The Habitations Are Mostly
Long, Flat-Roofed Sheds, Double Storied, With Doors Composed Of A Single
Plank, And Holes For Windows Pierced High Above The Ground, And Decorated
With Miserable Wood-Work:
The principal houses have separate apartments
for the women, and stand at the bottom of large court-yards closed by
gates of Holcus stalks.
The poorest classes inhabit "Gambisa," the
thatched cottages of the hill-cultivators. The city abounds in mosques,
plain buildings without minarets, and in graveyards stuffed with tombs,--
oblong troughs formed by long slabs planted edgeways in the ground. I need
scarcely say that Harar is proud of her learning, sanctity, and holy dead.
The principal saint buried in the city is Shaykh Umar Abadir El Bakri,
originally from Jeddah, and now the patron of Harar: he lies under a
little dome in the southern quarter of the city, near the Bisidimo Gate.
The ancient capital of Hadiyah shares with Zebid in Yemen, the reputation
of being an Alma Mater, and inundates the surrounding districts with poor
scholars and crazy "Widads." Where knowledge leads to nothing, says
philosophic Volney, nothing is done to acquire it, and the mind remains in
a state of barbarism. There are no establishments for learning, no
endowments, as generally in the East, and apparently no encouragement to
students: books also are rare and costly. None but the religious sciences
are cultivated. The chief Ulema are the Kabir [23] Khalil, the Kabir
Yunis, and the Shaykh Jami: the two former scarcely ever quit their
houses, devoting all their time to study and tuition:
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