United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Word Of The Day