Arable the Blest

Writers, ancient and modern, have vied with each other to distil the qualities of southern Arabia. Poets have held to the image of Ophir, the land of frankincense – Milton’s ‘spicie shoare’. Others have claimed it as the original home of the Arab people, who spread northwards and eastwards over the peninsula, Arab al-Araba. But only those who have experienced the life and people of southern Arabia can express the essence of the region. Freya Stark, who lived among the people of the Hadramaut, once wrote:

In all places where men have lived for long the marks of their sojourn must linger, but most often, visited by successive tides, they are altered or buried under many oblivions. In South Arabia, nothing much has come to change them through the centuries, except the natural and little-destructive forces of decay.

Seen in the Hadhramaut, London, 1938, pp. xxii–xxiii. Houses at Sana, capital of the Yemen, 1912 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg130_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Children from the poorer classes at Sana, going to fetch water. There were wells both inside and outside the walls. The old town, which included the crowded quarter where the poor congregated, was surrounded by a massive wall, repaired at great cost by the Turks https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg131_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> In the house of the Mayor of Sana, 1912. The pipes grouped in the centre are indicative of the relaxed attitude towards tobacco held by the Zeidis. The guests are wearing the white turbans and silk robes of the well-to-do https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg132_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> A bookshop at Sana. The large white turban was universally worn by those who had pretensions to learning, 1912 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg132_2.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> The Imam Ahmed, while still Crown Prince, at Taiz, 1947

The Zeidi Imamate was founded in the tenth century, but its power came with an energetic Imam, Qasim, in the seventeenth. The Imams had become a by-word for corruption and incompetence, and their power was bitterly resented by much of the population in the south; the Zeidi strongholds were in the north, and the Turks dominated the coastline.

https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg133_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg133_2.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> In the high mountains north of Ibb: two young girls at El Hadeida. At the time of the photograph, they were about fourteen, and had been married at about the age of twelve; they were married to men of fifty to sixty https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg134_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Traditional medicine in the Yemen: cupping with horns and leeches, pre-1914 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg134_2.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> A slave making bread at El Tanem, in the Tihama, 1912 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg135_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Country people bringing dung into Sana; the dried cakes were used as fuel in winter, although the temperature never dropped very low, despite the town’s altitude, <italic>c</italic>. 1912 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg136_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Cutting and binding corn, central highlands of the Yemen https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg137_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> The market-place at Badjil, in the highlands of Yemen https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg138_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg139_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Tribesmen from the Hajar, the mountains which dominated the coastline of Oman to the promontory of Ras al-Hadd. The peoples of the interior were fiercely independent, recognizing only the authority of their own leaders and disdainful of the coastal tribes https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg139_2.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> A mountain warrior https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg140_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Bedu tribesman from south Arabia https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg141_1.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Shehari boy in the Qara mountains of Dhofar, southern Arabia https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315829128/f43fc5cf-233e-4034-beb3-6f62df6fd6a5/content/pg141_2.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>