Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/126

 at Sabbatha; his outlook was in the other direction. The Periplus indicates his control of the fertile frankincense valleys far beyond the account of Strabo, who knew Chatramotitis as a producer of myrrh only; this movement followed the Habash migration. The Chatramotitae had, it is true, to cope with an alliance of Homerites and Persians which ultimately pressed them on either side and engulfed them; but this was in a later century. Saphar and Sabbatha were not yet beyond the period of expansion within their respective spheres. From the Red Sea to the summits of the Arabian Alps was that of the former; the Wadi Hadramaut, on the eastern slope, that of the latter. Between the two lay precipitous mountains. Topography and history alike discredit an attack upon Aden by the Chatramotitae.

But in the alliance of Muza with Saphar we have the motive for the destruction of Aden. The foreign trade was centered at the Homerite port, and Cholaebus gained for his merchants the rights which those of Aden had enjoyed under the Sabaean kings. The loss was not great; Ibn Khaldun (Kay's edition, p.158) tells us that the city was built mostly of reeds, so that conflagrations by night were common there. It involved hardly more than the discontinuance of an annual fair, as described in the account by Lieut. Cruttenden at Berbera, quoted under §14.

27. Cana may be identified with Hisn Ghorab (14° 10’N., 48° 20’ E.), a fine harbor, protected from all winds by projecting capes on either side and by islands in the offing, as described in the text. Here are numerous ruins and one famous Himyaritic inscription, of which a version is given by Forster. The "Island of Birds" is described by Müller as 450 feet high, covered with guano, and thus has its name from the same cause as the promontory Hisn Ghorab (Raven Castle). The modern town is called Bir Ali.

Fabricius (pp. 141–2), following Sprenger and Ritter, locates Cana slightly farther west, at Bâ-l-Haf. This seems not to accord with the text, which says the port was "just beyond the cape projecting from this bay," while Bâ-l-Haf would be "just before." The identification depends too literally on the stated distance of the islands and fails to take into account that they are described as "facing the port." This is true of Hisn Ghorab and not of Bâ-l-Haf.

Müller (p.278) and Glaser (Skizze, pp. 174–5) support the Hisn Ghorab location by comparison of the distances given by Ptolemy (VI, 7, 10) between his Kanê emporion and the neighboring ports.

From Hisn Ghorab the way to the interior leads up the Wadi Maifa, which empties into the ocean a short distance to the east.