mention in connection with these tombs is that the Arab historian, Yaqut,
in his 'Mu'gam,'[12] tells us of a god in the Hadhramout, called Al
Galsad, who was a gigantic man; perhaps this god may have some connection
with the giant tombs of Saleh and Eber. Also Makrisi, who wrote in the
tenth century, a.d., speaks of a giant's grave he saw near Shabwa.
Near Al Agoum we saw a quantity of very ancient stone monuments, situated
on slightly elevated ground, above the sand. At first we imagined them to
be tombs, but on closer inspection we discovered that the erections,
which are large unhewn ones of the cromlech type, are decorated inside
with geometric patterns somewhat similar to those we found in the
Mashonaland ruins, and therefore my husband was more inclined to believe
they were originally used for religious purposes. There are traces of
letters above the pattern. The buildings are about 20 feet square and
several are surrounded by circular walls. They are apparently of extreme
antiquity, and doubtless far anterior in date to any other Himyaritic
remains that we saw in the Hadhramout.
The wazir joined us as usual on our return from Kabr Saleh, as we sat
outside our tent in the moonlight with Imam Sharif and the Indian
interpreters, and we had a pleasant evening. We were perfectly charmed to
see great preparations for sleep going on among the Bedouin. We thought
they really must be tired after dancing the whole night and walking the
whole day. They were busy putting themselves to bed in graves which they
dug in the loose dust, not sand; turbans, girdles, and so forth being
turned into bedclothes. Just as they were still Iselem began capering
about and they all got up shouting and screaming, but the wazir, seeing
my distress, with the greatest difficulty quieted them, as he did when
they broke out again at three o'clock in the morning.
It took us six hours the following day to ride back to Al Koton, where,
not being expected, we could not get a meal of even bread, honey, and
dates for about an hour and a half, and then had to wait till we were
very sleepy indeed for supper. We endured great hunger that day.
Salim-bin-Ali, the other wazir, had not come with us because he was not
well. The day of our reception, in curvetting about, he fell from his
horse and had suffered various pains ever since.
The sultan had had another stone brought for us from Al Gran; we did not
care to take this away as it had very little writing on it, only [Symbol:
script] (_al amin_, to the protection). It is circular, 1 foot 41/2 inches
in diameter, 21/2 inches high, made of coarse marble. We saw a similar
circular stone at Raidoun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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