LAND OF FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 131, 27 February 1937, Page 20

LAND OF FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

The Hadhraniaut ADEN PROTECTORATE What would you do if, on a railway bookstall you came across a book entitled, "Aden Protectorate: A Report on the Social, Economic and Political Condition of the Hadhramaut: by W. 11 Ingrams, 0.8. E., First Political Officer, Aden Protectorate: Printed and Published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office: Price 3/- net?” asks David Keir in the “News Chronicle.” "Probably you would shrug your shoulders, as I would, and snatch at the nearest thriller. We would both be wrong. For the Aden book is really a most exciting travel-book. The Hadhraniaut is a tract of sunburned land somewhere—shall we say —between Aden and the Persian Gulf. It is unknown, but Mr. Ingrams may be the bringer of fame to the Hadbramis, for their country is certainly remarkable.

The time is announced “somewhat erratically” by the beating of gongs. There are no public clocks. Slaves are owned by the various Governments, but there is nothing in this Never Never Land to prevent a slave from reaching high administrative office. The present town magistrate of Mukalla, a civilised town on the coast, is a slave, and so, too, is the Governor of the Shibam province. But there is little or no private trading In slaves.

Houses are mud-built, rising frequently to as many as six stories. But in one wadi Mr. Ingrams found troglodyte Bedouins living in caves in the walls of the wadi. Women are made to know,. their place! Well-to-do women live in complete seclusion, never going outside unless heavily veiled, and their economic importance is nil —unlike the tribeswomen, who guard their husbands’ flocks, milk the animals, gather the firewood and fetch the water.

You get to this intriguing country as Mr. Ingrams did by travelling to its chief port, Mukalla, by steamship from Aden.

You then explore its interior by donkey, car, camel, and dhow. If you are as lucky -as Mr. Ingrams you take a wife with you—on another - donkey or camel—and she helps you to make a survey for the Government of the Great Untrodden.

Two thousand years ago the Hadhramaut was a forest of incense trees, and from it. went frankincense to Palestine and the Roman Empire. Rich countries farther East used it as a great trade route ’twixt East and West.

But gradually its then world importance faded, and for 1500 years the country has been cultivated in the most ancient way with primitive implements, the same old caravan routes have continued across vast open tracts of sunburnished land and through the fertile valleys or wadis.

Its importance waned for several reasons. Over on the other side of the Red Sea were the Abyssinians, and they—2ooo years before Mussolini sacked their country—entered into, a virtual trade alliance with Imperial Rome. Trade began to flow up the Red Sea instead of overland through Arabia.

Then Christianity, and later Islam, found less use than the Romans and Jews for the frankincense which had always figured largely in funeral and religious ceremonies, and the cultivation of the incense trees practically died.

But. not quite—for to-day, as in the time of Christ—frankincense grows occasionally in some of the South Arabian gullies. Mr. Ingrams saw it growing. For centuries the Hadhraniaut was beyond the back of beyond. The postwar twentieth-century version of nine-teenth-century civilisation' has tried a little to change all that. The Royal Air Force has established a few bases in the accessible parts. There is an increasing number of curious European visitors. Many of the Hadhrainis are migrating to other countries. A minor industrial revolution has begun, but in the main the Hadhram.aut trades are still odd and traditional.

If there is rain during April and May the Hadhramaut bees produce black honey. Honey obtained during the crop from November to March may not bo eaten by pregnant women. It is considered unduly heating. But there is none the less a plentiful market for it round Mukalla, and in Java and Malaya. Its chief exports arc honey, dried shark, shark fins, and tobacco. Most of the shark fins go to China. Murder cases, says Mr. Ingrams, are now practically non-existent, which is not surprising, for murderers are executed with a dagger plunged into

the supra sternal notch (a depression at the top of the breastbone). There is still raiding of each other’s property by tribesmen, but it is dishonourable to be found out. Generally life seems to pursue a fairly placid course in the vast unexplored hinterland of South Arabia.

There are, for example, no road accidents. The camel and the ass are still the principal means of conveyance for man and goods, and the roads are deliberately scheduled as camel and donkey routes. About 53.000 camels leave the camel park outside the west gate of Mukalla every year for the interior, and about 32,000 leave Shihr. But mechanised vehicles are beginning to rear their ugly heads. Mr. Ingrams discovered that recently a few cars destined for the interior have been dismantled and carried at the rate of 12 camels to one car over the mountains. Bi»t the total number of ears and motor-cycles in Hadhraniaut is not more than 90.

Mr. Ingrains even remembers that the Hadhramaut is mentioned in the tenth chapter of the Book of Genesis.