Two days later we arrived at the interesting old town of Taiz, and I think I was the first Western traveller to visit it since the days of Niebuhr in 1763. While waiting for the governor to investigate the seizure of my baggage and the question of my passport, I had a good opportunity to study the town. Taiz has a population of about seven thousand people; two or three very old mosques with minarets, a Jewish synagogue, and a very respectable market. Just back of the town rises a mountain called the Bride’s Castle, from the top of which you can see clear across to the African coast. The Turkish government takes its own time about such a little matter as the inspection of baggage and the granting of a passport, and it was July 26th before I left Taiz. Even then I was not released, but sent on from the local governor to the capital under guard of a mounted trooper, who rode a beautiful horse, while I followed on a mule. It was no hardship, however, to get away from Taiz, and once more to breathe the country air and climb the mountain passes.
A long day’s journey, always climbing up the mountainside, brought us to Ibb, where my servant was imprisoned because he had told me the names of the villages. After some difficulty he was released, but the incident shows how suspicious the Turks are of strangers who travel in their country. Twelve hours farther on we came to Yerim, an unhealthy town situated near a marsh. It was July 29th, but the high elevation and the rain-storms brought the temperature down to fifty-two degrees, which was a great change from the temperature at Aden which, when I left, was 105 degrees in the shade. At another village, Maaber, even at noon the temperature was not over fifty-six degrees, and we wrapped ourselves up as though we were on a polar expedition. In these highlands of Yemen snow falls during the winter season, and frost is common. Just after leaving Yerim, we passed a large boulder on the road with an impression in it as though it were of some one’s foot. The Arabs say it is that of Ali, the grandson of Mohammed, who came along this road, and whenever they pass it they anoint it with oil and stop to pray.
From Yerim on to Sanaa the plateau is more level. Wide fields of barley and wheat took the place of coffee plantations, and the funniest sight we saw was camels hitched up for plowing. What with their long necks and queer harness, so much too big for the job, it was an odd sight. Damar, a large town with three mosques and houses built of stone, was our next stopping place. From Damar to Waalan was thirty-five miles, and then to Sanaa eighteen miles more. The roads here are splendid and are kept in good repair for the sake of the Turkish artillery, although there are no carriages nor horses in use.
On Thursday, August 2d, I entered Sanaa by the Yemen gate. Three years before I entered the same city from the other side, coming from Hodeida. Handed over to the care of a policeman, I waited for the governor to hear my case, and after finding an old Greek friend who knew me in Aden, and offered to go bail, I was allowed liberty, and for nineteen days was busy seeing the city and visiting the Arabs. We shall hear more of Sanaa in a following chapter. I forgot to say that at Yerim, while sleeping in the coffee shop, I was robbed of all my money, and so I ended my zigzag journey not only tired out, but a pauper; and if I had not pawned my watch and coat, I would have been in debt to the hotel keeper. Pioneer journeys in Topsy Turvy Land are not without difficulty.
IV
GOING TO MARKET TO SOW SEED
The Arabs are a very old-fashioned people. In fact, their customs have not changed since the time that Ishmael as a boy went with his mother Hagar on the camels and landed somewhere in Arabia. I suppose that even in those old times the Arabs and the Syrians kept a weekly market where all the people from all the villages came together to barter their wares, to shake hands and make acquaintance and go back with a larger idea of their small world. The custom of holding weekly markets on a special day of the week even in the smallest villages is still common in Arabia. In fact, there are villages that take their name from a market day, and are called “Thursday” or “Saturday” because on those days of the week the village takes on an air of importance and doubles in population. The Arabs, however, do not have the same names for the days of the week that we have. Instead of naming them after idols, Thursday after Thor and Wednesday after the old god Woden, they number the days of the week just as in the first chapter of Genesis, and have “The First Day,” “The Second Day,” etc. The only exception is Friday which is the sacred day of the week and the Mohammedan Sabbath and is named “The Day of the Congregation” because then they all go to the markets to pray and hear a sermon.
A busy market is held at “Suk el Khamis” every Thursday all the year round, rain or shine (and it generally is shine in Arabia), out in the open air near the ruins of an old mosque about three miles distant from Menama village at Bahrein where the missionaries live. The two tall minarets on the mosque can be seen from the market. It is one of the oldest mosques in East Arabia, and was built several hundred years ago and rebuilt several times. Now it is no longer used to pray in nor does the call to prayer ever ring out from the minarets. The fret is that one Moslem sect after another took possession of the building, and in the religious disputes that arose the building itself went into decay. One part of the mosque is now used for a goat pen. The gray square stones of which the mosque was once built are scattered about and serve as seats for visitors, and every traveller who visits Bahrein climbs up one of the minarets and gets a fine view of the islands. If you can read the old writing carved on the stones in Arabic script, you can see how often this mosque has changed hands between the rival parties in the Moslem world called Shiahs and Sunnis, and if you should ever visit the missionary rooms of the Reformed Church in New York, the secretary there can show you a gavel or mallet made from a beam of wood which was once in the roof of this very mosque. A piece of the old beam fell to the ground and was made into a mallet to show that the religion of Islam in Arabia is decaying and that missionaries to Moslems need not be afraid to enter the country of Mohammed.
Every Thursday morning the plain around this mosque is a busy scene. How often I have ridden down to this market on a donkey or walked in the heat of the sun and have seen a thousand or more people crowded together in all their bright coloured garments, men and women and children, busily engaged in trade, in play, or in quarrels over the price of an article! One man, perhaps, brings a load of water jars from the village of Ali. Another has a big donkey load of ropes or mats for sale, and still another brings great baskets of melons, pomegranates, dates, limes and vegetables. Women, covered over with their heavy black veils and looking very mischievously through little peep holes for their eyes, crouch on the ground before their little open-air stands where they sell cheap jewelry and trinkets or tiny bottles of perfume and black antimony powder, which the Arab girls use for their eyes.