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]

[iv]

[v]

PREFACE

If my fellow-traveller had lived, he intended to have puttogether in book form such information as we had gatheredabout Southern Arabia. Now, as he died four days afterour return from our last journey there, I have had toundertake the task myself. It has been very sad to me,but I have been helped by knowing that, however imperfectthis book may be, what is written here will surely be ahelp to those who, by following in our footsteps, will beable to get beyond them, and to whom I so heartily wishsuccess and a Happy Home-coming, the best wish a travellermay have. It is for their information that I have includedso many things about the price of camels, the payment ofsoldiers and so forth, and yet even casual readers may careto 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 NineteenthCentury, and by the kindness of the editor I havebeen able to make use of these; also I have incorporatedthe lectures he had given before the Royal GeographicalSociety and the British Association. The rest is from hisnote-books and from the 'Chronicles' that I always wroteduring our journeys.[vi]

I thought at first of trying to keep our several writingsapart; but, to avoid confusion of inverted commas, I decided,acting on advice, just to put the whole thing into asconsecutive a form as possible, only saying that the leastpart of the writing is mine.

The bibliography is far from complete, as I can nameonly a few of the many books that my husband consultedon all the districts round those which we were going topenetrate.

As to the spelling of the Arabic, it must be rememberedthat it is a very widely spread language, and there arenat

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