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Updated: June 8, 2025
Shibahm is now the property of the sultan of Makalla, but was administered by his cousin Sal
So much was said about the dangers of the onward road that Saleh was sent with the letters for Shibahm and Sheher and told to hold them tight, and say that if we could not deliver these in person we should return to the wali of Aden and say that the sultan of Hagarein would not let us go on. This frightened him, so he made a very dear bargain for fifteen camels, and we were to leave next day.
From the entrance to Wadi Ser we could see Shibahm in the distance, an unpromising looking spot among sandhills. We were all able to find shelter at Hanya under an enormous thorny b'dom tree covered with fruit, and we felt like birds out of a cage, for we never could walk out at Al Koton without a crowd, and the greasiness and spiciness of the food was beginning to pall.
The sultan of Siwoun was invited, with seven sheikhs, to the palace of Shibahm on friendly terms and there murdered in cold blood, while forty of his followers were killed outside. The inhabitants of Shibahm were not at all friendly disposed to us.
Talib had not been absent from us an hour when he again arrived, saying he wanted four dollars to pay a debt he owed in Bir bin Aboudan; 'it was to come out of the thirty dollars still owing for the siyara, and to be paid at Sheher, he said. He was, of course, told that the money for the siyara had been fully paid up, seventy dollars before the sultan of Shibahm, and forty at Sa'ah.
The Kattiri tyrannise over the sultan of Siwoun and are enemies to the sultan of Shibahm; beyond them are the Minhali, who are also enemies; then the Amri and the Tamimi, who are friendly, and then come the Mahri. The sultan told us that not even he could prevent us going along the kafila path, but we should not be admitted into any villages and should probably be denied water.
This seal is of particular interest, for on it were the words 'Yarsahal, the Elder of Shibahm'; and in an inscription published by M. Halévy, we have the two Yarsahals and various members of this family described as vassals of the King of the Gebaniti.
Hamdani tells us in his 'Geography of the Arabian Peninsula' that there were salt works at Shabwa, and 'that the inhabitants, owing to the wars between Himyar and Medhig, left Shabwa, came down into the Hadhramout and called the place Shibahm, which was originally called Shibat. Times are much changed since Shabwa was a great town, for from all accounts it is now quite deserted save for the Bedouin, and is six days from good water; the water there is salt and bitter, like quinine, the sultan said.
On the whole I should accredit Shibahm with a population of certainly not less than six thousand souls: there are thirteen mosques in it, and fully six hundred houses, tall and gaunt, to which an average population of ten souls is but a moderate estimate. The slave population of Shibahm is considerable; many slaves have houses there, and wives and families of their own.
There are three or four armed soldiers to protect Shibahm, the sultan has erected bastions and forts all about it, and the walls are patrolled every night. There are many ruined houses in the plain, relics of the great war forty years ago, when the Kattiri advanced as far as Al Koton and did great damage.
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