Pre-Islamic history - count3.

Other large city sites exist within the area of the main wadi, at the entrances to the larger tributary valleys: in Wadi 'Amd, the site of the ancient city of Mudab, opposite Huraidah, where the Temple of the Moon was the first Hadrami site to be excavated in modern times (by Caton-Thompson c. 1936); in Wadi Hajrain, the ancient city of Raybun, near Mashhad; in Wadi 'Idm, the twin ancient city sites of Mashhad and Sünah; and finally, in Wadi Hadramawt itself, farther east, the city sites of al-Hajrah and al-Sawm. But there are also innumerable smaller sites, both of forts and, high on the surrounding collines (low promontories of the great cliffs), of temples, with grand, straight, stone staircases leading up to them from the valley below.

Occasionally we gain dim glimpses of the religion and ways of life of the people in ancient times. The wadi is full of legends of ancient giants, and there are many revered tombs of them, mostly made by piling up stones, varying in length from 9 to 24 m. Many of these giants were reputed to be miracle workers, like Salih, the father of Hud, who created camels out of living rock (perhaps the first camels in Arabia?). People are said to go blind if they take away stones or steal anything from these tombs. The tombs are, or were until recently, the sites of annual pilgrimages, which seem to have little or nothing to do with Islam, but are survivals from ancient times. The most important of these pilgrimages, to the site of the tomb of Hud himself, has been arrogated to Islam for more than 1,000 years. But we know that in antiquity a great annual fair took place at the tomb, to which tribes from many distant places came to exchange goods and, presumably, to make some sort of religious observances. The nature of these observances is still unclear. The Hadrami pantheon is thought to have had a close similarity to those of the other South Arabian kingdoms, and was therefore dominated by the triad of the moon and the moon's consort: the sun, and the star of Venus.

The moon god in Hadramawt bore the distinctive name of Sin, probably borrowed from the Babylonian religion. The city of Shabwah was clearly an important religious center, because of the rituals connected with the gathering and trans-shipment of the incense, and presumably because it was the residence of the king. According to Pliny, Shabwah had more than sixty temples in his time. After its destruction it seems to have continued as a pilgrimage centre: a fifth-century-A.D. graffito there is associated with the monotheistic cult of Rahman. But the Kings of Himyar now claimed jurisdiction over the city and the entire wadi, terming themselves 'Kings of Saba', Dhü Raydan, Hadramawt and Yamanat'.

In Shabwah and throughout the wadi there seems to have been, in ancient times, an annual ritual hunt for ibex in the mountains, some relic of which survived until recently. The three-day hunt ended with public celebrations and the sacrifice of a captured animal, after which the meat was eaten. This, and other superstitions associated with the hunt, suggest an ancient religious ritual (also attested by numerous inscriptions), and the connotation has led to its being strongly disapproved of and suppressed wherever possible by strict orthodox Muslims in modern times.

A high level of culture seems to have been enjoyed in Hadramawt and throughout South Arabia, particularly by the urban people. Some of their luxuries doubtless came down the trade routes in exchange for incense, and Hellenistic art was dominant in the first centuries of the Christian era. In the earlier centuries before Christ a major artistic influence in sculpture seems to have come from the Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia.

From the western Kingdom of Yemen, more than 5,000 inscriptions in stone have survived, many dating from the first millennium B.C. Inscriptions in stone are rarer in Hadramawt, and the earliest are later than the western ones. The explanation for this is probably that early Hadrami inscriptions were executed in wood, brick or plaster. Certainly, the first datable inscription, from the city of Raybun and thought to be from the ninth century B.C., is of baked earth. The monumental stone inscriptions mostly come from the fifth to fourth centuries B.C. One of the finest hillside temples, Ba-Qutfah, has inscriptions which have been dated to before the fourth century B.C.

The evidence of archaeological finds suggests that the region continued to prosper for nearly 1,000 years, with a steady increase both in the area under cultivation and in the volume of the incense trade (which seems to have reached its apogee in the third century A.D.), and a corresponding growth of cities and settlements in South Arabia. It is possible that this very expansion sowed the seeds of decline. The larger populations may have overstrained the fuel, food and fodder resources of the area, leading to the interminable wars of which the inscriptions tell us. In this period the most cataclysmic event was the capture and Systematic pillage of Shabwah by the King of the Sabaeans in A.D. 220-30. Over-cultivation may have led to impoverishment of the soil and the eventual abandonment of some of the plantations. Over-grazing may have destroyed the natural cover and probably led to large flash floods, which proved too much for the dams and irrigation works. According to al-Bakri, the great Marib dam burst in A.D. 520, and again in A.D. 650, and the main dam at the east end of Wadi Hadramawt burst shortly before the advent of Islam. The very cultivation system, which allowed fresh silt layers to accumulate on the fields below the dams, thus raising the field levels with each seasonal flood, made the task of building up the stone retaining walls and dams increasingly arduous.

Eventually the entire region was subject to a series of foreign invasions. The first came in the early sixth century A.D., when the Ethiopians captured Marib and the Ha~1rami port of Qan~, according to an inscription there; they seem to have been aiming to take over what was left of the trade in incense and Indian goods. We do not yet know how far they penetrated into Wadi Hadramawt, or whether they reached Shabwah. The archaeologi- cal evidence suggests, however, that the palace of Shabwah continued to be occupied after the third century A.D., and was ultimately destroyed by fire, perhaps caused during an earth- quake. At some time, according to the early Islamic historians, the bulk of the inhabitants left and moved farther east, into the more fertile and sheltered lands of the wadi proper, where they settled around Shibam. According to al-Hamdani, writing in the tenth century A.D., the city was named after them.

There is evidence that before Islam there were some Christians in the wadi-as one might expect, for conversion was apparently one of the aims of the Ethiopian conquest. Until recently, popular belief in the wadi still held that some of the ruined forts on the mountain ridges were built by Christians. Moreover, scholars know of two Christian poets of the Kindah tribe who were born in Dawean.

The second invasion was by the Persians, in other words, the Sassanians. It is said that they were invited in by dispossessed members of the Yemeni royal families to help them drive out the Ethiopians, in the last quarter of the sixth century A.D. Again, the exact extent of Persian domination in South Arabia is not known-for the Persians, once invited, naturally came to stay. But the strong Persian style of the door pillars and other carvings from Hisn al- Urr at the eastern end of Wadi Hadramawt suggests that this fortress was either theirs or belonged to one of their satraps.

After the bulk of its people had left, Shabwah does not seem to have been entirely deserted. Situated as it was on a dome of salt, the city became a source for this precious commodity. The salt was mined by a few village families and exported thence all over the wadi and as far afield as San'a and Aden, until modern times.

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