Part 2

It was five o’clock on Monday morning, July 2d, that I set off from Aden with my camel boy Salih, and we did not stop until we reached the village of Wahat, nearly at noon. Starting again at seven o’clock, we followed the Arab custom of marching the whole night with the caravan. There was no breeze, and it was very hot. Vegetation does not begin until you enter Wady Merga. Here we had fresh dates, and made our camp under a big acacia tree. The road begins to rise rapidly as we follow the Wady northwards, and at midnight we pass Suk-el-Juma, or Friday market. This part of the road, they tell us, is dangerous, and so the Bedouins who accompany our eighty-two camel caravan swing the lighted wicks which they use to fire their flint-lock shotguns. Only one man in the party had a Springfield rifle. On July 4th we fell in with some Arabs who wanted to seize me as a spy of the British government and keep me as a prisoner until money was paid for my release. After some difficulty we persuaded them that I was not a British subject, and that no money would be paid even if they kept me a prisoner for many days.

The following day we had another adventure. Climbing up the valley and past fields of verdure, where men were plowing and women were weeding the gardens, we suddenly stumbled upon a Turkish castle, where an unmannerly negro official was in charge. He said no strangers were allowed beyond the Turkish frontier, seized all my baggage, confiscated my books and maps, and sent me under guard to Taiz, the next important town. On the afternoon of this same day, a heavy thunderstorm burst upon us from a clear sky, the wind became a hurricane, some of the camels stampeded, our umbrellas turned inside out, and, worst of all, a mountain torrent, swollen by the sudden rains and hail, carried away a donkey and part of our baggage. Drenched to the skin, we at last forced the camels up the slope to the house of an Arab, and were hospitably entertained, around a big fire which he built, on Arab coffee and sweetmeats.

We were now three thousand feet above sea level, and it was very cold at night even in July. We pressed on the next day, travelling through a country where every one fears his neighbour. I asked my guide why he had not prayed since we left Wahat, and his answer was, “If I pray on the road, my heart gets soft, and I fear to shoot an Arab robber because he may be a Moslem.” We saw many centipedes and scorpions sleeping after their rain bath, and warming themselves on the rocks. Every turn of the road brought us in sight of new villages, and everywhere the peasants have done their best to cultivate the soil by irrigation, until you can count a dozen terraces one above the other up the mountainside, in various shades of green of the different crops. Once and again we met caravans going down to the coast, carrying coffee or sheep-hides, as you see in the picture. One could hear the approach of a caravan by the camel drivers’ song. In a high, monotonous key and with endless repetition, they would sing verses like this about their camels:

“O Lord, keep them from all dangers that pass, And make their long legs pillars of brass.”

Two days later we arrived at the interesting old town of Taiz, and I think I was the first Western traveller to visit it since the days of Niebuhr in 1763. While waiting for the governor to investigate the seizure of my baggage and the question of my passport, I had a good opportunity to study the town. Taiz has a population of about seven thousand people; two or three very old mosques with minarets, a Jewish synagogue, and a very respectable market. Just back of the town rises a mountain called the Bride’s Castle, from the top of which you can see clear across to the African coast. The Turkish government takes its own time about such a little matter as the inspection of baggage and the granting of a passport, and it was July 26th before I left Taiz. Even then I was not released, but sent on from the local governor to the capital under guard of a mounted trooper, who rode a beautiful horse, while I followed on a mule. It was no hardship, however, to get away from Taiz, and once more to breathe the country air and climb the mountain passes.

A long day’s journey, always climbing up the mountainside, brought us to Ibb, where my servant was imprisoned because he had told me the names of the villages. After some difficulty he was released, but the incident shows how suspicious the Turks are of strangers who travel in their country. Twelve hours farther on we came to Yerim, an unhealthy town situated near a marsh. It was July 29th, but the high elevation and the rain-storms brought the temperature down to fifty-two degrees, which was a great change from the temperature at Aden which, when I left, was 105 degrees in the shade. At another village, Maaber, even at noon the temperature was not over fifty-six degrees, and we wrapped ourselves up as though we were on a polar expedition. In these highlands of Yemen snow falls during the winter season, and frost is common. Just after leaving Yerim, we passed a large boulder on the road with an impression in it as though it were of some one’s foot. The Arabs say it is that of Ali, the grandson of Mohammed, who came along this road, and whenever they pass it they anoint it with oil and stop to pray.

From Yerim on to Sanaa the plateau is more level. Wide fields of barley and wheat took the place of coffee plantations, and the funniest sight we saw was camels hitched up for plowing. What with their long necks and queer harness, so much too big for the job, it was an odd sight. Damar, a large town with three mosques and houses built of stone, was our next stopping place. From Damar to Waalan was thirty-five miles, and then to Sanaa eighteen miles more. The roads here are splendid and are kept in good repair for the sake of the Turkish artillery, although there are no carriages nor horses in use.

On Thursday, August 2d, I entered Sanaa by the Yemen gate. Three years before I entered the same city from the other side, coming from Hodeida. Handed over to the care of a policeman, I waited for the governor to hear my case, and after finding an old Greek friend who knew me in Aden, and offered to go bail, I was allowed liberty, and for nineteen days was busy seeing the city and visiting the Arabs. We shall hear more of Sanaa in a following chapter. I forgot to say that at Yerim, while sleeping in the coffee shop, I was robbed of all my money, and so I ended my zigzag journey not only tired out, but a pauper; and if I had not pawned my watch and coat, I would have been in debt to the hotel keeper. Pioneer journeys in Topsy Turvy Land are not without difficulty.

IV

GOING TO MARKET TO SOW SEED

The Arabs are a very old-fashioned people. In fact, their customs have not changed since the time that Ishmael as a boy went with his mother Hagar on the camels and landed somewhere in Arabia. I suppose that even in those old times the Arabs and the Syrians kept a weekly market where all the people from all the villages came together to barter their wares, to shake hands and make acquaintance and go back with a larger idea of their small world. The custom of holding weekly markets on a special day of the week even in the smallest villages is still common in Arabia. In fact, there are villages that take their name from a market day, and are called “Thursday” or “Saturday” because on those days of the week the village takes on an air of importance and doubles in population. The Arabs, however, do not have the same names for the days of the week that we have. Instead of naming them after idols, Thursday after Thor and Wednesday after the old god Woden, they number the days of the week just as in the first chapter of Genesis, and have “The First Day,” “The Second Day,” etc. The only exception is Friday which is the sacred day of the week and the Mohammedan Sabbath and is named “The Day of the Congregation” because then they all go to the markets to pray and hear a sermon.

A busy market is held at “Suk el Khamis” every Thursday all the year round, rain or shine (and it generally is shine in Arabia), out in the open air near the ruins of an old mosque about three miles distant from Menama village at Bahrein where the missionaries live. The two tall minarets on the mosque can be seen from the market. It is one of the oldest mosques in East Arabia, and was built several hundred years ago and rebuilt several times. Now it is no longer used to pray in nor does the call to prayer ever ring out from the minarets. The fret is that one Moslem sect after another took possession of the building, and in the religious disputes that arose the building itself went into decay. One part of the mosque is now used for a goat pen. The gray square stones of which the mosque was once built are scattered about and serve as seats for visitors, and every traveller who visits Bahrein climbs up one of the minarets and gets a fine view of the islands. If you can read the old writing carved on the stones in Arabic script, you can see how often this mosque has changed hands between the rival parties in the Moslem world called Shiahs and Sunnis, and if you should ever visit the missionary rooms of the Reformed Church in New York, the secretary there can show you a gavel or mallet made from a beam of wood which was once in the roof of this very mosque. A piece of the old beam fell to the ground and was made into a mallet to show that the religion of Islam in Arabia is decaying and that missionaries to Moslems need not be afraid to enter the country of Mohammed.

Every Thursday morning the plain around this mosque is a busy scene. How often I have ridden down to this market on a donkey or walked in the heat of the sun and have seen a thousand or more people crowded together in all their bright coloured garments, men and women and children, busily engaged in trade, in play, or in quarrels over the price of an article! One man, perhaps, brings a load of water jars from the village of Ali. Another has a big donkey load of ropes or mats for sale, and still another brings great baskets of melons, pomegranates, dates, limes and vegetables. Women, covered over with their heavy black veils and looking very mischievously through little peep holes for their eyes, crouch on the ground before their little open-air stands where they sell cheap jewelry and trinkets or tiny bottles of perfume and black antimony powder, which the Arab girls use for their eyes.

The barber is also busy and plies his razor with a deft hand while he shaves the heads and beards of those who come, charging only a few coppers for the job. The breadmaker arrives on the scene very early, and builds his small open oven to bake his flap-cakes. He rolls the dough on a board, flattens it out with his fingers and then tosses it against the sides of the hot oven where it sticks fast and bakes into a large, light, palatable cake. Oh, how good such Arab bread is when you are hungry, or when you sit down to an Arab guest meal and have it served with fresh butter and honey!

More numerous and more loud than all the others who come are the half-naked Bedouins who come to sell a drove of sheep or barter for a couple of camels. They are all there this morning:

“Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief; Butcher, baker and candlestick maker.”

And if the candlestick maker, who sells more candles than candlesticks, is present, why should the missionary, who is sent to bring the Light of Life to men, be absent?

As often as possible therefore we visit this market-place, and sell books and Bibles or preach to those who will listen. It is not at all an easy place to sell or to preach, but those who come there witness fine, splendid opportunities to meet men face to face, to get acquainted and to renew old acquaintance with villagers who come from distant parts of the Bahrein Island group. Here it is that many a gospel portion has exchanged hands and many a story of the power of Christ has been sowed as good seed in the hearts of the Arabs in the hope that God would use it to make them think of Jesus Christ as their Saviour. If books are sold they are often carried from here to distant villages, and it is possible to make acquaintance here with Arabs who come from the mainland and are visiting the islands, while one is sure to meet old friends who have not been able to come to see you for a long time.

One merchant used to keep a dry-goods stand and was one of the few Moslems in the early days of our work who was always glad to welcome a missionary. When the sun was very hot the shelter of his mat-screen was a nice shady nook to sit down in and talk with wayfarers. Right near the tall minarets we sometimes discuss the Koran and its teachings, and tell the Arabs how the book of Mohammed is really a finger-post pointing them to the Gospel and to Jesus Christ, the Great Prophet Who is alive forevermore. Will you not pray that every Thursday God will bless this little acre, the market-place of Suk el Khamis, where we sow the seed of God’s Own Word, waiting for the harvest?

“Sowing the seed with an aching heart, Sowing the seed while the tear-drops start, Sowing the seed till the reapers come Gladly to gather the harvest home; Gathered in time or eternity, Sure, ah sure, will the harvest be.”

V

WHERE THE QUEEN OF SHEBA LIVED

You have all read the story given in 1 Kings x. of the Queen of Sheba and her visit to Solomon of whose fame she had heard in her distant kingdom in Southwest Arabia, but the story as told in Mohammed’s Bible, the Koran, is very different, and has many curious fables mixed up with it. It is found in the chapter called “The Ant,” and this is how he tells it.

“We heretofore bestowed knowledge on David and Solomon: and they said, Praise be unto God, who hath made us more excellent than many of His faithful servants! And Solomon was David’s heir; and he said, O men, we have been taught the speech of birds, and have had all things bestowed on us; this is manifest excellence. And his armies were gathered together unto Solomon, consisting of genii, and men and birds; and they were led in distinct bands, until they came unto the valley of ants. And an ant, seeing the hosts approaching, said, O ants, enter ye into your habitations, lest Solomon and his army tread you under feet, and perceive it not. And Solomon smiled, laughing at her words, and said, O Lord, excite me that I may be thankful for Thy favour wherewith Thou hast favoured me and my parents; and that I may do that which is right and well-pleasing unto Thee; and introduce me, through Thy mercy, into Paradise, among Thy servants the righteous. And he viewed the birds, and said, What is the reason that I see not the lapwing? Is she absent? Verily I will chastise her with a severe chastisement, or I will put her to death, unless she bring me a just excuse. And she tarried not long before she presented herself unto Solomon, and said, I have viewed a country which thou hast not viewed; and I come unto thee from Saba, with a certain piece of news. I found a woman to reign over them, who is provided with everything requisite for a prince, and hath a magnificent throne. I found her and her people to worship the sun, besides God.”

The Koran then goes on to tell how Solomon sent her a letter, and she sent ambassadors to him, and finally asked one of his terrible jinn to bring her to him, throne and all, from Southwest Arabia. He did it in the twinkling of an eye, and after she saw Solomon and his glory she was converted to his religion!

Although this latter story of the Queen of Sheba is evidently fabulous, there is no doubt that the Bible story is true, because recent explorers have visited the country of the Queen of Sheba and her old capital Marib, a short distance east of Sanaa, and have brought back inscriptions which tell of the ancient glory of her kingdom. In the Old Testament the Sabaeans lived in Sheba, and their caravans brought gold and precious stones and spices into distant lands. (See Job vi. 19; Ezek. xxvii. 22, and Psalm lxxii. 10.)

On my first and second visit to Sanaa, the high mountain capital of all Yemen, I was privileged to look over into the borders of the country where the Queen of Sheba lived, and on the journey described in Chapter III I probably travelled from the coast by the same road which was used in the days of Solomon. It is not easy to build roads in so mountainous a country. Everywhere one can see the ruins of the old Himyarite civilization which flourished here from the time of Solomon until the Christian era. Some of the roads undoubtedly have been kept in repair ever since they were built along the mountainside by these early engineers. Stone bridges across torrent beds, tanks for holding water, and old castles with inscriptions in the strange language, still witness to the strength and vigour of this old empire. The accompanying picture is not that of the Queen of Sheba herself, but is undoubtedly that of a princess in the Sheba country. It was found among many, many other inscriptions and carvings in the land south of Marib, the old capital, where the famous dyke was built which was destroyed by a flood. When you study the picture, you will notice that the woman’s dress, with its ornaments and without a veil, the use of a throne, the carved pillars, and the page boys (or are they girls?) in waiting, are all so very different from the Arabia of to-day. The picture is also interesting when we remember how the early travellers and scientists who copied or brought back these famous inscriptions have confirmed the history of the Old Testament and its many references to South Arabia. One of them says: “The Queen of Sheba proved Solomon with hard questions, all of which in his wisdom he answered her. Now we who study the Old Testament, reversing the process, go to the wonderland of that queen with a multitude of inquiries, to many of which it has already given us a satisfactory reply.”

The capital of the Queen of Sheba, Marib, is largely in ruins, but something of the glory of the old civilization still lingers at Sanaa, which is at once one of the most beautiful and one of the most ancient cities of Arabia, built before the time of Solomon. It lies in a wide valley 7,250 feet above sea level. Jebel Nakum, with its marble quarries, rises abruptly like a fortress, just east of the city. The town is surrounded by a high wall, and has four gates. The houses are many of them four and five stories high, built of stone, and as they have no window-glass, they use slabs of alabaster instead. The population of the city is about fifty thousand, of whom more than twenty thousand are Jews.

My first visit to the city was in 1891, and the second in 1894. The first time I came straight up from Hodeida through Menakha, and in four days reached the city. The second journey was from Aden northward, leaving on July 2d, but what with delays and accidents and imprisonment by the Turks at Taiz, I did not reach Yemen’s capital until the 2d of August. The most surprising thing about Sanaa is not its old ruins, nor the wonderful fertility of the country round about, but the interesting character of its population. Here was a large city full of Jews who came to this part of the world, as they themselves testified, long before the destruction of Jerusalem; Greek merchants were carrying on a brisk trade in all the manufactured articles of Europe with the Arabs of the interior; Turkish army officials in splendid uniform trying in vain, as they are to-day, with their regiments of Turkish troops to put down Arab rebellions; and then the Arabs themselves, men, women and children, strong mountaineers, with love for liberty and heartily despising the government of which they are unwilling subjects.

Looking northward from this city you can see the highlands of Asir and the distant road that leads through Nejran. All this country was once Christian, and in Sanaa itself stood the great cathedral built by the Abyssinian king, Abraha, about the time when Mohammed was born. From Sanaa he led his army to Mecca, hoping to take the city and convert it to the Christian faith, but he was not successful. In the Koran chapter of “The Elephant,” you may read how the Christians were defeated when smallpox broke out among them. Standing on the slopes of Jebel Nakum and looking eastward, the country of the Queen of Sheba is spread out before you. You can imagine I was very sorry that, having been robbed of all my money on the way, it was impossible to carry out my plan of going from Sanaa to Marib, and from there right across Arabia to Bahrein. Perhaps some of you who read these lines will be privileged to make this journey. If you are, you will pass through some of the most interesting ruins in the world, and the hardships of a camel journey will be abundantly compensated by what you see on the road.

VI

THE JEWS OF KHEIBAR

Nearly all of the people who live in the country of the camel are Mohammedans, but it was not always so. Before the days of Mohammed, the prophet, there were very many Christians in Arabia and also many Jews. The former lived mostly in the southern part of the great peninsula, but the Jews had large settlements not only in the country of the Queen of Sheba—of which we have heard—but also at Mecca and Medina, which are now the two sacred cities, and especially in the country north of Medina, Kheibar. Some of these children of Israel came to Arabia at the time of the captivity when they were driven from their own country by persecution, and settled down in the rich and fertile valleys of Nejran and on the hills of Yemen. Others came to Arabia about the time when Jesus Christ was born.

There are Jews in Arabia still but not nearly as many as in the olden time. Their condition, too, is very sad and they are often sorely oppressed by the Moslems. There is no missionary working among them at present, although they have been visited by colporteurs who brought them the New Testament in the Hebrew language so that they might read for themselves the story of the Saviour Jesus Christ. I once had the pleasure of talking to a large company of Jews in the capital city of Yemen, Sanaa, and it was very touching to realize that these Jews were not of the number whose ancestors rejected Jesus and led Him out to be crucified, because as they themselves told me their forefathers had left the Holy Land many, many years before Jesus was born at Bethlehem.

But I want to tell you about the Jews of Kheibar. Northeast of the city where Mohammed lies buried, Medina, there is a barren stretch of rocky country and in the midst of it a valley where there are some springs of water and where with great toil it is possible to produce some vegetation. Here it was that thousands of Jews settled in the days before Mohammed, tilled the soil and lived happily until the Arabian prophet with his fierce warriors came preaching a new religion and filling the valley with the dead bodies of those who would not accept it.