CHAPTER VIII.

SANAA, THE CAPITAL OF THE YEMEN.

The city of Sanaa is situated in a wide valley, at an elevation of seven thousand two hundred and fifty feet above the sea-level. Although the town lies almost altogether on the flat bottom of the valley, a mountain, Jibel Negoum, rises abruptly on the east—so abruptly, in fact, that the old fortress and castle which form the citadel of Sanaa are perched on one of its spurs, from which the main peak rises in rocky bareness to a very considerable height.

The town is in form a triangle, the apex being formed by the _kasr_ above-mentioned, and the base by the wall of the garden suburb Bir el-Azab. There are three distinct quarters within the outer walls: the first or east quarter that of the Turks and Arabs, where are situated the bazaars, the Government buildings, and the principal native houses; the second the Jews’ quarter, separated from the last by a wide strip of barren ground, part of which shows signs of once having been a cemetery; and thirdly, this suburb of Bir el-Azab, where many a villa stands within luxurious gardens of fruit and other trees, enclosed with high walls. In spite of the fact that Sanaa is situated only between the 15th and 16th degree of north latitude, and so well within the tropics, there are very few signs to be seen of anything approaching tropical vegetation, and one is surprised at first, until the great altitude of the place is taken into consideration, to find that nearly all our English fruits flourish there. Although, of course, by day the sun is intensely hot, it is quite a common occurrence to experience frosts on winter nights. Yet in spite of lying at so great an elevation above the sea, Sanaa is subject at times to serious droughts; and although in the rainy season a torrent of water pours down the river-bed which runs through the centre of the town, in the dry periods of the year water is procurable only from wells sunk to a great depth in the solid rock. The water drawn from these wells is said to be very fresh and good. As is the custom in so many parts of the East, it is a marketable produce, and is carried about in skins by water-bearers, and sold at so much per skin, or even per cup. Yet in spite of water being a thing of money value, it is extraordinary how clean the general population of Sanaa seem to be, with the exception of the lower-class Turks, who, to judge from their appearance, one could believe never to have even heard of its existence. However, happily they are in the minority.

The whole town of Sanaa is surrounded by a wall built for the most part of mud-bricks dried in the sun, though in many cases the towers, which at regular intervals protect the walls, and on most of which the Turks have mounted small guns, are of stone. The city is entered by four principal gates, one lying to each point of the compass. Although extremely badly built, and capable apparently of withstanding no armed force, the walls of Sanaa formed a sufficient protection to the city against the wild Arab hordes by whom the place was infested in the autumn and winter of 1891. Had the Arabs been possessed of any artillery, instead of being armed with only a few matchlock-guns and rifles and their spears, no doubt the city would have fallen. Yet it has been found by proof, especially in the several bombardments of Mokha, that walls and fortifications of sun-dried bricks are by no means as easy to form a breach in as it might be supposed. However, in these days of shells they would offer but poor resistance, although when fired at with shot the missile merely buries itself in the clay, without doing any appreciable damage. To further fortify the place, the Turks have at regular intervals built, some few hundred yards outside the walls, towers, somewhat resembling our martello towers of the south coast. Here, as they have done upon the main wall, they have erected small guns which proved of great use in the Arab attacks upon Sanaa. These towers, by being built within easy range of one another, and being exposed to no more serious fire than that of matchlock-guns, are said to have played terrible havoc amongst the natives, as a handful of Turks in each, with one piece of artillery and a dozen or so rifles, were able to pour a telling fire into the flanks of the Arabs as they approached the city walls.

But the strongest point in the fortifications of Sanaa is the old fort on the spur of Jibel Negoum, the walls of which are solidly built of stone. Where necessary, the Turks have repaired and strengthened it. It was opposite to the gate of this fort, which serves as the Turkish arsenal, that I was lodged during my stay in Sanaa; and I was not a little amused to notice that the guns by which the walls are protected point ominously into the city. It is no doubt by the constant view of these cannon, whose gaping mouths point direct at the Arab quarter, that revolt and revolution against the Osmanli forces was held in check within the city, when all the rest of the Arab population, with but few exceptions, had risen up in arms.

A fort, but not nearly so large or strong, protects the city to the west, lying close to the gate by which the highroad to Hodaidah and the coast leaves the town. Both this edifice and that at the east end of Sanaa contain the remains of old palaces, but to-day they have fallen into disrepair. No longer the fountains splash their crystal waters into the clear air; no longer the pavements re-echo with the bells and anklets of dancers: now nothing is heard but the rough voice and rougher tread of the Turkish troops upon the marble floors. There is, in fact, but little to tell of the former grandeur of Sanaa. No doubt, within many of the houses there must be beautiful courts and gardens; but of these I saw little or nothing, for although I visited the Turkish Governor-General, Ahmed Feizi Pasha, in one of the old palaces of the Imams, the place has been so changed and decorated and spoiled that it resembles to-day a huge barrack rather than a palace. The walls have been whitewashed, the great staircases are dirty, and the steps worn away by the nails of the soldiers’ boots; and even in the great rooms in which Ahmed Feizi Pasha resides, or does his business, the simple old Arab taste has been changed for decoration of _Louis Quatorze_, by no means bad of its kind, some of the wall-painting being far above the average, but still sadly out of place.

Of the remains of the old palace and temple of Ghumdan, reached by some sixteen hundred steps, nothing but a heap of ruins remains to-day. Yet what a strange great place it must have been, with its four walls painted different colours, and its centre tower seven storeys in height, each diminishing in size, until the highest of all was floored with a single piece of marble. At each corner of this little summer-house was a marble lion, the open mouth of which exposed to the wind seemed to emit roaring. Strange fancies they had, these old-world Yemen people; and it must be regretted that the old palace and the adjacent temple dedicated to Zuhrah, supposed to be the Venus of Arabia, should have incurred the fanatical wrath of Othman, the third Caliph, and by his orders have been destroyed; for had it been left to die a natural death, there is little doubt that, in the situation and climate it enjoyed, there would have been at least some of it left to-day to tell of its former splendour.

Although one cannot see the interior of the Arab houses of Sanaa, a fair estimate of their size can be gained from the outside; and even to us English, who are used to great houses, many of those of Sanaa appear immense. It is impossible to describe the style of architecture in which they are built, for it is a style that exists nowhere else. It is purely and essentially Yemenite, though in some cases gateways and windows are found of Byzantine and Gothic form. There is one house at Dhamar, built of red brick and faced with white stone, with a stone porch, that, were it set down in an English country district, would pass for Elizabethan. The house, too, forms an E, and although I could find out nothing about its history, it seems impossible that the strange building could be an accident; and I am inclined to believe that it must have been erected by one of the many renegades who, in the middle ages, sought their fortunes in the wealthy cities of Arabia.

At Sanaa I saw no houses of this kind, the style of architecture, with the exception of the decoration of doors and windows, being more or less uniform. Many of the larger houses are built of stone and brick and cement, the lower two storeys perhaps being of well-squared stone of various colours, arranged so as to form designs, the upper portion being of brick covered with a hard cement that takes a fine polished surface, not unlike the material used in Cairo, and corresponding to the _tabbia_ of Fez. Many of the upper storeys are built overhanging the streets, but this is not carried out to nearly such a large extent as in many of the oriental cities; while the _musher-ibeyeh_ work of Cairo is rare here, its place being taken by long narrow windows filled in with stained glass in designs. From the outside the pattern is often inappreciable, as the chips of glass are simply stuck into the plaster framework. From within, however, only such of the glass is exposed as fits in between the solid pattern, and the designs are often exceedingly fine. The same can be seen in the tomb and mosque of Kaït Bey, one of the tombs of the Caliphs at Cairo, and again some specimens of the work exist in the museum of Arab antiquities in the same city. What carved wood there is used for window-screens does not in the least resemble that of Egypt, but is arranged in geometric designs, much more in the style of Chinese and Japanese workmanship, with which some of the designs are identical.

A word must be said here on the extraordinary quantity of Chinese and Japanese pottery to be found in the Yemen. There is scarcely a _café_ by the roadside where one will not find that the cups have come from the far East, and yet I found that but very little enters the country to-day. I believe the origin of the presence of this extraordinary amount of oriental pottery is to be traced to the last few centuries, when Aden was the great mart of exchange between the East and Europe. With great wealth in the cities of the Yemen, a very appreciable quantity of the goods brought to Aden would be taken into the interior, and the care with which pottery and antiquities are treasured by the natives of the country would explain their existing until to-day. There is little doubt that should the Yemen ever be opened up, and Europeans be able to travel with safety and comfort, that it will become a field for the curio-hunter such as has not been known since the days when the Egyptian antiquities began to be unearthed. Coins, gems, inscriptions, sculptures, old Persian and Arab antiquities, embroideries, arms, brass and copper work, manuscripts, carpets, oriental pottery and glass—the Yemen is full of them, and as yet her treasures are almost untouched.

Although many of the streets of the town consist of narrow byways, turning and twisting in every direction between the high walls of the houses, there are parts that are by no means badly laid out, and one or two of the main streets are quite wide thoroughfares, in which the few carriages which Sanaa boasts are able to pass each other. The most important of these streets leads from the square into which the Government buildings look to the bazaars. It is only a few hundred yards in length, it is true, but still it is sufficiently wide, and the shops on either side sufficiently good, to compare favourably with many in European towns. The “square” itself is a large oblong open space, faced on the east by the old castle and the large much-bedomed Turkish mosque, and on the west by what were once the palaces of the Arab rulers, and to-day form barracks and Government offices. At one end of the square an enterprising Turk has built a large _café_, where the officers and the few Greek shopkeepers love to congregate, and from the large doors and windows of which float clouds of pale-blue tobacco-smoke, issuing in curling clouds from the _shishas_ of the smokers. It is from this point that the main street leads off to the bazaars, and in the few hundred yards of thoroughfare are to be seen the best shops, kept either by Turks or by Greeks, in which every imaginable article can be procured, from tins of sardines and inferior Turkish cigarettes to photograph-frames and musty chocolate creams. One or two have large glass windows in which the goods are exposed to view, but they have a dingy dusty appearance, and seem to tell that trade is not bright. There, too, is a small restaurant, where all the favourite Turkish dishes can be obtained, some of which are by no means to be despised; while bottles of Greek and native wines standing on shelves tell that the Turks of Sanaa do not keep too strictly to the tenets of Islam with regard to drinking.

[Illustration: _Turkish officers in a café at Sanaa._]

Issuing from this street, one emerges into the bazaars, and here one sees Sanaa proper, not as it has been altered and changed to suit Turkish tastes.

Of the many scenes that the city presents to the traveller, the bazaars are perhaps the most interesting; for here one loses all idea of more modern times, and is thrown back, as it were, into the past. The bazaars have never changed. From time immemorial there have existed the strange box-like little shops, filled with much the same objects, and tended by people who, from the distance that they are separated from the outer world, have changed but little. Just as they dress to-day, so have they dressed since the word of Islam was first heard in the land. The only change, perhaps, noticeable to the casual observer, is the scattering of Turks and Turkish soldiers, whom now and again one passes in the narrow streets. The shops are all of one storey, the floor being raised about two feet above the ground, but not projecting on to the street in the little platforms one is so used to in Egypt and elsewhere. Here the seller sits cross-legged amongst his goods in the shadow of his mud-brick shop, gazing in front of him into the sunlit yellow street and beyond into the shop opposite. A little awning or covering of wood often projects above the opening, sufficient to give a patch of shade large enough to shield the purchaser from the sun’s hot rays.

As is the custom throughout the East, each trade has a number of shops, or often a whole street, put aside to its special business. The workers of arms, the jewellers, the second-hand shops, the sellers of silks and cottons, the crockery and china vendors, each has his own special quarter; while the vegetable and fruit bazaar is an open space, where, under rough little awnings, supported on poles and canes, the market produce is exposed for sale.

Particularly interesting amongst the shops are those of the jewellers and makers of arms. The walls of the former are hung with silver necklaces and bangles and anklets, many of which are of very beautiful design. Some of the necklets particularly are extremely lovely, resembling in workmanship the finest and best Greek and Etruscan work, with none of the roughness apparent in the jewellery of so many oriental countries. The favourite design seems to be single chains supporting pendants of various shapes and forms, from discs of fine filigree-work to solid pear-shaped globules of metal. The bracelets are generally bands of worked silver, though some, like the necklaces, are decorated with small chains and hanging pendants. But the greatest skill of the jewellers of Sanaa, who are rightly renowned for their workmanship, is exhibited in the dagger-sheaths, many of which are of rich silver-gilt, and even, at times, of gold. Perhaps the most lovely, however, are of plain polished silver inlaid with gold coins, principally of the Christian Byzantine emperors; others again, of delicate filigree, which the natives line with coloured leathers or silks. But more than even the sheaths of these _jambiyas_, as they call their daggers, the natives value the blades. Antique ones are generally considered the best, and the people declare that the old art of hardening the steel has been lost. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the modern blades are of no mean workmanship, and great prices, for the Yemen, are paid for good specimens. The two parts of the dagger are nearly always sold separately, and a Yemeni, having found a blade to suit him, has a sheath made according to his taste and wealth. The early European visitors to Sanaa speak of the jewelled arms worn by the Imams and their companions; but I saw only one specimen of these in the bazaars, a silver-gilt sheath studded with rough pearls and turquoises, for which the shopkeeper was asking some forty pounds sterling, without the blade. Another art long lost, but of which examples are still to be procured, is the application of silver to copper and brass. This kind of work usually takes the form of boxes of one of the latter metals, covered with inscriptions in Kufic or other Arabic characters in silver. The later forms of this work are very inferior to the earlier, and the silver is apt to peel off.

One of the great institutions of Sanaa are the khans, or caravanserais, of which there are a considerable number, the greater part being situated near the gates of the city. These buildings vary in size, but some are very large, though nearly all in bad repair. They usually consist of large houses three and four storeys in height, open to the sky in the centre. The lower floor forms stabling for the animals, while a number of rooms of various sizes open out on to the balconies which surround the court on the upper storeys. The hire of these rooms is very small, something like twopence a night, and as many as like to crowd into it do so. There is nearly always a _café_ attached, where cooking can be done, either by the visitors themselves, or, if more extravagantly inclined, by the servants of the khan. Assembled round the gates of these khans are to be seen the tribes-people from every part of the interior—bringers of salt from Mareb, the modern Saba or Sheba; of coffee from the northern districts; of indigo and grain and spices from wherever the soil is suitable to their growth. Caravans from the Hadramaut and Yaffa discharge their goods here too, to reload their camels with the produce of the largest city of Southern Arabia.

The population of Sanaa, although there is no official census to base one’s calculation upon, probably numbers some forty to fifty thousand people, of whom twenty thousand are said to be Jews. These, as has already been stated, have a quarter entirely to themselves; and although many hire shops in the bazaars, and are daily engaged in the town in attending to them, or in carrying on their respective trades, at night retire to the _ghetto_, with the exception of a few who are servants, and who sleep in their masters’ houses. There seems to be no more oppression of the Jews in the Yemen than there is of the Arabs. They are free to carry on whatever trade they will; to attend their synagogues and schools, and, in fact, seem very little interfered with by the Turks. They, of course, pay their regular share in the taxation, as is only right they should; and if it be exceptionally heavy in their case, it is so also in the case of the Arab inhabitants—though naturally the Jews, as to nature born, cry out a great deal more than the natives.

The _ghetto_ is quite separate from the Arab city. The houses are built almost entirely of mud-bricks, but look clean and comfortable, though the habit of throwing all their refuse into the streets is by no means a pleasant one for the passer-by. However, in this they are little worse, if at all, than the Arabs, whose drain-pipes project well over the middle of the narrow streets, through which generally flows an open drain. The passer-by has to be careful to keep near the house-wall, or he will run the risk of coming terribly to grief. There are said to be more than twenty synagogues in the Jews’ quarter, and over seven hundred boys attending the schools. The whole male population is supposed to be able to read; but the females attend entirely to their house-work, or the sewing of garments, and all education is neglected in their case.[41]

The Jews of the Yemen are believed to have come from India, and, as far as is known, there are none remaining of the old Jewish stock of pre-Islamic times. Although much despised by the proud Arabs, they are seldom treated with violence or even roughness, and what little persecution there can be said to exist consists almost entirely of the jeers of small boys, and even this is rare.

One cannot help noticing and admiring the extremely pleasant manners shown by the people of the Yemen toward Europeans. With the exception of the lower classes there is no crowding; and even when curiosity leads the people to congregate round a stranger, there are no rude remarks, much less any of the ribald cursing which distinguishes the attitude of the Moors of Morocco toward Europeans. This trait in the character of the people of the Yemen adds very largely to the pleasure of travelling, and many a kind word was said to me on my journey by “warriors” of the fiercest aspect, and many a pleasant smile and “God-speed” followed me as I rode away from the villages and towns. In fact, with a very few exceptions, I never heard a word of unpleasantness spoken either to or of myself. There is apparently less religious fanaticism towards Christians than exists between the two sects of Islam represented in the country—the Zaidis[42] by the Arabs, and the Sunnis by the Turks.

Through the centre of Sanaa flows at times the river Kharid. However, the river-bed is dry except in the rainy season, when a huge torrent pours down its course, often doing considerable damage to the adjacent houses. A bridge spans the river at one spot, and from here a good view is obtained both up and down the stream, the high yellow banks of which are crowned with tall houses, built in the peculiar style of architecture common to the place.

Beyond the Jews’ quarter, and to the extreme west of the town, is the suburb of Bir el-Azab, of which mention has already been made. Here the roads are wider, and pass between the high walls of the gardens, over the top of which can be seen the leaves and blossoms of the fruit-trees. Two villages also form country residences for the inhabitants of the city—Jeraaf, about two miles to the north, and Raudha, the same distance farther on. Shortly before my arrival at Sanaa the rebels had succeeded in blowing up with gunpowder the Turkish barracks at the latter place, together with some five-and-twenty soldiers.

[Illustration: _Turkish mosque at Sanaa, as seen from the prison window._]

With the exception of the Turkish mosque, all the others seem to be in bad repair, owing, it is said, to the Osmanli Government having seized most of the mosque property, the sole means of adding to and keeping in order the building themselves. The great mosque is a huge square building surrounded by a high wall, and boasting two tall minarets of curious construction. It was here that Ibn Fadl, the leader of the Karmathians, in the year 911 A.D., carried out one of those acts of licentious cruelty with which the history of the East teems. Having in that year successfully installed himself at Sanaa, from which on two previous occasions he had been ousted, he caused the great courtyard of the mosque to be filled some three or four feet deep with water, into which were driven naked all the young girls of the city. From his seat on the minaret he gazed upon them, and such as pleased him he dishonoured. The height of the water, however, discoloured the walls, and for centuries told the tale of the brief power wielded by this licentious usurper.

[Illustration: _Turkish soldier._]

But of all the sights offered by the city of Sanaa, the population presents the most interesting. Everywhere some strange figure meets the eye: here it is some wild tribesman with bronzed skin and raven-black locks, girded with his loin-cloth of dark blue cotton; there some merchant from the Hejaz, slow and stately, with strange glassy eyes that speak of _hashish_, robed in striped silks, and whose turban, so white it is, literally seems to sparkle in the sunlight. Again it is some ill-fed, ill-clothed Turkish soldier, with only one boot perhaps, and that scarcely more than a shadow of its former self, with face unshaven and sunk with illness; and as one is still watching him, there rattles past a shabby victoria, in which is seated some fat Pasha or Bey, with hideous black-cloth clothes richly sewn in gold lace; and one knows that as often as not his clothes, his carriage, and his horses are bought with the money that ought to feed the soldiers, for but a small proportion of the pay of the troops ever reaches them. Then, again, a woman passes, wrapt head to foot in coloured garments, the veil of coloured stuff just transparent enough to allow her to grope her way, for so do the women of Sanaa hide their charms; and here, there, and everywhere are the “gamins,” the same all over the world, though their blood and their language be different,—little monkeys all, and in Sanaa rebels to the very heart.

Of all the cities of the Yemen, there is none that can boast the antiquity of Sanaa. Tradition says that it was founded by Ad, the ancestor of the tribe of Adites, who were destroyed by a miraculous hot blast of wind for refusing to listen to the voice of the Prophet Hud. A second tribe, that of Thamud, met with a like fate for disregarding the Prophet Salih; only in their case it was a terrible voice that called to them from the skies that caused their deaths.[43] There is only one drawback to this tale—namely, that long after the destruction of the Adites we find them attacked and conquered by a descendant of Yarub, brother of Hadramaut, and son of Kahtan. He was apparently more successful than the miraculous hot wind, for they were evidently entirely wiped out on this occasion, and we find no more mention of them in history. But there is another interest belonging to the Adites—namely, that they were of the autochthonous stock of the Yemen, and therefore probably one of the original Semitic people who afterwards spread over Arabia and founded the Arab races, and who have, with the propagation of Islam, wandered far into Asia and Africa. The original name of Sanaa was Azal, Uzul, or Uwal, the latter of which means “primacy” in the Arab tongue. The authorities appear to differ as to which was really the first name, and it seems not improbable that Azal or Uzul was the original title, which, being incomprehensible to the later races, they changed to the Arabic Uwal—a word that described not only the antiquity of the place, but also bears a strong resemblance to its original name. This is, however, merely a conjecture.

Although Saba seems in the days of the Sabæans to have been a more important place than Sanaa, there is little reason to doubt that the latter was in existence; and amongst other authorities Ibn Khaldun states that Sanaa was the seat of the Tubbas or Himyaric kings for centuries before the time of Islam. This alone, apart from the traditions of far greater antiquity, of which we have no reason to doubt the truth, shows that probably two thousand years ago the city of Sanaa was a flourishing community, the seat of the government of powerful kings, who were living in a state of civilisation and culture. But the question of the antiquity of Sanaa is not one that can be entered into at any length here, and interesting as is the subject, space does not allow of carrying it further.

There are one or two episodes in the history of Sanaa that cannot be passed over without some slight mention. The first is the erecting there of a Christian church by Abrahá el-Ashram, Viceroy of the Yemen, under the Abyssinian King Aryat, for the building of which the Emperor of Rome is said to have supplied marble and workmen. Abrahá, who was a fanatical Christian, hoped by the erection of this wonderful structure, of which unfortunately we have but few details—and such as do exist are absurd—to change the goal of pilgrimage from the Kaabah at Mecca, which, it must be remembered, was an object of veneration long before the time of Mahammed, to Sanaa. Failing to entice the Arabs, he attempted by force to bring them to his church, which eventually led to his famous attack upon Mecca in 570 A.D., and in the total destruction of his army by pebbles dropped from the claws and beaks of birds.[44]

At the time of the introduction of Islam into the Yemen, we find the government in the hands of Budhan, or Budzan, the Persian Viceroy, who, however, embraced the new religion, and was confirmed by Mahammed as Governor of the Yemen—a post he held until he died. Within a year or two of the death of Mahammed himself, Islam was firmly grafted in the country, owing, it must be added, to the indomitable courage and energy of Mohajir, who, on his triumphal march to the Hadramaut, secured the leaders of the party dissentient to the rule of the then Caliph Abou Bekr, and, sending them prisoners to Mecca, planted the Caliph’s rule firmly in Sanaa.

Although the Christians of Nejrán continued such for a period, the enthusiasm of the people for Islam swept them along in its tide, and idolatry and Christianity soon became extinct in the Yemen—the third Caliph, Othman, destroying almost the last vestige of the former by razing the temple of Zuhrah at Ghumdan, the remains of which and of the Christian church of Abrahá are visible to-day in a heap of ruins at and near Sanaa respectively.

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.]