Southern Arabia

CHAPTER I. Manamah and Moharek

MANAMAH AND MOHAREK

The first Arabian journey that we undertook was in 1889, when we visited the Islands of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf; we were attracted by stories of mysterious mounds, and we proposed to see what we could find inside them, hoping, as turned out to be the fact, that we should discover traces of Phoenician remains.

The search for traces of an old world takes an excavator now and again into strange corners of the new. Out of the ground he may extract treasures, or he may not--that is not our point here--out of the inhabitants and their strange ways he is sure, whether he likes it or not, to extract a great deal, and it is with this branch of an excavator's life we are now going to deal.

We thought we were on the track of Phoenician remains and our interest in our work was like the fingers of an aneroid, subject to sudden changes, but at the same time we had perpetually around us a quaint, unknown world of the present, more pleasing to most people than anything pertaining to the past.

The group of islands known as Bahrein (dual form of Bahr, i.e. two seas) lies in a bay of the same name in the Persian Gulf, about twenty miles off the coast of El Hasa in Arabia.

Bahrein is really the name of the largest of the islands, which is twenty-seven miles long by ten wide. The second in point of size is Moharek, which lies north of Bahrein, and is separated from it by a strait of horse-shoe form, five miles in length, and in a few places as much as a mile wide, but for the greater part half a mile.

The rest of the group are mere rocks: Sitrah, four miles long, with a village on it of the same name; Nebi Saleh, Sayeh, Khaseifa, and, to the east of Moharek, Arad, with a palm-grove and a large double Portuguese fort, an island or a peninsula according to the state of the tide.

It was no use embarking on a steamer which would take us direct from England to our destination, owing to the complete uncertainty of the time when we should arrive, so we planned out our way via Karachi and Maskat; then we had to go right up to Bushire, and again change steamers there, for the boats going up the Gulf would not touch at Bahrein. At Bushire we engaged five Persians to act as servants, interpreter, and overseers over the workmen whom we should employ in excavating.

We had as our personal servant and interpreter combined a very dirty Hadji Abdullah, half Persian, half Arab. He was the best to be obtained, and his English was decidedly faulty. He always said mules for meals, foals for fowls, and any one who heard him say 'What time you eat your mules to-day, Sahib?' 'I have boiled two foals for dinner,' or 'Mem Sahib, now I go in bazaar to buy our perwisions of grub,' or 'What place I give you your grub, Mem Sahib?' would have been surprised.

He had been a great deal on our men-of-war; he also took a present of horses from the Sultan of Maskat to the Queen, so that he could boast 'I been to Home,' and alluded to his stay in England as 'when I was in Home.'

Abdullah always says chuck and never throw; and people unused to him would not take in that 'Those peacock no good, carboys much better,' referred to pickaxes and crowbars.

He used to come to the diggings and say: 'A couble of Sheikhs come here in camp, Sahib. I am standing them some coffee; shall I stand them some mixed biscuits, too?'

I must say I pity foreigners who have to trust to interpreters whose only European language is such English as this.

With the whole of our party we embarked on the steamer which took us to Bahrein, or rather as close as it could approach; for, owing to the shallowness of the sea, while still far from shore we were placed in a baggala in which we sailed for about twenty minutes. Then when a smaller boat had conveyed us as near to the dry land as possible, we were in mid-ocean transferred, bag and baggage, to asses, those lovely white asses of Bahrein with tails and manes dyed yellow with henna, and grotesque patterns illuminating their flanks; we had no reins or stirrups, and as the asses, though more intelligent than our own, will not unfrequently show obstinacy in the water, the rider, firmly grasping his pommel, reaches with thankfulness the slimy, oozy beach of Bahrein.

Manamah is the name of the town at which you land; it is the commercial capital of the islands--just a streak of white houses and bamboo huts, extending about a mile and a half along the shore. A few mosques with low minarets may be seen, having stone steps up one side, by which the priest ascends for the call to prayer. These mosques and the towers of the richer pearl merchants show some decided architectural features, having arches of the Saracenic order, with fretwork of plaster and quaint stucco patterns.

On landing we were at once surrounded by a jabbering crowd of negro slaves, and stately Arabs with long, flowing robes and twisted camel-hair cords (akkal) around their heads.

Our home while in the town was one of the best of the battlemented towers, and consisted of a room sixteen feet square, on a stone platform. It had twenty-six windows with no glass in them, but pretty lattice of plaster. Our wooden lock was highly decorated, and we had a wooden key to close our door, which pleased us much. Even though we were close upon the tropics we found our abode chilly enough after sunset; and our nights were rendered hideous--firstly, by the barking of dogs; secondly, by cocks which crowed at an inordinately early hour; and, thirdly, by pious Mussulmans hard at work praying before the sun rose.

From our elevated position we could look down into a sea of bamboo huts, the habitations of the pearl-fishers: neat enough abodes, with courtyards paved with helix shells. In these courtyards stood quaint, large water-jars, which women filled from goat-skins carried on their shoulders from the wells, wobbling when full like live headless animals; and cradles, like hencoops, for their babies. They were a merry idle lot of folk just then, for it was not their season of work: perpetually playing games (of which tip-jack and top-spinning appeared the favourite for both young and old) seemed to be their chief occupation. Staid Arabs, with turbans and long, flowing robes, spinning tops, formed a sight of which we never tired. The spinning-tops are made out of whelk-shells, which I really believe must have been the original pattern from which our domestic toy was made. The door-posts of their huts are often made of whales' jaws; a great traffic is done in sharks; the cases for their swords and daggers are all of shagreen. The gulf well deserves the name given to it by Ptolemy of the Ichthyophagorum sinus.

Walking through the bazaars one is much struck by the quaint, huge iron locks, some of them with keys nearly two feet long, and ingeniously opened by pressure of a spring. In the commoner houses the locks and keys are all of wood. In the bazaars, too, you may find that queer El Hasa money called Tawilah, or 'long bits,' short bars of copper doubled back and compressed together, with a few characters indicating the prince who struck them.

The coffee-pots of Bahrein are quite a specialty, also coming from El Hasa, which appears to be the centre of art in this part of Arabia. With their long beak-like spouts and concentric circles with patterns on them, these coffee-pots are a distinct feature. In the bazaars of Manamah and Moharek coffee-vendors sit at every corner with some huge pots of a similar shape simmering on the embers; in the lid are introduced stones to make a noise and attract the attention of the passers-by. Coffee-shops take the place of spirit and wine shops, which in the strict Wahabi country would not be, for a moment, tolerated. In private houses it is thought well to have four or five coffee-pots standing round the fire, to give an appearance of riches.

Besides the coffee-pots, other objects of El Hasa workmanship may be seen in Bahrein. Every household of respectability has its wooden bowl with which to offer visitors a drink of water or sour milk; these are beautifully inlaid with silver in very elaborate patterns. The guns used by Bahreini sportsmen are similarly inlaid, and the camel saddles of the sheikhs are most beautifully decorated on the pommels in the same style.

The anvils, at which the blacksmiths in the bazaars were squatting, were like large nails with heads about six inches square, driven into the ground and about a foot high.

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