United States or Gibraltar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
They look with peculiar distrust on the introduction of external influence into their sacred country, and are the obstructionists of the Hadhramout, but at the same time their influence is decidedly towards law and order in a lawless land. They never carry arms.
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.
We were anxious to proceed along the Hadhramout valley and to reach the tomb of the prophet Houd.
We had many an interesting stroll round the sultan's gardens at Al Koton, and watched the cultivation of spices and vegetables for the royal table, or rather floor; the lucerne and clover for his cattle, the indigo and henna for dyeing purposes, and the various kinds of grain. But on the cultivation of the date-palm the most attention is lavished; it was just then the season at which the female spathe has to be fructified by the male pollen, and we were interested in watching a man going round with an apron full of male spathes. With these he climbed the stem of the female palm, and with a knife cut open the bark which encircles the female spathe, and as he shook the male pollen over it he chanted in a low voice, 'May God make you grow and be fruitful. No portion of the palm is wasted in the Hadhramout: with the leaves they thatch huts and make fences, the date stones are ground into powder as food for cattle, and they eat the nutty part which grows at the bottom of the spathes, and which they called kourzan. On a journey a man requires nothing but a skin of dates, which will last him for days, and, when we left, Sultan Sal
Imam Sharif was returning from Zanzibar, and leaving that ship to tranship for India. From a Survey by Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur. M^r. Stanford's Geog.^l Estab.^t, London 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.
Now Pliny says that the capital of the country was Thumna; this is quite correct and was confirmed by the seal, for Thumna was the capital of the Gebaniti, who were a Himyaritic tribe, west of the Hadhramout. It is therefore an additional confirmation of the accuracy of the ancient geographers concerning this district.
From 'Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, by S. Lane-Poole, I take the following notices of this place: El Asmaï has narrated of a man of Hadhramout that he said: 'We find near Barahout an extremely disgusting and foetid smell, and then news is brought to us of the death of a great man of the chiefs of the infidels.
Another curious point I may mention in connection with these tombs is that the Arab historian, Yaqut, in his 'Mu'gam, tells us of a god in the Hadhramout, called Al Galsad, who was a gigantic man; perhaps this god may have some connection with the giant tombs of Saleh and Eber. Also Makrisi, who wrote in the tenth century, a.d., speaks of a giant's grave he saw near Shabwa.
They then increase the business by credit, and when they have got enough of other people's money into their hands, one departs with it to the inaccessible Hadhramout, while the other waits to hear of his safe arrival, and then he goes bankrupt and follows him. Sultan Sal
Word Of The Day