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Their faces are veiled with something like the yashmak of Egypt, but it is of plain blue calico, a little embroidered. Makalla is ruled over by a sultan of the Al Kaiti family, whose connection with India has made them very English in their sympathies, and his majesty's general appearance, with his velvet coat and jewelled daggers, is far more Indian than Arabian.
After our futile attempts to penetrate into the Mahri country, there was nothing left for us but to start again in our boat for Sheher, and rely on the promises which Sultan Hussein al Kaiti had given us the year before of sending us under safe escort to the eastern portion of the Hadhramout valley, which must contain much of interest, not yet having been explored by Europeans; so we set sail again, and were soon passing country that we had ridden over on camels.
A very steep, winding, slippery road led us to the gate, where soldiers received us and conducted us to a courtyard, letting off guns the while. There stood the Sultan Abdul M'Barrek Hamout al Kaiti, a very fat, evil-looking man, pitted by smallpox.
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.
Ghalib, the eldest son and heir of the chief of the Al Kaiti family, ruled here as the vicegerent of his father, who is in India as jemadar or general of the Arab troops, nearly all Hadhrami, in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad.
We were soon out of the Nahad country. Our troubles on the score of rudeness were happily terminated at Haura, where a huge castle, belonging to the Al Kaiti family, dominates a humble village, surrounded by palm groves. Without photographs to bear out my statement, I should hardly dare to describe the magnificence of these castles in the Hadhramout.
Really the most influential people in the town are the money-grubbing Parsees from Bombay, and it is essentially one of those commercial centres where Hindustani is spoken nearly as much as Arabian. The government of the country is now almost entirely in the hands of the Al Kaiti family, which at present is the most powerful family in the district, and is reputed to be the richest in Arabia.
Once it was the chief commercial port of the Hadhramout valley, but now Makalla has quite superseded it, for Sheher is nothing but an open roadstead with a couple of baggalas belonging to the family of Al Kaiti, which generally have to go to Hami to shelter, and its buildings are now falling into ruins, since the Kattiri were driven away.
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