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A few years ago a hundred Yafei surprised the Fadhli, and sacked the fort, which has not since been repaired. Many parties of travellers were gathering round this well for the night; one husband and wife who took alternate charge of a baby slung in a straw cradle and a goat; another pair with their household goods, baby, and many fowls on a camel, while they were each laden with more fowls.
Finally, when he could not get what he wanted, and we saw it was not safe to trust ourselves in the hands of so shifty a man, he became so insistent that my husband told him 'he had seen enough of him; he might leave our camp; we would not travel with him. Off went the sultan in such a hurry that he left his stick behind, and sent us a message that we were not to pass another night in his country. We sent back a message that we would not stir till morning. When the sultan was gone we had tea, and I was talking to a dirty little boy of five called Boubakr and a bigger one called Ali, to whom I was giving lumps of sugar dirtied by the journey. We were laughing well at the sultan, calling him all sorts of names expressing our scorn of his meanness, when to our amusement we found these were his sons. He came himself about dawn next day to say we were to go back over the Wadi Banna, and not the shortest way to the part of the Fadhli country, which is beyond the Yafei, unless we gave him more money. We would not speak to him ourselves, so he had to talk with the servants (who were continuing packing) all the while, and, we let him see the greatest amusement on our part. Mus
The sources belong to the Yafei, and the Fadhli pay them annually 25 Maria Theresa dollars, a basket of dates, and a turban for the sultan, but the management is in the hands of seyyids in inam for ever, they being supposed to be neutral, for fear a war might produce a drought. Still, in time of war the water often is cut off.
The sultan told us there had been a great uproar about us, and all the Yafei tribe were now considered Kafirs. The Kattiri absolutely refused the Jabberi leave to conduct us, and the Nahadi, through whose lands we had passed from Hagarein, said that if they had known how the Kattiri would treat us, they would have treated us just the same.
He and the soldiers and the wazir, Abdullah bin Abdurrahman, rode at some distance to our left, between us and the dangerous Yafei towers. The Goddam or Kadam range, which separates the Wadi Yeramis from the Abyan, is a mass of arid peaks, none reaching to more than 2,000 feet. A road leads from Al Ma'a across the mountains to the sea at Asala.
The Kattiri are not allowed to stay in the town at night, for we heard that seven months before some of them were detected in an attempt to blow up the palace with gunpowder. There was a fight also, about a quarter of a mile outside the town, in which five Kattiri and seven Yafei were killed.
The Bedouin here, like the Turkomans, live in scattered abodes, little groups of two or three houses dotted about, and solitary homesteads. It belongs to the Kattiri tribe, who are at war with the Yafei. They once owned Sheher and Makalla and took Al Koton, but in a war in 1874 the Yafei were supported by the English; hence their friendship for England.
They said that the Yafei might shoot us, though a cannon would be necessary, and lay the blame on the Fadhli, so they would by no means let us camp anywhere but in a most disgustingly dusty place next the village; and they kept sharp watch all night, talking much. The towers protect the approach to the Wadi Theba, which here goes up or comes down from Al Kara.
It would be easy for the inhabitants to stop an enemy's attack here. The smell of the arrack is not at all pleasant. Two Fadhli were once directed into the Banna bed by the Yafei of Al Husn, and when they were in the wood they set fire to it and burnt them. The inhabitants do not venture off the path. There are quicksands in some parts of the wadi.
Secondly, we have the Arabs proper, a decidedly later importation into the country than the Bedouin. They live in and cultivate the lands around the towns; many of them carry on trade and go to India and the Straits Settlements, and some of them are very wealthy. They also are divided into tribes. The chief of those dwelling in the Hadhramout are the Yafei, Kattiri, Minhali, Amri, and Tamimi.
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