From this period the history of Sanaa has been a troubled one. Constant warfare with foreign princes, and assassinations and rivalry fraught with bloodshed between the local rulers, help to make up as dark a page of history as can be imagined. Yet in spite of this, the city has been always an important and flourishing one, renowned for its manufactures, its trade, and its wealth. With every disadvantage accruing from a constant change of government, it managed to survive; and not only to survive but to increase, until toward the middle of the seventeenth century it reached unparalleled prosperity under the then powerful Imams. But as they sank in power, so did Sanaa lose its prosperity. Its fate seemed drawn along with that of its Imams; and as ruler after ruler lost more and more of his territory, so the glories of the capital diminished. Yet there was now and again a flicker in its death-throes; but never did it last above a few years, when once more the steady decline would commence. How it ended is well known; for, broken in spirit and harassed by the surrounding tribes, Sanaa offered no resistance when the Turks, in 1872, entered the place; and the city, which had nobly held her own in so many encounters, almost welcomed the stranger into her midst. Had the inhabitants been aware at that time how their action would lead to their oppression, there is but little doubt that they would have hesitated in their invitation to the Turkish forces, already firmly established on the coast, to come and take over the reins of government. [Illustration: MENAKHA, FROM THE NORTH.] CHAPTER IX. SANAA TO MENAKHA. As long as I live I shall never forget my departure from Sanaa. In the cold grey dawn, the temperature little if anything above freezing, worn out with a night of raging fever that still throbbed in my veins, I was lifted on to my mule at the door of the _conàk_, and, with a couple of soldiers to accompany me, sent upon my way. Weird and wretched everything looked. The houses, that only the day before had struck me as beautiful in their strange oriental architecture, now looked like pallid ruins, depressing in the extreme; while the few hurrying persons we passed seemed but shadows in the grey light of dawn.