The wali kept all his prisoners in the courtyard. When we were there he had twelve, all manacled, and reposing on grass mats at night. These were wicked Bedouin from the mountains, prisoners taken in a recent war he had had with the Mahri tribe, the _casus belli_ being a find of ambergris which the Mahri had appropriated, though it had been washed up on the Dhofar coast. One prisoner, a murderer, whose imprisonment was for two years, was chained to a log of wood, and he laid his mat bed in a large stone sarcophagus, brought from the neighbouring ruins of the ancient capital of the frankincense country, and really intended for a trough. Another, convicted of stealing his master's sword and selling it to the captain of a dhow, had his feet attached to an iron bar, which made his locomotion exceedingly painful. A mollah prisoner was, owing to the sanctity of his calling, unfettered, and he led the evening prayers, and on most nights--for want of something better to do, I suppose--these prisoners of Wali Suleiman prayed and sang into the small hours of the morning. Day by day we watched these unfortunate men from the roof, and thought we had never seen so unholy a set of men, according to what we heard; they did not look so. Some were morose, and chewed the cud of their discontent in corners; the younger and better-looking ones were gallant, and flirted with the slave girls, helping them to draw up buckets from the well in the centre of the courtyard; the active-minded cut wood for the household, and walked about doing odd jobs, holding up the iron bar which separated their feet with a rope as they shuffled along, or played with the wali's little boy, five years of age, who rambled about among them. Goats, kids, cocks, and hens, also occupied this courtyard, and the big, white she-ass, the only representative of the equine race as far as we could see in Dhofar, on which Wali Suleiman makes his state journeys to the various villages in his dominions along the coast, and which he kindly lent to me once when we went to visit the ruins.