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Updated: July 31, 2024
Bir Lammas is a great, and I must add, very dirty, halting-place for caravans going to Shukra, on the Tarik el Arkob, to El Kaur and the Wadi Hadhramout. We were two nights at Bir Lammas. I was too ill to go about at all, but I could not resist going out to see some baboons which came to look at us from the low cliffs. I am sure their leader must have been 4 feet long without his tail.
Lastly, we have the slave population of the Hadhramout, all of African origin, and the freed slaves who have married and settled in the country. Most of the tillers of the soil, personal servants, and the soldiers of the sultans are of this class. Never shall I forget the confusion of our start.
The village of Kishin, the Mahri capital, consists of a few scattered houses and some Bedou huts of matting and poles placed in a dreary sandy waste, very different from the fertile plain of Dhofar, and more like the surroundings of Sheher. When my husband asked for the sultan's assistance to go into the Hadhramout, he said: 'No one ever goes that way, it is full of robbers.
Religion is the moving spirit of the place; without religion the whole Hadhramout would have been abandoned long ago as useless, but the inhabitants look upon it as the most sacred spot on earth, Mohammed having been born in Arabia, and hence their objection to its being visited by unbelievers. The Shafi sect prevails to the exclusion of all others.
From it the table-land slopes gently down to the northward towards the main valley of the Hadhramout, and eastwards towards the Wadi Adim. After two days more travelling we approached the heads of the many valleys which run into the Hadhramout; the Wadis Doan, Rakhi, Al Aisa, Al Ain, Bin Ali, and Adim all start from this elevated plateau and run nearly parallel.
The pattern of their dress is the same as that worn in the Hadhramout, i.e. composed of two pieces of cotton cloth wide enough to reach the finger-tips and with a seam down each side. The front piece is longer than in the Hadhramout, coming down to within a foot of the ground, but the train is also very much longer, and must lie more than a yard and a half on the ground.
Wellsted, in his list of the Hadhramout towns, mentions Henan as Ainan, and as a very ancient town, on the hill near which are inscriptions and rude sculptures.
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