Introduction - 2

There are also island forts in the dry riverbed, all now in ruins, mostly dating back several thousand years and doubtless originally intended to protect the ancient incense trade. In addition, they probably served as collection centers for the people and their produce, when the Shenzis (savages) from the mountains came down to raid the ripe crops.

The topography of Wadi Hadramawt, shown in relation to the coast of South Arabia.

Life in the wàdi was often precarious. A mere thirty years ago foreign visitors used to observe Bedouin tribes who were involved in blood feuds fighting each other outside the walls of the cities, and stray shots from the cliffs were frequently heard. The people of the town, Saiyids (princes of Islam), sheikhs, traders, craftsmen, workers and, until quite recently, slaves, formed sheltered communities, surrounded by the cultivated fields of dhura (great millet), sorghum, vulgar corn, pumpkins, and hashish. Cattle, sheep and black-and-white goats grazed among the date palms and on the fringes of the irrigated land. Most of the agriculture and pasturage is still carried on by women wearing black shawls on top of which are perched tall, broad brimmed, straw 'witches' hats'.

The villages and towns, whose total population is approximately 200,000, are connected by roads. At short intervals, on one side or the other, there are small domed water cisterns (siqayah) and shelters for pilgrims on the way to Mecca (murabba'ah). Building them is a charitable act. In the old days foot runners, dressed only in loincloths and carrying long staffs, ran along these roads to bring letters from one important house to another.

In the side wadis there are often high stone banks of terraced cultivation, and wild figs, wild date and fan palms. Many of the small villages lie up on the rocky slopes of the main wadi or its tributaries, thus leaving all available flat land for cultivation, using either water diverted from the floods after the seasonal monsoon rains or subterranean water brought up from wells in leather buckets.

Map of Wadi Hadramawt, showing major archaeological sites, monuments and major towns.

Rainfall over any of the side wadis brings a sail, or flood, sweeping down into the main wadi bed, first as a small trickle, but followed a few minutes later by a rushing wall of water half a metre high-then one metre, then five, taking everything before it. Within a few hours it is over. If the dams and diversion banks have worked well and not been broken, all the surrounding fields and date plantations are filled with standing water that is left to soak into the rich loamy soil brought down by earlier floods. However, the main wadi bed soon dries. Occasionally a few pools of water lie unabsorbed for some weeks, to create picturesque reflections from the it/Il, or tamarisk, trees overhanging them. For a while yellow climbing flowers bloom in the wadi and the fields turn many varied shades of green. Yet sometimes the rain does not come for two or three years.

Land Rovers and trucks now carry goods and people up from the coast along made-up roads where once camel trains, some 150 strong, took three days for the journey. When the first few hundred motorcars in the wadi were brought up they came in parts on camelback the motor road to the sea being fairly recent. There are now, however, daily flights to the main port of the governorate at Mukalla, and others to distant Aden.

But the character of the wadi itself remains unchanged: tranquil, oblivious to man's progress. A power Station has been built, with sufficient capacity to provide the whole system of valleys with all the electricity it needs for years to come. There are agricultural schemes, utilizing more underground water than was ever dreamed of, and dates are now packed for shipment all over the Islamic world.

But the essential grandeur and beauty of Wadi Hadramawt remain the same. The sun rises behind the long line of rock promontories that project from the cliffs to the south, its rays creeping down the northern escarpment, throwing into relief the mountain bastions, which march from the eastern to the western horizon. The dawning light strikes across the tops of the houses and then the palms and fields below. The calls of the mu'addin from numerous minarets sound a pattern of echoes from the cliffs of the wadi, and the first lone figures emerge from their houses to wash and to perform their solitary early prayers in the open air. A gentle, embracing light spreads over the land. The cliffs glow magenta, their pillars and hollows revealed in pale blue shadows. Soon the sun is high, revealing how the width of the wadi varies as tributary valleys fuse and part, always closed in by cliffs, at times peaceful and aloof, at others embracing and even powerfully dominating. There are noble, double-stepped projections of advancing rock: each bastion seems about to separate from the wall behind, to assume a godlike individual personality of its own. Sometimes the succession of mountain bulwarks do, indeed, take on the aspect of a pantheon of ancient gods-never more so than at the end of the day, when the giant forms loom out of the night sky, more sensed than visible, dimly illuminated by the lights of the towns below. Then there steals over the observer an awareness of the awesome timelessness of this land, old before Islam, continually renewing itself, yet ultimately unchanged, immutable.

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