Produced by Michael Ciesielski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net SOUTHERN ARABIA [Illustration: Lafayette, photo. Walker & Boutall ph. sc. [Signature: Theodore Bent] London. Published by Smith, Elder & Co. 15, Waterloo Place.] SOUTHERN ARABIA BY THEODORE BENT, F.R.G.S., F.S.A. AUTHOR OF 'THE RUINED CITIES OF MASHONALAND' 'THE SACRED CITY OF THE ETHIOPIANS' 'THE CYCLADES, OR LIFE AMONG THE INSULAR GREEKS' ETC. AND MRS THEODORE BENT _WITH A PORTRAIT, MAPS, AND ILLUSTRATION_ LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1900 [All rights reserved] PREFACE If my fellow-traveller had lived, he intended to have put together in book form such information as we had gathered about Southern Arabia. Now, as he died four days after our return from our last journey there, I have had to undertake the task myself. It has been very sad to me, but I have been helped by knowing that, however imperfect this book may be, what is written here will surely be a help to those who, by following in our footsteps, will be able to get beyond them, and to whom I so heartily wish success and a Happy Home-coming, the best wish a traveller may have. It is for their information that I have included so many things about the price of camels, the payment of soldiers and so forth, and yet even casual readers may care to know these details of explorers' daily lives. Much that is set down here has been published before, but a good deal is new. My husband had written several articles in the _Nineteenth Century_, and by the kindness of the editor I have been able to make use of these; also I have incorporated the lectures he had given before the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association. The rest is from his note-books and from the 'Chronicles' that I always wrote during our journeys. I thought at first of trying to keep our several writings apart; but, to avoid confusion of inverted commas, I decided, acting on advice, just to put the whole thing into as consecutive a form as possible, only saying that the least part of the writing is mine. The bibliography is far from complete, as I can name only a few of the many books that my husband consulted on all the districts round those which we were going to penetrate. As to the spelling of the Arabic, it must be remembered that it is a very widely spread language, and there are naturally many different forms of the same word--_e.g. ibn_, _ben_, _bin_--and such very various ways of pronouncing the name of the Moslem prophet, that I have heard it pronounced Memet, Mamad and Mad. I must give hearty thanks in both our names to all who helped us on in these journeys, and especially to Mr. Headlam, who has given me much assistance by going through the proofs of this book. Mr. W. C. Irvine has kindly provided the column of literary Arabic for the vocabulary. MABEL VIRGINIA ANNA BENT. 13 Great Cumberland Place, W: _October 13, 1899_. CONTENTS