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Updated: May 18, 2025
In fact, it scarcely ever rains in the Hadhramout. From the roof of our lofty castle we had an excellent view straight down the broad Hadhramout valley, dotted with towns, villages, palm groves, and cultivation for fully thirty miles, embracing the two towns of Siwoun and Terim, ruled over by the two brother sultans of the Kattiri tribe.
The following evening we were thrown into some excitement by the arrival of the sultan in our room with seven letters, the general tenor of which was that eight of the Tamimi had come, with the siyara of four Amri only, and no siyara of Kattiri, as far as Siwoun, and asked to be passed on, but that the Kattiri refused them safe conduct; they asked the sultan of Shibahm to go to Shibahm and arrange for them to reach us.
We began bargaining for it at once, my husband offering ten rupees for the stone and ten for the golden setting, but the seyyid who brought it said it was the property of a man in Siwoun, who wished to keep it for his children, and he must take it back to him.
The animosity still continues and there is little intercourse between Siwoun and Shibahm, though only twelve miles apart. The Kattiri have more of the Bedou about them and the Yafei have more of the Arab. Our siyar was twenty-five dollars.
The Jabberi had gone away, as my husband said he must think over this; so we consulted together. We at first quite decided to return to Al Koton, and try to reach the coast by Wadi al Ain and, if we could not have the camels, to load our own three animals with necessaries and money, leaving all else behind, and perhaps to slip by Siwoun in the night.
Our very faint hope of this was only founded on the fact that the seyyids of Meshed are at enmity with those of Siwoun. On February 1, the Tamimi sent to say they had really started to fetch us, but the Kattiri told them they would declare war on them unless they retired.
In answer to the seven letters there was nothing from the sultan of Siwoun, and the sultan of Terim sent a verbal answer 'Do as you please, taking no responsibility to which Sultan Sal
The sultan also went to Shibahm to meet some of the arbiters of our fate, and the sultan of Siwoun agreed to let us pass: but others said we had five hundred camels loaded with arms, and all sorts of other fables, and they all quarrelled dreadfully about us, so the sultan returned to Al Koton to await replies to his letters.
These people never seem to think that we value our own lives as much as they do theirs. Meshed was also closed against us. The sultan of Siwoun and the seyyids had sworn on the Koran not to let us proceed on our journey; the Kattiri had also sworn and sent messages to the Tamimi of Bir Borhut, the Jabberi of Wadi bin Ali, and the Nahadi, and they were all against us.
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.
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