Chapter 18
MERBAT AND AL HAFA
After returning from our expedition to the Hadhramout in 1894 we determined the next winter to attempt the ambitious adventure of making a journey overland right across Southern Arabia from Maskat to Aden. On our way we hoped to revisit the Hadhramout, to explore those portions which we had been compelled to leave unvisited the former winter, and so to fill up the large blank space which still exists on the map of this country. Experience taught us that our plan was impracticable; the only possible way of making explorations in Arabia is to take it piecemeal, to investigate each district separately, and by degrees to make a complete map by patching together the results of a number of isolated expeditions. Indeed, this is the only satisfactory way of seeing any country, for on a great through journey the traveller generally loses the most interesting details.
My husband again, to our great satisfaction, had Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur, placed at his disposal; and, as the longest way round was the quickest and best, we determined to make our final preparations in India, and meet him and his men at Karachi.
We left England at the beginning of November 1894, and at Aden, where we were obliged to tranship, we picked up our camp furniture, which we had deposited there on our return from Wadi Hadhramout.
Imam Sharif came on board to meet us at Karachi, and we also received a letter inviting us to stay at Government House, where we were most kindly entertained by Mrs. Pottinger, in the absence of her brother, Mr. James, the Commissioner in Scinde. This was very delightful to us, as we had already stayed in Reynolds's Hotel when on our way to Persia.
Matthaios had absolutely refused to come with us for fear we should carry out our great wish of going to Bir Borhut, and indeed the very name of '_Aravia_' was odious to him. Of course, being in India, we had to take two men in his place, and accordingly engaged two Goanese, half Portuguese: one Diego S. Anna Lobo, a little old man, as butler, and the other, Domingo de Silva, as cook. The former could speak English and Portuguese; the latter neither, only Hindustani. We took them back to India with us the following spring, keeping Lobo as our servant during the time of our stay there.
We had a calm and pleasant voyage of three days to Maskat with Captain Whitehead on the B.I.S.N. steamer _Chanda_, arriving just in time to escape a violent storm, which lasted for days, and in its commencement prevented our landing at the usual place. We had to go round a little promontory. There was also a good deal of rain, which cooled the air considerably.
We were the guests of Colonel Hayes Sadler, in his hospitable Residency, and he interested himself kindly in our affairs, giving us all the help he could in our arrangements, as did also Dr. Jayaker, the Indian doctor.
We intended first of all to penetrate into the regions of the Jebel Akhdar, and then to pass through the territory of the Jenefa tribe to Ghubbet el Hashish, which takes its name not from land grass, but from seaweed. There a boat was to meet us and take us westward; in this way we should avoid a stretch of desert which the Bedouin themselves shrink from, and which is impassable to Europeans. We could not procure any information about our journey to the Jebel Akhdar, as it does not appear to be the fashion at Maskat to go inland. However, both our old friend the Sultan Feysul and Colonel Sadler took infinite trouble to arrange for our journey; camels were hired and a horse for me, and the sheikhs of the tribes through whose country we should have to pass were summoned to escort us.
Owing, however, to the illness of some of our party, we were at the last moment obliged to defer the expedition; though we had made all the preparations we could for the great cold we should have to encounter, the change of climate would have been injurious to Imam Sharif and two of his men. As events proved it was fortunate we did so, for the insurrection (which I have already mentioned) broke out almost immediately afterwards, and in all probability we should not have returned alive to relate our experiences.
We next determined to go by sea to Merbat, and thence explore the Dhofar and Gara mountains. The sultan offered us the use of his _batil_, which was preparing to go to Zenghiber, as they call Zanzibar. We found on inspection that it was a small decked boat, with a very light upper deck at the stern, supported by posts. They were busy smearing the ship with fish oil. We were told it might be ready in three days, and we might take seven days or more over the voyage. However, we were delivered from this long voyage, for, unexpectedly, a steamer arrived most opportunely for us.
As it was not the pilgrim season, and as there was no cholera about, we ventured on this steamer, which is one of those that ply under the Turkish flag between the Persian Gulf and Jedda. The captain was an Armenian: in fact, all the steamers belonging to Turkey are run by Armenian companies and manned by Armenian sailors. The captain of the _Hodeida_ was not too exorbitant in his demand of 500 rupees to drop our party at Merbat. The steward could fortunately speak Greek.
We left Maskat on Monday, December 17, and had a very calm voyage, but this being our fifth steamer since we left home, we were anxious for a little dry land journeying.
We saw the high mountains all Tuesday, but nothing on Wednesday after early morning. The coast recedes and becomes low where the desert comes down to the sea. We passed the Kouria Mouria Islands in the night. They are inhabited by the Jenefa tribe, who pursue sharks, swimming on inflated skins. On Thursday we passed very curious scenery, a high akaba, just like the Hadhramout, in the background, and for about a mile between this and the sea a volcanic mass of rocks and peaks and crags of many hues. After passing this we were at our destination, and at three o'clock in the afternoon we left the steamer to land at Merbat. We were conveyed to the shore in three boats, one of which was called 'el liebot.' It is only fair that the English who have borrowed so many nautical terms from the Orientals, should now in their turn provide the Arabian name for a boat. Cutters and jolly-boats have taken their names from 'kattira' and 'jahlibot.'
Merbat, which is sixty-four miles from Maskat, is the first point of the Dhofar district after the long stretch of desert has been passed. It is a wretched little spot consisting of some fifty houses and a few Bedou huts, with about two hundred inhabitants. It is built on a tongue of land, which affords shelter for Arab dhows during the north-east monsoon. The water supply is from a pool of brackish water.
The excitement caused by the first arrival of a steamer was intense, and tiny craft with naked Bedouin soon crowded round us; after entrusting us to their tender mercies our Armenian captain steamed away, and it was not without secret misgivings that we landed amongst the wild-looking inhabitants who lined the shore.
We imagined we were being very kindly received when they pointed out the largest building in the place as our habitation, and my husband, Imam Sharif, our interpreter Hassan, and I joyfully hastened thither.
Unfortunately we had no recommendation to the head-man of this place, and he evidently distrusted us, for after taking us to a fort built of mud bricks, which offered ample accommodation for our party, he flatly refused to allow us to have our baggage or our servants therein.
After entering a kind of guard-room, we had to plunge to the right into pitchy darkness and stumble along, stretching out our hands like blind men, each taken by the shoulders and pushed and shoved by a roundabout way to a dark inner staircase, where we emerged into the light on some roofs.
They wanted us to stay where we were, but not wishing to remain without conveniences, we succeeded in getting between them and the door, and then found our way out of the building and rejoined our servants and our baggage on the beach. We flourished our letter to Wali Suleiman in his face; we expostulated, threatened, and cajoled, and passed a whole miserable hour by the shore, seated on our belongings under the blazing afternoon sun, watching our steamer gradually disappearing in the distance. Hemmed in by Bedouin, who stared at us as if we had come from the moon, exceedingly hot, hungry, and uncomfortable, we passed a very evil time indeed, speculating as to what would be the result of the conclave of the old head-men; but at last they approached us in a more friendly spirit, begged our pardon, and reinstated us in the fort with our bag and baggage, and were as civil as they could be. To our dying day we shall never know what caused us this dilemma. Did they really think we had come to seize their fort (which we afterwards heard was the case), and interfere with their frankincense monopoly? Or did they think we had come to look into the question of a large Arab dhow, which was flying the French flag, and was beached on the shore, and which we had reason to believe was conveying a cargo of slaves to one of the neighbouring markets for disposal? Personally, I suspect the latter was the true reason of their aversion to our presence, for the coast from here to Maskat has a bad reputation in this respect, and just lately Arab slave-dhows have been carrying on their trade under cover of protection obtained from France at Obok and Zanzibar. The inhabitants have plaited hair and knobkerries. I believe they belong to the Jenefa tribe.
Finding Merbat so uncongenial an abode, with no points of interest, and with a malarious-looking swamp in its vicinity, and not being able to obtain camels or escort for a journey inland, we determined only to pass one night there, and after wandering about in search of interests which did not exist, we came to terms with the captain of a most filthy baggala to take us along the coast to Al Hafa, the residence of Wali Suleiman, without whose direct assistance we plainly saw that nothing could be done about extending our expedition into the interior. It was only forty miles to Al Hafa, but, owing to adverse winds, it took us exactly two days to perform this voyage, and our boat was one of the dirtiest of the kind we have ever travelled on. In our little cabin in the stern the smell of bilge-water was almost overpowering, and every silver thing we had about us turned black with the sulphureous vapours. These pungent odours were relieved from time to time by burning huge chafing dishes of frankincense, a large cargo of which was aboard for transport to Bombay after we had been deposited at Al Hafa. One of the many songs our sailors sang when changing the flapping sails was about frankincense, so we tried to imagine that we were having a pleasant experience of the country we were about to visit; and even in its dirt and squalor an Arab dhow is a picturesque abode, with its pretty carvings and odd-shaped bulwarks. We were twenty-five souls on board, and our captain and his crew being devout Mohammedans, we had plenty of time and opportunity for studying their numerous prayers and ablutions.
The plain of Dhofar, along which we were now coasting, is quite an abnormal feature in this arid coast. It is the only fertile stretch between Aden and Maskat. It is formed of alluvial soil washed down from the Gara mountains; there is abundance of water very near the surface, and frequent streams make their way down to the sea, so that it is green. The great drawback to the country is the want of harbours; during the north-east monsoons dhows can find shelter at Merbat, and during the south-west monsoons at Risout, but the rest of the coast is provided with nothing but open roadsteads, with the surf always rolling in from the Indian Ocean.
The plain is never more than nine miles wide, and at the eastern end, where the mountains were nearer to the sea, it is reduced to a very narrow strip, a grand exception to the long line of barren waste which forms the Arabian frontage to the Indian Ocean, and which gets narrower and narrower as the mountains approach the sea at Saihut. Tall cocoanut palms adorn it in clusters, and long stretches of bright green fields refresh the eye; and, at frequent intervals, we saw flourishing villages by the coast. Tobacco, cotton, Indian corn, and various species of grain grow here in great abundance, and in the gardens we find many of the products of India flourishing, viz. the plantain, the papya, mulberries, melons, chillis, brinjols, and fruits and vegetables of various descriptions. We anchored for some hours off one of these villages, and paid our toll of dates to the Bedouin who came off to claim them, as is customary all along this coast, every dhow paying this toll in return for the privilege of obtaining water when they want it.
The Gara mountains are now one of the wildest spots in wild Arabia; owing to the disastrous blood feuds amongst the tribe and the insecurity of travel, they had never previously been penetrated by Europeans: all that was known of the district was the actual coast-line. Exciting rumours had reached the ears of Colonel Miles, a former political agent at Maskat, concerning lakes and streams, and fertility unwonted for Arabia, which existed in these mountains, and our appetites were consequently whetted for their discovery.
In ancient times this was one of the chief sources of the time-honoured frankincense 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: circle with dot in middle] 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 Manteion Artemidos 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.