bilad al shahr

A basket of quail burst open in the bazaar. They did not try to escape but spread out like spilt honey
Lawrence Durrell, Justine

“The term Shahra comes from an ancient region called Bilad al Shahr,” he says, “that once stretched from Hadhramaut (now in present-day Yemen) till Ras al Hadd, and up to the southern shores of the Perisan Gulf, around present day Bahrain and Qatar. The word shahr means ‘the grazing land.’ This region was known by many terms, like al Ahqaaf, Bilad Aad and Bilad al Mahra. It is from this region that the earliest inhabitants of Arabia sprang forth, developing their language and culture and migrating outwards.”

According to Ali, the Shahra are the dwindled remnants of the last of the ancient, original tribe from al Shahr. But if his legend is true – and this is only one explanation – how come we talk of the Shahra in Dhofar when the ancient region stretched northeast till Ras al Hadd, and up to what is now the Persian Gulf? “Empires rise and fall,” says Ali, “and as the Shahra faced hardship over the centuries they withdrew to the place most precious, which had the monsoon, was fertile enough to cultivate crops and graze cattle and was home to the all-important commodity of that age, frankincense. This region is Dhofar.” So in Ali’s scheme of things Dhofar is the shrunken distillation of the ancient land of the Arabs, and everything flowed from here.

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