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Southern Arabia

<h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3> <h4>THE AKABA</h4> Having left these villages behind us, we climbed rapidly higher and higher, until at an elevation of over 4,000 feet we found ourselves at last on a broad, level table-land, stretching as far as the eye could reach in every direction. This is no doubt the 'Maratha Mountains' of Ptolemy, the Mons Excelsus of Pliny,[8] which shuts off the Hadhramout, where once flourished the frankincense and the myrrh. Words cannot express the desolate aspect of this vast table-land, Akaba or the 'going-up,' as the Arabs call it. It is perfectly level, and strewn with black lumps of basalt, looking as though a gigantic coal-scuttle had been upset. Occasionally there rises up above the plain a flat-topped mound or ridge, some 80 feet high, the last remnant of a higher level which is now disappearing. There is no sign of habitation. Only here and there are a few tanks, dug to collect the rain-water, if any falls. These are protected or indicated by a pair of walls built opposite one another, and banked up on the outer side with earth and stones, like shooting butts. The Akaba is exclusively Bedou property, and wherever a little herbage is to be found, there the nomads drive their flocks and young camels.[89] Of the frankincense which once flourished over all this vast area, we saw only one specimen on the highland itself, though it is still found in the more sheltered gullies; and farther east, in the Mahri country, there is, I understand, a considerable quantity left. We were often given lumps of gum arabic, and myrrh is still found plentifully; it is tapped for its odoriferous sap. It is a curious fact that the Somali come from Africa to collect it, going from tribe to tribe of the Bedouin, and buying the right to collect these two species, sometimes paying as much as fifty dollars. They go round and cut the trees, and after eight days return to collect the exuded sap. In ancient times none but slaves collected frankincense and myrrh. This fact, taken probably with the meaning of the name Hadhramout (the later form of the ancient name Hazarmaveth), gave rise to the quaint Greek legend 'that the fumes of the frankincense-trees were deadly, and the place where they grew was called the valley or enclosure of death.' From personal observation it would appear that the ancients held communication with the Hadhramout almost entirely by the land caravan-route, as there is absolutely no trace of great antiquity to be found along the coast-line, whereas the Wadi Hadhramout itself and its collateral branches are very rich in remains of the ancient Himyaritic civilisation. Though we were always looking about for monuments of antiquity, the most ancient and lasting memorial of far past ages lay beneath our feet in that little narrow path winding over Akaba and Wadi, and polished by the soft feet of millions of camels that had slowly passed over it for thousands and thousands of years. We found the air of the table-land fresh and invigorating after the excessive heat of the valleys below. For three days we travelled northwards across the plateau. Our first stage[90] was Haibel Gabrein. This is, as it were, the culminating point of the whole district; it is 4,150 feet above the sea. From it the table-land slopes gently down to the northward towards the main valley of the Hadhramout, and eastwards towards the Wadi Adim. After two days more travelling we approached the heads of the many valleys which run into the Hadhramout; the Wadis Doan, Rakhi, Al Aisa, Al Ain, Bin Ali, and Adim all start from this elevated plateau and run nearly parallel. The curious feature of most of these valleys is the rapid descent into them; they look as if they had been taken out of the high plateau like slices out of a cake. They do not appear to have been formed by a fall of water from this plateau; in fact, it is impossible that a sufficient force of water could ever have existed on this flat surface to form this elaborate valley system. In the valleys themselves there is very little slope, for we found that, with the exception of the Wadi Adim, all the valley heads we visited were nearly of uniform height with the main valley, and had a wall of rock approaching 1,000 feet in height, eaten away as it were out of the plateau. We were, therefore, led to suppose that these valleys had originally been formed by the action of the sea, and that the Hadhramout had once been a large bay or arm of the sea, which, as the waters of the ocean receded, leaving successive marks of many strands on the limestone and sandstone rocks which enclosed them, formed an outlet for the scanty water-supply of the Southern Arabian highlands. These valleys have, in the course of ages, been silted up by sand to a considerable height, below which water is always found, and the only means of obtaining water in the Hadhramout for drinking purposes, as well as for cultivation, is by sinking wells. The water of the main valley is strongly impregnated with salt, but is much sweeter at the sides of the valley than in the centre. No doubt this is caused by the weight of the alkaline[91] deposits washed down from the salt hills at Shabwa, at the head of the main valley. The steep, reddish sandstone cliffs which form the walls of these valleys are themselves almost always divided into three distinct stories or stratifications, which can be distinctly seen on the photographs. The upper one is very abrupt, the second slightly projecting and more broken, and the third formed by deposit from above. The descent into the valley is extremely difficult at all points. Paths down which camels can just make their way have been constructed by the Bedouin, by making use of the stratified formation and the gentler slopes; but only in the case of the Wadi Adim, of all the valleys we visited, is there anything approaching a gradual descent. It appears to me highly probable that the systematic destruction of the frankincense and myrrh trees through countless generations has done much to alter the character of this Akaba, and has contributed to the gradual silting up of the Hadhramout and its collateral valleys, to which fact I shall again have occasion to refer. The aspect of this plateau forcibly recalled to our minds that portion of Abyssinia which we visited in 1892-93; there is the same arid coast-line between the sea and the mountains, and the same rapid ascent to a similar absolutely level plateau, and the same draining northwards to a large river-bed in the case of Abyssinia, into the valleys of the Mareb and other tributaries of the Nile, and in the case of this Arabian plateau into the Hadhramout. Only Abyssinia has a more copious rainfall, which makes its plateau more productive. It had not been our intention to visit the Wadi Al Aisa, but to approach the Hadhramout by another valley called Doan, parallel and further west, but our camel-men would not take us that way, and purposely got up a scare that the men of Khoreba at the head of Wadi Doan were going to[92] attack us, and would refuse to let us pass. A convenient old woman was found who professed to bring this news, a dodge subsequently resorted to by another Bedou tribe which wanted to govern our progress. The report brought to us, as from the old woman, was to this effect: A large body of sheikhs and seyyids having started from Khoreba[9] to meet and repel us, Mokaik's father had left home to help us. As we had now abandoned Khoreba, Mokaik said he was anxious to hurry off to meet his father and prevent a hostile collision. Mokaik was told he could not go as he was responsible for our safety, but that some others might go. 'No,' said Mokaik, 'they cannot be spared from the camels; we will get two men from the village.' My husband agreed to this, but when Mokaik proposed that my husband should at once pay these men, he told Mokaik that he must pay them himself, as he was paid to protect us. This attempt at extortion having failed, we passed a peaceful night and subsequently found Mokaik's father, Suleiman Bakran, safe at home, which he had never thought of leaving. Our first peep down into the Wadi Al Aisa, towards which our Bedouin had conducted us, was striking in the extreme, and as we gazed down into the narrow valley, with its line of vegetation and its numerous villages, we felt as if we were on the edge of another world. The descent from the table-land to the Wadi is exactly 1,500 feet by a difficult, but very skilfully engineered footpath. The sun's rays, reflected from the limestone cliffs, were scorchingly hot. The camels went a longer way round, nearer the head of the valley, but, so difficult was our short cut that they arrived before us, and the horse, and the donkey. Having humbly descended into the Wadi Al Aisa,[93] because we were not allowed to go by the Wadi Doan, we found ourselves encamped hard by the village of Khaila, the head-quarters of the Khailiki tribe, within a stone's throw of Mokaik's father's house and under the shadow of the castle of his uncle, the sheikh of the tribe. These worthies both extorted from us substantial sums of money and sold us food at exorbitant prices, and so we soon learnt why we were not permitted to go to Khoreba, and why the old woman and her story had been produced. We thought Mokaik and his men little better than naked savages when on the plateau, but when we were introduced to their relatives, and when we saw their castles and their palm groves and their long line of gardens in the narrow valley, our preconceived notions of the wild homeless Bedou and his poverty underwent considerable change. We climbed up the side of the valley opposite Khaila to photograph a castle adorned with horns, but were driven away; too late, for the picture had been taken. During the two days we encamped at Khaila we were gazed upon uninterruptedly by a relentless crowd of men, women, and children. It amused us at first to see the women, here for the most part unmasked, with their exceedingly heavy girdles of brass, their anklets of brass half a foot deep, their bracelets of brass, their iron nose rings, and their massive and numerous earrings which tore down the lobe of the ear with their weight. Every Bedou, male or female, has a ring or charm of cornelian set in base silver, and agates and small tusks also set in silver. The root with which the women paint themselves yellow is called shubab. It is dried and powdered. It only grows when there is rain. The whole of the poultry at Khaila was carried about in the arms of the women and children who owned them, all the time of our sojourn, in the hopes of selling them. They, at least, were glad of our departure.[94] Not far from Khaila, we saw a fine village which we were told was inhabited by Arabs of pure blood, so we sent a polite message to the seyyid, or head-man of the place, to ask if we might pay him our respects. His reply was to the effect that if we paid thirty dollars we might come and pass four hours in the town. Needless to say we declined the invitation with thanks, and on the morrow when we marched down the Wadi Al Aisa we gave the abode of this hospitable seyyid a wide berth, particularly as the soldiers told us it was not safe, for the Arabs meant to kill us. Leaving Khaila, where we remained two nights and saw the New Year in, we passed a good many towered villages: Larsmeh was one, Hadouf another, also Subak and others. We passed the mouth of the Wadi Doan, which runs parallel to Wadi Al Aisa, and has two branches, only the largest having the name Doan. The mouth is about three miles below Khaila; five miles more brought us to Sief, where we halted for a night. It is also inhabited by pure Arabs, who treated us with excessive rudeness. It is a very picturesque spot, perched on a rock, with towers and turrets constructed of sun-dried brick; only here, as elsewhere in these valleys, the houses being so exactly the same colour as the rocks behind them, they lose their effect. The rich have evidently recognised this difficulty and whitewash their houses, but in the poorer villages there is no whitewash, and consequently nothing to make them stand out from their surroundings. One can pretty well judge of the wealth of the owners of the various towers and castles by the amount of whitewash. Some have only the pinnacles white, and some can afford to trim up the windows and put bands round the building. At Sief several men came once or twice and begged my husband to let me go out that the women might see me, but when I went out they would not allow me to approach or[95] hold any intercourse with the Arab women, using opprobrious epithets when I tried to make friendly overtures, with the quaint result that whenever I advanced towards a group of gazing females they fled precipitately like a flock of sheep before a collie dog, so we discovered that it was the men themselves who wished to see me. These women wear their dresses high in front (showing their yellow-painted legs above the knee) and long behind; they are of deep blue cotton, decorated with fine embroidery, and patches of yellow and red sewn on in patterns. It is the universal female dress in the Hadhramout, and looks as if the fashion had not changed since the days when Hazarmaveth the Patriarch settled in this valley and gave it his name.[10] The tall tapering straw hat worn by these women when in the fields contributes with the mask to make the Hadhrami females as externally repulsive as the most jealous of husbands could desire. I am pretty sure that this must be the very same dress which made such an unfavourable impression upon Sir John Maundeville, when he saw 'the foul women who live near Babylon the great.' He says: 'They are vilely arrayed. They go barefoot and clothed in evil garments, large and wide, but short to the knees, long sleeves down to the feet like a monk's frock, and their sleeves are hanging about their shoulders.' The dress is certainly wide, for the two pieces of which it is composed, exactly like the Greek peplos, when the arms are extended, stretch from finger-tip to finger-tip, so when this dress is caught into the loose girdle far below the waist, it hangs out under the arms and gives a very round-backed look, as is the case with the peplos. There are a great many Arabs at Sief, a most unhealthy, diseased-looking lot. They are of the yellow kind of Arab, with Jewish-looking faces.[96] Saleh retired into Sief on our arrival, and we saw him no more till we started next day. He was a very useless interpreter. He used to like to live in the villages, saying he could not bear to live in the camp of such unbelievers as we were, and used to bring his friends to our kitchen and show them some little tins of Lazenby's potted meat, adorned with a picture of a sheep, a cow, and a pig, as a proof that we lived on pork, whereas we had none with us. He always tried to persuade the people that he was far superior to any of us, and when places had to be made amongst the baggage on the camels for my husband and the servants to ride, he used to have his camel prepared and ride on, leaving some of the servants with no seat kept on the camels for them. My husband cured him of this, for one morning, seeing Saleh's bedding nicely arranged, he jumped on to the camel himself and rode off, leaving Saleh an object of great derision. Once we got down into the valley we had to ride very close together for safety, and I found it most tiresome making my horse, Basha, keep pace with the camels. The people at Sief were so disagreeable that I told Saleh to remind them that, if our Queen wanted their country, she would have had it long before we were born, and that they were very foolish to fear so small an unarmed party, who had only come to pass the winter in a country warmer than their own; at the same time, unless we had been quite confident that our safety was well secured from behind, such a party, with a woman among them, would never have come. We set off early next morning for Hagarein. We passed after one hour Kaidoun, with its own private little valley to the west, a tributary of the main one, which in this part is called Wadi Kasr. There is the grave of a celebrated saint, and a very pious seyyid, called Al Habid Taha Ali al Hadad, abides near it. He never goes out of his house, but is so much revered that many thousands of dollars are sent him[97] from India and other parts, and when his son visited Aden he was received with great honour by the merchants there. Then we passed several other villages, including Allahaddi and Namerr. It was at the ziaret or pilgrimage to the grave in Kaidoun that Herr von Wrede, who was disguised, was discovered to be a Christian and forced to turn back. The town of Hagarein or Hajarein is the principal one in the collateral valleys, and is built on a lofty isolated rock in the middle of the Wadi Kasr, about twenty miles before it joins the main valley of the Hadhramout. With its towers and turrets it recalled to our minds as we saw it in the distance certain hill-set, mediæval villages of Germany and Italy. Here a vice-sultan governs on behalf of the Al Kaiti family, an ill-conditioned, extortionate individual, whose bad reception of us contributed to his subsequent removal from office. Internally Hagarein is squalid and dirty in the extreme; each street is but a cesspool for the houses on either side of it, and the house allotted to us produced specimens of most smells and most insects. The days of rest we proposed for ourselves here were spent in fighting with our old camel-men who left us here, in fighting with the new ones who were to take us on to the main valley, and in indignantly refusing to pay the sultan the sum of money which our presence in his town led him to think it his right to demand. <div class="footnotes"> <div class="footnote">[8] Pliny, xii. 14, 52: 'In medio Arabiae fere sunt Adramitae pagus Saboraeum in monte excelso.' </div> <div class="footnote">[9] The town of Khoreba, in the Wadi Doan, may represent the town of Doan itself mentioned by Hamdani, the <ins title="Greek: Thabanê">Θαβἁνη</ins> of Ptolemy, which Pliny calls Toani. The name Khoreba signifies ruins. </div> <div class="footnote">[10] Gen. x. 26. </div> </div> <hr /> [98] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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