The process by which we obtained this footing in Arabia was strictly in accordance with the maxims of policy adopted by the then rulers of British India, and which they were at the same time engaged in carrying out, on a far more extended scale, in Affghanistan. In both cases—perhaps from a benevolent anxiety to accommodate our diplomacy to the primitive ideas of those with whom we had to deal—
"the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can"—
was assumed as the basis of our proceedings: and though the brilliant success which for a time attended our philanthropic exertions in the cause of good order and civilization beyond the Indus, so completely threw into the shade the minor glories of Aden, that this latter achievement attracted scarcely any public attention at the time of its occurrence, its merits are quite sufficient to entitle it to a more detailed notice than it has hitherto received in the pages of Maga. Nor can a more opportune juncture be found than the present, when the late events in Cabul have apparently had a marvellous effect in opening the eyes of our statesmen, both in India and England, to the moral and political delinquency of the system we have so long pursued—of taking the previous owner's consent for granted, whenever it suited our views to possess ourselves of a fortress, island, or tract of territory, belonging to any nation not sufficiently civilized to have had representatives at the Congress of Vienna. Whether our repentance is to be carried the length of universal restitution, remains to be seen; if so, it is to be hoped that the circumstances of the capture of Aden will be duly borne in mind. But before we proceed to detail the steps by which the British colours came to be hoisted at this remote angle of Arabia, it will be well to give some account of the place itself and its previous history; since we suspect that the majority of newspaper politicians, unless the intelligence of its capture chanced to catch their eye in the columns of the Times, are to this day ignorant that such a fortress is numbered among the possessions of the British crown.
The harbour of Aden, then, lies on the south coast of Yemen, as nearly as possible in 12º 45' N. latitude, and 45º 10' E. longitude; somewhat more than 100 miles east of Cape Bab-el-Mandeb, at the entrance of the Red Sea; and about 150 miles by sea, or 120 by land, from Mokha, [34] the nearest port within the Straits. The town was built on the eastern side of a high rocky peninsula, about four miles in length from E. to W., by two miles and a half N. and S.—which was probably, at no very remote period, an island, but is now joined to the mainland by a long low sandy isthmus, [35] on each side of which, to the east and west, a harbour is formed between the peninsula and the mainland. The East Bay, immediately opposite the town, though of comparatively small extent, is protected by the rocky islet of Seerah, rising seaward to the height of from 400 to 600 feet, and affords excellent anchorage at all times, except during the north-east monsoon: but the Western or Black Bay, completely landlocked and sheltered in great part of its extent by the high ground of its peninsula, (which rises to an elevation of nearly 1800 feet,) runs up inland a distance of seven miles from the headland of Jibel-Hassan, (which protects its mouth on the west,) to the junction of the isthmus with the main, and presents at all times a secure and magnificent harbour, four miles wide at the entrance, and perfectly free from rocks, shoals, and all impediments to ingress or egress. Such are the natural advantages of Aden: and "whoever"—says Wellsted—"might have been the founder, the site was happily selected, and well calculated by its imposing appearance not only to display the splendour of its edifices, but also, uniting strength with ornament, to sustain the character which it subsequently bore, as the port and bulwark of Arabia Felix."
[Footnote 35: This isthmus is said by Lieutenant Wellsted to be "about 200 yards in breadth:" perhaps a misprint for 1200, as a writer in the United Service Journal, May 1840, calls it 1350 yards; and, according to the plan in the papers laid before Parliament, it would appear to be rather more than half a mile at the narrowest part, where it is crossed by the Turkish wall.]
From the almost impregnable strength of its situation, and the excellence of its harbour, which affords almost the only secure shelter for shipping near the junction of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, Aden has been, both in ancient and modern times, a place of note and importance as a central point for the commerce carried on with the East by way of Egypt. It was known to the ancients as the Arabian emporium, and Abulfeda, in the fourteenth century, describes it, in his Geography, as "a city on the sea-shore, within the district of Abiyan; with a safe and capacious port, much frequented by ships from India and China, and by merchants and men of wealth, not only from those countries, but from Abyssinia, the Hedjaz, &c.;" adding, however, "that it is dry and burnt up by the sun, and so totally destitute of pasture and water, that one of the gates is named Bab-el-Sakiyyin, or Gate of the Water-carriers, for fresh water must be brought from a distance." In somewhat later times, when the Portuguese began to effect settlements on the coasts of Guzerat and Malabar, and to attack the Mohammedan commerce in the Indian Seas, the port of Aden (when, with the rest of Yemen, then paid a nominal allegiance to the Egyptian monarchy) became the principal rendezvous for the armaments equipped by the Circassian Sultans of Cairo in the Red Sea, in aid of their Moslem brethren, then oppressed by those whom the Sheikh Zein-ed-deen emphatically denounces as "a race of unclean Frank interlopers—may the curse of Allah rest upon them and all infidels!" It was, in consequence, more than once attacked by the famous Alboquerque, (who, in 1513, lost 2000 men before it,) and his successor Lope Soarez, but the Portuguese never succeeded in occupying it; and the Mamluke empire was overthrown, in 1517, by the arms of the Ottoman Sultan, Selim I. The new masters of Egypt, however, speedily adopted the policy of the rulers whom they had supplanted; and not contented with the limited suzerainté over the Arab chiefs of Yemen, exercised by the Circassian monarchs, determined on bringing that country under the direct control of the Porte, as a point d'appui for the operations to be undertaken in the Indian Ocean. With this view, the eunuch, Soliman-Pasha, who was sent in command of a formidible squadron from Suez, in 1538, to attempt the recapture of Dui, [36] in Guzerat, from the Portuguese, received instructions to make himself in the first place master of Aden, to the possession of which the Turks might reasonable lay claim as a dependency of their newly-acquired realm of Egypt; the seizure, however, was effected by means of base treachery. The prince, Sheikh-Amer, of the race of the Beni-Teher, was summoned on board the admiral's galley, and accepted the invitation without suspicion; but he was instantly placed in confinement, and shortly afterwards publicly hanged at the yard-arm; while the Pasha, landing his troops, took possession of Aden in the name of Soliman the Magnificent. It was not, however, till 1568, that the final reduction of Yemen was accomplished, when Aden and other towns, which had fallen into the hands of an Arab chief named Moutaher, were recaptured by a powerful army sent from Egypt; the whole province was formally divided into sandjaks or districts, and the seat of the beglerbeg, or supreme pasha, fixed at Sana.
[Footnote 36: The warfare of the Ottomans in India is a curious episode in their history, which has attracted but little notice from European writers. The Soliman-Pasha above mentioned (called by the Indian historians Soliman-Khan Roomi, or the Turk, and by the Portuguese Solimanus Peloponnesiacus) bore a distinguished part in those affairs; but this expedition against Diu was the last in which he was engaged. The kingdom of Guzerat was, at that time, in great confusion after the death of its king, Bahadur Shah, who had been treacherously killed in an affray with the Portuguese in 1536; and it would appear probable that the Turks, if they had succeeded against Diu, meditated taking possession of the country.]
The domination of the Turks in Yemen did not continue much more than sixty years after this latter epoch; the constant revolts of the Arab tribes, and the feuds of the Turkish military chiefs, whose distance from the seat of government placed them beyond the control of the Porte, combined in rendering it an unprofitable possession. The Indian trade, moreover, was permanently diverted to the route by the Cape; and any political schemes which the Porte might at one time have entertained in regard to India, had been extinguished by the reunion, under the Mogul sway, of the various shattered sovereignties of Hindostan. In 1633, [37] the Turkish troops were finally withdrawn from the province, which then fell under the rule of the still existing dynasty of the Imams of Sana, who claim descent from Mohammed. But the ruins even now remaining of the fortifications and publick works constructed in Aden by the Ottomans during their tenure of the place, are on a scale which not only proves how fully they were aware of the importance of the position, but gives a high idea of the energy with which their resources were administered during the palmy days of their power, when such vast labour and outlay were expended on the security of an isolated stronghold at the furthest extremity of their empire. The defences of the town, even in their present state, are the most striking evidence now existing of the science and skill of the Turkish engineers in former times; and, when they were entire, Aden must have been another Gibraltar. "The lines taken for the works," says a late observer, "evince great judgment, a good flanking fire being every where obtained; no one place which could possibly admit of being fortified has been omitted, and we could not do better than tread in the steps of our predecessors. The profile is tremendous." A supply of water (of which the peninsula had been wholly destitute) was secured, not only by constructing numerous tanks within the walls, and by boring numerous wells through the solid rock to a depth of upwards of 200 feet, [38] but by carrying an aqueduct into the town from a spring eight miles in the country, the reservoir at the end of which was defended by a redoubt mounted with artillery. The outposts were not less carefully strengthened than the body of the place—a rampart with bastions (called, in the reports of the garrison, the Turkish Wall) was carried along some high ground on the isthmus from sea to sea, to guard against an attack on the land side—the lofty rocky islet of Seerah, immediately off the town, was covered with watchtowers and batteries—and several of those enormous guns, with the effect of which the English became practically acquainted at the passage of the Dardanelles in 1807, were mounted on the summit of the precipices, to command the seaward approach; and, when Lieutenant Wellsted was at Aden, those huge pieces of ordnance was lying neglected on the beach; and he asked Sultan Mahassan why he did not cut them up for the sake of the metal, which is said to contain a considerable intermixture of silver; "but he replied, with more feeling than could have been anticipated, that he was unwilling to deprive Aden of the only remaining sign of its former greatness and strength." Several of them have been sent to England since the capture of the place, measuring from fifteen to eighteen and a half feet in length; they are covered with ornaments and inscriptions, stating them to have been cast in the reign of "Soliman the son of Selim-Khan," (Soliman the Magnificent.)
[Footnote 37: Captain Haines, in the "Report upon Aden," appended to the
Parliamentary papers published on the subject, erroneously places this
even in 1730, the year in or about which, according to Niebuhr, the
Sheikh of Aden made himself independent of Sana.]
[Footnote 38: "No part of the coast of Arabia is celebrated for the goodness of its water, with the single exception of Aden. The wells there are 300 in number, cut mostly though the rock, … and the tanks were found in good order, coated inside and out with excellant chunam, (stucco,) and merely requiring cleaning out to be again serviceable.">[