Smoking the mada‘a (water pipe) in the Jawl (p. 180).
The Real Jewel is Yemen
Smoking the mada‘a (water pipe) in the Jawl (p. 180).
There is, quite fortunately, no dearth of picture books about Yemen. In part this is due to the picturesque aura of Yemeni landscapes, which explains why it is a common National Geographic venue. Charles and Patricia Aithie, a geologist and artist/journalist respectively from Wales, have produced a splendid array of color photographs with a supporting text designed for the general reader. The text begins with an introduction by Mark Marshall, British ambassador to Sanaa from 1987-1993. This is followed by a tourist-targeted chronology of South Arabia from the first traces of the Neolithic to the northern border agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2000. The Aithie's narrative description is divided geographically with separate chapters on (1) the Highlands, (2) Tihama, and (3) Hadramawt, South Coast and Aden. The select bibliography emphasizes geography and travel writing. The index appears to be quite comprehensive, although, annoyingly, Arabic names beginning with the definite article (al) all appear under the letter "a." If you are looking for a specific Arabic placename, you will have to consider the possible variants since the text makes little attempt to be systematic.
Let's begin with the photographs, since they are the main reason worth having a copy of the book. First, the print quality is very good for most of the pictures. There is a nice balance between shots of people, terraces, architecture and material culture (pottery, hats, stained glass designs). As an artistic collection this volume does not match the brilliance and consistency of work by Pascal and Marie Maréchaux, but several of the shots are indeed exquisite (doorway, p. 41; boy and donkey, p. 61; night scene in Taiz, p. 99; Tihama child, p. 104; Tihama man, p. 107; Beit al-Faqih market, p. 129; Shabwa salt miner, p. 155). The photographs are almost uniformly symmetrical (e.g., p. 135). Sometimes the layout reduces scenes that beg for a larger frame into small vignettes that may require a magnifying glass to appreciate (e.g., the boys on bicycles on p. 113). In terms of photographic quality, there are several illustrations that well capture the intricacies of lighting (e.g., small boats at Mukha, p. 141 and the village of Habban, p. 189). Unfortunately, there are also several cases where the contrast is flat (unidentified object on top of p. 86; Jiblah on pp. 96-97), washed out (storks on p. 90) and faces unintentionally obscured in the shadows (female trader on p. 132).
Female trader at al Khamis (p. 132)
The wildlife shots look, for the most part, like they were taken by tourists. This is especially the case for the three photographs of birds (p. 120), which are too small to have an effect, unimaginatively cropped and of poor contrast. The vivid colors of Red Sea fish are also lost (p. 114). The best wildlife photograph is a striking image of a blue agame lizard (p. 65), although even here the tail is out of focus. I did notice a few pictures that are problematically cropped. For example, the two Tihama women on a donkey cart (p. 11) would have made a nice picture, but the bottom of the frame has an obstruction in the left hand corner; attempting to crop this out resulted in the hooves of the donkeys being cut off.
Colorful, but not very detailed, maps (pp. 17-19) are given of the topography, main roads, and administrative sectors, but &endash; given that the target is the tourist more than the scholar &endash; it would have been nice if the shadings (for elevation) on the topographic map had been explained. Small maps are also provided in the text for roads leading to Sanaa (p. 35), worldwide coffee production (p. 48), geologic structure (p. 54), a very rough and very small map of land use (p. 91), Tihama markets (p. 114), Jabal Bura' (p. 121), Wadi Hadramawt (p. 148), ancient South Arabian kingdoms (p. 153), sketch maps of Aden for 1877 and 1960 (p. 198), geology of the Aden volcano (p. 204), Socotra island (p. 205), and the Tawila Tanks at Aden (p. 206).
Beit al-Faqih market (p. 128).
Now, to the text. Mark Marshall's introduction is a confused historical and cultural summary better left unread. It is full of superlative anecdotalisms, such as: "The highlands of Yemen are said to be the only place where the Arabs are at home in a temperate climate." (p. 8), certainly surprising news to Omanis, Lebanese and Syrians; the first non-Yemeni reached the village of Qubaita in 1989 (p. 8), the first to sign a guest register?'; "The tribal territories have not changed for at least a thousand years..." (p. 8), perhaps the author should enroll at Oxford for a course with Paul Dresch; the spin on Hud as an "allegedly monotheistic" prophet (p. 10), as though this is somehow a relevant issue to doubt. It is perhaps not surprising that a former British ambassador glosses Britain's role in the former protectorate of Aden, which simply "became fully independent" and then "soon turned very leftist" (p. 10). You will not find any nuanced political history in the main text either; we are informed that the Aden region "was devastated by tyrannical Marxist methods of government" (p. 203). Admittedly, this makes it a text extremely unlikely to offend anyone. Successful picture books do not generally carry powerful polemics.
The textual narrative and captions are generally accurate but suffer from a tourist-level knowledge of Yemeni culture, a feature common to derivative accounts supplementing table-top picture books. Geography drives the text as a kind of expanded commentary on the range of Yemeni locales. This text has the merit of giving equal attention to north and south, although it is mainly the well known places which are treated. The geographical description is fairly good, although without the thoroughness of German writings. An informative sidebar is provided on termites in Yemen (p. 193); see below. The text is especially useful for a general description of crafts and local architecture. Readers not familiar with Yemen may become a bit disoriented by the constant listing of place names, since this is not a travel guide to hold in the hand while cruising the highways. The authors are sympathetic to Yemeni culture, not bashing qat use or dwelling on "wild" tribesmen as many tourist accounts tend to do. Discussion of cultural customs is at times superficial, such as the limited explanation of bara' dance as "local people join in the dance with graceful movements" (p. 52). Even Quakers would have trouble finding many "oats" in Yemen (p. 24); perhaps the authors are thinking of barley, which was left off the list of major grains. The jambiya (curved dagger) was never the main weapon of war (p. 77). The hamlet on a rock (p. 59) is not the village of al-Ahjur, although it is in the valley of al-Ahjur; it is located near the top, not the bottom, of the wadi.
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Taiz street at night (p. 99). |
The editing has some minor problems. A caption on p. 86 refers to a picture on the right; it is on the left. I note that the indexed reference to Ar-Rawda on p. 180 is in error. There are also the occasional and distracting idiosyncratic spellings of place names: Jabla for Jibla (p. 9); Dhaffar for the established Dhofar or at least Dhafar (p. 9); Wadi Dhar for Wadi Dhahr (p. 50). There is some confusion as to whether the Rasulid dynasty begins in 1228 (p. 134) or 1229 (pp. 14, 100). The first sentence on p. 139 is missing a comma. Those kinds of things that a good proof reader should catch.
Overall, this is a book worth owning. For someone who knows nothing about Yemen, the text is informative and the pictures compelling. For an English text useful for tourists, this one works. Keep it at least near your coffee table, but not on top of books by the photographers Maréchaux.
Support for this volume came from a variety of sources, including the Arts Council of Wales, the Ministry of Tourism and Culture in Yemen, the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen in London and the British Yemeni Society. The authors are to be commended for their collaborative effort. Potential readers are recommended to include this volume in their collections.
Ka‘ba diagram from a Yemeni manuscript in Tarim (p. 172).
[All photos by Charles and Patricia Aithie.]
Termites
On the upper part of the South Arabian coastal plain tower-like termite mounds form a conspicuous feature of the landscape. They are irregular to conical in shape, rising to head height, and stand 50-100m apart along the wadi courses in Abyan province. Their builders are large colonies of the fungus-growing higher termite Macrotermes, most probably Macrotermes subhyalinus, a common sight in tropical Africa, where the genus originates, but fairly rare in the Arabian Peninsula where they occur sporadically here and in nearby Dhofar (Oman) and Saudi Arabia.
Not surprisingly, it takes a vast number of the tiny termites to produce such prodigious earthworks, and the termite colonies contain millions of individuals, some of them quite long-lived, each performing a different role in a highly organised colonial structure. The mounds, built up of a mixture of earth, saliva and clay that sets extremely hard, have a complex internal structure and ventilation system. A central chamber is inhabited by the king and queen termite, and a series of chambers of varying size and shape contain fungus combs which help the insects to break down the life-giving cellulose they harvest on the surface at night. M. subhyalinus feeds mainly on grass litter; this is stored in spacial chambers in the nest where it is allowed to ferment before it is eaten and deposited in the combs. After a few weeks the combs are broken down and the nutrients harvested.
The termites enter and leave the mound through a series of underground passageways, or foraging galleries, in its base, which radiate out under the surrounding area and come to the surface some distance away. Foraging takes place on the surface at night, and only during the day if food is in short supply.
The termites have become adapted to life in this semi-arid environment, and by mean of some specially arranged hairs can extract water from the pores in the soil through capillary action. In general, they are largely inconspicuous except for annual migration flights - the means by which the colonies are able to spread. A proportion of winged migrating forms leave from temporary exit holes near the top of the mound. They are incapable of powerful flight and usually travel less than 100m. On landing the males and females snap off their wings, find a partner and dig a tunnel to start a new colony as the new king and egg-producing queen. The first eight months in a new colony's life are a particularly vulnerable time for the queen, who loses about thirty percent of her initial weight. Mortality rates at this stage are typically about fifty per cent.
Termites are in a sense the tropical equivalent of the temperate earthworm, helping to fertilise and enrich the soil, and are therefore especially important in dry climates, where ordinary decay is rather slow. One species however - Microtermes najdensis, which lives in the soil - is a particular pest in the cultivated wadi areas of the Tihama, causing substantial root damage to a wide range of crops, including cotton and maize."
