Asia

[Visited: July 2021]

After our brief visit of Tarim, we continued further east into Wadi Hadramaut. The sun was relentlessly frying the earth and everyone who moved on it, and we were fortunate with our airconditioned car. Ah, just to think how traders once traveled through the wadi centuries ago, and how some people even do so this very day. Even at this hot time of the day, we saw women completely wrapped in black, wearing mudhallas or straw hats, working the green fields. Despite the heat and the desert-like appearance, water still runs through the canyon, allowing for agriculture. It is one of the reasons that Wadi Hadramaut has a rich history and is still inhabited by many. After driving through the canyon for a while, we turned right, and soon entered Aynat. A medieval town, it was rebuilt at the end of the Middle Ages by the sufi Shaykh Abu Bakr bin Salim.
The sufi sage established a reputation for himself, and had a following as far as Africa and Central Asia. Several other sufis established themselves here, too, in the vicinity of the pious city of Tarim. We drive through Aynat town which seems almost abandoned. We see attractive houses, slowly decaying. We also see several new houses built in concrete, and it makes us a little sad to see that slowly but surely, the mud brick architecture that makes villages in Wadi Hadramaut so attractive and built with natural materials from the region will be replaced by ugly and uniform structures. Like all settlements in Wadi Hadramaut, Aynat lies right under the cliffs of the canyon, and the adobe houses are well camouflaged. The white tower of the minaret of one of the old mosques clearly stands out.
We reach the entrance of the cemetery of Aynat, our guide leaves his Kalashnikov in the car, and we walk into the sacred resting place. Seven mausolea for famous sufis dot the cemetery, all with pointed domes resting on a rectangular base. Between them, many tombstones have been erected for others. They are brown like the houses, with white paint. Some have recently been destroyed by Al Qaeda, our guide explaining that they did not comply with the views of Al Qaeda. Regardless of the reasons behind it, seeing demolished graves always is a sorry sight. We enter one of the mausolea, and find decorated windows, as well as the tomb proper, clad in a green cloth. When we leave the cemetery, we see mud bricks laying on the ground, waiting to be baked by the sun. It gives me hope: perhaps mud brick houses are still being built. We walk through town, enjoying the views of Aynat under the steep walls of Wadi Hadramaut, before we continue further east.

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Aynat (Yemen)

Aynat > Yemen > Asia

[Visited: July 2021]

Around the World in 80 Clicks