THE CITY OF SHIBAHM
On January 25 we started for Shibahm, carpets having been sent forward the day before. The sultan was to follow us in a day or two, when some sheikhs had been to see him. We started at 8.30 and were at Shibahm in four hours. We had eleven camels only, three horses, and the donkey. We travelled, as soon as we left Al Koton, through sand nearly all the way. We passed the tall white dome of Sheikh Aboubekr-bin-Hassan's tomb, near which the ruling family are buried if the seyyids permit. They are all-powerful, and the sultan can do nothing in this respect without them—not even be buried in his own family tomb. There is a well beside the tomb, or rather the kind of building from which water is obtained in the open valleys. This consists of a small white building 8 or 9 feet square, with a dome resting on an open pattern composed of a herring-bone course of bricks; a little wooden ladle, 4 or 5 inches wide, stands in one of the little openings to dip out the water, which would otherwise evaporate. They drink out of the ladle, and fill the water-skins and the drinking trough for animals, which stands always near. They would never let us drink from the ladles.
As we neared Shibahm we passed through a good deal of ground that had once been irrigated, but it had had its ups and downs, and was now abandoned. First there had been plenty of soil and the palm-trees were planted in it. Then the wind had denuded the roots, some of which had been banked up and walled in with stones; others were standing on bare roots, but at this time the sand was burying the whole place. There were high drifts against many of the walls and among the trees.
Shibahm is twelve miles distant from Al Koton, and is one of the principal towns in the Hadhramout valley. It is built on rising ground in the middle of the narrowest part of the valley, so that no one can pass between it and the cliffs of the valley out of gunshot of the walls. This rising ground has doubtless been produced by many successions of towns built of sun-dried bricks, for it is the best strategical point in the neighbourhood.
Early Arab writers tell us that the Himyaritic population of this district came here when they abandoned Shabwa, early in the Christian era. We succeeded, however, in finding evident traces of an occupation of earlier date than this, both in a seal, which is described further on, and in an inscription in which the name Shibahm occurs, and which certainly dates from the third century b.c. Even if Shibahm were not the site of the original capital it must always, centuries before our era, have been a place of considerable importance as the centre of the frankincense trade, for here must have been made up the caravans which brought the spices westward by the great frankincense road across Arabia. The caravans take twenty-five days on the journey to Saihut, and five to Makalla; they go also to Nejd, but we could not find out how long they take.
Shibahm is now the property of the sultan of Makalla, but was administered by his cousin Salàh, who received 40,000 rupees a year for the purpose. It is now three hundred years since these Yafei left their old home and came to settle in the Hadhramout. They were then a wild predatory race, plundering caravans; now they have become peaceable and rich. They still remain close friends with the Yafei farther west, but are quite independent of them. It is the maintenance of a residence for the Nizam of Hyderabad, and their constant communication with India, that has doubtless made all the difference between the Yafei tribe and others. Building seems to have been their mania. The sultan of Shibahm has numbers of houses at Al Koton and Shibahm, and he was intending to spend 20,000 rupees in rebuilding his father's house, for the castle at Al Koton is not his own but Government property, and the strip of land across the valley, part of it sandy, goes with it. He was buying up land for himself in the Wadi Al Ain and elsewhere. He told us his father left eleven million rupees to divide among his numerous progeny.
Relationships in that family must be a trifle confused. Manassar of Makalla had married two sisters (both now dead) of his cousin Salàh. Salàh had married two of Manassar's sisters. A daughter of Salàh's married Manassar, and another of them was married to one of Manassar's sons, and Manassar's brother Hussein of Sheher married, or was married to, a third daughter of Salàh. Apparently the same complications existed in the generation before this, but into them it is impossible to go. As in India, the favourite marriage that a man can make is to marry his 'uncle's daughter.' Possibly the fact that property goes from brother to brother till a whole generation is dead, instead of from father to son, has something to do with this arrangement.
The town of Shibahm offers a curious appearance as one approaches; above its mud brick walls, with bastions and watch towers, appear the tall houses of the wealthy, whitewashed only at the top, which make it look like a large round cake with sugar on it. Outside the walls several industries are carried on, the chief of which is the manufacture of indigo dye. The small leaves are dried in the sun and powdered, and then put into huge jars and filled with water. Next morning these are stirred with long poles, producing a dark-blue frothy mixture; this is left to settle, and then the indigo is taken from the bottom and spread out on cloths to drain; the substance thus procured is taken home and mixed with dates and saltpetre. Four pounds of this indigo to a gallon of water makes the requisite and universally used dye for garments, the better class of which are calendered by beating them with wooden hammers on stones. This noise was a great mystery to us till we traced our way to it and found out what it was. They used also to beat the dried leaf of a kind of acacia called kharrad, and, when pounded, make of it a paste which has a beautiful pea-green appearance; it is used for giving a polish to leather.
A Sabæan Altar