creator of kingdoms

You tell yourself: I'll be gone/ To some other land, some other sea,/ To a city lovelier far than this/ Could ever have been or hoped to be ¬/ Where every step now tightens the noose:/ A heart in a body buried and out of use:/ How long, how long must I be here/ Confined among these dreary purlieus/ Of the common mind? Wherever now I look/ Black ruins of my life rise into view. So many years have I been here/ Spending and squandering, and nothing gained./ There's no new land, my friend, no/ New sea; for the city will follow you,/ In the same streets you'll wander endlessly,/ The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age,/ In the same house go white at last ¬/ The city is a cage./ No other places, always this/ Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists/ To take you from yourself. Ah! Don't you see/ Just as you've ruined your life in this/ One plot of ground you've ruined its worth/ Everywhere now ¬ over the whole earth?
Cavafy, The City

In time, with the death of the so-called Frankincense highway, that creator of kingdoms, even the Shahra abandoned the northern desert of Dhofar, according to Ali. It was perhaps after such times that migrations from what is now Yemen ensued, bringing the Mahri, a tribe from Mahra, which in turn is a region that stretches from western Houf till al Ghayda. Now, in present-day Dhofar, the majority of the population might actually be non-Shahra. But you will find traces of such Semitic languages and cultures even across the oceans, typically in Ethiopia, where a section of the population speak Amhari, which is said to bear a striking commonality with Mahri.

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