¹ Durain means ‘fox’.

² Serjeant, R. B., Prose and poetry from Ḥaḍramawt, London, 1951, Ar. text, p. 62Google Scholar, verse 10.

³ Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah bi-Ḥaḍramawt, Singapore, 1953Google Scholar, 4. This was sent me by Saiyid ‘Alawī b. Ṱāhir of Johore and might be his own composition. It is reviewed in the Aden paper al-Nahḍah. The anonymous author is critical of government activities in irrigation and anti-erosion work on technical grounds, and makes certain proposals of his own.

⁴ If the bracketed word which the text includes as a part of the quotation be omitted, the verses are rajaz type.

⁵ Hurgronje, C. Snouck, ‘L'interdit séculier (rifgèh) en H'adhramôt’, Revue Africaine (Alger), XLIX, 256, 1905, 92–9Google Scholar.

⁶ See 'Kazi, Abd al-Khaliq, A critical edition, of the Kitāb al-Muntakhab fi 'l-fiqh—a collection of the answers of the Zaidī Imām Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusain to questions by Abū Ja'far Muḥ. b. Sulaimān al-Kūfī, thesis submitted for London Ph.D., 1957, 171Google Scholar.

⁷ Rossi, E., ‘Note sull' irrigazione, l'agricoltura e le stagioni nel Yemen’, Oriente Moderno, XXXIII, 8–9, 1953, 349–61Google Scholar.

⁸ Ahmad… b.al-Murtaḍā, , al-Baḥr al-zakhkhār. Cairo, 1949Google Scholar.

⁹ Abu 'I-Khair, Yahyā b. Sa'd b. Yahyā al-'Imrānī, al-Bayān fi 'l-furū', cf.Brockelmann, , GAL, I, 391Google Scholar, Suppl., I, 675. He died in 558/1163 at Dhu 'I-Sufāl. A copy of his Bayān is also available in the British Museum.

¹⁰ cf. GAL, i, 396.

¹¹ 'Abdullāh b. 'Abdullāh b. Aḥmad… b. Ibrāhīm Makhramah al-Saibānī al-Jūhī (1501–2– 1564–5) a Ḥaḍramī author; photocopy in SOAS Library.

¹² He died in 1034/1624–5. Cf. Muḥ. b. Muḥ.…Zabārah, , Mulḥaq al-Badr al-ṱāli’, Cairo, A.h. 1348, 9Google Scholar.

¹³ A MS work by 'Alī b. 'Abdullāh al-Samhūdī (ob. 911/1505) entitled al-Anwār al-sanīyah fī ajwibat al-as'ilat al-Yamanīyah (Lévi-Provençal, E., Les manuscrits arabes de Rabat, Paris, 1921, p. 249)Google Scholar, I had thought might be another in the same series, but through the courtesy of Muḥammad b. Tāwīt who sent me a microfilm of the MS I have discovered that it does not deal with irrigation but with religious questions.

¹⁴ Numbered Fiqh no. 85, and entitled al-Ajwibat al-ḥasanah wa-jawābāt Ibn Ḥajar 'an al-as'ilat al- Yamanīyah.

¹⁵ van Ronkel, P. S., Supplement to the catalogues of the Arabic M8S preserved in the Museum of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences, Batavia, 1913, p. 292Google Scholar. His son Muḥammad it probably is whose obituary notice appears in al-'Aidarūs, Ibn, al-Nūr al-sāfir, Baghdad, 1934, 414Google Scholar, under the chronicles for the year 993/1585. He himself figures in a list of Meccan ‘ulamā’ including Ibn Ḥajar and several South Arabians, in Ulughkhānī,An Arabic history of Gujerat, ed. Ross, E. D., London, 1910–1928, II, 637Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Mulakhkhaṣ al-fitan, fols. 11 r. an d 12 v. Cf.Cahen, Claude and Serjeant, R. B., ‘A fiscal survey of th e mediaeval Yemen’, Arabica, IV, 1, 1957, 22–33Google Scholar.

¹⁷ al-'Aidarūs, Ibn, al-Nūr al-sāfir, Baghdad, 1934, 69Google Scholar.

¹⁸ See p. 34, n. 7.

¹⁹ cf. my‘Two sixteenth-century Arabian geographical works’, BSOAS, XXI, 2, 1958, 257Google Scholar.

²⁰ Irvine, A. K., A survey of old South Arabian lexical materials connected with irrigation techniques, thesis submitted for Oxford D. Phil., 1962Google Scholar; Ghul, M. A., Early southern Arabian languages and classical Arabic, thesis submitted for London Ph.D., 1962Google Scholar. For a survey of earlier materials, see Grohmann, A., Südarabien als Wirtschaftsgebiet, Brünn, 1933, II, 19–33Google Scholar, ‘Bewässerung’, but the whole section ‘Landwirtschaft’ is not irrelevant. A more recent and general survey, Caponera, Dante, Water laws in Moslem countries (FAO Development Paper No. 43), Roma, 1954Google Scholar, has little specific information on South Arabia.

²¹ Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah, 8. Irvine, , op. cit., 253Google Scholar, quotes rḥbm from C540 as a proper name, but it could be taken in the sense given here.

²² cf. the form Ukhdūd, BS0AS, XXII, 3, 1959, 572–3Google Scholar.

²³ Beeston, A. F. L., ‘The so-called harlots of Ḥaḍramaut’, Oriens, V, 1, 1952, 17Google Scholar.

²⁴ A ḥadbah was said to be a qārah (prominence) aw bilād saghīrah.

²⁵ Caton-Thompson, G., The tombs and moon temple of Hureidha, Oxford, 1944Google Scholar, plate I. See also pp. 9–16, ‘Ancient irrigation in the Wādī 'Amd’, and pl. LXXII.

²⁶ SeeBibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum: indices, glossarium, Leiden, 1879, 325Google Scholar, for maqāsim al-mā'.

²⁷ In Sa'īd of Upper 'Awlaqī territory (Wādī Yashbum), bidd (pl.bidād) is a channel.

²⁸ cf. marṣad in p. 54, n. 73, and ḥarrah in al-Shāmil. 203.

²⁹ cf. p. 37, n. 22. This word appears as a name on von Wissmann's map, near Ḥuraiḍah. In Dathīnah a khudād is a sort of furrowing in the ground made by a sail, always long-wise of course, a synonym of which is said to be washar, a ‘sawing, saw-cut’ as it were.

³⁰ Landberg, quoting Hein, denies that the latter's assertion that marbadah means siqāyah is correct, but I think Hein is probably right, except that it may conceivably be so named because siqāyahs are covered with nūrah which makes them conspicuous. I think rabada should be taken as equivalent to rabaṱa ‘to bind or tie’, and consider that the Ḥaḍramīs regard the fatḥah as bound together with clay. In Tarīm rabad means to close the breach of a clay bund (sawm) to make it hold water.

³¹ The maṱīrah (in Tarīm 21 dhirā' square) is probably of an extent more or less fixed over all Ḥaḍramawt. 'Alawī b. Ṱāhir, al-Shāmil, 173, discussing a certain maṱarah, apparently a large basin (ḥawḍ) which fills with water at flood-time, states its area in maṱīrahs, adding that the maṱīrah is 49 dhirā' square (nearly 79 feet); this measure relating presumably to the Wādī Daw'an. The Tarjī al-aṱyār of 'Abd al-Raḥmān b. Yaḥyā. al-Ānisī al-Ṣan'ānī, ed. al-Yaḥṣubī and al-Fā'ishī (Cairo, A.h. 1369), 234, makes al-maṱīr equivalent to al-mamṱūr, quoting a verse wa-lā zāl maṱīr.

³² cf.Rossi, , ‘Note sull' irrigazione’, 359Google Scholar; Landberg, , Arabica, v, Leiden, 1898, 146Google Scholar seq., and Gloss, daṯ. A legal text I saw in Mūdiyah contains the phrase This perhaps may be read ḥawl with Gloss, daṯ., in the sense of a rain torrent, but Lane gives ḥiwal as a furrow or trench in the ground in which palm trees are planted. A Kibsī saiyid told me that a ḥawl simply means a jirbah, a field, and is still used in this sense in the Yemen.

³³ On the Jōl west of the Wādī Daw'an, Bedouin called a small heap of stones, approximately a foot high, where several paths branched off, a kūt; it had been made to indicate the correct path.

³⁴ Landberg, , Ḥaḍramoût, Leiden, 1901, 184Google Scholar, gives a plural ḍumur, and describes it as a ‘digue transversale pour faire entrer l'eau dans les champs’.

I have recorded a plural ḍumūr.

³⁵ cf. Ryckmans, G., ‘Sabéen ḥbl = accadie n abullu?’, Archiv Orientáí, XVII, 2, 1949, 310–12Google Scholar. This article discusses a brief inscription, ‘sur une grande pierre faisant partie des assises extérieures des grands temples de Ṣirwāḥ’, from the Yemen. Ryckmans proposes that ḥabl is a term of construction equivalent to the Akkadian abullu, i.e. a large door, gate. Muḥ. b. Abī , Bakr al-Shillī, al-Mashra' al-rawī, Cairo, A.h. 1319, I, 127Google Scholar, discusses a well known as al-Bīr al'Alawīyah at Bōr dug by a celebrated Saiyid who ‘lined it with large stones and inscribed his name on every stone of the top-most abl, which is the midmāk (vocalization dubious)’. Lane gives dumlūk as applied to a stone in the sense of ‘smooth, even’. At Sa'īd of Yashbum it seemed to be the name of the two facing walls of a stone deflector, with a core of earth or rubble, this filling known locally as wajlah. The workmen called these two walls ḥablain (fig. 6). They used a sledge ('ishshah) to carry the stone for the work, and the usual palm-leaf baskets for conveying the wajlah. Clearly this sense fits the phrase of CIH, 343, 5 'dy ḥblthmw w'brthmw. Cf. the discussion by Ryckmans, G., ‘Epigraphical texts’, in Fakhry, Ahmed, Archaeological journey to Yemen, Cairo, 1951–1952, n, 2Google Scholar. The Ḥaḍramī author of al-Mashra' evidently understands the word as a course of stones, but the sense in Yashbum is a little different. In the Tarīm area it was used of a course of stones in a barrage. Al-Mashra', i, 141, alludes to shafīr al-bir, the ‘lip’of the well. According to al-Shāmil, 177, the Ḥaḍramīs excavate for the foundations of a house until they come to the nudūwah or damp earth. They then lay the stone foundation, course (ḥabl) upon course, the lowest course being called ḥabl al-nudūwah.

³⁶ See p. 51.

³⁷ Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah, 1953. Ghirain is a word cited also in Muḥ.'Luqmān, Alī, Qiṣṣat al-dastūr al-Labjī, Aden, 1952, 7Google Scholar. Blackman, W. S., The fellāḥīn of Upper Egypt, London, 1927, 146Google Scholar, records ṱafi as a yellow clay used as slip in the Nile valley. This silt is no doubt beneficial to the ground, since in Ḥuraiḍah the earth is cut up and ṱifil (colloquial pronunciation) is used instead of dung. Dung is not used in Ḥuraiḍah because of its heat except in places frequently watered. In the Yemenite Bughyat al-fallāḥīn (see p. 46, n. 44) there are many instructions for the application of dung to the soil, and human excrement is even sold for this purpose in some of the larger towns of Ḥaḍramawt.

³⁸ Bowen, R. LeBaron Jr, and Albright, F. P., Archaeological discoveries in South Arabia, Baltimore, 1958, 43–88Google Scholar, reviewed in BSOAS, XXIII, 3, 1960, pp. 582–5Google Scholar. Cf. the article ‘Ukhdūd’ cited in p. 37, n. 22. paper, An Aden, al-Janūb al-'Arabī, no. 164, p. 9Google Scholar, speaking of Shibām. refers to which might mean placing the spoil at the side of the field.

³⁹ e.g. in the Sīrah ofHishām, Ibn, cf. BSOAS, XXI, 1, 1958, 3Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Zibr is pronounced zabr in Dathīnah where it was explained to me as turāb, but there also a zabīr is a mass of earth like a sawm or bund.

⁴¹ Many places in Ḥaḍramawt are called al-Jidfirah/Jidfarah. Cf.Wissmann, H. v. and Serjeant, R. B., ‘A new map of southern Arabia’, Geographical Journal, CXXIV, 2, 1958, 168Google Scholar, ‘a stratum of good hard clay without sand’. Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah, 14, says that jadāfir (pl.) are wide open places like desert tracts (ṣaḥārā), they being cultivated places from which the course of the wādī has descended, so they have become dried up and hard. Cf. al-Shāmil, 170. Rahaiyam explained jidfarah as al-nukhr/nukhur (cf. p. 71, n. 158), and as .

⁴² cf.Rossi, , ‘Note sull' irrigazione’, 359Google Scholar, ṣulbī ‘terra non coltivata’.

⁴³ op. cit., 12.

⁴⁴ In addition to my transcript from Tarīm two copies are available in the Dār al-Kutub though not in the printed catalogues. Cf.Meyerhof, Max, ‘Sur un traité d'agriculture composé par un sultan yéménite du xve siècle’, Bulletin de l'Institut d'Égypte, XXV, 1943, 55–63Google Scholar, and xxvi, 1944, 51–65. Many passages in the text can correct or improve Ibn Baṣṣāl, Libro de agricultura, Tetuan, 1955Google Scholar, ed. and trans, by J. M. Millás Vallicrosa and Mohamed Aziman, a source upon which the Bughyah draws extensively. I am indebted to Fu'ād Saiyid for information on the existence of the two Cairo copies.

⁴⁵ Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah, 14. Hamīm was stated to mean a flood that yahumm ‘makes a noise’, cf. Gl. daṯ., ‘gronder’, of a torrent. It is described in al-Ḥayāt as being destructive. I n Aden one speaks oi al-dardashah ḥaqq al-sail, the flowing noise of a flood, or a perennial stream (ghail).

⁴⁶ For corporate organization t o deal with fires, see Prose and poetry, preface, 27.

⁴⁷ Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan… al-Ḥaddād, al-Fawā'id al-sanīyah, fol. 104v., cites a word as meaning jawābī (pl. of jābiyah). Mayāḍī (s. mīḍā') should probably be read.

⁴⁸ cf.Landberg, , Ḥaḍramoût, 163Google Scholar, ra'aḍ, ‘faire dévier l'eau du sêt dans les champs’.

⁴⁹ Gloss, daṯ., ‘foin’. The word is known also to Lane.

⁵⁰ cf. also‘Building and builders in Hadramawt’, Le Muséon, LXII, 3–4, 1949, 283Google Scholar. Cf. al-Nūr al-sāfir, 252, imārat mīzāb al-raḥmah min al-bait al-sharīf, i.e. the repair of the rain-water spout of the Ka'bah.

⁵¹ The Yemenite plot called qaṣabah (pl. qaṣab) is apparently the same as libnah (pl.liban), a plot of land 12 dhirā' square. One says, Bā nasīr niḥbil buq'ah ‘We're going to go and measure out a piece of land’. In the Lower Yemen libnah is also known as shuklah.Rossi, , op. cit., 359Google Scholar, reports much the same. Cf. the section on masāḥah in the Ambrosiana MS no. 112, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, III, 1910, 908Google Scholar. My ‘Star-calendars and an almanac from south-west Arabia’, Anthropos, XLIX, 3–4, 1954, 450Google Scholar, also has some names for fields and irrigation-works.

⁵² My acephalous MS, fol. 62r., perhaps to be identified as Uns al-sālikīn.

⁵³ op. cit., 358.

⁵⁴ Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah, II, alludes to tanānīr qi'ar al-nakhl at Baḥrān. Qa'r (pl. qi'ār) seems to mean a dead palm trunk, and a tannūr is a large earthenware jar in the bottom of which a fire is lighted and flapjacks cooked on the warm interior sides. In this context it might mean some sort of pot in which a young palm had been planted, but this is surmise. This would be different from the qarā. Cf. Lisān al-'Arab, qarīy, majrā al-mā' fi 'l-rawḍ, majrā al-mā' fi 'l-ḥawd.

⁵⁵ cf. the section oncorvée, , infra, p. 59–60Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ The word also occurs in the Mulakhkhaṣ al-fitan, fol. 12v., sawq al-mā' ilā ummahātihi min maqāni' al-ra'īyah fi 'l-shu'ūb wa-'l-wādī.

⁵⁷ I heard a Yemenite use ḍumaid as a pl. to this word.

⁵⁸ Where food forms a part of the payment it is known in Ḥuraiḍah as ḍuḥā, explained as the ghadā of other districts.

⁵⁹ Ḥajar, Ibn, al-Fatāwā al-kubrā, Cairo, 1938, iv, IIIGoogle Scholar, alludes to jihāz as the present of the bride before marriage. See ‘Recent marriage legislation from al-Mukallā’, BSOAS, XXV, 3, 1962, 482passimGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁰ ‘Two tribal law cases, 2’, JRAS, 1951Google Scholar, Pts. 3–4, 156. The Ḥuraiḍah prices for 1954 are much lower than those for Tarīm in 1947.

⁶¹ More strictly literally the sense appears to be ‘how flourishing it is with karam (generosity)’.

⁶² The khubrah is placed over the ripening dates to keep off birds.

⁶³ cf. Gloss, doṯ., nuqrah and naqar. Cf. Meulen, D. v. d. and Wissmann, H. v., Ḥaḍramaut, Leiden, 1932, 148–9Google Scholar. Raḥaiyam describes a nuqrah as majrā al-mā' —al-masīlah, min al-tīn al-mutawassiṱ al-rakhwah. Popper, W., Extracts from Abū 'l-Maḥāsin ibn Tughrī Birdi's chronicle (Ḥawādith al-duhūr), Berkeley, 1930–1942Google Scholar, glossary, cites makān n q r, a tract of land, once a birkah.

⁶⁴ cf. supra, p. 43, n. 35. Al-Shāmil, 186, defines a maḍla'ah as a barrier (ḥājiz) of stone, constructed at a field (jarb), or basin containing palms (ḥawḍ al-nakhl), or the side of a sāqiyah to revet (ḥajaza) it against collapse and retain its water and soil.

⁶⁵ ‘Al-Lughat al-dārijah bi-Ḥaḍramawt’, al-Rābiṱat al-'Aīawlyah (Batavia), I, 3, A.h. 1347, 169–71Google Scholar, citing mirdam as used in the area.

⁶⁶ Gloss, doṯ., 192, bikār ‘colonne’.

⁶⁷ To buttress is zaḥḥam. Raḥaiyam said, Al-zāḥimah tarfud-uh ‘the buttress supports it’Rifād means ‘support’.

⁶⁸ I have also noted a form mukhratah.

⁶⁹ At the village of Tin'ah our Tamīmī camel-man called the part corresponding to the 'ādah by the name illīd (i.e. al-yad), and the cairn, 'arūs (fig. 9). According toal-Rābiṱat al-'Alawīyah (Batavia), I, 3, A.h. 1347, 169Google Scholar, it is a wall or column (ḥā'iṱ aw usṱuwānah) in a house. I n Saiwūn al-yad is called al-ḥāmil.

⁷⁰ My rendering made without further reference to the informant is slightly dubious here, for it might mean that the flood-water was higher than usual, half-way up the cairns.

⁷¹ 'Affāsh does not figure in the lexicons consulted.

⁷² For various forms of this word cf. Gloss, doṯt., 275 seq. The hagiology known as al-Jawhar al-shaffāf, story 379, speaks of sāqiyat jarb Abī 'l-Ḥasan ‘the channel of the field of Abī al-Ḥasan’. Al-Shāmil. 210, speaks of jurūb fi ḥijl Ṣīf, i.e. ‘fields in the cultivated land of Ṣīf’, the latter a village of Wādī Daw'an, known as Jurūb al-Darasah, or ‘the Students’ Fields', because they were a waqf to maintain students. A part of these being destroyed by flood, it was put out on a munāsharah or mufākhadhah contract (cf. p. 62, n. 110) by which the cultivator (fakhīdh) who restored and replanted it obtained half the fields and half remained with the waqf. I do not know whether there is any difference between jurūb and dhabr. Landberg describes dhabr as ‘terrain arrosé par la noria ou la pluie, champ’. He states that it is often pronounced dabr. I have seen it written in MSS as ḍabr, with ḍād. This brings it near to the root ẓbr, rendered by Jamme, A., ‘South Arabian’, in Pritchard, J. B., Ancient Near Eastern texts, Princeton, 1955Google Scholar, with a query, as ‘land-measure or weight’. Bā Hārūn, op. cit., fol. 45r., has an example of its usage, Jā Wādī Dammūn bi-sail 'aẓīm wa-sharibat jamī' dhubūr al-bilād.

⁷³ Hajar, Ibn, op. cit., III, 64Google Scholar, discussing the manāfidh ‘exits’ of a sāqiyah-channel, says, In Tarīm marṣsad (pl. marāṣsid) was said to mean maqāsim al-mā', a place where the stream is divided (cf. p. 40, n. 28), but I was also told that a marṣad is a low maḍla'ah, about 6 inches high, really a stone line across a wādī or a channel-bed. Cf. raṣa'ah, marṣū' etc. Lane and Dozy are not very helpful on either root.

⁷⁴ Raṵaiyam defined a fijrah as al-arḍ al-ghawīṱah al-nāzilah min al-mustawiyah al-mutaḍāyiqah.

⁷⁵ Shurūy, shurūj; cf. Gloss, doṯ., 2034; ‘Star-calendars’, 450. Vatican MS no. 1362 in Bāb al-suyūl wa-'l-miyāh, though disappointing in that the usages all seem to be purely classical, records that al-shirāj are madāfi‘al-mā’ min al-ḥizzān ila 'l-suhūl. The Yemenite Tarjī' al-aṱyār, 308, states, . My own notes from Tarīm describe a sharj as a part of the wādī in which there is arable soil (ṱtīn) and 'ilb trees, and where one has fields. It is near the misyāl or else it may be watered direct from the spill from the mountains. A sharj can be irrigated by a sail or by rain, but not by sināwah.

⁷⁶ An Aden newspaper defined the 'atim as majārī fī 'l-arḍ makshūfah li-tantafi' bi-'l-mā' al-ashjār wa-'l-mazrū'āt al-mujāwirah li-'l-majārī.

⁷⁷ They are also the grave-diggers; cf.‘The cemeteries of Tarīm’, Le Muséon, LXII, 1–2, 1949, 159Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Ta'dīl might mean ‘levelling, adjusting’. Perhaps the Āl Bā 'Adail are so named because of their specializing in this craft. The Bā Sumbul are stone-workers.

⁷⁹ A marqā means a darajah or step, as in Lane.

⁸⁰ Ghās, yaghīs, Hadramoût, 672.

⁸¹ In the Yemen razm can mean a water-channel, and Gloss, daṯ. discusses this root at some length. TheTarjī' al-atyār says that a marzam is ‘what is placed upon something to make it firm and prevent it from moving and shifting from its place’. The proverb resembles another I heard in Tarim, Dāwĭ 'l-ḥimār min rawth-ah ‘Cure/treat the ass by its dung’. The dung is to be mashed up and placed on the animal's sore.

⁸² Photocopy in SOAS Library, fol. 291r.

⁸³ ibid., fol. 792v.

⁸⁴ Ajbara is probably to be so rendered; cf. Dozy, Supplément, jabr al-bahr ‘cutting of a canal bank’, an Egyptian usage. ‘Ubar could be the bank leading to the field, which it probably is in this case.

⁸⁶ 'Alī b. Muh. b. Ṣabrain, Sa'id Abū, al-Muhimmāt al-dīlnīyah fī ba'<ḍ al-murtakab min al-manāhī al-rabbānīyah, p. 24, no. 66Google Scholar. The author flourished in 1294/1877. Cf. ‘Materials for South Arabian history, II’, BSOAS, XIII, 3, 1950, 593Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Ḥijl (pl. ḥijāl) is cultivated land of any area. ‘Alawī b. Ṭāhir, K. al-Shāmil (SOAS photocopy) calls ital-ḥaql wa-'l-jurūb.

⁸⁷ Rabsh is the dung brought down by the flood mixed with all kinds of debris. Cf. marbashah, the palm-leaf basket used by cultivators, presumably used for carrying rabsh as well as for other purposes.

⁸⁸ Rabbakh ‘to loosen’, probably here, ‘to remove’. The text is not easy to interpret at this point, and seems almost to contradict itself.

⁸⁹ Maqla' (pl. maqāli'), a palm tree.

⁹⁰ Agin, Jaime Oliver, Historia del nombre Madrid, Madrid, 1959Google Scholar. Cf. Lewis, Norman N., ‘Malaria, irrigation, and soil erosion in central Syria’, Geographical Review, xxxix, 2, 1949, 287Google Scholar, for qanāts and ‘foggaras’ in Syria.

⁹¹ op. cit., 26 seq.

⁹² Rossi, , ‘Note sull' irrigazione …’, 356Google Scholar, describes a ‘kadāmdh’ apparently similar to our kiẓāmah. Cf. van Vloten, G., Liber Mafâtîh al-olûm (al-Khwārizmī), Leiden, 1895, 71Google Scholar, al-haẓā' im al-miyāh al-jāriyah taḥt al-urḍ mithl al-qunīy ‘kaẓā'im are waters running under the ground like qanāts’.

⁹³ I have not discovered the Tradition in this form in Wensinck, A. J., Concordance…de la Tradition musulmane, Leiden, 1933–Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ Beirut edition, 1956, xii, 521.

⁹⁵ Other writers allude to qanāts which I have not seen, and there may be more perhaps also at Ahwar which I have not yet visited. For Oman one may probably find information on qanāts or relevant thereto, in 'al-Salimi, Abdullah, Jawhar al-niẓām, Cairo, A.h. 1345Google Scholar, especially II, 56 seq., Bāb al-sawādqī.

⁹⁶ op. cit., 27–9. According to the Tāj al-'arūs, the shāqūl is an iron-shod pole in use among the cultivators at Basra, about 2 cubits (dhirā') high, but from the rather summary description I cannot discern how it is used. Dozy, Supplément, describes shāqūl as ‘plomb ou fil à plomb’. Cf. Liber Mafâtih al-olûm, 255, which describes it as a plumb-line used by carpenters and builders.

⁹⁷ 'Ṭāhir, Alawī b., K. al-Shāmil, 89Google Scholar, says of a naqabah that the ground is excavated to the depth of a fathom (tunqab al-arḍ qadr qāmah).

⁹⁸ Al-Riḥlat al-svlṭaniyah, Cairo, A.h. 1370, 23Google Scholar. 'Alawī b. Tāhir, op. cit., calls the karīf a ṣahrîj, while Muh. b. Hāshim, , Riḥah, Cairo, A.h. 1360, 12Google Scholar, describes i t as a khazzān. Al-Shāmil. 199 seq., has an instructive account of local disputes before the decision to build the Qaidūn karīf, with a poem on the event describing local wells as 100 qāmahs deep. Water was led into the karīf from a spring through pottery pipe sections (jibtḥ, pl. jubūḥ) joined together with nūrah beaten up with cotton and (sesame ?) oil.

⁹⁹ Rossi, E., L'arabo parlato a Ṣan‘â’, Roma, 1939, 202Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ cf. de Goeje, M. J., Liber expugnationis regionum…al-Beládsorí, Leiden, 1866Google Scholar, glossary, 106, Dozy's Supplément contains further examples.

¹⁰¹ Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 22, 1. 18; Gloss, daṯ., wakkad ‘préparer, apprêter, mettre en ordre’.

¹⁰² ibid., pref., p. 27.

¹⁰³ See p. 35, n. 11; photocopy fol. 277 r.–v. Cf. Yahyā b. Ādam, , Kitāb al-kharāj, trans. Shemesh, A. Ben, Taxation in Islam, Leiden, 1958, 102Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ ‘Forms of plea, a Šāfi'ī manual from al-Šihr’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, XXX, 1–2, 1955, 11Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ In the Āl al-Kāf Library, Tarīm. The family of Bā Sawdān lived at al-Khuraibah of Daw'an, and are described as of Kindah. Muhammad and his famous father 'Abdullāh have many works in MS as yet unpublished of which I have some record. According to 'Alawī b. Ṭāhir, , al-Shamil, photocopy in SOAS library, 141Google Scholar, Muhammad died in 1281/1864–5. For his biography see 'Abdullāh b. Muḥ, . al-Saqqāf, Tārilkh al-Shu‘ara’ al-Ḥaḍ, ramīyīn (Cairo, A.h. 1353–), III, 196–201Google Scholar, with a slightly different title for this risālah.

¹⁰⁶ Read sāqā.

¹⁰⁷ The ḥufrah is th e trench or runnel, and appears to be used here much a s one would say ‘so many head of horse’.

¹⁰⁸ To be read mu'an (?). Bā Faqīh al-Shihrī's history (my MS, fol. 53r.) has the phrase baggage.

¹⁰⁹ This phrase appears to mean that they have equal shares in the palm plantations resulting from the efforts of the planter. The term ta'tīq which precedes, probably means until the land and plantations are in a proper state of cultivation.

¹¹⁰ The Liber Mafâtîh al-olûm, 16, defines mukhabarah as al-muzāra'ah bi-'l-thulth aw al-rub', or the like. I am, however, inclined to link it with khubrah the basket-cover placed over the ripening dates, but the material quoted by Lane is interesting and not necessarily at variance with this suggestion. Particularly interesting is the reference to Khaibar in this connexion, where dates were an important crop. Mufākhadhah might be connected with fukhtah the fertilization of the female palm tree, but fākhadh means ‘to divide’ as does nāsab and one can say fākhadh al-lahm ‘he divided the meat’, according to A. M. Bā Ḥashwān. Al-shaikh 'Alī b. Bā Kathir, 'Abd al-Rahīm is known to have composed a Manẓūmah fī Aḥkām al-muzāra‘ah wa-’lmukhābarah (Tar. Sh. Ḥaḍ., ed. cit., ii, 71)Google Scholar but no copies are yet known. 'Abd al-Raḥman b. Muḥ…al-Mashhūr, , Bughpat al-mustarshidīn, Cairo, 1936, 162 seq.Google Scholar, has much additional informative material on mughārasah, mufākhadhah, munāsṣabah, and mukhāla'ah.

¹¹¹ Nashar ‘to give one's land to someone else to cultivate’. Munāsharah is similar to mufākhadhah, and a nashīr is denned as alladhī ya'mal al-arḍ 'ind istiqbāl al-suyūl. Nishr was explained to me as ‘sharing in the crop’.

¹¹² Taḥṣīl al-da'āwī fī raf' al-shakāwī, al-Mukallā, n.d. (but received in 1958), 21–2.

¹¹³ Prose and poetry, preface, 37–8, mostly an ‘ooooooo’ sound, with words appearing here and there.

¹¹⁴ while I cannot positively affirm that this is also the case in Ḥaḍramawt it seems to me very likely.

¹¹⁵ Its curative properties were praised by the Prophet and to this day these are highly esteemed.

¹¹⁶ Neither of these two pieces seems to have a consistent metre.

¹¹⁷ I had thought the palm-cultivator to be addressing himself, but I now think he must be speaking to the palm tree. This has made me wonder if ḥuḍūr-ak could mean ‘to ripen’. Yā mawla 'l-ṣalāḥ must, I think, be apostrophizing the palm tree, and it is reminiscent of the title given to saints, even unknown saints such as Mawlā Matar.

¹¹⁸ Gloss, daṯ., kara' ‘eau de pluie’. Naḥr according to Landberg, , Ḥaḍramoût, 720Google Scholar, is ‘couronne du palmier’, but nvḥūr was explained to me as sa'f.

¹¹⁸ For the zakāt see Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 24. By ma'rūf, the ṭarḥah, or small gift of dates to a beggar at the date-harvest may be meant.

¹²⁰ Bā Farārah, described as a dūd tawhul al-kharīf, a worm which eats the ripe dates.

¹²¹ For a maqāmah on this institution see Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 16 seq. A dispute over shirāḥah figures in Muh. b. Hāshim, , Tārīkh al-dawlat al-Kathīrīyah, Cairo, 1948, 134Google Scholar. Māl is stated by al-Shāmil, 175, to be used in Ḥaḍramī dialect in the sense of cultivated fields (jurūb).

¹²² See p. 61, n. 107.

¹²³ For these types see Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 128, v. 15.

¹²⁴ Mattāsh would be so called after one of the nine fakhidhahs of Yāfi' which used to control Tarīm.

¹²⁵ A dawwārah is a palm with three or more trunks stemming from the root.

¹²⁶ Nahr (pl. unhur), syn. judhū', trunks or stems of th e palm; where a palm has several stems from one root these are known as awlād. It has occured to me that the word anhār in Bahraq, ‘Forms of plea’, 11, may be another plural in this sense.

¹²⁷ Fūṣiḥ was said to mean an open piece of ground without 'ilb trees or palms. Perhaps it is to be linked with fasaḥ in the Gloss, daṯ.

¹²⁸ The Masīlah is the flood-bed of the Wādī Ḥaḍramawt, which is very wide in places, the 'ain seems to mean the channel in it where floods normally run.

¹²⁹ Haid is palm-grove a t th e side of the Masīlah, cf. fig. 8. Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'idah, 5, mentions Ḥaid Qāsiru which one passes coming into Tarīm. Qāsim is apparently maqāsim al-mā' a place where the flood-waters are distributed, not a proper name. In coastal Ḥaḍramawt a ḥalṭ is a bustān, and I think that ḥaid in the sense of palm-grove is to be linked with this word, not with ḥaid in the sense of a mountain.

¹³⁰ Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 128, v. 14. A red variety becoming black, called ‘swift’ because it is the first date to ripen.

¹³¹ I have not confirmedmathlūth in this meaning.

¹³² Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 130, v. 30, a qirain is a palm with two stems from one root.

¹³³ A manqar is a tall single palm.

¹³⁴ Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 131, v. 41, the zār is a yellow typ e of date.

¹³⁶ The khal'ah (pl. khila'ah) is a small young palm which has reached the fruit-bearing stage. Syn.naqīl. Bā Hārūn, MS cit., fol. 8r., speaks of a saiyid who had khali' fi 'l-Maqta' taht Rawghah…idhā waqa' al-kharīf mā yukhallī aḥad yashrdḥ khali'-ah, i.e. palms in al-Maqta'(?) near Rawghah…when the ripe dates came he would not let anyone act as watchman over his palms. Raḥaiyam commenting on Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 163, stated that khali' is pl. of khal'ih ‘palm’. Khilā'ah, Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 130, is the act of planting palms. Bā Hārūn, fol. 9v, contains the phrase yaghris khil'ān, the latter word also a pl. of khal'ih. A celebrated saiyid ancestor is known as Khāli' Qasam, i.e. the man who planted palms at Qasam village. Rafraiyam told me that at Rawghah Satan became a watering ass to one of the saiyids and used to work on his khal'ah. This field where Satan worked is still known at Rawghah, lying by the mosque there.

¹³⁶ Prose and poetry, p. 128, v. 13, the Madīnī, said to originate from Medina, is a type much esteemed for its quality.

¹³⁷ Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah, 18.

¹³⁸ cf. my ‘Star-calendars and an almanac from south-west Arabia’, Anthropos, XLIX, 3–4, 1954, 434–5Google Scholar. The almanac in question has entries relating to flooding, but these apply to the Yemen.

¹³⁹ Qawām, the supports or posts, the lintel being kafāh.

¹⁴⁰ Al-Hayāt al-sa'idah, 15.

¹⁴¹ For this author cf. ‘Historians and historiography of Ḥaḍramawt’, BSOAS, xxv, 2, 1962, 242, as also for Bā Sanjalah, infraGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴² Al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah, 15, but in the following year Bā Sanjalah records rains in Ḥaḍramawt after much dearth, the MS unfortunately being wormed at this point so that it is not clear that rains had been short previously.

¹⁴³ cf. Prose and poetry, Ar. text, p. 129, Fī safk Daw'an luh awṣār. The safḥ is the point at which the mountain foot touches the level plain.

¹⁴⁴ Young of locusts, with wings about one inch long.

¹⁴⁵ The letters are undotted in the text; my reading is conjectural.

¹⁴⁶ Perhaps this should be read 'uqam with Landberg, , Ḥaḍramoût, 660, deflectorsGoogle Scholar. These would be the deflectors which lead the water into the fields as in pl. iv. Cf. the Aden, paper Ṣawt al-Janūb, II, 30, 1963Google Scholar, .

¹⁴⁷ Shumovsky, T. A., Tri neizvestnye lotsii Aḥmada ibn Mādzhida, arabskogo lotsmana Vasko da Gamy, Moscow, 1957, fol. 88r.Google Scholar, 1. 24, reads this word as al-Shullī, but in Ferrand, G., Instructions nautiques, Paris, 1921–1828, I, 148 and elsewhere, al-ShillīGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁹ My MS has ghaiṭ for which al-Ḥayāt al-sa'īdah, 16 (based on Bā Faqīh al-Shihrī) ha s ghiyāḍ.

¹⁵⁰ A stony-bottomed flood-course, see p. 37 supra.

¹⁵¹ In the Wādī Dhahabān is the mawza' of Shibām, of which Muh. b. Hāshim, , Tārīkh aldawlat al-Kathīrīyah, Cairo, 1948, 165Google Scholar, says, that it is li-ṣadd mīyāh al-suyūl wa-ḍabṭ-hā. He adds wa-'alaihī madār al-raiy fi 'l-maghāris ḥawla-hā.

¹⁵² Bā Hārūn, MS cit., story 253, refers to Sail al-Iklīl which carried off the palms of Ḥaḍramawt, and story 274, to the same flood which carried off the palms of al-Maqṭa' (?), houses in Qasam, etc. Al-Rābiṭat al-'Alawīyah (Batavia), II, 7, A.h. 1348, 275Google Scholar, in a note on floods in Ḥaḍramawt, alludes to this flood and the large number of palms destroyed by it in the Tarīm district, as well as some 20 mosques in the area.

¹⁵³ p. 458.

¹⁵⁴ Author of Tadhkirat al-muladhakkir fī-mā jarā min al-sail al-mutabaḥḥir, Dār al-Kutub MS, no. 1257, a verse maqāmah of about 20 pages with akhbār al-suyūl al-qadīmah, and references to the Iklīl flood and al-Sail al-Hamīm.

¹⁵⁵ p. 17, but this statement may be incorrect.

¹⁵⁶ p. 16.

¹⁵⁷ Bait Muslimah is qidā 'Idim ‘in 'Idim direction’.

¹⁵⁸ A celebrated eighteenth-century Ḥaḍrami ṣūfī 'ālim.

¹⁵⁹ A nukhrah (pl. nikhāx) was denned b y Rahaiyam as,

¹⁶⁰ In the Ahl Sahl Library, Tarīm, Muḥ. b. Zain b. 'Alawī b. Sumaiṭ, , Ghāyat al-qaṣd wa-'l-murād fī manāqib Shaikh al-'Ibād, 'Abdullāh b. 'Alawī b. Muḥ. al-Ḥaddād, story 279Google Scholar, has an account of the great flood that swept away the Jāmi' mosque of 'Ināt. For B. Sumaiṭ cf. ‘Materials for South Arabian history, II’, BSOAS, XIII, 3, 1950, 582Google Scholar.

¹⁶¹ My rendering of the Arabic is tentative. I found this passage in a MS in the library of the late Sulṭān 'Alī b. Ṣalāḥ at al-Qaṭn. It would appear that when the first crop of millet was being harvested the floods caused the roots to sprout a second time.

More correct spellings would of course be . 'Awaḍ b. Sa'īd b. 'Ali Bā Faḍl was secretary to Sulṭān 'Alī.

¹⁶² p. 18.

¹⁶³ II, 66, 293, 56, 50, 54, 50, 57,1, 293, ii, 65, 58, 69, i, 43.

¹⁶⁴ Al-Sālimī demonstrates that an elaborate system of share-cropping obtains also in Oman, referring (ii, 39) to the need for the hired man (ajīr) and partner (sharīk),

¹⁶⁵ Al-Lughat al-dārijah, 169 seq.

¹⁶⁶ Al-Shāmil, 165.

¹⁶⁷ Jawhar al-niẓām, I, 302.

¹⁶⁸ Gloss, daṯ., 1416.

¹⁶⁹ Al-Shāmil, 175.

¹⁷⁰ Al-Shāmil, 186.

¹⁷¹ So in Gloss, daṯ., with fuller explanation.