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Zusatztext [Freya Stark] writes angelically in the great tradition of Charles Doughty and T. E. Lawrence. The pulse quickens as you read! because she can bring the sights and sounds of incredible countries before you in the twinkling of an eye." -- The New York Times Book Review "[ The Valleys of the Assassins ] remains a wonderful description of a people and a place! altered today by Progress! perhaps! but through [Freya Stark's] eyes still alive with bandits! dervishes! idol worshippers! armed tribesmen! and mountain scenery of great beauty." --From the Introduction by Jane Fletcher Geniesse "Stark is constantly alive to her immediate surroundings: indeed! what gives her work its extraordinary depth and power is just this ability to focus past and present... stereoscopically! in a single image." -- Times Literary Supplement [London] Informationen zum Autor Freya Stark Klappentext In 1934, famed British traveler Freya Stark sailed down the Red Sea, alighting in Aden, located at the tip of the Arabian peninsula. From this backwater outpost, Stark set forth on what was to be her most unforgettable adventure: Following the ancient frankincense routes of the Hadhramaut Valley, the most fertile in Arabia, she sought to be the first Westerner to locate and document the lost city of Shabwa. Chronicling her journey through the towns and encampments of the Hadhramaut, The Southern Gates of Arabia is a tale alive with sheikhs and sultans, tragedy and triumph. Although the claim to discovering Shabwa would not ultimately be Stark's, The Southern Gates of Arabia, a bestseller upon its original publication, remains a classic in the literature of travel. This edition includes a new Introduction by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Stark's biographer. INTRODUCTION: The Incense Road “Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant?” (Song of Solomon.) “Centumque Sabaeo Ture calent arae sertisque recentibus halent.” (Aeneid I, 416.) In the first century of our era an anonymous Greek sea captain wrote the Periplus of the Erythroean Sea. He was neither educated nor literary, but he wrote for the information of sailors and merchants, taking one by one the Red Sea ports of his time, their markets and exports, and following first the western, then the eastern coast, to the regions near Zanzibar whence “the unexplored Ocean curves around towards the West” and eastward to Malacca, “the last part of the inhabited world . . . under the rising sun.” Few books are more beguiling than this of the old captain—for elderly I think he must have been to have had so intimate a knowledge of voyages behind him. After his African journey to the frankincense lands that lie by the Cape of Spices which is now Cape Guardafui, he starts from Egypt eastward. He passes the trader’s road from Petra where the King of the Nabatæans collected dues, and, sailing along the coast of Arabia, tells how “the land next the sea is dotted here and there with caves of the Fish Eaters,” and “the country inland is peopled by rascally men who live in villages and nomadic camps, by whom those sailing off the middle course are plundered, and those surviving shipwrecks are taken for slaves. Therefore we hold our course down the middle of the Gulf, and pass on as fast as possible by the country of Arabia, until we come to the Burnt Island. (Jebel Tair 15°359N. 41°409E.) directly below which there are regions of peaceful people, nomadic, pasturers of cattle, sheep and camels.” Here he reaches the Himyaritic kingdom of Yemen, the last of the ancient independent empires of Arabia, and its port Muza [which is now Mokha or Mauza’], “crowded with Arab ship owners and seafaring men, and busy with the affairs of commerce. . . .” Here are the high-shouldered mountain...
