Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 3, Anatomy-Astronomy

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Arabia, either the murderer himself, or one of his family ; and, when
none of these are to be found, one of his clan. This goes on
by rotation, each party having its turn of taking revenge, till
at last whole tribes rise against each other in hereditary feuds.
Many tribes are confederated, so that not only their own people,
but also strangers standing under their protection, are safe in
each other’s territory. Even a man against whom there is a
cause of blood revenge, is safe from vengeance when under the
protection of an ally of his persecutors. The Baron von Wrede
having procured a protector, or dakheil, at Makallah, was well
received by the man’s clan, and on subsequent occasions found
that the dakheil he obtained in the interior could, under all cir¬
cumstances, be relied upon, although a considerable degree of
firmness was always necessary on his part to support his pro¬
tector’s sense of duty against fear or temptation. The Be¬
douins profess to be Mahometans, but they care very little
for a strict observation of the law of the prophet, pleading the
still greater sanctity of the law of necessity, whence they will
eat all sorts of unclean animals, such as snakes, lizards, and
the like vermin, “ because they are hungry, there is nothing
else to be got, and the law of the prophet does not fill their
bellies.” Here, as well as in Yemen, there are many remnants
of the ancient fire-worship, which was the prevailing creed in
South Arabia previous to Mahomet; and the prophet Hud, who
lived in an age so remote, and whose person is so completely
mythologized that modern scholars have been tempted to iden¬
tify him with Bacchus, is no less revered by those children of
the desert than Mahomet himself. But the reformed creed of
the Wahabys never penetrated into these mountains. The
Bedouins of Hadhramaut are altogether the fiercest and rudest
among all the wandering tribes of Arabia, and whatever is cal¬
culated to uphold and propagate that reckless and savage spirit,
is more admired by them, and esteemed more worthy of imita¬
tion, than the precepts of a refined morality. A lad having de¬
liberately shot his father, who wanted him to fetch some camels,
and kicked him when meeting with disobedience, was not only
not punished by the tribe, but applauded, and finally praised
by his own dying parent, who, being in the act of taking re¬
venge by shooting his son in his turn, suddenly dropped his
gun, exclaiming—'“No ! let him live, he has acted like a man.”
The women of the Bedouins go about unveiled, and in the towns
only married women hide part of their face, the young girls
being allowed to exhibit their charms to the other sex without
any other restraint but that of common decency. The Bedou¬
ins look upon the townspeople as a degenerated, cowardly, mer¬
cenary race, losing no opportunity of showing them their con¬
tempt ; while, on the other hand, the settled, civilized Hadhrami
speak of their wild brethren in the desert as a set of overbear¬
ing savages, and behave to them in a manner as the Byzantine
Greeks did towards their conquerors, the Turks, cringing be¬
fore their eyes, and cheating them behind their backs.
nguage. The Arabic of Hadhramaut, especially that of the Bedouins,
ditfers from that of Yemen, not only in pronunciation and ac¬
cent, but also by the admixture of many non-Arabic words,
which are, without doubt, remnants of the ancient Himyaritic.
This latter language, or perhaps only a modified dialect of it,
is still spoken in the interor of El Shehr or Mahra, and in all
probability also in the eastern parts of Hadhramaut in the
larger meaning of the word, but not along the sea-coast, where
the modern Arabic prevails. The Baron von Wrede obtained
a little vocabulary of Himyaritic words of the present vernacu¬
lar tongue, among which the word “ ofir,” that is red, strikes
the antiquarian at once, as being the key to the whereabouts of
the Biblical “ Ophir.” For the Mahra people also call them¬
selves the tribe of the red (ofir) country, and the same ap¬
pellation they give to the Red Sea, which is but a translation
of Erythrean Sea, which we are fully justified in supposing to
be, in its turn, a translation of “ Bahr Ofir.” Other words,
which are not found in the Arabic language, are :—a:if, bad ;
diyah, good; fadhan, hill; gai, kin, much; kar, house; eb-
her, well; hiif, milk; istaha, sit down; karhai, small; ket,
rope ; makedir, durra ; rigau, tall; sami, dead ; shikah, near;
sheli, very near ; salet, oil; sheiwat, fine ; shift', hair ; tahrir,
antelope ; tahriz, kill (him); thama, alive ; terab, wood ; tob-
ba, great, powerful, Ac.
1 he spirit of destructiveness which the Mahometan Arabs
exhibited against whatever was not in accordance with, or left
4tiqui-
B 1 A. 359
Arabia.
ence upon the monuments left by the kings and the nobles of
Himyar. Yet some important remnants have been preserved
as shown by the researches of the travellers mentioned above :
and the Baron von Wrede has not only added to the list but
leaves a fair prospect to future travellers of making still more
important discoveries. At Khoreibeh he obtained a copy of an
old Arabic MS., being a history of Hadhramaut from its ear¬
liest times, and containing a complete list of the Himyaritic
kings from the founder of the kingdom down to Mahomet,
corresponding with, and completing the list given by Abulfeda!
In the Wadi Obneh, he copied a beautiful Himyaritic inscrip¬
tion of five lines, the characters of which seem to indicate Sa-
bffian models ; and he not only examined many substructures
of modern buildings, which belong to a very early and primi¬
tive period, such as castles and houses of sheiks, but obtained
positive information on the Txdbet-el-moluk, or the “ tombs of
the kings,” in the lower part of the Wadi Doan, not far from
Grein and the tomb of Hud. They are forty in number, each
being a separate structure covered with Himyaritic inscrip¬
tions, and they are held in great veneration by the natives,
although only a few even among their learned men know what
they are. The Baron was prevented from visiting them by
his arrest at Grein.
The coast of this extensive province is now completely sur- El Shehr
veyed, but of the interior we know nothing. Much gum and or Mahra.
frankincense, the latter of very ordinary quality, grows in the
mountains along the coast, between Capes Ras Fartak in the
west, and Ras Nus in the east. The tehamah is narrow, and
in many places interrupted by spurs of the Himyaritic range
projecting into the sea, as at Ras Fartak, the Promontorium
Syagrios of the ancients, a bold rock rising 2500 feet above the
Indian Ocean ; and at Ras Shejer, which is still higher by 500
feet. The Himyaritic range lowers considerably as it advances
north-east, some inconsiderable ridges of barren sand-hills being
its extreme feelers towards the high mountains of Oman. West
of Ras Nus is the fertile plain of Dhafar, where the cultivation
of indigo occupies many hands. Dhafar, its former seaport,
exists no longer ; it was the seat of the bishops of Hadhramaut,
when the Christian religion prevailed here in the period pre¬
ceding that of Mahomet, and after they had left their former
residence at Nagra, or Nagrane. East of the same cape Mr
Cruttenden and party discovered the large, fertile, and well
peopled Wadi Rekob, with a running stream dried up in its
lower course, but which must be a powerful river in the rainy
season, as testified by enormous blocks of rock carried down by
the torrent from the mountains farther inland. The inhabi¬
tants are a remarkably handsome and well-disposed tribe, the
women being the handsomest in Arabia, according to the state¬
ment of the British officers, their visitors. They have large
herds of goats and sheep, and seem to lead a happy life as shep¬
herds and agriculturists. In the upper portion of the Wadi
Rekob lies a thriving town, Djezzar, which, however, the party
had no time to visit. The inhabitants of the towns and villages
along the sea, are addicted to piracy, for which they have been
frequently punished by the British men-of-war; and they all
pursue the capture of sharks, with which the sea swarms, and
the fins of which, when salted and dried, are not only eaten by
the Arabs, but yield an important article of export to the Indian
ports and China, where they are considered great dainties.
Oman, the north-eastern peninsular projection of South Ara- Oman,
bia, is physically hardly connected with the Arabian continent,
from which its mountainous territory is separated by the eastern
El Ahkaf. Its coast and seaports were known to the Euro¬
peans at an early date. Its capital, Mascat, was conquered by
the Portuguese in 1508, who kept possession of it till 1658,
when the Arabs, taking the town, put the whole garrison to
death, and established a native government under a prince of
the ancient dynasty of the tribe of the Yaharibi-el-Azad. The
country was subsequently conquered by the Persians, who were
driven out in 1730, in their turn, by Ahmed Ibn Said, an
adventurous chief, who claimed collateral descent from that
. , ’. , -li-uian, anatneir natredot religious sym¬
bols, combined with an utter disregard of that historical learn¬
ing which alone is calculated to keep alive, in the lapse of cen¬
turies, that feeling of piety towards the works of our forefathers,
which is the real inexhaustible source of all love of antiquity,
—these various combined causes have nrodnccd « ivfl,.