Das Wurde Im "Brunnen der Hölle" Gefunden - Jemen's Brunnen von Barhout

It was the morning of September 15, 2021 and Muhammad al-Kindi was standing on the abyss of the great unknown. He and his Oman cave exploration team were in the middle of the desert, on the far eastern edge of Yemen, near the border with Oman, a desolate place, far from cities or main roads. As the sun rose, they plunged into a huge hole in the earth, which was about 30 meters wide on the surface and went down to a depth of ... well, no one was sure. The hole was known as the well of Barhut, and al-Kindi and his team prepared for an attempt to line up at its base first. A large group of locals had gathered around them, but they were not just curious spectators. When al-Kindi and his team set up their equipment, the locals asked them not to carry out their expedition. Some in the crowd trembled openly in fear. Their concern was understandable. The local population knows the well of Barhut under a completely different name. For them it is the well of hell. And the legends about this nickname do not take them lightly. In fact, many consider it a blessing to even talk about the well. According to locals, the well is a place of unexplored disappearance, where people just seem to dissolve in the air. Many believe that objects near the hole can actually be sucked in. An often told story tells of a shepherd who let his baby play in the area, to later find that the child had disappeared immediately, without leaving any traces in the sand, where it may have crawled to the well. In addition, many have reported seeing strange animals around the well, including terrible winged creatures that are much larger than humans. Others have noticed an evil, almost unbearable smell, while some even say that they heard strange voices and people screaming from the depths. But what perhaps disturbed people the most, when they saw how al-Kindi and his team prepared to descend into the well, was a story that described what had happened to another, who had attempted such a thing in the past. According to the locals, the citizens decided to tie a rope to a man when the region was suffering from severe drought, and to let him into the well to look for water. As he descended, the man suddenly began to scream in fear, which caused them to lift him out of the surface immediately. But when they did, the lower half of his body was missing. The man had been severed at the waist. No wonder some al-Kindi and his team asked not to enter the well. It may all sound very dramatic, perhaps like urban legends that are built up by mouth propaganda and exaggeration over generations. Apart from the fact that the idea of the Bahut well as a well of hell is deeply intertwined with the religious and historical conditions of the region. During the time of the prophet Muhammad in the 7th century AD, an Islamic scholar named Ibn Abbas held the words of the prophet in a series of hadiths. In one of these hadiths, Muhammad speaks of the well of Bahut. The worst water on earth is the water in the well of Bahut in Hadhramaut. It is like haystacks compared to other pests. It sprouts in the morning and dries out in the evening. In a certain way, Muhammad's words about the well were taken literally. In fact, in modern times, a man named Amr Hashim Muhammad Osman, with his illustrious descriptions of the water of the region he came across, when he delivered the mandatory military service in the region, was a kind of celebrity. An ordinary well was dug to supply the military area with water. But when the pump started working for the first time to remove the water, a black liquid like tar came out of the well. The smell was unbearable. A foul smell, like lazy eggs. I got sick of the heaviness of the smell. No one could use the water for at least 12 hours. While the smell persisted, black substances settled on the walls of the pond where the water had accumulated. Nevertheless, I swear that I could not sleep from the smell of my clothes and my body after washing with this water. It is certain that this well is connected to the same source that feeds the water of Bahut and has the same properties. On the other hand, many words of religious personalities, including Muhammad's words about the well of Bahut, were understood rather metaphorically. Consider it this way. For people who live in a desert, the idea of a well that produces water like haystacks would have been pretty much the worst thing you can imagine. If Muhammad says that the well of Bahut has the worst water on earth, this can be seen as a metaphor for the worst place on earth. This idea formed the basis for the legend of the well of Bahut. In the 13th century, a Muslim traveler and historian named Ibn al-Mujawir wrote about how the well of Bahut was created. He brought his construction back to the famous king Shahad bin Ad, who ruled over the Arabian Peninsula in the time after the flood of Noah. For Muslims, Shaddad is a tyrant and an unbeliever in memory and more generally than the builder of the legendary lost city of Iran, of which many say that it is buried under the desert sand to this day, an Atlantis of sand. According to Ibn al-Mujawir, Shaddad came to East Yemen during the expansion of his kingdom and found it desolate and without water. Therefore, he ordered two jinn prisoners under his command to dig a large system of wells and canals. In the Islamic tradition, the jinn are supernatural beings who were created by God out of smokeless fire. They have both the ability to do good and evil and often appear in the form of animals, especially as snakes and birds or even as humans, while they also lead their own lives in a separate dimension known as Al-Gaib. It was these supernatural beings that Shaddad bin Ad allegedly forced to build the Bahut well. But according to al-Mujawir, there was more. When much time had passed, he wrote, Shaddad bin Ad began to send those who had to be locked up to this place, both humans and evil jinn. Because of this story, the well of Bahut in the entire region was known as a prison for evil jinn, a kind of interdimensional station between the world of humans and the supernatural world of jinn, where they could be captured. The area was even called Maqam al-Jinn, the residence of the jinn. To this day, a local saying describes the well of Bahut as a place where extinguished tongues sprinkle in cold nights, which implies that the screams and voices, which are often heard from the well, are actually the voices of long imprisoned jinn. Over the years, the idea of the Bahut well as a prison from a prison for jinn became a kind of fire for the damned, whether they were jinn or humans. Around the turn of the 16th century, a historian named Abu Mahrama from the city of Aden wrote in detail about the history of the region near the well of Bahut. Within this story, there was a story that spoke of the true nature of the Bahut well. There was a man from the people of Khurasan who lived in Mecca. He was a man with many pious efforts in relation to worship and good deeds, and the people often invested money in him. A man left him with 10,000 dinars and set off. When he returned to Mecca, he found that the man had died. He asked the sons and the people of the man for his money and they said, we have no knowledge of your money. The man then went to a group of scholars and denunciators from Mecca and complained to them about his affair. They told him to sit at the well of Samsam until half or a third of the night had passed. Then he should put his head on it and shout out loud, O Fulan, I am Fulan, owner of the money, what have you done with it? The man did this for three nights without reaction. He returned to the group and told them that nothing had happened. Then they said to him, truly, we fear that this man is among the people of the fire, and you must go to Yemen to a wadi in Aden called Bahut. There he would find a well and they indicated that he should put his head in it again until half or a third of the night had passed. Then he should ask for the money. When the man followed the instructions, the deceased replied this time that the money in his room was buried in this and that house and asked the denunciator to return to Mecca and to ask his son to dig it out. Abu Mahramah concludes the story with a statement that makes the moral clear. Truly, the souls of the wasteful moans in the well of Bahut, and truly, it is true that it is in Aden where the people who were banished into the fire live until resurrection. This was continued in the early 1900s by Sheikh Abbas Kumi, an Islamic scholar and renowned interpreter of religious books and old texts. In one of his most famous works entitled Manasil al-Akhira, he tells an incredible story. One day, a man came to the presence of the Holy Prophet in a way that had overwhelmed him with fear and had made his face pale. He said he had witnessed an amazing event that was the cause of his unrest. At the Prophet's request, he said, My wife has a disease for which she asked me to fetch some water from the well of Bahut. I took a leather bag and a bowl and went. When I arrived there, the eerie surroundings made me afraid and I hurried to look for the well. I found a well and was about to fill the bag with water when I heard the sound of chains. I heard a voice asking me for water because he died of severe thirst. As I looked up, I saw a man hanging on a chain that was tied around his neck. I was confused, but I agreed to his request for water. As I stretched out my hand to offer him water, the chain was suddenly pulled up and the man came very close to the bright sun. I was amazed and frightened and began to fill the water bag when I saw how the man was sent down again. He bathed me again in water. And as before, when I stretched out my hand to offer him water, the chain was pulled up. This happened three times. The third time I was so frightened and ran away from there. O Prophet, I ask you now to explain the incident to me. The Holy Prophet replied, The man you saw in the well of Bahut was none other than the cursed Cain, who had killed his brother Abel mercilessly. He will be punished in the same way in the valley. And on the day of Kayamat he will be led to the blazing fire of hell. Based on reports like this, the local tradition began to consider the well of Bahut as the prison of the dark spirits and the souls of the unbelievers. Quite simply, the idea of the well of Bahut as the well of hell had developed over centuries through religious texts and historical reports. It was no wonder that Muhammad al-Kindi and his Oman cave research team, when they prepared to descend into the well, were surrounded by locals who issued gloomy warnings. The thing is that al-Kindi and his team were the only modern group who tried to explore the depths of the well. In 2013, the Al-Bayan newspaper of the United Arab Emirates published a report about a company called Desertline that tried to visually examine the well. According to the article, an employee was attached to a crane and lowered into the well with a video camera. The employee began to scream and was quickly brought back to the surface, where he claimed that the geometry of the walls had begun to shift as he descended and approached him. The rest of the team thought that their colleague might have suffered from claustrophobia and went to look at the video material. But although enough light fell from the surface , the camera only showed black. This kind of device malfunction is not unusual near the Bahut well. Less than two years before al-Kindi and his team undertook their experiment, a local YouTube channel called Hadramaut had a brilliant idea. If there seemed to be problems every time when a person was lowered into the well, why not just fly in a drone? The results of their experiment were caught in a video published on their YouTube channel in an amazing way. First, the drone normally descends and a look at the interior of the well begins to focus. But then the drone suddenly stops and begins to move irregularly. The pilot says, I literally can't control it. It goes to the side, it goes vertically and then it suddenly goes against the wall. You can hardly bring it up again. When the pilot manages to save the drone, he realizes that its camera has frozen only a few seconds after the descent and now does not work at all. That's when things start to get really bizarre. Suddenly strange noises come out of the well that sound like moans and howls. With the words of the channel's moderator, now we hear some scary noises, wind noises, noises of something strange, to be honest. The video ends with the men being visibly shocked and the moderator announces, truly, whoever comes here will be afraid. Whoever comes here, I don't think he will benefit from it, except to take a look at it and then leave. Did something like these stories happen to Al-Kindi and his team when they tried to climb into the well? It is interesting that Yemenite officials, shortly before their expedition, seemed to wash their hands of everything that could happen when the team entered the well. The director of the agency for geological surveys and soil estimates of the region, Salah Bab Hayr, said, In other words, Al-Kindi and his team seemed to inform that they had already tried in vain to get to the bottom of the well and that the local authorities would not be to blame if things did not go well. With all this in mind and the weight of centuries-old history and legend on his shoulders, Al-Kindi took a deep breath and began his descent into the wells of Bahut, where he sailed down on a rope attached to the surface. At first everything went smoothly. As soon as I had gone down the first 30 meters, Al-Kindi said, I could begin to see the details of the cave and its formations. It was a very happy moment to just go down and enjoy the scene. But then there was without warning a sharp jerk on the rope and Al-Kindi stopped moving and left him alone in the dark in the well of the cave. After a few moments he noticed that his rope was not long enough. He had already reached its end without reaching the bottom. He quietly pulled his walkie-talkie and called for a longer rope to the surface. When it was sent down, he continued his descent, went further than ever before and actually made it all the way down. His body was not separated, the walls were not closed, he was not attacked by evil spirits, nor did he disappear into another dimension. Instead, he stood on the floor of a normal cave. There were, in his words, a lot of beautiful cave deposits, including stalactites and stalagmites, which could get up to nine meters high, and an incredible deposit of cave pearls. There were also numerous birds, beetles, toads and lizards, as well as, above all, a huge colony of incredibly protruding snakes. But they will not disturb you, unless you disturb them, joked Alkindy. From the walls of the cave ran shiny waterfalls with clear water. Far from being frightening, it was quite spectacular in the words of Alkindy. After Alkindy, the rest of his team also left, and together they spent most of five or six hours exploring. Their cameras did not fail, and they were able to take amazing photos of the inside of the well. Yes, there was a foul smell, but it came from missing animal corpses, including many dead birds. Alkindy even drank a bottle of water that flowed into the cave and later announced, I am still alive, before he added, it is very fresh, completely normal water. Before returning to the surface, the team collected samples of water, stones, earth and some dead animals, with the intention of analyzing them and shortly after publishing a complete report on their findings. When they came out of the well, the locals who were waiting on the surface were speechless. They bombarded the team with questions that the brave explorers patiently answered and even showed a lot of photos and samples. Alkindy was firmly convinced that by entering the Barhut well, he had scattered centuries of legend on a single afternoon. As he expressed it, what we have done here, I consider essential, because we have changed the opinion of the people at least about one of these places. After all these years, the great secret of the Barhut well, the well of hell, had been solved. Not with a bang, but with a murmur. Or what was it? For some, questions about the well of Barhut remain unanswered. Details still have to be filled out, so that the mystery remains alive and healthy. For example, Alkindy and his team have not found any human remains in the well, apart from those of animals. The most common explanation for the numerous strange disappearances around the well is that people were simply careless and fell in. So where were their bones? When they fell in, it seemed as if they had dissolved in the air. Even more important is that in the weeks and months that followed the exploration of the drilling hole by the team, the promised report on the samples never came up. If everything was as simple as the team assumed, where was the report? Those who are more connected with the religious history of the well even went further. First of all, why were there so many snakes? And since the djinn supposedly manifest in our world , could the existence of so many snakes actually be a proof that it is the dwelling of the djinn? If the Bahut well were really a kind of gate to other dimensions, a prison of dark spirits, wouldn't it make sense that I would open and close this gate? That it would not always be visible to human eyes? However, there is something else, which goes back to the original words of Muhammad, that the well of Bahut is the worst water on earth. Is it possible that we have misunderstood the meaning of Muhammad's metaphor all the time? In the late 1800s there was no more famous travel team than Theodore and Mabel Band. Every year after their marriage in Liverpool, England in 1877, they traveled abroad, where Theodore wrote and drew sketches and Mabel took photos and led a diary. Over the next 15 years, the couple documented their travels through Italy and Greece, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia and elsewhere. In 1893 they were supposed to embark on their most dramatic journey ever, which was still largely unknown to the Europeans at this time. On these trips they approached the area where the well of Bahut was located. As Theodore wrote, we were indeed very concerned about whether we could go on or had to go back and whether we could do both safely. We wanted to go directly along the Wadi Hadramaut and see Bir Bahut or Barahut. Their concern was understandable. They had been told everything about the well of Bahut. It is an adit well in a dry desert and a gloomy valley, Theodore noted in his notes. A well whose water is black and stinking, where the souls of the unbelievers find their abode. But there was more, an even more mysterious property that had been told to the Bands. Massoudi speaks of it in the 10th century as the largest volcano in the world and says that it emits huge fire masses and that its thundering noise can be heard miles away. In fact, they saw signs of volcanic activity as they approached the area. There is a lot of sulfur at the heights nearby, Theodore reports, before he adds ominously, they consider this place the abode of hell. Unfortunately for the Bands, the area around the well of Bahut was part of the Ottoman Empire at this time and thus closed off to British explorers. They were forced to return home without ever having explored this allegedly large volcano. If you read their reports today, you might wonder if this was simply a case of myth-making by locals who were devoured by eager travellers or could the area really be the home of a resting supervolcano, a hellish slum that threatens the world? One thing is certain in today's time. The area around the well of Bahut is one of the most active tectonic borders in the world. Yemen is located at a threefold intersection between three tectonic plates that are constantly separating and forming new oceanic crusts. It has been found that there are at least 11 holocene volcanoes in the country and that there are volcanic rocks and limestones that are connected to lava flows in the whole area. It is known that a large part of the Yemenite coast was created by lava flows. In the history of the region, volcanic activity played an outstanding role. From reports of an eruption in the area of the well of Bahut in the 10th century to reports that a volcano still smoked in 1813. Also in modern times there are eruptions on the calendar, including in 2007, when an island off the coast of Yemen caught fire and then disappeared, where a number of Yemenite soldiers were killed who were stationed there. And in 2011, when another eruption on the coast of Yemen lasted almost a month and created a completely new island in the sea. Is it really possible that in the midst of all these volcanic activities there is a sleeping supervolcano that could erupt one day? Maybe Mohammad really meant when he said that the well of Bahut had the worst water on earth. The worst water? A metaphor for a volcanic eruption that could literally destroy the earth. Maybe the well of Bahut is really a hell well, i.e. a supervolcano that could turn the world into a living hell. Thank you for watching. If you liked the video, we are happy about a like. If you are new here, please subscribe to the channel so you don't miss anything in the future.