Yemen’s Red Sea Coast and the Ottoman Legacy

Al-Luhhaya to al-Jah, Yemen

“I embarked on a ship....and reached the township of al-Sarja, a small town inhabited by a body of the Awlad al-Hiba.”

The remains of the once-thriving port of al-Luhayya

In the English translation of the Travels of Ibn Battuta, the footnotes simply say Sharja is a “township of grass huts with an anchorage in the vicinity of al-Luyyaha.” So, arriving in al-Luhayya we looked for it, asking all the old men we could find - nobody had heard of it. The English translation completed over 50 years ago, could refer to half the coastline. Al-Luyyaha itself is almost in the sea - this stretch of the Red Sea which was so important under the Ottomans is disappearing, victim of the natural effects of tide and climate, as well as the man-made contribution of lack of attention and money. (I believe Sharja is a memory a little further north than we ventured.)

The remains of an Ottoman building in al-Luhayya

Crumbling Ottoman Forts dot the Red Sea shoreline, or rather they used to - now the shore is often two kilometers away from their remains. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Turkish merchants grown wealthy on Red Sea trade, built beautiful houses of stone and stucco richly decorated both inside and out with naksh, white painted stucco design, as well as detailed exterior brickwork patterns, with interior ceilings in polychrome. But all are now in ruins measured merely by degree of delapidation.

A goat munches away happily oblivious to its once ornate surroundings.

In al-Luhayya we found one ceiling under which a group of men were chewing the afternoon qat which still showed its past azure-tinted glory. Part of a larger house - a peep next door revealed slender, once-blue, elegantly carved pillars supporting wooden ceilings in open salons with richly decorated walls - the rest was now home to thousands of hafafish - small bats, and the whole place reeked of guano.

This may be the only intact polychrome ceiling left in al-Luhayya

Al-Luhayya is a forgotten place, as is almost the whole Red Sea coastal area of Yemen, the Tihama. Tihama means ‘hot land' and the name is amply merited. The climate is fearsome combining high temperatures, (in summer the temperatures routinely top 45C degrees/115F), and high humidity with, in certain months, high winds. The combination is ruinous for architecture. Yet it is only in the architecture that there is any hint of the region’s past glory. Al-Luhayya today is a moldering place somnolent in the heat of early summer;   mangrove swamps divide the shore into little islets, colored fishing boats lie beached on grainy black sand, while its distegrating Turkish-built fort atop the highest point in town reveals a past that was infinitely grander.   

Ibn Battuta spent one night in Sharja before moving on to “the roadstead of al-Hadith, where we did not land”, another place which has not been identified by scholars although it is probably somewhere near the present day town of al-Urj where we camped on the beach overnight. It was difficult to find a perfect spot as while the beaches are empty of people they are full of litter, but eventually we found a place that worked. There was not a breath of wind and the moon was almost full; sitting in the warm night air watching the moonlight glitter over the water, serenaded by the bubbling water of the water pipe, in the glow of a burning fire, life was near to blissful.

Moon rising behind the doum trees in al-Urj

The infamous wind did pick up around 2:00am however and by 4:30am I awoke vaguely chilled to find the moon gone and the sky a veritable carpet of stars. Incidentally I did not find larium for $2 or otherwise, and I was now carrying around $1.50 worth of choroquine which does not work in Yemen, and $2 worth of doxycycline which I did not want to take because it has to be taken daily for 4 weeks after you have left the mosquito area. The side effects of this antibiotic are irritating to say the least, and you also have to be very careful of the sun - a bit of an issue in Yemen where there is only sun. I also discovered that while it was the mini monsoon in the mountains, it was still dry along the coast so I did the only normal thing - I took neither of them........ I hasten to add that this is most definitely NOT what the CDC would recommend. I saw one mosquito. 

The following day we packed up camp and after a delicious breakfast of fasooliya (beans), ground lamb, freshly-baked flatbread (Yemen’s bread may just be the most delicious on the planet) and sweet tea, in the market town of Marawi’ah, we set off south.

Market day in Marawi'ah

Ibn B’s next port of call was, “the roadstead of al-Ahwab”, another place not identified with certainty although opinion seems to center on it being the port of Ghulayfiqa which in the 12th century was the main port for Zabid. 

To avoid backtracking, it made more sense to visit Bait al-Faqih first, the town Ibn Battuta called Ghassana;

“mention happened to be made of the ascetic and humble devotee Ahmed ibn al-’Ojail al-Yamani who was one of the greatest of men and of those favored with miraculous powers. I went out to visit the grave of this saintly man which is in the village called Ghassana outside Zabid and met his pious son Abu’l Walid Isma’il.”

The tomb of  Beit al-Faqih's namesake, Ahmed ibn al-'Ojail al-Yamani

Bait al-Faqih means ‘House of the Wise Man’ and Ahmed ibn al-’Ojail al-Yamani is the wise man after whom the town is named. I was rather takenaback therefore to find out that the first few local people we asked for directions to the tomb did not know where it was. We eventually found one old man who knew and who drove with us to the tomb. When we got there a host of children apparently playing truant from school were hanging round, as well as several lame and blind old men. This is a favored place for baraka or blessing, and one of them plied both Abdullah and me with earth from the tomb and muttered Islamic prayers, giving us our share of baraka.  The Faqih’s son, Abu’l Walid Isma’il now lies buried opposite his father in a similar tomb. Although Beit al-Faqih was never a port, it is nonetheless home to a decaying fort, Turkish houses which are falling to bits, and an exquisitely carved gate which I hope someone will restore before it is too late.

Gate in Beit al-Faqih

As I have mentioned before, it is imperative to have a good driver - they always know the best places to eat, and Abdullah was no exception. In the otherwise entirely unremarkable town of al-Husseinaya, he drove unerringly down backstreets piled with plastic bags and bottles to a restaurant where we ate the most delicious cumin-encrusted lamb shanks, rice, flatbread, tomato and herb salad and a formidable sauce of yogurt, crushed red chilli peppers and garlic. In the entire week of eating in local restaurants where it is doubtful we ever paid more then $7 for a meal for both of us I ate some of the best food I have ever eaten in Yemen.  After this splendid repast we stopped to buy the day’s qat before setting off in the general direction of Ghulayfiqa. I have no hesitation in saying that it is the end of the world. The Turkish fort on the hill which was once clearly built to protect the harbor, is now two kilometers inland surrounded by sabkha, or saltflats. A lone donkey standing forlornly under a shady tree in front of a cluster of rude huts and dwellings gave the only sign of life.

Later that day we arrived at our camping place on the beach at al-Jah which this time was so windy we had to change our location twice. The wind blew strongly all afternoon and all evening and it was easy to see why the once-active harbors along the Red Sea had all silted up. The south-westerly wind sent the waves crashing on to the shore, piling up sand at an angle and forming discrete ‘canals’ of water - one could see the shoreline visibly changing, and centuries of this had left the ports marooned inland.