphitheatre of mountains. We went up a lovely gorge with ferns, trees, and a running stream, as different as possible to the aridity of the Hadhramout.
January 1, 1895, began with a wild-goose chase after some ruins consisting of a circular wall of loose stones about a foot in height, very likely only a sheep pen.
The camels were much quieter and the Bedouin very friendly. We only travelled an hour and a half, having gone round some spurs and found ourselves in a round valley, back to back with that we had left, and about half a mile distant from our last camp. It was surrounded by some very high and some lower hills, and we were just under a beetling cliff with good water in a stream among bulrushes, reeds, and tropical vegetation.
There was a Bedou family close by with goats; they sold us milk at an exorbitant price and asked so much for a kid that we stuck to our tinned meat.
The Gara, in whose country we were now, are a wild pastoral tribe of the mountains, travelling over them hither and thither in search of food for their flocks. They are troglodytes of a genuine kind and know no home save their ancestral caves, with which this limestone range abounds; they only live in rude reed huts like ant hills, when they come down to the plain of Dhofar in the rainy season for pasturage. There is a curious story connected with the Gara tribe, which probably makes them unique in Arabia, and that is, that a few years ago they owned a white sheikh. About the beginning of this century an American ship was wrecked on this coast, and all the occupants were killed save the cabin boy, who was kept as a slave. As years went on his superior ability asserted itself, and gained for him in his later years the proud position of sheikh of all the Garas. He lived, married, and died amongst them, leaving, I believe, two daughters, who still live up in the mountains with their tribe. The life and adventures of this Yankee boy must have been as thrilling and interesting as any novelist could desire, and it is a great pity that the white sheikh could not have been personally interviewed before his death, which occurred over twenty years ago.
A GARA FORGE
A Gara Forge
Sprenger (§ 449) supposes that the tribal name Gara or Kara corresponds to the ancient Ascites whom Ptolemy places on this coast; but as the Ascites were essentially a seafaring race, and the Gara are a pastoral tribe of hill Bedouin, the connection between them does not seem very obvious. It is more probable that they may correspond to the Carrei mentioned in the campaign of Aelius Gallus as a race of Southern Arabia, possessing, according to Pliny, the most fertile country.
As for weapons, the Gara have three, and every male of the tribe carries them. One is a small shield (gohb) of wood or shark's skin, deep, and with a wooden knob at the centre, so that when they are tired and want a rest they can turn it round and utilise it as a stool; the second is a flat iron sword with a wooden handle, actually made in Germany, for we saw a dhow arrive from Zanzibar whilst we were at Dhofar which brought a cargo of such swords; the Bedouin purchased them with avidity, and were like children with a new toy for some time after, bending them across their naked shoulders, and measuring them with their neighbours, to see that they were all equally long; handing them safely about by their blades. These swords are simply flat pieces of iron, made narrower at the top to leave a place for the hand to grip them; there is no form of hilt of any kind. They are used to cut down trees, split logs, scrape sticks, and cut meat into joints. They have scabbards covered with white calico, which are not always used, and there are no straps to attach the sword to the person. The third weapon is a wooden throw-stick, made of a specially hard wood called miet, which grows in the mountains; it is about a yard long, and pointed at both ends; it is called ghatrif. The Gara are wonderfully skilful at hurling it through the air, and use it both in battle and for the chase with admirable precision. They have hardly any guns amongst them, and what they have are only of the long matchlock class; in fact, they do not seem to covet the possession of firearms, as our friends in the Hadhramout did the year before. Every man clutched the sword and ghatrif in one hand very tightly as there was nothing to prevent their slipping, being both pointed.
The little pipes which they use are of limestone, soft when cut and hardening in the air. They are more like cigarette holders than pipes.
The thorn-extractors used by the Gara tribe are like those used by most of the other Bedouin: a knife, a sort of stiletto, and tweezers. They sit down on the wayside and hack most heartily at their feet, and then prod deeply with the stiletto before pulling the thorn out with the tweezers.
Certainly black skins are not so sensitive as white, and though, of course, I do not approve of slavery, I do think a great deal of unneeded pity has been wasted on slaves by people who took it for granted that being men and brothers they had the same feelings as ourselves, either in mind or body. No one with the same feelings as we could go so readily through the burning cure (kayya). In Mashonaland I have seen people walking on narrow paths only suited to people who have never learnt to turn out their toes, all overhung with thorny bushes which not only tore our clothes but our skins. The black people only had white scratches as if they were made of morocco leather. If by any chance a knock really brought a bit of flesh or skin off, and blood annoyed them by streaming down, they would clutch up a handful of grass with a dry leaf or stick, and wipe the wound out quite roughly.
We had never put ourselves into the charge of such wild people as the Garas—far wilder in every way than the Bedouin of the Hadhramout, inasmuch as they have far less contact with civilisation. The Bedou of Southern Arabia is, to my mind, distinctly of an aboriginal race. He has nothing to do with the Arabs, and was probably there just as he is now, centuries before the Arabs found a footing in this country. He is every bit as wild as the African savage, and not nearly so submissive to discipline, and is endowed with a spirit of independence which makes him resent the slightest approach to legal supervision.
When once away from the influence of Wali Suleiman, they paid no heed to the orders of the soldiers sent by him, and during the time we were with them we had the unpleasant feeling that we were entirely in their power. They would not march longer than they liked; they would only take us where they wished, and they were unpleasantly familiar; with difficulty we kept them out of our tents, and if we asked them not to sing at night and disturb our rest, they always set to work with greater vigour.
Seventeen of these men, nearly naked, armed as I have described, and wild-looking in the extreme, formed our bodyguard, and if we attempted to give an order which did not please them, they would independently reply, 'We are all sheikhs, we are not slaves.' At the same time they paid the greatest deference to their chief, the old Sheikh Sehel, and expected us to do the same.
Sheikh Sehel was the head of the Beit al Kathan, which is the chief of the many families into which the Gara tribe is divided, and consequently he was recognised as the chief of all the Garas. He was a wizened, very avaricious-looking old man, who must have been close upon seventy, and though he owned 500 head of cattle and 70 camels, he dressed his old bones in nothing save a loin-cloth, and his matted grey locks were adorned and kept together by a simple leather thong twisted several times round his forehead. Despite his appearance he was a great man in his limited sphere, and for the weeks that were to come we were completely in his power.
He had the exclusive charge of me and my camel, which he led straight through everything, regardless of the fact that I was on several occasions nearly knocked off by the branches of trees; and if my seat was uncomfortable, which it often was, as well as precarious—for we all sat on luggage indifferently tied on—we had the greatest work to make Sheikh Sehel stop to rectify the discomfort, for he was the sheikh of all the Garas, as he constantly repeated, and his dignity was not to be trifled with.
The seventeen sheikhs got half a dollar a day each for food, their slaves a quarter.
Our expedition nearly came to an untimely end a very few days after our start, owing, as my husband himself confessed, to a little indiscretion on his part; but as the event serves to illustrate the condition of the men we were with, I must not fail to recount it. During our day's march we met with a large company of the Al Khathan family pasturing their flocks and herds in a pleasant valley. Great greetings took place, and our men carried off two goats for an evening feast. When night approached they lit a fire of wood, and piled stones on the embers so as to form a heated surface. On this they placed the meat, cut in strips with their swords, the entrails, the heads, and every part of the animal, until their kitchen looked like a ghastly sacrifice to appease the anger of some deity. I must confess that the smell thereof was exceeding savoury, and the picture presented by these hungry savages, gathered round the lurid light of their kitchen, was weird in the extreme. Daggers were used for knives, two fingers for forks, and we stood at a respectful distance and watched them gorge; and so excited did they become as they consumed the flesh, that one could almost have supposed them to be under the influence of strong drink. Several friends joined them from the neighbouring hills, and far into the night they carried on their wild orgy, singing, shouting, and periodically letting off the guns which the soldiers sent by Wali Suleiman brought with them.
We retired in due course to our tent and our beds, but not to sleep, for in addition to their discordant songs, in rushing to and fro they would catch in our tent-guys, and give us sudden shocks, which rendered sleep impossible. Exasperated at this beyond all bearing, my husband at length rushed out and caught a Bedou in the very act of tumbling over a guy. Needless to say a well-placed kick sent him quickly about his business, and after this silence was established and we got some repose.
Next morning, however, when we were prepared to start, we found our Bedouin all seated in a silent, solemn phalanx, refusing to move. 'What is the matter?' my husband asked, 'why are we not ready to start?' and from amongst them arose a stern, freezing reply. 'You must return to Al Hafa. We can travel no more with you, as Theodore has kicked Sheikh Sehel,' for by this time they had become acquainted with our Christian names, and never used any other appellative.
We felt that the aspect of affairs was serious, and that in the night season he had been guilty of an indiscretion which might imperil both our safety and the farther progress of our journey. So we affected to take the matter as a joke, laughed heartily, patted Sheikh Sehel on the back, said that we did not know who it was, and my husband entered into a solemn compact that if they would not catch in our guys again, he would never kick his majesty any more. It was surprising to see how soon the glum faces relaxed, and how soon all ill-feeling was forgotten. In a very few minutes life and bustle, chattering and good humour reigned in our camp, and we were excellent friends again.
It was on the third day after leaving Al Hafa that we passed through one of the districts where frankincense is still collected, in a narrow valley running down from the mountains into the plain of Dhofar. The valley was covered for miles with this shrub, the trunk of which, when punctured, emits the odoriferous gum. We did not see any very large trees, such as we did in Sokotra. The Bedouin choose the hot season, when the gum flows most freely, to do this puncturing. During the rains of July and August, and during the cool season, the trees are left alone. The first step is to make an incision in the trunk, then they strip off a narrow bit of bark below the hole, so as to make a receptacle in which the milky juice, the spuma pinguis of Pliny, can lodge and harden. Then the incision is deepened, and after seven days they return to collect what are, by that time, quite big tears of frankincense, larger than an egg.
The shrub itself is a picturesque one, with a leaf not unlike an ash, only stiffer; it has a tiny green flower, not red like the Sokotra flowers, and a scaly bark. In all there are three districts in the Gara mountains where the tree still grows; anciently, no doubt, it was found in much larger quantities, but the demand for frankincense is now so very limited that they take no care whatever of the trees. They only tap the most promising ones, and those that grow farther west in the Mahri country, as they produce an inferior quality, are not now tapped at all.
The best is obtained at spots called Hoye and Haski, about four days' journey inland from Merbat, where the Gara mountains slope down into the Nejd desert. The second in quality comes from near Cape Risout, and also a little farther west, at a place called Chisen, near Rakhiout, frankincense of a marketable quality is obtained, but that farther west in the Mahri country is not collected now, being much inferior. The best quality they call leban lakt, and the second quality leban resimi, and about 9,000 cwt. are exported yearly and sent to Bombay. It is only collected in the hot weather, before the rains begin and when the gum flows freely, in the months of March, April, and May, for during the rains the tracks on the Gara mountains are impassable. The trees belong to the various families of the Gara tribe; each tree is marked and known to its owner, and the product is sold wholesale to Banyan merchants, who come to Dhofar just before the monsoons to take it away.
One must imagine that when this industry was at its height, in the days when frankincense was valued not only for temple ritual but for domestic use, the trade in these mountains must have been very active, and the cunning old SabÆan merchants, who liked to keep the monopoly of this drug, told wonderful stories of the phoenix which guarded the trees, of the insalubrity of the climate and of the deadly vapours which came from them when punctured for the gum. Needless to say, these were all false commercial inventions, which apparently succeeded admirably, for the old classical authors were exceedingly vague as to the localities whence frankincense came. Merchants came in their ships to the port of Moscha, which we shall presently visit, to get cargoes of the drug, but they probably knew as little as we did of the interior of the hills behind, and one of the reasons why Aelius Gallus was sent to Arabia by Augustus on his unsuccessful campaign was 'to discover where Arabian gold and frankincense came from.'
Early Arabian authors are far more explicit, and we gather from Makrisi, Ibn Khaldun, and others, something more definite about Dhofar and the frankincense trade, and of the prince of this district who had the monopoly of the trade, and punished its infringement with death. These writers, when compared with the classical ones, assist us greatly in identifying localities.
The Portuguese knew about Dhofar and its productions, for Camoens, in his Tenth Lusiad, 716, writes:
'O'er Dhofar's plain the richest incense breathes.'
But not until Dr. Carter coasted along here some fifty years ago was it definitely known that this was the chief locality in Arabia which produced the drug.
Myrrh, too, grows in large quantities in the Gara range, and we obtained specimens of it in close proximity to the frankincense-tree. The gum of the myrrh-tree is much redder than ordinary gum Arabic, whereas the frankincense gum is considerably whiter. The commerce of Dhofar must have been exceedingly rich in those ancient days, as is evidenced by the size and extent of the SabÆan ruins on the plain. They are the most easterly ruins which have been found in Arabia of the SabÆan period, and probably owe their origin entirely to the drug trade.
For the first few days of our journey, we suffered greatly from the unruliness of the camels. They danced about like wild things at first, and scattered our belongings far and wide, and all of us in our turns had serious falls, and during those days, boxes and packages kept flying about in all directions. Imam Sharif had his travelling trunk broken to pieces and the contents scattered right and left, and some treasured objects of jewellery therein contained were never recovered. So scarce did rope become during our journey, that the Bedouin had actually to take the leather thongs which bound their matted locks together, to lead the camels with, and rope was almost the only thing they tried to steal from us while we were in their company. At length our means of tying became so exhausted that we had to send a messenger back to buy rope from Wali Suleiman, and obtained a large sackful for two reals.
Our new supply of rope was made of aloe-fibre, barely twisted in one thin strand, and at every camp we had to set up a rope-walk to make ropes that would not break. The Garas were always cutting off short bits to tie round their hair or their necks. The servants, headed by Lobo, had to be very sharp in picking up all the pieces lying about after unloading, or we should soon have been at a loss again.
We originally understood that Sheikh Sehel was going to take us up to the mountains by a valley still farther west, but for some reason, which we shall never know, he refused; some said the Mahri tribe was giving trouble in this direction, others that the road was too difficult for camels. At any rate, we had partially to retrace our steps, and following along the foot of the mountains, found ourselves encamped not so many miles away from Al Hafa.
CHAPTER XX
THE GARA MOUNTAINS
At length we turned our faces towards the Gara mountains, with considerable interest and curiosity, and prepared to ascend them by a tortuous valley, the Wadi GhersÌd, which dives into their very midst, and forms the usual approach for camels, as the mountain sides in other parts are too precipitous. After riding up the valley for a few miles, we came across one of the small lakes of which we were in quest, nestling in a rocky hole, and with its fine boulders hung with ferns and vegetation, forming altogether one of the most ideal spots we had ever seen. That arid Arabia could produce so lovely a spot, was to us one of the greatest surprises of our lives. Water-birds and water-plants were here to be found in abundance, and the hill slopes around were decked with fine sycamores and acacia-trees, amongst the branches of which sweet white jessamine, several species of convolvulus, and other creepers climbed.
The water was deliciously cool, rushing forth from three different points in the rock among maidenhair and other ferns into the basin which formed the lake, but it is impregnated with lime, which leaves a deposit all down the valley along its course. Evidence of the mighty rush of water during the rains is seen on all sides, rubbish is then cast into the branches of the great fig-trees, and the Bedouin told us that at times this valley is entirely full of water and quite impassable.
Next day we pursued our way up the gorge of GhersÌd, climbing higher and higher, making our way through dense woods, often dangerous for the camel riders, and obliging us frequently to dismount.
Merchants who visited Dhofar in pursuit of their trade knew of these valleys, and not unnaturally brought home glowing accounts of their fertility, and thus gained for Arabia a reputation which has been thought to be exaggerated.
In the Wadi GhersÌd, amongst the dense vegetation which makes the spot a veritable paradise, we came across many Bedouin of the Beit al Kathan family tending their flocks and dwelling in the caves. They were all exceedingly obsequious to Sheikh Sehel, and we soon found that he was a veritable king amongst them, and forthwith we gave up any attempt to guide our own footsteps, but left ourselves entirely in his hands, to take us whither he would and spend as long about it as he liked. One thing which interested us very much was to see the greetings of the Bedouin: for an acquaintance they merely rub the palms of their hands when they meet, and then kiss the tips of their respective fingers; for an intimate friend they join hands and kiss each other; but for a relative they not only join hands, but they rub noses and finally kiss on either cheek. Whenever we met a party of their friends on our way, it was a signal for a halt that these greetings might be observed, and then followed a pipe. At first we rather resented these halts; but they take such a short time over their whiff of tobacco, and are so disconsolate without it, that we soon gave up complaints at these delays. They literally only take one whiff and pass the stone pipe on, so that a halt for a smoke seldom lasts more than five minutes, and all are satisfied. Sheikh Sehel met many of his relatives in the Wadi GhersÌd, and his nose was subject to many energetic rubs, and the novelty of this greeting, about which one had vaguely read in years gone by, excited our interest deeply, but at the same time we were thankful we were not likely to meet any relatives in the valley, and to have to undergo the novel sensations in person.
Every afternoon, when our tents were pitched and our baggage open, whole rows of Bedouin would sit outside asking for medicine; pills, of special violence of course, and quinine were the chief drugs required, and then we had many sore eyes and revolting sores of every description, requiring closer attention. As to the pills, we had some difficulty in getting the Bedouin not to chew them, but when one man, Mas'ah by name, solemnly chewed five Holloway's pills and was very sick after so doing, it began to dawn upon them that our method was the right one. Most embarrassing of all our patients was old Sheikh Sehel himself. Fortune had been kind to him in most respects: she had given him wealth and power amongst men, and the fickle goddess had bestowed upon him two wives, but alas! no offspring, and to seek for a remedy for this, to a savage, overwhelming disaster, he came with his head-men to the tent of the European medicine men. It was in vain for my husband to tell him that he had brought no remedy for this complaint. They had seen him on one or two occasions consult a small medicine book, and their only reply to his negative was, 'The book; get out the book, Theodore,' and he had solemnly to pretend to go through the volume before they could be convinced that he had no medicine to meet the case.
It was curious to hear their morning greeting, 'Sabakh, Theodore! Sabakh, Mabel!' The women of the Gara tribe are timid creatures, small, and not altogether ill-looking; in fact the Garas are, as a tribe, undersized and of small limbs, but exceedingly active and lithe. The women do not possess the wealth in savage jewellery which we found to be the case in the Hadhramout the previous year, nor do they paint themselves so grotesquely with turmeric and other dyes, but indulge only in a few patches of black, sticky stuff like cobbler's wax on their faces, and a touch of antimony round their eyes and joining their eyebrows; they wear no veils, and at first we could not get near them, as they ran away in terror at our approach. They have but poor jewellery—silver necklaces, armlets, nose, toe, and finger rings. One evening, when up in the mountains, we were told that a harem wished to see us, and we were conducted to a spot just out of sight of our tents, where sat three females on the ground looking miserably shy, and in their nervousness they plucked and ate grass, and constantly as we approached retreated three or four steps back and seated themselves again. Presently, after much persuasion, we got one of them to come to the tent and accept a present of needles and other oddments, the delight of womankind all the world over. Altogether these Gara women formed a marked and pleasant contrast to the Bedouin women in the Hadhramout, who literally besieged us in our tent, and never gave us any peace.
It is interesting to read in the 'Periplus' (p. 32) a description of this coast and of the high mountains behind, 'where men dwell in holes.' We often went to visit the troglodytes in their cave homes, where we found men, women, and children living with their flocks and herds in happy harmony. The floor of their caves is soft and springy, the result of the deposits of generations of cattle; in the dark recesses of the cave the kids are kept during their mother's absence at the pasture, and though these caves are slightly odoriferous, we found them cool and refreshing after the external heat. In some of them huts are erected for the families, and in one cave we found almost a village of huts; but in the smaller ones they have no covering, and when in the open the Gara cares for nothing but a tree to shelter him. All their farm implements are of the most primitive nature; the churn is just a skin hung on three sticks, which a woman shakes about until she obtains her butter. Ghi or rancid butter is one of the chief exports of Dhofar. They practise too, a pious fraud on their cows by stretching a calf-skin on a stick, and when the cow licks this she is satisfied and the milk comes freely. They have but few pots and pans, and these of the dirtiest description, so when we got milk from them we always sent our own utensils.
In these valleys, by rocks near the streams and under trees, live, the Bedouin told us, those curious semi-divine spirits which they call jinni, the propitiating of which seems to be the chief form of religion amongst them. One morning, as we were riding up a narrow gorge beneath the shade of a beetling cliff, our guides suddenly set up a sing-song chant, which they continued for fully ten minutes. 'Aleik soubera, Aleik soubera,' were the words which they constantly repeated, and which were addressed, they told us, to the jinni of the rocks, a supplication to allow us to pass in safety.
Jinni also inhabit the lakes in the Gara mountains, and it is considered dangerous to wet your feet in them, for you will catch a fever. We could not induce the Bedouin to gather a water-plant we coveted in one of them for this reason. They inhabit, too, the caves where the people dwell, and have to be propitiated with suitable offerings. In fact, the fear of jinni, and the skill of certain magicians in keeping them friendly, are the only tangible form of religion that we could discover amongst them. When at the coast villages they outwardly conform to the Mohammedan customs, but when away in their mountains they abandon them altogether. During the time we were with them they never performed either the prayers or the ablutions required by the Moslem creed, and the only thing approaching a religious festival amongst them that we heard of, is an annual festival held by the Garas in November by the side of one of their lakes, to which all the members of the different families repair, and at which a magician sits on a rock in the centre of a group of dancing Bedouin, to propitiate, with certain formulas, the jinni of the lake. Amongst the Bedouin of the Hadhramout we noticed the same absence of religious observances and the same superstitious dread of jinni, but at the same time I fully believe they have their own sacred places and festivals, which they conceal as much as possible from the fanatical Moslems who dwell amongst them. A Bedouin never fasts during Ramazan, and does not object to do his work during the month of abstinence, but he goes to mosque and says his prayers when occasion brings him to the coast. It seems to me a curious coincidence that in many other Mohammedan countries we have visited we have come across the same story of concealed religion as practised by the nomad races. We have the Ali-Ullah-hi in the Persian mountains, about whose secret rites horrible stories are told; we have the Ansairi and the Druses in the Lebanon, and the nomad Yourouks of Asia Minor, and the DÜnmeh of Salonika, about all of whom the strict Mohammedans of the towns tell you exactly the same story that we heard about the Bedouin of Southern Arabia. They are all looked upon as heathen by the Moslems, and accredited with secret rites and ceremonies about which no definite knowledge can be gained; and thus it would seem that throughout the length and breadth of Islam there are survivals of more ancient cults which the followers of Mohammed have never been able to eradicate, cults which no doubt would offer points of vast interest to the anthropologist if it were possible to unravel the mysteries which surround them.
We were for ever hearing stories of jinni amongst the Gara Bedouin, and all we could gather was that when propitiated they are friendly to the human race. Old Sheikh Sehel and his men stuck to it that they had constantly seen jinni, and their belief in them seems deeply rooted. This word is pronounced ghinni in Southern Arabia.
On January 4 we were at Beit el Khatan. We had to climb on foot. The valley became narrower as we went on, and the cliffs at the side were full of long caverns, with great stumpy stalactites and stalagmites, looking like teeth in gigantic mouths. The rocks we had to climb up were very rough and rugged, but where millions of camels' feet in thousands of years had polished them they were quite smooth and slippery. When we got above the woods, all very hot, we were able to ride again, at an elevation of 2,600 feet, on undulating, grassy ground.
We encamped under two large fig-trees, and the weather being cloudy and windy were glad to find a quantity of wood ready gathered, the remains of a night shelter. There was muddy water at a little distance. The climate seems most healthy, in winter at least. Three kinds of figs grow here. Some are little purple ones with narrow leaves, and some large red ones with broad leaves.
Leaving the Wadi GhersÌd we had a beautiful journey. We two enjoyed every minute of the three hours and a half.
We went up the valley through a thick forest of lovely trees. There were myrtles, ilex, figs, acacia, and a quantity of other trees, with climbing cacti and other creepers, and great high trees of jasmin. Sometimes it was hard enough to get through the bushes and under the trees, perched up aloft on our camels. We were down in the river-bed part of the time, and then climbing through the forest to get to the top of the falls. Above the forest rise tiers of cliffs, and there were trees at the top on a tableland, as well as large isolated trees on most of the mountain tops, sheltering many birds.
We had to wait fully an hour for our tent, as the servants' camels were somehow belated, and it was considered to be all owing to the jinni, whose abode we passed. Large white bustards assembled round our camp.
Once we were settled, there was the usual run on the medicine chest. A very nice Bedou soldier, Aman, the head one, was given five pills into one hand by my husband, and as he insisted on grasping his weapons with his other, he had such difficulty in consuming them that I had to hold the cup of water for him to sip from.
Madder trees grow about, and the Bedouin make clothes from the silky fibres.
We ascended a good deal the following day, to a point whence our view extended over the great central desert. It looked like a blue sea with a yellow shore. We then turned a little to the south, then north again, and found ourselves among a quantity of wooded spurs, and on the edge of a deep wooded wadi.
Right up to the tops of the mountains, which reach an elevation of about 3,000 feet, the ground is fertile and covered with grass, on which large herds of cattle feed; clusters of sycamores and limes growing here and there give to the undulating hills quite a park-like appearance. As we happened to be there in the dry season, the grass was all brown and slippery, and there stood around us acres upon acres of hay with no one to harvest it; but after the rains the aspect of the Gara hills must be as green and pleasant as those of Derbyshire. The dry grass often catches fire, and from the mountains in various directions we saw columns of smoke arising as if from the chimneys of a manufacturing district. The country through which we travelled for the next two days is covered with thorny bushes and anthills, and is more like Africa than Arabia. The anthills, though very extensive, were not so fantastic as those we saw in Africa. We were going eastward over high ground; we decided to halt for two nights near a pretty little hole full of maidenhair fern, where there was water. It was nice and clean at first, but even at the end of the first day it was much diminished and very muddy. Travellers like ourselves must be a great nuisance drinking up the scanty supply of water which might last the inhabitants for a long while.
We had hoped to get a good rest after our many days of marching, but while we were here there came on the most frightful hurricane from the north; it blew steadily for two days and nights and put all rest out of the question. With difficulty could we keep our tents erect; when we were in ours we had to be tightly tied in and sit next to the sunniest wall; in the evening when the wind abated a little we used to sit by a large fire, dressed in blankets.
The piercing blasts quite shrivelled up our poor unclad conductors, who crouched in an inert mass round log fires which they made. We were obliged to remain inactive, for they said the camels would not move during this wind, though I believe the cause of inaction rose more from their own dislike to travel in the cold; and so inert were they that we could hardly get them to fetch us water from the neighbouring spring, their whole energy being expended in fetching huge logs of wood to keep the fires burning, and I think they were all pleased when the time came to descend to the lower regions again and a warmer atmosphere.
We were afraid to start before the sun was up for fear the camels would be too cold to move, and he did not visit us very early.
Sheikh Sehel promised to take us across the Gara border into Nejd if we wished; but as it would have entailed a considerable delay and parley with the sheikhs of the Nejd Bedouin, and as we could see from our present vantage ground that the country would afford us absolutely no objects of interest, we decided not to attempt this expedition.
On leaving our very exposed and nameless camping-ground, we pursued our course in a north-east direction, still passing through the same park-like scenery, through acres and acres of lovely hay, to be had for nothing a ton. It is exceedingly slippery, and dangerous foothold for the camels; consequently numerous falls were the result, and much of our journey had to be done on foot.
We and they used involuntarily to sit down and slide and be brought up suddenly by a concealed rock.
To the south the descent is abrupt and rocky to the plain of Dhofar and the Indian Ocean, and the horizon line on either side is remarkably similar, for in the far, far distance the sandy desert becomes a straight blue line like a horizon of water. To the east and west the arid barrenness of Arabia soon asserts itself, whereas the undulating Gara range, like the Cotswold, is fertile, and rounded with deep valleys and ravines running into it full of rich tropical vegetation.
On the second day we began again to descend a hideously steep path, and a drop of about 1,500 feet brought us to a remarkable cave just above the plain, and only about ten or twelve miles from Al Hafa. This cave burrows far into the mountain side, and is curiously hung with stalactites, and contains the deserted huts of a Bedou village, only inhabited during the rains. Immediately below this cave in the Wadi Nahast are the ruins of an extensive SabÆan town, in the centre of which is a natural hole 150 feet deep and about 50 feet in diameter; around this hole are the remains of walls, and the columns of a large entrance gate. We asked for information about this place, but all we could get in reply was that it was the well of the Addites, the name always associated with the ruins of the bygone race. They also said the Minqui had lived in the town. In my opinion this spot is the site of the oracle mentioned by Ptolemy and others, from which the capital of Dhofar took its name. It much resembles the deep natural holes, which we found in Cilicia in Asia Minor, where the oracles of the Corycian and Olbian Zeus were situated. It is just below the great cave I have mentioned, and, as a remarkable natural phenomenon, it must have been looked upon with awe in ancient days, and it was a seat of worship, as the ruined walls and gateway prove; furthermore, it is just half a day's journey east of the city of Mansura or Zufar, where, Ibn Batuta somewhat contemptuously says, 'is Al Akhaf, the abode of the Addites,' and there is no other point on the plain of Dhofar where the oracle could satisfactorily be located from existing evidence. Some time, perhaps, an enterprising archÆologist may be able to open the ruins about here, and verify the identification from epigraphical evidence.
When we reached the valley Imam Sharif said: 'We do not know how we got down that place, for all of our feet was each 36 inches from the other foot.' We had such trouble squeezing through the trees, too.
We encamped not at all far from the deep hole, and at first were too hot and tired after our tremendous clamber to look round, but my husband found it in his sunset stroll, and came and called to me to hurry out while light yet lingered in such joyful tones that I asked, 'Is it DianÆ Oraculum?'
Before starting in the morning we went to visit some troglodytes, dirty, but pleasant, and willing for us to see all there was to be seen, and as anxious to see us; indeed, they wished to see more of me than I thought convenient, but fortunately my husband's collar-stud came undone and they all crowded to see his white chest amid shouts of 'Shouf Theodore!' (Look at Theodore).
One of these people had fever and another neuralgia. We found neuralgia pretty common in Arabia. Quassia-chips were given to each to steep in water, but carefully tied up in different coloured cotton bags. Our way was very uninteresting, due south to the sea at Rizat.
My husband's camel required repacking, and he and Hassan managed to lose sight of the rest of the kafila. Imam Sharif and I went on without perceiving that the rest had stopped. We had to wait an hour to be found. I dismounted, and sat in a circle of thirteen men. When one of them wished to attract my attention he tapped me on the knee with sword or stick, saying, 'Ya (oh), Mabel!'
One of the first days I heard them consulting what my name might be; several were suggested, but at last they thought it must be 'FÀtema' and to try called 'Ya FÀtema!' I said 'My name is not "FÀtema";' then they asked, and thus they learnt our names.
They said they did not wish us to give them orders of any kind as they were sheikhs; certainly not through the soldiers. 'We are gentlemen, and they are slaves, and if we choose we can kill them. What is it to us? We shall have to pay 400 reals, but we can give a camel each and can well afford it. We are rich.'
I must say these men were often very kind to me.
CHAPTER XXI
THE IDENTIFICATION OF ABYSSAPOLIS
We now pursued our way along the coast-line of Dhofar in an easterly direction. Wali Suleiman entertained us for a night at a farm he had built at a place called Rizat, the land around which is watered by an abundant stream. His garden was rich in many kinds of fruits, and on our arrival, hot and weary from the road, he spread a carpet for us under the shade of a mulberry tree while our camp was pitched, and ordered a slave to pick us a dishful of the fruit, which was exceedingly refreshing. Besides these he provided us with papayas, gourds, vegetables, and all sorts of delicacies to which we had been strangers during our wanderings in the Gara mountains. In this genial retreat Wali Suleiman passed much of his time, leaving behind him at Al Hafa the cares of state and the everlasting bickerings in his harem.
The next morning, refreshed and supplied with the requisites for another journey, we started off again in our easterly course towards Takha, the most important village at the east end of the plain of Dhofar. As we rode across the plain we were perpetually harassed by the thought as to where the excellent harbour could be, which is mentioned by all ancient writers as frequented by the frankincense merchants, and which modern writers, such as Dr. Glaser and Sir E. H. Bunbury, agree in considering to be some little way west of Merbat. Yakut tells us how the ancient ships on their way to and from India tarried there during the monsoons, and he further tells us that it was twenty parasangs east of the capital. The 'Periplus' speaks of it as Moscha, Ptolemy as Abyssapolis, and the Arabs as Merbat; but as there is no harbourage actually at Merbat, it clearly could not be there. So as we went along we pondered on this question, and wondered if this celebrated harbour was, after all, a myth.
It was a most uninteresting ride along this coast: flat, and for the most part barren, broken here and there by lagoons of brackish and evil-smelling water and mangrove swamps. On the way we saw antelopes and foxes with white bushy tails. One night we encamped by one of these river beds on slightly rising ground, and were devoured by mosquitoes, and so pestilent are these insects here that they not only attacked us, but tormented our camels to such a degree that they were constantly jumping up in the night and making such hideous demonstrations of their discomfort that our rest was considerably interfered with.
When we reached Takha, after a ride of fifteen miles, we found ourselves once more amongst a heap, or rather two heaps, of SabÆan ruins, which had not been so much disturbed by subsequent occupants as those at the capital, but at the same time they were not nearly so fine, and the columns were mostly undecorated. There were also some very rough sarcophagi.
The wali of Takha received us well, and placed his house at our disposal, but it was so dirty we elected to pitch our tents, and encamped some little distance from the village. On the following morning the wali sent us with a guide to inspect some ruins round the neighbouring headland which forms one end of the bay, of which Ras Risout is the other. The rock of which it is composed is white in all the sheltered parts and where the path is polished, and nearly black in the exposed parts. When we reached the other side of this promontory, to our amazement we saw before us a long sheet of water, stretching nearly two miles inland, broken by many little creeks, and in some parts fully half a mile wide. This sheet of water, which is called Kho Rouri, had been silted up at its mouth by a sandbank, over which the sea could only make its way at high tide, and the same belt of sand separated from it a fortified rock, Khatiya by name, which must formerly have been an island protecting the double entrance to what once must have been an excellent harbour, and which could be again restored to its former condition by an outlay of very little capital and labour. We were the more amazed at coming across this sheet of water, as it is not marked in the Admiralty chart.
Surely there can be no doubt that this is the harbour which was anciently used by the merchants who came to this coast for frankincense. It would be absolutely secure at all seasons of the year, and it is just twenty parasangs from the ruins of the ancient capital—exactly where it ought to be, in fact—and probably the Arabs called it Merbat, a name which has been retained in the modern village on the sheltering headland, where we landed when we first reached Dhofar. As for the name Moscha—given in the 'Periplus'—it is like Mocha, a name given to several bays on the Arabian coast, and I think we discovered why Ptolemy called it Abyssapolis, as I will presently explain. We ascended the rock at the entrance, took a photograph of the sheet of water, and felt that we had at last succeeded in reconstructing the geography of this interesting bit of country.
I hear that the Egyptologists are in search of a harbour to which the expedition to the land of Punt was made under the enterprising Queen Hatasou. Some imagine that this coast of Arabia was the destination of this expedition, and I herewith call their attention to this spot, for I know of none other more likely on the barren, harbourless coast between Aden and Maskat. If we take the illustration of this expedition given in the temple of Deir al Bahari, we have, to begin with, the frankincense trees, the long straight line of water running inland, the cattle and the birds; then the huts which the Bedouin build on tall poles, approached by ladders, from which they can inspect the produce of their land and drive off marauders, look exactly like those thereon depicted. All that we want are the apes, which certainly do not now exist in the Gara mountains, but it is just the spot where one would expect to find them; and in a district where the human race has been reduced to the smallest point, there is no reason why the kindred race of apes should not have disappeared altogether. Apes still exist near Aden.
THE ABYSS OF ABYSSAPOLIS, DHOFAR
The Abyss of Abyssapolis, Dhofar
We had great difficulty in getting the camels to face the water and carry us to the peninsula, the water being half-way up their sides. On climbing up we saw columns lying about, and there had been a wall all round the summit. It had originally been built in courses with roughly squared stones, as we could see near the doorway, but the present wall is of ordinary broken stones.
Leaving the harbour behind us we again approached the mountains, and, after journeying inland for about eight miles, we found the valley leading up to the mountains choked up by a most remarkable formation caused by the calcareous deposit of ages from a series of streams which precipitate themselves over a stupendous wall in feathery waterfalls. This abyss is perfectly sheer, and hung in fantastic confusion with stalactites. At its middle it is 550 feet in depth, and its greatest length is about a mile. It is quite one of the most magnificent natural phenomena I have ever seen, and suggestive of comparison with the calcareous deposits in New Zealand and Yellowstone Park; and to those who visited this harbour in ancient days it must have been a familiar object, so no wonder that when they went home and talked about it, the town near it was called the City of the Abyss, and Ptolemy, as was his wont, gave the spot a fresh appellative, just as he called the capital the Oracle of Artemis.
About a quarter of a mile from the western side of the whole abyss is a small conical mountain, about 1,000 feet high, which looks as if it had once stood free but were now nearly smothered by the petrifaction of the overflowing water. It rises above the level top of the cliffs, and has about a quarter of a mile of abyss on one side, which is only 300 feet in depth, and half a mile on the other. It is all wooded. The larger side and the upper plain is called Derbat, and the smaller Merbat or MergÀ.
The three days we spent in exploring the neighbourhood of this abyss were the brightest and pleasantest of all during this expedition. Our camp was pitched under shady trees about half a mile from the foot of the abyss, whither we could wander and repose under the shade of enormous plantains which grew around the watercourse, and listen to the splashing of the stream as it was precipitated over the rock to irrigate the ground below, where the Bedouin had nice little gardens in which the vegetation was profuse. One day we spent in photography and sketching, wandering about the foot of the rocky wall; and another day, starting early in the morning, with one camel to carry our things, we set off to climb the hill by a tortuous path under shady trees which conducted us along the side of the hill, and got lovely glimpses of the abyss on both sides through the branches.
On reaching the summit we found ourselves on an extensive and well-timbered flat meadow, along which we walked for a mile or so. It was covered with cattle belonging to the Bedouin grazing on its rich pasturage. It seemed like the place Jack reached when he had climbed up the beanstalk. At length we came to two lovely narrow lakes, joined together by a rapid meandering stream, delicious spots to look upon, with well-wooded hills on either side, and a wealth of timber in every direction. We lunched and took our midday siesta under a wide-spreading sycamore by the stream, after walking up alongside the lakes for nearly two miles; fat milch cows, not unlike our own, were feeding by the rushing stream; birds of all descriptions filled the branches of the trees, water-hens and herons and ducks were in abundance on one of the lakes, bulrushes and water-weeds grew in them; it would be an ideal little spot in any country, but in Arabia it was a marvel. The trees were loaded with climbing cactus and a large purple convolvulus with great round leaves.
We wanted to get some water-plants, easily to be obtained if anyone would have entered the lake in which they grew, but the jinni or ghinni who lives there (our old friend the Genius of the 'Arabian Nights') was so dangerous that the plants had to be hooked out with sticks and branches tied to strings. Sheikh Sehel maintains that he has seen ghinni in that neighbourhood.
This wide-spreading meadow can be watered at will by damming up the streams which lead the water from the lakes to the abyss, and in a large cave near the edge of the precipice dwells a family of pastoral Bedouin who own this happy valley; before leaving the higher level we went to the edge and peered over into the hollow below, where, far beneath us, was our camping ground among the trees, and in the sun's rays the waterfall over the white cliff gave out beautiful rainbows. We had to cross much swampy ground, and got our feet wet, without catching the inevitable fever.
Imam Sharif camped away from us one night and found that the streams which feed them have their source up in the limestone, about two days' journey from them. The Bedouin are exceedingly proud of them, and in the absence of much water in their country they naturally look upon them with almost superstitious awe and veneration. Perhaps in Scotland one might be more inclined to call them mountain tarns, for neither of them is more than a mile in length, and in parts they are very narrow; yet they are deep, and, as the people at Al Hafa proudly told us, you could float thereon any steamer you liked, which may or may not be true, but their existence in a country like Arabia is, after all, their chief cause for renown. This really is Arabia Felix.
If ever this tract of country comes into the hands of a civilised nation, it will be capable of great and useful development. Supposing the harbour restored to receive ships of moderate size, the Gara hills, rich in grass and vegetation, with an ample supply of water and regular rains, and, furthermore, with a most delicious and health-giving air, might be of inestimable value as a granary and a health resort for the inhabitants of the burnt-up centres of Arabian commerce, Aden and Maskat. It is, as I have said, about half way between them, and it is the only fertile stretch of coast-line along that arid frontage of the Arabian Peninsula on to the Indian Ocean.
Every November a fair or gala is held up here by the side of the lakes, to which all the Bedouin of the Gara tribe come and make merry, and the fair of Derbat is considered by them the great festival of the year. A round rock was shown us on which the chief magician sits to exorcise the jinni of the lakes, and around him the people dance. There is doubtless some religious purport connected with all this, but, as I have said before, it is extremely difficult to get anything out of the Bedouin about their religious opinions; like the Bedouin of the Hadhramout, they do not observe the prayers and ablutions inculcated by the Mohammedan creed, and the Arabs speak of them as heathen, but beyond this we could not find out much. Their language, too, is different from anything we had heard before. They can understand and converse in Arabic after a fashion, but when speaking amongst themselves none of our party, Arab or European, could make out anything they said, and from such simple words as we were able to learn—such, for example, as ouft for wadi, a valley, shur instead of yom for day, and kho instead of nahr for a river—we were led to believe that they speak an entirely different language, and not a dialect as in the Hadhramout.
As we passed through the hay, the Gara had gathered up a lot of it in sacks, which they put under the camels' loads by day and used as beds by night, and between times applied to quite a different purpose. One of these sacks was used as a combined dish and strainer when they boiled their rice. The rice was turned out of the pot, and as soon as the cook had scraped it all out with his hands they sat round, and fed themselves with handfuls of it.
After another day, spent over sketching, photography, and measurements, we felt we had thoroughly explored the neighbourhood of the abyss, so we started back to Al Hafa to prepare for our departure from Dhofar.
It took us three days to get there. We stayed a night on the way on some high ground above one of the swamps, and on the second day stopped to visit Hamran, or Hameroun, where the wali had built a small fort and a farm, which supplied him when at Rizat with butter, vegetables and fruit. He also grew tobacco there.
We found ourselves once more in our old quarters in the castle, where many fleas had been born in our absence, while the flies and mosquitoes were not diminished. The wali had more prisoners. We again visited Robat and the other ruins.
The interests which centred in this small district—the ancient sites, the abyss, and, above all, the surprising fertility of the valleys and mountains, the delicious health-giving air, and the immunity from actual danger which we had enjoyed—combined in making us feel that our sojourn in Dhofar had been one of the most enjoyable and productive of any expedition we had hitherto undertaken, and that we had discovered a real Paradise in the wilderness, which will be a rich prize for the civilised nation which is enterprising enough to appropriate it.
CHAPTER XXII
SAILING FROM KOSSEIR TO ADEN
Our object had been to go across from Dhofar by land to the Hadhramout, across the Mahri country. Wali Suleiman had done all in his power to help us, but without much success, as the Gara were more or less at war with the Mahri, who are a dangerous warlike tribe. When we first left Al Hafa, a message had been sent to the Mahri chiefs to come and arrange about our journey, but on our return we found that only two had come. They said if we would give them 200 reals, i.e. about 12l., they would let us go through their country, but they made no allusion to the request that they would arrange with the Minhali, Amri, Kattiri, and Tamimi. As far as we and the wali could make out, they would only have let us go a certain way along their coast, and then we should have been in difficulty about a ship. The reply from the sultan of Jedid was also unfavourable, so we had nothing left but to hire a batil and set sail along the coast for Kishin, to the sultan of which place my husband had a letter from the British political agent at Maskat.
We took leave of Wali Suleiman with much regret, and had we foreseen all the disappointments that were in store for us we should, I think, have stayed far longer under his favourable influence. We were sorry afterwards to hear of his death. A rebellion broke out, in which his castle was knocked into ruins, and in the battle he, his eldest son, and little black Muoffok were all killed.
A long sea journey in an Arab batil is exceedingly uncomfortable. We had a cabin in the stern, open all round; a sail was stretched in front to secure our privacy; it was so low that we could by no means stand or even sit up except on the deck, as 3 feet 6 inches was the height of this place. It was roofed over with palm-stalks supported on posts overlaid with matting, so slippery that Imam Sharif and Hassan, the interpreter, had to tie themselves with ropes, as there was nothing to prevent their sliding into the sea. I stayed in my camp bed for six days, as there was nothing else to do. Our servants crowded every space on the outer part of the deck in and on boxes. We had some palm-leaf matting hung on the port and southern side to shield us from the sun, and much rejoiced that we were not deprived by the sun of the glorious views which unrolled themselves along our starboard side.
When morning came, Lobo used to creep in across my husband's feet and bring our basins to our bed-sides, and when our toilette was finished he used to creep in and fetch them, and then creep back, and, spreading the breakfast on the floor, squat in the middle and hand us our food. The gunwale of the batil was only three inches from the level of my bed. Airy as our 'cabin' was, bilge-water was our torment.
We had started on January 23, the weather being cool and overcast, about 11 o'clock, and reached the village of Rakhiout in thirty hours—only forty miles.
We called there to do a civility to the wali, and leave two soldiers there. This is the end of Omani influence, and there is a small fort as a protection against the Mahri. There was a contrary wind and such a violent swell that we rocked and tossed for thirty more hours in front of the small village, whence parties of inhabitants came to stare at us. It is on a small flat space, with high hills and cliffs all round it.
We started at last, and got at least two miles, when we were awakened by a great gale. I was nearly blown out of bed. The sail was taken down, and we were in some danger, as it was feared the mast would give way. We anchored, and the wind seemed to blow from all sides at once; the small boat was nearly smashed against the rudder. The stars were shining brightly all the time.
We started again at dawn, and did not go more than three-quarters of a mile in the whole day, the wind being so contrary. One of the peculiarities of our navigation was that whenever we tacked we went completely round. At sunset we had to cast anchor again, and lie tossing till three, and then went on well.
While at anchor we heard shouts and cries to come to land, but our sailors would do nothing of the sort. They said a single man might often be seen calling that he was wrecked, and asking to be fetched away, but a party of armed men would be behind a rock, and come out and murder the benevolent crew and steal the boat.
It was really delightful in the morning to open my still sleepy eyes and, without moving, to see the lovely picture which seemed to be passing before me—not I before it—of beautiful mountains with their foreground of water, every fold and distance filled up and separated by soft vapours. Then sunrise began to paint the rocks red, and black shadows came and changed their shapes, and presently all became hard and stony looking.
Passing Ras Hamar, which is the next cape to Risout, we had seen easily how it had acquired the name, for it looks like a donkey drinking, with its nose in the water and its ears cocked. This shows particularly from the west. In the pilot book of that sea, it is stated that it is called Hamar, or Ahmar, from its red colour; but it is not red. The two peculiar peaks on its summit are noticed.
The wind died away about nine, and we shook about and went round and round; but in the afternoon we had a good wind, and at noon of the next day (January 28) we were before Kishin.
The sultan was at his village, three miles inland, or, more correctly, in sand—a hot walk. He is a wizened little old man, who can neither read nor write, and was poorly dressed, visitors being quite unexpected.
The village of Kishin, the Mahri capital, consists of a few scattered houses and some Bedou huts of matting and poles placed in a dreary sandy waste, very different from the fertile plain of Dhofar, and more like the surroundings of Sheher.
When my husband asked for the sultan's assistance to go into the Hadhramout, he said: 'No one ever goes that way, it is full of robbers.'
Of course he was civil enough, as my husband showed him the letter from Maskat, but he seemed to have little authority. I think his followers were sorry to see such a likely prize depart unmolested. Those on board were rather alarmed at the length of time consumed in these negotiations.
The old Sultan Salem is father to the sultan of Sokotra, which belongs to the Mahri tribe, and brother to the sultan of Saihut, another robber chief, who is equally averse to admitting Europeans to his dominions. The fact is that these tribes object to European inquiry, as they know they would no longer be able to exist in their present condition.
My husband extracted from him a letter to his brother of Saihut.
After our futile attempts to penetrate into the Mahri country, there was nothing left for us but to start again in our boat for Sheher, and rely on the promises which Sultan Hussein al Kaiti had given us the year before of sending us under safe escort to the eastern portion of the Hadhramout valley, which must contain much of interest, not yet having been explored by Europeans; so we set sail again, and were soon passing country that we had ridden over on camels.
Ras Fartak is the great landmark, but the fine scenery ends at Jedid. Looking back, the rich colouring of the capes, seeming to overlap one another, and the great height, give a most impressive effect. The slopes are adorned with feathery-looking trees, and there are many little sandy beaches, and there were also many deep caverns. For two days we saw hardly an inhabitant.
Between Jedid and Ras Fartak the land is low and recedes, and as we sailed along we decided that it was the mouth of some big valley from the interior, and after careful cross-examination of the sultan of Kishin and our sailors we gathered that this was actually the mouth of the great Hadhramout valley, which does not take the extraordinary bend that is given in our maps, but runs in almost a straight line from west to east, and the bend represents an entirely distinct valley, the Wadi Mosila, which comes out at Saihut.
We were two days getting to Sheher, anchoring both nights; the first, as 'dirty weather' was causing alarm, was a very noisy one, the servants and sailors talking and singing all night to be in readiness. The second night we were put to bed very quietly among the strange and weird stacks of rocks at Ras Dis, and had a heavy shower of rain, which, of course, penetrated our matting roof.
When we reached Sheher, a messenger was sent ashore with a letter to Sultan Hussein, and a message was returned inviting us to take up our quarters in the same unfinished palace where we had lived ten months before. One of the first people to greet us was the nÀkhoda of the ship on which we had gone to Aden from Sheher. The word reis for captain is never used. Ghaleb Mia was at the house to meet us, and we were much interested by finding that the governors of everywhere round about were in Sheher to give up their accounts. He of Hagarein was scowling, but they of Dis, Kosseir, and Haura seemed friendly and pleased to see us. We heard good accounts of various patients, and were especially pleased to hear that the daughter of the governor of Dis, who had for some time been bedridden with a bad leg, had been well ever since our visit—quite cured by Holloway's ointment. The next day there were great negotiations and plannings as to our future course.
Our scheme was that we should go from Sheher to Inat in the Hadhramout valley, down to Bir Borhut and Kabr Houd, and thence eastward to Wadi Mosila, back to Sheher by the coast, and then try to go westward—or, as to us appeared preferable, to go up by the Wadi Mosila to Wadi Hadhramout, and then to try to get to the west without returning to Sheher.
There we stuck for some days, listening to any gossip we could hear, and taking evening walks by the sea, guarded by soldiers. We were told that Sultan SalÀh of Shibahm had lost his head wife, the sister of Manassar of Makalla, but had consoled himself by marrying four others about two months afterwards, and had divorced two of them already. The family of Al Kaiti are not very good friends among themselves; a soldier discharged by SalÀh of Shibahm is always quickly engaged by Hussein of Sheher, and if Hussein dismisses a servant he is sure of a place with Manassar. They stop each other's letters and annoy each other in many ways, but are always ready to unite if any strange foe assails their family.
Manassar had quarrelled with his wife, the daughter of SalÀh, because SalÀh, on the death of his wife, had refused to marry a third daughter of Manassar, as his dying wife requested. Hussein had only one wife and no children.
There had been great trouble with the Hamoumi, and only three months before two soldiers had been killed about half a mile from Sheher. Ghaleb Mia and Hussein Mia dared not go to Inbula or anywhere outside their walls without forty or fifty men, and when SalÀh's daughter, who is married to the seyyid, came to Sheher, she had to come by a circuitous route, with an escort of five hundred men.
When a Bedou has committed a murder, he runs to the houses of the seyyids, where there is sanctuary, and gets absolution on paying four or five hundred dollars, according to the rank of the murdered man. Thus travelling is difficult unless you have paid siyar, and a relation of the siyara is kept in prison at Sheher. All this time the behaviour of the sultans and their hospitality to us were very different to what it had been the year before; they sent us no presents of food, nor did they ever invite Imam Sharif to a meal, which they had constantly done when we were last there. Their manner was stiff and constrained, and they said they themselves had been badly treated for their kindness to us and that they were now considered Kafirs themselves. The fact is that all the Mohammedan world was in a state of restless activity, as the jehad, or holy war, was being preached. And now I will tell a most remarkable circumstance, quite the most extraordinary in this book.
Sultan Hussein told my husband on February 1 that a consul had been murdered at Jedda.
We were most excited about this, and anxiously inquired about it when we reached Aden, but heard that no murder had taken place, nor did it till May, when several consuls were murdered.
This proves that it must have been a very long-arranged plan, and that the sultan knew of it and thought it had had time to be carried out. No doubt all this accounted for his bad reception of us.
After a good deal of illusory delay, the sultan declared he could not in any way be responsible for our safety if we went anywhere from Sheher, so we had to bow to the inevitable and put ourselves on board a dhow belonging to Kutch, bound for Aden.
The captain and sailors were all Hindoos, and to our amusement our Mohammedan party were as unclean as ourselves. The crew would not let us touch their fire and water, and filled our vessels themselves without touching them, very good-humouredly, and they made up an extra galley for us by putting some sand in a wooden box, and here Christians and Moslems had perforce to cook together. Of course we did not mind, but there was much laughter at the expense of the others, in which indeed they joined, for they bore their adversity amiably when it brought strange cooking-fellows.
On reaching Aden we still desired to penetrate into the Jebel Akhdar, so looked out for a ship going to Maskat. We could find none, therefore we embarked for India with all our company. I am not going to describe India, but will only tell of our money difficulties.
So ignorant were we and everyone at Maskat as to what money was in use in Dhofar, that we were persuaded that it was necessary to take an immense quantity of small change in the shape of copper coins about the size of a farthing, supposed to be Omani. We had four wooden boxes bound with wire, about 1 foot long and 5 or 6 inches high and wide, delivered to us, all closed up, and said to have a certain sum in each.
Soon after we set out we opened one of these boxes to get out some money and have it ready, but found in it so many and various kinds of coins, all the same size, that we opened all the boxes, making quite a mound on the ground, to sort out the German East Africa, English East Africa, Zanzibar, and other useless coins, and then packed them neatly up, an awfully troublesome and dirty job. We kept out what we thought would pass, but behold! all were useless; no one would look at anything but Maria Theresa dollars and Indian coins down to two-anna pieces—nothing lower.
All these boxes, therefore, had to return to Maskat, and when paying off the interpreter, Hassan, a most respectable person with large, round, gold spectacles, my husband asked him to be kind enough to take his money in these boxes and change at Maskat. No, he would only have good silver dollars; and sadly he rued his want of good-nature.
We two and Lobo, whom we retained, went to a hotel in Bombay, but Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur, his four men, our Goanese cook, Hassan, and a certain young Afghan, Ahmet, who had been a sort of odd man and tent-pitcher, went to a caravanserai; and after Hassan's steamer had departed to Maskat, Imam Sharif came and told us the doleful tidings that Ahmet had disappeared with the good silver dollars and the gold watch and chain of Hassan. No doubt he then regretted he had not taken the boxes of copper.
MAP OF MOUNT ERBA
Map of Mount Erba
and surrounding country
to illustrate the explorations of
Mr. J. THEODORE BENT.
Stanford's Geog.l Estab.t, London
London: Smith, Elder & Co.
