Another industry carried on outside Shibahm is rope-making out of the fibres of the fan palm (saap) which grows wild in the narrower valleys; the leaves are first left to soak in water, and then beaten till the fibres separate. Yet another is that of making lime for whitewash kilns—it is curious to watch the Bedouin beating the lime thus produced with long sticks, singing quaint little ditties as they thump, in pleasant harmony to the beating of their sticks.
We entered the town by some very sloping steps, which led through the gateway, passing some wells and the indigo dyers outside; also some horrible pools where they had put the little fish that the camels eat, to drain the oil from them. We entered a sort of square, having the castle on the right-hand side and a ruined mosque in front of us. This huge castle was built by the grandfather of the Sultan Manassar, sultan of Makalla, but, owing to some difference about his wives, he left the two topmost stories unfinished. No one lives in it, so we had the whole of this immense pile of buildings to ourselves. It belongs to Manassar. It is larger than Al Koton by far, and that is also exceeded in size by Haura. It is a most imposing structure and much more florid than the others. The gateway is a masterpiece of carving in intricate patterns. On entering this you turn sharp to the right up a shallow staircase, protected from without, but exposed to fire from the inmates of the castle. The pillars in the lofty rooms are beautifully carved. All the windows are filled with pretty fretwork; bolts, doors, and window frames are also carved. The huge doors are carved on one side only, the outer one, and inside they are rough and ill-grained and splashed with whitewash. There are pretty dado patterns round the walls; and the staircase, as in the other castles, has numerous doors for defence, usually put in the middle of the flights. Shooting-holes are in every direction. We established ourselves in a room about 30 feet by 25 feet, and used to go up and dine in one of the unfinished rooms at the top where there was a little bit of roof and where the cooking was done. We generally thought it wise to dine in our grill-room, in order to have our food hot. We all greatly enjoyed the works of our own cooks, provisions being supplied to us.
We overlooked a huge puddle into which the surrounding houses drain, and it is a proof of the scarcity of water in this part of Arabia, that they carefully carry this filthy fluid away in skins to make bricks with, even scraping up the remaining drops in the pool with their hands. In fact, it scarcely ever rains in the Hadhramout.
From the roof of our lofty castle we had an excellent view straight down the broad Hadhramout valley, dotted with towns, villages, palm groves, and cultivation for fully thirty miles, embracing the two towns of Siwoun and Terim, ruled over by the two brother sultans of the Kattiri tribe. Close to Shibahm several collateral valleys from north and south fall into the Hadhramout, and a glance at the map made by our chartographer, Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur, will at once show the importance of this situation.
Shibahm is the frontier town of the Yafei tribe, the Kattiri occupying the valley about two miles to the east, and these two tribes are constantly at war. Sultan Salàh's big standard was in one of our dwelling-rooms ready to be unfurled at a moment's notice. He has cannons on his walls pointed in the direction of his enemy—old cannons belonging to the East India Company, the youngest of which bore the date of 1832. From the soldiers we obtained a specimen of the great conch shells that they use as trumpets in battle, and which are hung to the girdle of the watchmen, who are always on the look-out to prevent a surprise.
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. There are three or four armed soldiers to protect Shibahm, the sultan has erected bastions and forts all about it, and the walls are patrolled every night.
There are many ruined houses in the plain, relics of the great war forty years ago, when the Kattiri advanced as far as Al Koton and did great damage. The sultan of Siwoun was invited, with seven sheikhs, to the palace of Shibahm on friendly terms and there murdered in cold blood, while forty of his followers were killed outside.
The inhabitants of Shibahm were not at all friendly disposed to us. On the day of our arrival my husband ventured with two of the sultan's soldiers into the bazaar, and through the narrow streets; but only this once, for the people crowded round him, yelled at him, and insulted him, trying their best to trip him up and impede his progress; he was nearly suffocated by the clouds of filthy dust that the mob kicked up, and altogether they made his investigations so exceedingly disagreeable that he became seriously alarmed for his safety, and never tried to penetrate into the heart of Shibahm again. On the whole I should accredit Shibahm with a population of certainly not less than six thousand souls: there are thirteen mosques in it, and fully six hundred houses, tall and gaunt, to which an average population of ten souls is but a moderate estimate. The slave population of Shibahm is considerable; many slaves have houses there, and wives and families of their own. The sultan's soldiers are nearly all slaves or of slave origin, and one of them, Muoffok, whose grandfather was a Swahili slave, and who had been one of our escort from Makalla, took us to his house, where his wife, seated unveiled in her coffee corner, dispensed refreshments to quite a large party there assembled, whilst Muoffok discoursed sweet music to us on a mandoline, and a flute made out of the two bones of an eagle placed side by side.
Taisir and Aboud were also abiding in Shibahm. Taisir when he met us, on the minute asked for bakhshish, saying he had been ill when we parted and had had none though we had sent it to him. Oh! there was such kissing of hands! so we thought it politic to love our enemy and gave him a present. The Wazir Salim-bin-Ali had travelled with us to take care of us in the absence of his master.
Once the Arabs had a good laugh at the expense of three members of our party. One morning our botanist went forth in quest of plants and found a castor-oil tree, the berries of which pleased him exceedingly. Unwilling to keep so rare a treat for himself, he brought home some branches of the tree, and placed the delicacy before two of our servants, Matthaios and, I am glad to say, Saleh, who also partook heartily. Terrible was the anguish of the two victims, which was increased by the Arabs, veritable descendants of Job's comforters, who told them they were sure to die, as camels did which ate these berries. The botanist did not succumb as soon as the others, who, not believing he had eaten any berries himself, vowed vengeance on his head if they should recover, and demanded that, to prove his innocence, he should eat twelve berries in their presence. To our great relief the botanist was at last seized with sickness, and thereby proved his guiltlessness of a practical joke; three more miserable men I never saw for the space of several hours. However, they were better, though prostrate, next day, and for some time to come the popular joke was to imitate the noises and contortions of the sufferers during their anguish.
