The Travels Of Marco Polo - Volume 2 Of 2 By Marco Polo And Rustichello Of Pisa











































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1839 Captain Haines described the modern town as extending in a scattered
manner for a mile along the shore - Page 443
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In 1839 Captain Haines Described The Modern Town As Extending In A Scattered Manner For A Mile Along The Shore, The Population About 6000, And The Trade Considerable, Producing Duties To The Amount Of 5000l. A Year.

It was then the residence of the Sultan of the Hamum tribe of Arabs.

There is only an open roadstead for anchorage. Perhaps, however, the old city is to be looked for about ten miles to the westward, where there is another place bearing the same name, "once a thriving town, but now a desolate group of houses with an old fort, formerly the residence of the chief of the Kasaidi tribe." (J.R.G.S. IX. 151-152.) Shehr is spoken of by Barbosa (Xaer in Lisbon ed.; Pecher in Ramusio; Xeher in Stanley; in the two last misplaced to the east of Dhofar): "It is a very large place, and there is a great traffic in goods imported by the Moors of Cambaia, Chaul, Dabul, Batticala, and the cities of Malabar, such as cotton-stuffs ... strings of garnets, and many other stones of inferior value; also much rice and sugar, and spices of all sorts, with coco-nuts; ... their money they invest in horses for India, which are here very large and good. Every one of them is worth in India 500 or 600 ducats." (Ram. f. 292.) The name Shehr in some of the Oriental geographies, includes the whole coast up to Oman.

NOTE 2. - The hills of the Shehr and Dhafar districts were the great source of produce of the Arabian frankincense. Barbosa says of Shehr: "They carry away much incense, which is produced at this place and in the interior; ... it is exported hence all over the world, and here it is used to pay ships with, for on the spot it is worth only 150 farthings the hundredweight." See note 2, ch. xxvii. supra; and next chapter, note 2.

NOTE 3. - This was no doubt a breed of four-horned sheep, and Polo, or his informant, took the lower pair of horns for abnormal ears. Probably the breed exists, but we have little information on details in reference to this coast. The Rev. G.P. Badger, D.C.L., writes: "There are sheep on the eastern coast of Arabia, and as high up as Mohammerah on the Shatt-al-Arab, with very small ears indeed; so small as to be almost imperceptible at first sight near the projecting horns. I saw one at Mohammerah having six horns." And another friend, Mr. Arthur Grote, tells me he had for some time at Calcutta a 4-horned sheep from Aden.

NOTE 4. - This custom holds more or less on all the Arabian coast from Shehr to the Persian Gulf, and on the coast east of the Gulf also. Edrisi mentions it at Shehr (printed Shajr, I. 152), and the Admiral Sidi 'Ali says: "On the coast of Shehr, men and animals all live on fish" (J.A.S.B. V. 461). Ibn Batuta tells the same of Dhafar, the subject of next chapter: "The fish consist for the most part of sardines, which are here of the fattest.

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