ABSTRACT
THAT afternoon Sheikh Sa'id tnet us with his car and drove up through Shiban1 to Seiyun. Here we were welcomed by Seiyid Bubekr al Kaf to his ne\v house, as yet unfinished, for workmen were still busy in the hall and passages under the superintendence of the architect of aU the new-fashioned buildings in the Hadhramaut, Seiyid Alawi bin Bubekr bin Alawi al Ka£ Much of it was already completed and it appeared to be far luore decorated than any of the other very ornamented houses we had seen. The workmen were local and the man responsible for the decorations had never left Seiyun, but he had only to be shown how to do a thing once after which he did it perfectly himself: as we were able to judge. The walls, like all the houses, are only of dried mud and straw with a lime plaster. For some two-thirds of the way up the walls the plaster is polished with a sn100th flint till it shines like marble. In most rooms there were pillars (and in big rooms there is usually a forest of them) as it is difficult for long beams of \vood for the roofs to be brought by camels. So Seiyid Alawi, having seen reinforced concrete made in Singapore, was himself experitnenting with reinforced concrete beams to avoid too many pillars. Pale green and gold are the principal colours used in the decorations, which mainly take the form of crowns with trailing green strips; these adorn most of the windows and doors. We were also shown a large ballroom attractively designed with a number of pillars down both sides and decorated with gold crowns and coloured ornamentation. There was no ceiling to this room, for it was to be roofed with panes of glass to be brought up from the coast on camels.
