Page 15 - Travels in Arabis (Vol I)

XVI*

tion to the layout, population and economy o£ the harbour
town of Muscat, Wellsted was able to reproduce the plan of
the town with impressive exactitude, to provide even more
comprehensively detailed information and above all to re­
port on Muscat’s multifarious international trade relations.
No less thorough is his presentation of the neighbouring
town of Matrah and of the former slave harbour of Sur.
Wellsted devoted his attention to the Bani Bu Ali, who had
been suppressed by a British punitive expedition in 1821.
In these observations, Wellsted’s characteristic objectivity
and his ability to maintain distance from the facts he is
presenting, emerge particularly clearly. The fact that there
are some Beduins who fish as well as breed camels, and for
whom dried fish is an essential component of their animals’
fodder is first mentioned here and later apparently forgotten
again. His explanations of tribal structure and of inter-tribal
relations and tribal economy could only be expanded or
supplemented by Thesiger roughly 100 years later—this de­
spite Miles’ and Lorimer’s comprehensive works.7 Atten­
tion should also be drawn to his description of eating habits
and forms of housing, hygienic conditions in the fertile
oases and in the mud huts and also to the architectural
peculiarities of the settlements. Wellsted—and no traveller
after him—is struck by the fact that the oasis gardens of
Wadi Batha have been dug several metres into the bed of
the Wadi and are surrounded by high piles of earth. He is
also able to name the causes for this laborious method of
gardening. The description of Nizwa and above all of the
ascent of the Jabal Akhdar represents the highlight of Well­
sted’s book. The vegetation, geology and morphology of
this mountain range as well as the plants cultivated and the

7 MILES, a. a. O.; LORIMER, J. G. (1915): Gazetteer of the Per­
sian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia. Calcutta (new edition 1970).