Pre-Islamic history - count.

By the time of the ancient Romans, Pliny (xii, 42) could write:

Let us take into account [also] the vast number of funerals that are celebrated throughout the whole world each year, and the heaps of odours that are piled up in honour of the bodies of the dead.... It is the luxury of man, which is displayed even in the paraphernalia of death, that has rendered Arabia thus 'happy'.

We are fortunate in the survival of a unique historical document from Roman times, a navigational guide to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, written by an anonymous Alexandrian captain: The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. This book tells us that it was the Hadrami 'people alone . . . and no other people among the Arabians [who] behold the incense tree.

Frankincense is still grown in the gullies and secluded wadis of Hadramawt - small thorny trees, 'not of great height or thickness', as the author of the Periplus tells us, 'they bear the frankincense sticking in drops on the bark'. According to the ancient Greek botanist Theophrastus (372-287 B.C.):

frankincense, myrrh, cassia and also cinnamon are found in the Arabian peninsula about Saba', Hadramyta, Kitibaina [Qataban] and Mamali. The trees of frankincense and myrrh grow partly in the mountains, partly on private estates at the foot of the mountains; wherefore some are under cultivation, others not.

Today no frankincense is deliberately cultivated in the wadi, but enough comes down from the small tributary valleys, where it is gathered from the wild bushes, to supply most of the people's needs. It is still used for fumigating and purifying, and for sweetening drinking water. It is also burnt for its aroma on social occasions, and a departing guest is offered the incense-burner to perfume his clothing before going out into the street.

Pliny tells us more about Hadramawt in ancient times. The gathering of frankincense was reserved to a small class:

Not over three thousand families have a right to that privilege by hereditary succession. For this reason, these persons are called sacred, and are not allowed, while pruning the trees or gathering the harvest, to receive any pollution, either by intercourse with women or contact with the dead; by these religious observances it is that the price of the commodity is so enhanced.

'All the frankincense ... in the country is brought ... to be stored in Shabwah' (Periplus), which shows the city's key position, west of the forests and of the main road up from the port on the coast. The King of Hadramawt had taken up residence in Shabwah, and it is therefore often referred to as a 'royal city'. According to Pliny (xii, 32):

The incense, after being collected, is carried on camels' backs to Sabota [Shabwah], of which place a single gate is left open for its admission. The laws have made it a capital offence to deviate from the highroad while carrying it. At this place the priests take, by measure and not by weight, a tenth part in honour of their god, whom they call Sabis; indeed, it is not allowable to dispose of it before this has been done; out of this tenth the public expenses are defrayed, for the divinity generously entertains all those strangers who have made a certain number of days' journey in coming thither.

There are certain portions also of frankincense which are given to the priests and the king's secretaries: and in addition to these, the keepers of it, as well as the soldiers who guard it, the gate-keepers and various other employees, have their share as well. And then besides all along the route, there is at one place water to pay for, at another fodder, lodging of the stations, and various taxes and imposts besides; the consequence of which is that the expense for each camel before it arrives at the shore of our sea [the Mediterranean] is 688 denarii.

The relationship with the other South Arabian kingdoms to the west is suggested by references in inscriptions to a Minean colony in Hadramawt and to an agreement with the Qatabanians (the Gebanitae): 'The incense can only be exported through the country of the Gebanitae, and for this reason it is that a certain tax is paid to their king as well' (Pliny, xii, 32).

There are numerous references; on the other hand, to wars between the Hadramis and the Sabaeans, from the central kingdom, whose capital was Marib.

The whole machinery of trade was a delicate mechanism, in a constant state of adjustment. Although the richness of the incense trade was important-particularly because it had presumably led to the original growth of centralized organizations which undertook the gigantic irrigation and dam-building works to provide the water necessary to sustain agriculture in the semi-arid conditions of much of the area-it is clear that a great deal of the prosperity for which the region was renowned came from the fertility of the alluvial soil and the husbandry of the people.

The site of Shabwah has been excavated systematically by French archaeologists since 1975; the remains of a great building (believed to have been the royal palace) high on a stone podium and fronted by a range of rooms round a courtyard have been uncovered, as well as a number of other major structures, the most splendid of which is the citadel. The entire city area is surrounded by a double wall, in which the remains of large town gates can be observed.

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