Materials for South Arabian History

Abstract

The Mss. herein described were purchased, copied, or recorded during a tour V A in Hadramawt as Colonial Research Fellow. Besides visiting the main ”f Wadi lying between Kabr Hūd and Hainin, I made investigations in the Wādī f Daw‘an, Huraida in ‘Amd, and in the course of a journey from Bal-Hᾶf, on the I coast, to Habbān on the western fringe of Wāhidi territory. Time did not I allow of a systematic recording of all existing MSS., which can be seen in i hundreds, especially as this formed only part of my programme, but those described here are the more interesting MSS. inspected. A similar tour seems to have been performed by Dr. Hamidullah in the Yemen shortly before my own investigations in Hadramawt. The many scholars, mostly saiyids, whom I met in Hadramawt gave generously of their assistance, often placing MSS. freely at my disposal; I must; mention in particular the ‘Attās family of Huraida, and Sālih b. ‘Alī al-Hāmidī of Saiwūn. On the other hand, I have been informed, I have no means of assessing how accurately, that there are occasional individuals in the country I who possess some valuable MSS. but would rather see them moulder to pieces ‘ than show them to strangers. I understand that some saiyids keep their books in the women's part of the house, as in learned saiyid society books are reckoned fair game to the casual borrower who succeeds in abstracting them while the owner is not looking. For anyone wishing to discover new MSS.

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