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Updated: May 31, 2025
It is ten miles inland from Sheher as the crow flies. About 8 o'clock next morning we started, not knowing precisely whence or whither, and determined to keep together as much as possible. We followed for miles the bed of a stream, which collects all the water from this part of the akaba, and gradually develops into Wadi Adim, the great approach to the Hadhramout.
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.
Our preparations for this expedition were made under quite different and much happier circumstances from those which attended our last journey from Aden to the interior of Arabia, i.e. the Hadhramout. We received every help that could be given us by General Cuningham, Colonel Hayes-Sadler, Captain Wadeson, and, indeed, everyone from whom we asked assistance was most kind.
The next day, three miles after leaving Haura, we quitted the Wadi Kasr and at last, at the village of Alimani, entered the main valley of the Hadhramout. It is here very broad, being at least eight miles from cliff to cliff, and receives collateral valleys from all sides, forming, as it were, a great basin.
Then again, he would continually lament over the fanaticism and folly of his fellow-countrymen, more especially the priestly element, who systematically oppose all his attempts at introducing improvements from civilised countries into the Hadhramout. The seyyids and the mollahs dislike him; the former, who trace their descent from the daughter of Mohammed, forming a sort of hierarchical nobility in this district; and on several occasions he has been publicly cursed in the mosques as an unbeliever and friend of the infidel. But Sultan Sal
The second one, which is a mile further up the Wadi Yeramis than the first, is evidently Himyaritic, and protected the first town after Banna on the way to the Hadhramout. It is circular, crowning a hill 300 feet high, and enclosing a space of 50 yards in diameter. On the north-east side it is protected by five square towers, and has one gate to the south.
For seven hours we travelled along the valley, which from its width was like a plain till we were within a mile of the castle of Al Koton, where the sultan of Shibahm resides. Thus far all was desert and sand, but suddenly the valley narrows, and a long vista of cultivation was spread before us. Here miles of the valley are covered with palm groves. Bright green patches of lucerne called kadhlb, almost dazzling to look upon after the arid waste, and numerous other kinds of grain are raised by irrigation, for the Hadhramout has beneath its expanse of sand a river running, the waters of which are obtained by digging deep wells. Skin buckets are let down by ropes and drawn up by cattle by means of a steep slope, and then the water is distributed for cultivation through narrow channels; it is at best a fierce struggle with nature to produce these crops, for the rainfall can never be depended upon. We had intended to push on to Al Koton, but Sultan Sal
This is no doubt the 'Maratha Mountains' of Ptolemy, the Mons Excelsus of Pliny, which shuts off the Hadhramout, where once flourished the frankincense and the myrrh. Words cannot express the desolate aspect of this vast table-land, Akaba or the 'going-up, as the Arabs call it. It is perfectly level, and strewn with black lumps of basalt, looking as though a gigantic coal-scuttle had been upset.
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.
There are traces of letters above the pattern. The buildings are about 20 feet square and several are surrounded by circular walls. They are apparently of extreme antiquity, and doubtless far anterior in date to any other Himyaritic remains that we saw in the Hadhramout.
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