From the Arab word “Maussem” (meaning “remarkable epoch”) the modern name, monsoon, for the periodical winds which blow in the Indian Ocean, is derived; and we know that when Vasco de Gama arrived at Mozambique, the Arab dhows which he met with there, trading to the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, Madagascar, and India, were all supplied with an astrolabe, or instrument for taking the altitude of the sun, moon, and stars, and with the mariner’s compass. This is very natural; the Arabs had been astronomers and navigators for many ages.
More than ten centuries before the advent of the Messiah, these Arabs must have traded with India and Ophir, or Sofala, in East Africa, for we find that the Queen of Sheba, or Saba or Yemen or Arabia (all names for the land of the Arabs), on visiting Solomon at Jerusalem, B.C. 981, “gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones; there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.”[5]
These spices came from India, or north-eastern Africa, and the gold and precious stones from Ophir;[6] for we have already proved that not one of these articles was the produce of Arabia. In the time of Moses spices were known and much used among the Hebrews, and the nearest places for obtaining them were north-eastern Africa, the Malabar coast and Ceylon, through the Arab’s emporium at Aden.
Aden has been successively occupied by the Persians and the Romans, and, in more modern times, by the Turks, and the Portuguese. It became a British possession under the following circumstances, as stated by Captain Playfair, assistant political agent, in his “History of Arabia Felix or Yemen” recently published, with the sanction of the Honourable East India Company.
On the morning of the 4th of January, 1836, the Madras ship, “Deria Dowlat,” under British colours, went on shore in the Koobet Sailán, a few miles distant from Aden, having on board a valuable cargo, and a number of pilgrims bound for Jedda. As daylight dawned she was boarded by crowds of Arabs from Aden, who plundered her of everything that could be removed. The passengers, amongst whom were several ladies of rank, landed on rafts, in doing which fourteen perished. The survivors were seized by the Arabs, stripped naked, and the females subjected to the most brutal indignities, and only saved from being carried off into the interior by the intercession of the Seyed of Aidroos, an influential family in Aden, who supplied them with food and clothing.
The government of Bombay felt bound not only to demand redress for this outrage, but to take such further precautions as should preclude the recurrence of similar atrocities.
For this purpose Captain Haines, I.N., was despatched to Aden in the Honourable Company’s sloop-of-war, “Coote;” and he was instructed, in the event of his negotiations proving successful, to endeavour to obtain the place by purchase, in order that British commerce in the Red Sea might be placed on a safer footing for the future, and that a secure coal depôt for the vessels engaged in the overland transit might be established.
On Captain Haines arrival at Aden, he had an interview with the Sultan of Aden, when the latter denied, most solemnly, all knowledge of, or participation in, the atrocity with which he was charged; but as the property of the “Deria Dowlet” was being sold publicly in the market, his assertion was not received. A formal demand was accordingly made for the sum of 12,000 dollars, as an indemnity, or the entire restitution of the plundered property. After much negotiation, goods to the value of 7,808 dollars were restored; and the Sultan passed a bill, at twelve months’ sight, to Captain Haynes, for the remaining 4,192 dollars.
Having thus settled the primary object of his mission, Captain Haynes succeeded in obtaining from the Sultan a written bond, dated 23rd January, 1838, that he would cede the peninsula on which Aden is built to the British in the following March, in consideration of an annual pension of 8,700 dollars. But before this could be embodied in a treaty, a plot had been formed by the Sultan’s son for the seizure of the papers and person of the political agent after the parting interview. Intelligence of the meditated treachery having reached Captain Haines, the interview was evaded, and he proceeded to Bombay.