We got very friendly with Sultan Salàh during our long stay under his roof, and he would come and sit for hours together in our room and talk over his affairs. Little by little he was told of all our sufferings by the way, and was very angry. We also consulted him as to our plans, and told him how badly Saleh was behaving.
We used sometimes to think of dismissing Saleh, but thought him too dangerous to part with. It was better to keep him under supervision, and leave him as much in the dark as possible about our projects.
The sultan took special interest in our pursuits, conducting us in person to archæological sites, and manifesting a laudable desire to have his photograph taken. He assisted both our botanist and naturalist in pursuing their investigations into the somewhat limited flora and fauna of his dominions, and was told by Imam Sharif that his work with the sextant was connected with keeping our watches to correct time.
He would freely discourse, too, on his own domestic affairs, giving us anything but a pleasing picture of Arab harem life, which he described as 'a veritable hell.' Whenever he saw me reading, working with my needle, or developing photographs, he would smile sadly, and contrast my capabilities with those of his own wives, who, as he expressed it, 'are unable to do anything but painting themselves and quarrelling.' Poor Sultan Salàh has had twelve wives in his day, and he assured us that their dissensions and backbitings had made him grow old before his time; his looking so old must be put down to the cares of polygamy. At Al Koton the sultan had at that time only two properly acknowledged wives, whom he wisely kept apart; his chief wife, or 'sultana,' was sister to the sultan of Makalla, and the sultan of Makalla is married to a daughter of Sultan Salàh by another wife; in this way do Arabic relationships get hopelessly confused. The influence of the wife at Al Koton was considerable, and he was obviously in awe of her, so much so that when he wanted to visit his other wife he had to invent a story of pressing business at Shibahm. 'Our wives,' said he one day, 'are like servants, and try to get all they can out of us; they have no interest in their husband's property, as they know they may be sent away at any time.' And in this remark he seems to have properly hit off the chief evil of polygamy. He also told us that, having got all they can from one husband, they go off to a man that is richer, though how they make these arrangements, if they stick to their veils, is a mystery to me.
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 Salàh has money which he made in India, and owns property in Bombay; consequently he has the most important weapon to wield that anyone can have in a Semitic country.
The sultan told us a famous plan they have in this country for making a fortune. Two Hadhrami set out for India together, a father and son, or two brothers. They collect enough money before starting to buy a very fine suit of clothes each, and to start trade in a small way. They then increase the business by credit, and when they have got enough of other people's money into their hands, one departs with it to the inaccessible Hadhramout, while the other waits to hear of his safe arrival, and then he goes bankrupt and follows him.
Sultan Salàh had not a high opinion of his countrymen, and told us several other tales that did not redound to their credit.
'Before I went to India I was a rascal (harami) like these men here,' he constantly asseverated, and his love for things Indian and English is unbounded. 'If only the Indian Government would send me a Mohammedan doctor here, I would pay his expenses, and his influence, both political and social, would be most beneficial to this country.' It is certainly a great thing for England to have so firm a friend in the centre of the narrow habitable district between Aden and Maskat, which ought by rights to be ours, not that it is a very profitable country to possess, but in the hands of another power it might unpleasantly affect our road to India, and in complying with this simple request of Sultan Salàh's an easy way is open to us for extending our influence in that direction.
Likewise from a humane point of view, this suggestion of Sultan Salàh's is of great value, for the inhabitants of the Hadhramout are more hopelessly ignorant of things medical than some of the savage tribes of Africa. Certain quacks dwell in the towns, and profess to diagnose the ailments of a Bedou woman by smelling one of her hairs brought by her husband. For every pain, no matter where, they brand the patient with a red-hot iron (kayya); to relieve a person who has eaten too much fat, they will light a fire round him to melt it; to heal a wound they will plug up the nostrils of the sufferer, believing that certain scents are noxious to the sore; the pleasant scents being the most harmful. Iron pounded up by a blacksmith is also a medicine.
On an open sore they tie a sheet of iron, tin, or copper with four holes in the corners for strings. We heard of the curious case of a man who for a wager ate all the fat of a sheep that was killed at a pilgrimage. He lay down to sleep under a shady tree and all the fat congealed in his inside. The doctor ordered him to drink hot tea, while fires were lit all around him, and thus he was cured and was living in Shibahm when we were there.
