Travelling through southern Yemen to Seiyun in the Hadramawt.

The road from Thumrayt, Dhofar Oman,  into Al Mazyunah leads into the northeast desert of the Hadramawt in Yemen. My destination there was Seiyun. I thought this town would be a great centre for visiting the Hadramawt.

Some halfway on the journey I took lunch, at Rimah.  At 1,000Yemeni Riyals (roughly 2 Omani Rials), it was about twice the cost of a similar rice and meat dish in Oman, despite Oman being the wealthier country. I think the isolation and lack of any competition means this restaurant has a charge-what-they-want policy. Eventually, some 900km after  Thumrayt, Seiyun appeared  – a long journey.

Just off the main square in Seiyun was my simple hotel. The square itself was home to the old Palace of the Al Katheri Sultans, one of the places I had hoped to visit. Its, in origin, a few hundred years old – but what we see is, from the early 20th century (1920s) as wealth came into the Hadramawt from emigrees who had become wealthy traders in Singapore and the East Indies.
This palace, like other major old buildings in the Hadramawt, was mud brick at its core. However, wealthier people in the region used a lime-mix plaster, Qadad, over the bricks. This is white in colour, largely water-resistant, and the plaster’s thickness of a couple of centimetres must add stability to the structure. The palace today is still a confection of white plaster and dominates the town. Today, the palace is a museum with a collection of local artefacts and photographs by Dame Freya Stark, the British explorer who travelled by herself in the region during the 1930s.

The next day I started my travel around the region, including Tarim with its amazing Al Mihdar Mosque whose minaret towers over 50meters in the air – remarkably it also is a structure created out of mud-bricks, with Qadad plaster. Created at the start of the 20th century, the current mosque building was a beneficiary of wealth, from not only local trade but also wealth pouring into towns whose members had emigrated, ‘temporarily’,  to the East Indies. They had started this emigration in the late 18th century, and the subsequent growth of Aden as a British port, linking into the Pacific, accelerated the process. Sir Stamford Raffles and Major-General William Farquhar (British administrators of Singapore in  the early 19thc) actively encouraged Arab migration to the Singapore area to stimulate commerce. Prominent Hadramawti families moved their financial capital from the Dutch East Indies to British territories, making themselves key players in trade to India & Europe.

Shibam, along the valley from Seiyun, is almost as it was built 500 years ago. It was so interesting I visited it twice. This town is a veritable citadel of mud-brick tower houses set in the Wadi Hadramawt. Inside the town, in one of its numerous small piazzas, I found the Haroun Al Rashid mosque. The mosque was probably originally built in 753 and rebuilt during the reign of Harun Al Rashid (died 809). A few centuries later massive floods destroyed the town in around 1533 and the mosque was again rebuilt.

Visiting the Hadramawt for a week, I left for Mukalla, allowing time to explore Wadi Dawan.

Though this valley is less wealthy than the larger towns, the houses here were particularly sympathetic to the landscape. In Wadi Dawan I was fortunate to meet a bee-keeper whose several dozen hives are individually locked, so valuable is honey here. When  I managed BHS in Saudi Arabia, honey from Wadi Dawan was sold by several street salesmen outside the entrance to the Al Khobar BHS store – which opened directly on the public street. They typically received around 600 Saudi riyals (about 160USDollars) a litre (it was sold in Vimto bottles); so I was delighted to find a source here.

Then it was up past the amazing Bugshan Palace. This is another Qadad-covered building, however in a multi-coloured chequer-board effect. From the settlement of Khaila the road snaked into Mukalla. My hotel here was just off the creek that runs into the town.

Mukalla is the main port for the Hadramawt, its whitewashed houses and narrow streets were a pleasure to wander through. My only disappointment was an inferior meal of fish.  The fish had been frozen rather than fresh, creating a stiffer flesh. Very surprising in a port of the Arabian Sea!

Finally, after a couple of nights in Mukalla, it took a day to drive along the coastal road (much of which was financed by Oman) before arriving into Salalah during the late evening.