July 26, 2025 • 25 mins
To locals, the Well of Barhout is known by an entirely different name – to them, it is the “Well of Hell,” and the legends surrounding this moniker are not something they take lightly. In fact, many consider it back luck to even speak about the well.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was the morning of September fifteenth, twenty twenty one,
and Mohammed Alkyndie stood on the precipice of the Great Unknown.
He and his Oman Cave exploration team were in the
middle of the desert at the far eastern edge of Yemen,
near the border with Oman, a desolate spot far from
any cities or major roads. As the sun rose, they
(00:21):
peered down into a giant hole in the earth, some
one hundred feet wide at the surface and extending downwards
to a depth of well. Nobody was quite sure. The
hole was known as the Well of Barut, and Alkyndi
and his team were preparing an attempt to become the
first to repel to its bottom. Around them, a large
group of locals had gathered, but these were not merely
(00:44):
curious onlookers. As Alcyndi and his team set up their equipment,
the locals begged them not to go through with their expedition.
Some in the crowd openly shook with fear. Their apprehension
was understandable to locals. The Well of Barut tis known
by an entirely different name. To them. It is the
well of Hell, and a legends surrounding this moniker are
(01:07):
not something they take lightly. In fact, many consider it
bad luck to even speak about the well. According to
the locals, the well is a place of unexplained disappearances,
where people seem to simply vanish into thin air. Many
believe that objects near the hole can actually be sucked
towards it. An often recounted story tells of a shepherd
(01:29):
who let her baby play in the area, only to
find that the child had instantly disappeared, with no tracks
left in the sand where it may have crawled towards
the well. Further, many have reported seeing strange animals around
the well, including terrifying winged creatures much larger than men.
Others have noted a foul, almost unbearable smell coming from it,
(01:54):
while some even say they have heard strange voices and
people screaming from deep below. But perhaps what was giving
people the most apprehension as they watched Alcyndia and his
team prepare to descend into the well was a story
describing what it happened to another who had made such
an attempt in the past. According to locals, at a
(02:15):
time when the region was suffering from severe drought, its
citizens decided to tie a rope to a man and
lower him into the well to look for water. As
he descended, the man suddenly began to scream in terror,
causing those at the surface to immediately lift him back out.
But when they did, the lower half of his body
(02:36):
was missing. The man had been severed at the waist.
It was no wonder that some begged Alcyndia and his
team not to enter the well. This may all sound
very dramatic, perhaps like urban legends, which are built through
generations by word of mouth and exaggeration, except the idea
of the Badu dwell as a well of Hell, as
(02:57):
one deeply woven into the religious and history the oracle
fabric of the region at the time of Mohammed. During
the seventh century CE, an Islamic scribe named iban Avas
recorded the words of the prophet in a series of hadiths.
In one of these hadiths, Mohammed speaks of the well
of Barut. The worst water on the face of the
earth is the water at Wadi Barut in Hadramut, which
(03:21):
is like locusts in comparison with other pests. It gushes
in the morning and is dry by the evening. In
one sense, Mohammed's words on the well have been taken literally.
In fact, in modern times, a man named Ahmar Hashim
Mohammed Osman gained a kind of prominence with his vivid
description of the region's water, which he came across well
(03:43):
completing compulsory military service in the area. There was an
ordinary well dug to provide the military site with water.
But when the pumps started working for the first time
to withdraw the water, a black liquid came out of
the well like tar. The smell was unbearable, a bad
smell like rotten eggs. I was nauseated by the severity
(04:03):
of the smell. No one could use the water for
at least twelve hours, as the odour subsided and black
matter was deposited on the pond walls where water was collected. Nevertheless,
I swear that I was unable to sleep from the
smell of my clothes and my body odor after washing
with that water. It is certain that this well is
connected to the same source that feeds the water of
(04:26):
Barut Well and contains the same characteristics. On the other hand,
like many words spoken by religious figures, Mohammed's words on
the well of Barut have also been taken more metaphorically.
Look at it like this. For those living in a desert,
the idea of a well producing water like locusts would
have been pretty much the worst thing imaginable. As such,
(04:49):
when Mohammed says the Barut well has the worst water
on the face of the earth, it can be seen
as a metaphor for the worst place on earth. This
idea formed the foundation of the legend of the Will
of Barut. Before we continue, we want to give a
shout out to numerologists dot com. This incredible website can
(05:09):
give you a completely free numerology video report based on
your name and date of birth. I tried the Numerology
Report myself and I was really amazed at how accurate
it was. You can discover your life path, secret talents,
and hidden strengths, and many powerful insights into your character.
Over two million people have tried the Numerology Report and
(05:31):
all of them are amazed at how accurate it is.
You can try it yourself. It's completely free. All you
have to do is click the link in my description
and type your first name and your date of birth.
Then you'll immediately see your personalized video numerology report. Let
me know in the comments if your report was accurate.
In the thirteenth century, a Muslim traveler and historian by
(05:54):
the name of ibenol Mijori wrote about how the Barut
wild had come into being. They attributed its construction to
the infamous king Shahdad Binad, who ruled over the Arabian
Peninsula in the time after the Flood of Noah. For Muslims,
Shaddad is remembered as a tyrant and infidel, and more
broadly as the builder of the legendary lost city of Edom,
(06:16):
which many say is still buried under the desert sand
to this day on Atlantis of the Sands. Watch our
video on Edam. The link is in the description and
the top pinned comment. According to ibenal Mijori, Shaddad had
come to eastern Yemen during the course of expanding his
kingdom and found it desolate and without water. Therefore, he
(06:39):
ordered two captive gin under his command to dig a
great system of wells and channels. In Islamic tradition, the
jin are supernatural beings created by God from smokeless fire.
They have the capacity for both good and evil, and
often appear to humans and animal form, particularly as snakes
and birds, or even as humans, while also leading their
(07:02):
own lives in a separate dimension known as al Ghaib.
It was these supernatural beings which Shaddad Binad allegedly forced
to build a Barut well, But according to al Majori,
there was more. When much time had passed, he wrote,
Shaddad Binad began sending all those who had to be
imprisoned to this place, both humans and evil Gin. From
(07:26):
this history, the Well of Barut became known across the
region as a prison for evil Jin, a sort of
interdimensional station between the world of humans and the supernatural
world of Gin, where they could be trapped. The area
even came to be called Mukam al Jin, the abode
of the Jin. To this day, a local saying about
(07:47):
the Well of Barut describes it as a place where
extinct tongues fizz on cold nights, implying the screams and
voices often heard from the well are actually the voices
of long imprisoned Gin. As the years passed, the idea
of the Barutwell as a prison expanded from a prison
for Jin to a sort of purgatory for the damned,
(08:09):
whether they be Jin or human. Around the turn of
the sixteenth century, an historian named Abu Makrama, who was
from the city of Aden near the will of Barut,
wrote extensively on the region's history. Within this history was
a story which spoke of the true nature of the Barutwell.
There was a man from the people of Khorasan living
(08:30):
in Mecca. He was a man of many pious exertions
in terms of worship and good acts, and people would
often deposit money with him. A man left him with
ten thousand dinars and left on a journey. When he
returned to Mecca, he discovered that the man had died.
He asked the man's sons and people about his money,
and they said, we have no knowledge of your money.
(08:53):
The man then went to a group from among the
learned and abstemias of Mecca and complained to them about
his affair. They instructed him that he should sit at
the will of Zamzam until half or a third of
the night had passed. He should then turn his head
towards it and call out in a loud voice, O Fulan,
I am Fulan, owner of the deposit, What have you
(09:16):
done with it? The man did thus for three nights
with no response, he returned to the group and told
them nothing had happened. They then said to him, verily,
we fear that this man is among the people of fire,
and you must go to Yemen to a wadi in
aiden called Barut. There he would find a will, and
they instructed that he should put his head in it
(09:39):
once again, when half of a third of the night
had passed, he should then ask about the deposit. When
the man did as instructed, this time, the deceased replied
that the money was buried in his room in such
and such a house, and told the depositor to return
to Mecca and ask his son to dig it up.
Abu Mukhrama concludes the story with an assertion making the
(10:01):
moral clear. Verily, the souls of the profligate moan in
the well of Barut, and verily it is correct that
it is an aiden where the people exiled to fire
reside until the resurrection. This was taken further in the
early nineteen hundreds by Sheikabasu Kumi, an Islamic scholar and
renowned interpreter of religious books and ancient texts, in one
(10:24):
of his most famous works titled manasialul al Kolach. He
recounts an incredible story. One day, a man came to
the presence of the Holy Prophet in a manner that
fear had overtaken him and his face had turned pale.
He said that he had witnessed an astonishing event, which
was the cause of his restlessness. On the Prophet's inquiry,
he said, my wife has a disease, for the cure
(10:47):
of which she requested me to fetch some water from
the well at Wadi i Barut. I took a leather
bag and a bowl and left. When I reached there,
the erie surrounding made me fearful, and I hastily started
searching for the well. I found one well and was
about to fill water in the bag when I heard
the noise of chains from above me. I heard a
(11:09):
voice requesting me for water, for he was dying of
intense thirst. When I looked above, I saw a man
hanging by a chain which was bound around his neck.
I was confused, but agreed to his request for water.
When I extended my hand to offer him water, the
chain was suddenly pulled on top and the man reached
just near the blazing sun. I was dumbfounded and scared
(11:33):
and started filling the water bag. When I saw the
man being sent down again, he again requested me for water,
and like before, when I extended my hand to give him,
the chain was pulled up. This happened thrice. On the
third time I was totally frightened and run away from there. O, Prophet,
(11:54):
I now request you to explain to me the incident.
The holy Prophet replied, the man whom you saw in
the Wadi i Barut was none other than the accursed
Kane who had mercilessly murdered his brother Abel. He will
be punished in the same manner in the valley, and
on the day of Kyamut, he will be fed to
the blazing fire of Hell. From accounts like these, local
(12:17):
tradition began to see the Well of Barut as a
prison of dark spirits and the souls of infidels. Quite simply.
The idea of the Well of Barut as a well
of Hell had been building for centuries through religious texts
and historical accounts. It was no wonder that as Mohammed
al Kindi and his Ohman Cave exploration team prepared to
(12:38):
descend into the well, they were surrounded by locals issuing
dire warnings. The thing is. Alcindi and his team were
not even the first modern group to attempt to explore
the depths of the well. In twenty thirteen, the UAE's
Albeian newspaper carried an account of a company called Desert
Line attempting a visual survey of the well. To the article,
(13:01):
an employee was attached to a crane and lowered into
the well with a video camera. At about one hundred
meters down. The employee began to scream and was quickly
returned to the surface, where he asserted that as he
had descended, the geometry of the walls had begun to
shift and close in on him. Thinking that perhaps their
colleague had suffered from about of claustrophobia, the rest of
(13:25):
the team moved to review the video footage. Yet, despite
enough light coming in from the surface to presumably shoot
good footage, the video camera recorded only black. This type
of equipment malfunction is not unusual around the Baurootwell. Not
two years before al Kindi and his team would make
(13:46):
their attempt, a local YouTube channel called Hadramut came up
with a brilliant idea if there seemed to be problems
every time a person was lowered into the well, why
not just fly a drone. In the results of their
attempt to do just this, we're stunningly cataloged in a
video published on their YouTube channel. At first, the drone
(14:08):
descends normally, and a view of the inside of the
well begins to come into focus. But then the drone
suddenly stops, then begins moving erratically. I literally can't control it,
the pilot says. It goes to the sides, it goes vertical,
and then suddenly it goes to the wall. You can
barely bring it up again. When the pilot manages to
(14:30):
recover the drone, he finds that its camera froze only
a few seconds into the descent and now does not
work at all. That's when things start to get really bizarre.
All of a sudden, strange noises begin to come out
of the well, which sound like groaning howling. In the
words of the channel's host, now we hear some sounds,
(14:52):
scary sounds, sounds of wind, sounds of something weird, to
be honest. The video ends with the men visibly sh
and the host proclaiming, truly, whoever comes here will feel scared.
Whoever comes here, I don't think he will get any
benefit except just taking a look and leaving with Something
similar to these stories happened to all Kindy and his
(15:14):
team when they attempted their descent into the well. It
is interesting that shortly before their expedition, Yemeny officials seemed
to wash their hands of anything which might happen once
the team entered the well. The director of the region's
Geological Survey and Mineral Resources Authority, Salah Babat, gave an
interview in which he skeptically stated, it's very deep. We've
(15:38):
never reached the bottom of this well as there's little
oxygen and no ventilation. We have gone to visit the
area and entered the well, reaching more than fifty to
sixty meters down into it. We noticed strange things inside.
We also smelled something strange. It's a mysterious situation. In
other words, Babet seemed to be informing al Kindi and
(16:02):
his team that they had already tried and failed to
get to the bottom of the well, and if things
did not go well, local authorities would not be to blame.
With all of this in mind, and the weight of
centuries of history and legend on his shoulders. Al Kindy
took a deep breath and began his descent into the
well of Barut, repelling himself downward by a rope attached
(16:25):
at the surface. At first, everything was going smoothly. As
soon as I went down the first thirty meters, al
Kindy said, I could start seeing the details of the
cave in its formations. It was a very happy moment,
just going down, enjoying the scene. But then, without warning,
there was a sharp jerk on the rope, and al
(16:46):
Kindy stopped moving, leaving him dangling in the dark alone
in the well of Hell. After a few moments, he
realized that his rope was not long enough. He had
come to the end of it without reaching bottom. Calmly,
he pulled out his walky talkie and called up to
the surface for a longer rope. When it was sent down,
(17:08):
he continued his descent, going further than any one ever had,
and in fact making it all the way to the bottom.
His body was not severed, the walls had not closed in.
He was not set upon by evil spirits, nor did
he disappear into another dimension. Instead, he stood on the
(17:30):
floor of what appeared to be a somewhat normal cave.
There were, in his words, loads of beautiful cave deposits,
including stalagtites and stalagmites reaching as much as thirty feet tall,
and an incredible deposit of cave pearls. There were also
numerous birds, beetles, toads, and lizards, as well as most notably,
(17:55):
an enormous colony of eerily translucent snakes. But they won't
bother you unless you bother them, al Kindy joked. From
the walls of the cave ran gleaming waterfalls of clear water.
Far from terrifying, it was, in the words of all Kindie,
quite spectacular. Following all Kindie the rest of his team
(18:16):
repelled in and together they spent the better part of
five or six hours exploring. Their cameras did not malfunction,
and they were able to take astonishing photographs of the
inside of the well. Yes, there was a foul odor,
but that came from decomposing animal carcasses, including many dead birds.
(18:37):
Al Kindie even drank a bottle of the water which
flowed within the cave, later proclaiming I'm still alive, before
adding it's very fresh, very normal water. Before returning to
the surface. The team collected samples of water, rocks, soil,
and some dead animals, with the intent to have them
(18:57):
analyzed before publishing a full report on what they'd found.
Shortly thereafter. When they emerged from the well, the locals
waiting on the surface were stunned. They bombarded the team
with questions, which the daring explorers patiently answered, even showing
the crowd photos and samples. Al Kindi strongly believed that
(19:19):
by venturing into the Barutwell he had dispelled centuries of
legend in a single afternoon. As he put it, what
we did here, I think is essential, because we changed
people's minds at least about one of these places. After
all those years, the great mystery of the Barutwell the
Well of Hell had been solved, not with a bang
(19:42):
but a whimper, Or had it? For some There remain
unanswered questions about the Well of Barut, details yet to
be filled in which leave the mystery alive and well. Why,
for example, did al Kindi and his team not find
any human remain and the well alongside those of animals.
(20:03):
The explanation which is most often given for the numerous
strange disappearances around the well is that people were simply
careless and fell in. So where were their bones? If
they had fallen in, it seemed as if they had
disappeared into thin air. More importantly, in the weeks and
months that followed the team's exploration of the well, the
(20:26):
promised report on the samples taken never materialized. If everything
was as straightforward as the team suggested it was, then
where was the report. Those more tied to the religious
history of the well went even further. First of all,
why were there so many snakes? And since the Gin
are said to manifest in our world as snakes, could
(20:49):
the existence of so many snakes actually provide evidence for
it being the abode of the Gin rather than against it. Moreover,
if the Baro Dwell really was the sort of gateway
to another dimension, a prison of dark spirits, would it
not make sense that this gateway would open and close,
(21:09):
that it would not always be visible to human eyes.
There's something else, though, something related back to the original
words of Mohammed to the well of Barut being the
worst water on the face of the earth. Is it
possible we misunderstood the meaning of Mohammed's metaphor all along?
In the late eighteen hundreds, there was no more famous
(21:31):
a team of travelers than Theodore and Mabel Bent. Each
year after their marriage in Liverpool, England in eighteen seventy seven,
they would travel abroad, with Theodore writing and drawing sketches
and Mabel taking photographs and keeping a diary. Over the
course of the next fifteen years, the couple would document
(21:52):
their travels through Italy and Greece, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, and elsewhere.
In eighteen ninety three, they would set off on their
most dramatic journey of all, an attempt to explore deep
into Yemen, which at that point was mostly unknown to Europeans.
On these travels, they would approach the area which was
(22:13):
home to the Well of Barut. As Theodor WoT, we
were very anxious, indeed, as to whether we could proceed
any farther or should have to go back, and whether
we could do either safely. We wanted to go right
along the Wadi Hadramut and to see Bier Barut or Barut.
Their anxiousness was understandable. They had been told all about
(22:34):
the well of Barut. It is an adite well in
a dry desert and a gloomy valley. Theodore records in
his notes a well whose waters are black and fetid,
where the souls of infidels make their abode. But there
was more than that, an even more sinister characteristic. The
Bends had been told about Masudi in the Tete Sentry
(22:56):
speaks of it as the greatest volcano in the world,
and says that it casts up immense masses of fire
and that its thundering noise can be heard miles away. Indeed,
they saw signs of volcanic activity as they approached the
area on the heights, near as much Brimstone, Theodore chronicles
before ominously adding they consider this place as the mouth
(23:19):
of Hell. Unfortunately for the Bents, the area encompassing the
Well of Barut was at that point in time part
of the Ottoman Empire, and was thus off limits to
British explorers like them. They were forced to return home
without ever exploring this alleged great volcano. Reading their accounts today,
(23:41):
one might ask if this was simply a case of
myth making by locals gobbled up by eager travelers, or
could the area really be home to a dormant supervolcano,
a mouth of Hell which threatens the world In modern times,
one thing is for certain. The area surrounded the Well
of Barut is one of the most active tectonic boundaries
(24:04):
anywhere in the world. Yemen is located at a triple
junction between three tectonic plates, which are constantly pulling away
from each other and creating new oceanic crusts. It has
been established that there are at least eleven Holocene volcanoes
in the country, and there are volcanic rocks and cinder
(24:25):
cones associated with lava flows all through the area. In fact,
much of Yemen's coast is known to have been created
by lava flows. Throughout the area's history, volcanic activity has
played a prominent part, from reports of an eruption in
the area of barutwell in the tenth century to accounts
(24:45):
that a volcano was still smoking in eighteen thirteen. Even
in modern times, eruptions are common, including in two thousand
seven when an island off the coast of Yemen was
engulfed in fire than disappear eared, killing a number of
Yemeny soldiers who were stationed there, and in twenty eleven,
when a different eruption off the coast of Yemen lasted
(25:09):
for nearly a month and created an entirely new island
in the sea. Is it really possible that amidst all
this volcanic activity lies a dormant supervolcano which may one
day erupt. Perhaps this is what Mohammed really meant when
he said that the Well of barutad the worst water
(25:30):
on the face of the Earth, the worst water a
metaphor for a volcanic eruption which could literally destroy the Earth.
Perhaps the Well of barut really is a well of hell,
that is, a supervolcano which could turn the world into
a living hell.
It was the morning of September fifteenth, twenty twenty one,
and Mohammed Alkyndie stood on the precipice of the Great Unknown.
He and his Oman Cave exploration team were in the
middle of the desert at the far eastern edge of Yemen,
near the border with Oman, a desolate spot far from
any cities or major roads. As the sun rose, they
(00:21):
peered down into a giant hole in the earth, some
one hundred feet wide at the surface and extending downwards
to a depth of well. Nobody was quite sure. The
hole was known as the Well of Barut, and Alkyndi
and his team were preparing an attempt to become the
first to repel to its bottom. Around them, a large
group of locals had gathered, but these were not merely
(00:44):
curious onlookers. As Alcyndi and his team set up their equipment,
the locals begged them not to go through with their expedition.
Some in the crowd openly shook with fear. Their apprehension
was understandable to locals. The Well of Barut tis known
by an entirely different name. To them. It is the
well of Hell, and a legends surrounding this moniker are
(01:07):
not something they take lightly. In fact, many consider it
bad luck to even speak about the well. According to
the locals, the well is a place of unexplained disappearances,
where people seem to simply vanish into thin air. Many
believe that objects near the hole can actually be sucked
towards it. An often recounted story tells of a shepherd
(01:29):
who let her baby play in the area, only to
find that the child had instantly disappeared, with no tracks
left in the sand where it may have crawled towards
the well. Further, many have reported seeing strange animals around
the well, including terrifying winged creatures much larger than men.
Others have noted a foul, almost unbearable smell coming from it,
(01:54):
while some even say they have heard strange voices and
people screaming from deep below. But perhaps what was giving
people the most apprehension as they watched Alcyndia and his
team prepare to descend into the well was a story
describing what it happened to another who had made such
an attempt in the past. According to locals, at a
(02:15):
time when the region was suffering from severe drought, its
citizens decided to tie a rope to a man and
lower him into the well to look for water. As
he descended, the man suddenly began to scream in terror,
causing those at the surface to immediately lift him back out.
But when they did, the lower half of his body
(02:36):
was missing. The man had been severed at the waist.
It was no wonder that some begged Alcyndia and his
team not to enter the well. This may all sound
very dramatic, perhaps like urban legends, which are built through
generations by word of mouth and exaggeration, except the idea
of the Badu dwell as a well of Hell, as
(02:57):
one deeply woven into the religious and history the oracle
fabric of the region at the time of Mohammed. During
the seventh century CE, an Islamic scribe named iban Avas
recorded the words of the prophet in a series of hadiths.
In one of these hadiths, Mohammed speaks of the well
of Barut. The worst water on the face of the
earth is the water at Wadi Barut in Hadramut, which
(03:21):
is like locusts in comparison with other pests. It gushes
in the morning and is dry by the evening. In
one sense, Mohammed's words on the well have been taken literally.
In fact, in modern times, a man named Ahmar Hashim
Mohammed Osman gained a kind of prominence with his vivid
description of the region's water, which he came across well
(03:43):
completing compulsory military service in the area. There was an
ordinary well dug to provide the military site with water.
But when the pumps started working for the first time
to withdraw the water, a black liquid came out of
the well like tar. The smell was unbearable, a bad
smell like rotten eggs. I was nauseated by the severity
(04:03):
of the smell. No one could use the water for
at least twelve hours, as the odour subsided and black
matter was deposited on the pond walls where water was collected. Nevertheless,
I swear that I was unable to sleep from the
smell of my clothes and my body odor after washing
with that water. It is certain that this well is
connected to the same source that feeds the water of
(04:26):
Barut Well and contains the same characteristics. On the other hand,
like many words spoken by religious figures, Mohammed's words on
the well of Barut have also been taken more metaphorically.
Look at it like this. For those living in a desert,
the idea of a well producing water like locusts would
have been pretty much the worst thing imaginable. As such,
(04:49):
when Mohammed says the Barut well has the worst water
on the face of the earth, it can be seen
as a metaphor for the worst place on earth. This
idea formed the foundation of the legend of the Will
of Barut. Before we continue, we want to give a
shout out to numerologists dot com. This incredible website can
(05:09):
give you a completely free numerology video report based on
your name and date of birth. I tried the Numerology
Report myself and I was really amazed at how accurate
it was. You can discover your life path, secret talents,
and hidden strengths, and many powerful insights into your character.
Over two million people have tried the Numerology Report and
(05:31):
all of them are amazed at how accurate it is.
You can try it yourself. It's completely free. All you
have to do is click the link in my description
and type your first name and your date of birth.
Then you'll immediately see your personalized video numerology report. Let
me know in the comments if your report was accurate.
In the thirteenth century, a Muslim traveler and historian by
(05:54):
the name of ibenol Mijori wrote about how the Barut
wild had come into being. They attributed its construction to
the infamous king Shahdad Binad, who ruled over the Arabian
Peninsula in the time after the Flood of Noah. For Muslims,
Shaddad is remembered as a tyrant and infidel, and more
broadly as the builder of the legendary lost city of Edom,
(06:16):
which many say is still buried under the desert sand
to this day on Atlantis of the Sands. Watch our
video on Edam. The link is in the description and
the top pinned comment. According to ibenal Mijori, Shaddad had
come to eastern Yemen during the course of expanding his
kingdom and found it desolate and without water. Therefore, he
(06:39):
ordered two captive gin under his command to dig a
great system of wells and channels. In Islamic tradition, the
jin are supernatural beings created by God from smokeless fire.
They have the capacity for both good and evil, and
often appear to humans and animal form, particularly as snakes
and birds, or even as humans, while also leading their
(07:02):
own lives in a separate dimension known as al Ghaib.
It was these supernatural beings which Shaddad Binad allegedly forced
to build a Barut well, But according to al Majori,
there was more. When much time had passed, he wrote,
Shaddad Binad began sending all those who had to be
imprisoned to this place, both humans and evil Gin. From
(07:26):
this history, the Well of Barut became known across the
region as a prison for evil Jin, a sort of
interdimensional station between the world of humans and the supernatural
world of Gin, where they could be trapped. The area
even came to be called Mukam al Jin, the abode
of the Jin. To this day, a local saying about
(07:47):
the Well of Barut describes it as a place where
extinct tongues fizz on cold nights, implying the screams and
voices often heard from the well are actually the voices
of long imprisoned Gin. As the years passed, the idea
of the Barutwell as a prison expanded from a prison
for Jin to a sort of purgatory for the damned,
(08:09):
whether they be Jin or human. Around the turn of
the sixteenth century, an historian named Abu Makrama, who was
from the city of Aden near the will of Barut,
wrote extensively on the region's history. Within this history was
a story which spoke of the true nature of the Barutwell.
There was a man from the people of Khorasan living
(08:30):
in Mecca. He was a man of many pious exertions
in terms of worship and good acts, and people would
often deposit money with him. A man left him with
ten thousand dinars and left on a journey. When he
returned to Mecca, he discovered that the man had died.
He asked the man's sons and people about his money,
and they said, we have no knowledge of your money.
(08:53):
The man then went to a group from among the
learned and abstemias of Mecca and complained to them about
his affair. They instructed him that he should sit at
the will of Zamzam until half or a third of
the night had passed. He should then turn his head
towards it and call out in a loud voice, O Fulan,
I am Fulan, owner of the deposit, What have you
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done with it? The man did thus for three nights
with no response, he returned to the group and told
them nothing had happened. They then said to him, verily,
we fear that this man is among the people of fire,
and you must go to Yemen to a wadi in
aiden called Barut. There he would find a will, and
they instructed that he should put his head in it
(09:39):
once again, when half of a third of the night
had passed, he should then ask about the deposit. When
the man did as instructed, this time, the deceased replied
that the money was buried in his room in such
and such a house, and told the depositor to return
to Mecca and ask his son to dig it up.
Abu Mukhrama concludes the story with an assertion making the
(10:01):
moral clear. Verily, the souls of the profligate moan in
the well of Barut, and verily it is correct that
it is an aiden where the people exiled to fire
reside until the resurrection. This was taken further in the
early nineteen hundreds by Sheikabasu Kumi, an Islamic scholar and
renowned interpreter of religious books and ancient texts, in one
(10:24):
of his most famous works titled manasialul al Kolach. He
recounts an incredible story. One day, a man came to
the presence of the Holy Prophet in a manner that
fear had overtaken him and his face had turned pale.
He said that he had witnessed an astonishing event, which
was the cause of his restlessness. On the Prophet's inquiry,
he said, my wife has a disease, for the cure
(10:47):
of which she requested me to fetch some water from
the well at Wadi i Barut. I took a leather
bag and a bowl and left. When I reached there,
the erie surrounding made me fearful, and I hastily started
searching for the well. I found one well and was
about to fill water in the bag when I heard
the noise of chains from above me. I heard a
(11:09):
voice requesting me for water, for he was dying of
intense thirst. When I looked above, I saw a man
hanging by a chain which was bound around his neck.
I was confused, but agreed to his request for water.
When I extended my hand to offer him water, the
chain was suddenly pulled on top and the man reached
just near the blazing sun. I was dumbfounded and scared
(11:33):
and started filling the water bag. When I saw the
man being sent down again, he again requested me for water,
and like before, when I extended my hand to give him,
the chain was pulled up. This happened thrice. On the
third time I was totally frightened and run away from there. O, Prophet,
(11:54):
I now request you to explain to me the incident.
The holy Prophet replied, the man whom you saw in
the Wadi i Barut was none other than the accursed
Kane who had mercilessly murdered his brother Abel. He will
be punished in the same manner in the valley, and
on the day of Kyamut, he will be fed to
the blazing fire of Hell. From accounts like these, local
(12:17):
tradition began to see the Well of Barut as a
prison of dark spirits and the souls of infidels. Quite simply.
The idea of the Well of Barut as a well
of Hell had been building for centuries through religious texts
and historical accounts. It was no wonder that as Mohammed
al Kindi and his Ohman Cave exploration team prepared to
(12:38):
descend into the well, they were surrounded by locals issuing
dire warnings. The thing is. Alcindi and his team were
not even the first modern group to attempt to explore
the depths of the well. In twenty thirteen, the UAE's
Albeian newspaper carried an account of a company called Desert
Line attempting a visual survey of the well. To the article,
(13:01):
an employee was attached to a crane and lowered into
the well with a video camera. At about one hundred
meters down. The employee began to scream and was quickly
returned to the surface, where he asserted that as he
had descended, the geometry of the walls had begun to
shift and close in on him. Thinking that perhaps their
colleague had suffered from about of claustrophobia, the rest of
(13:25):
the team moved to review the video footage. Yet, despite
enough light coming in from the surface to presumably shoot
good footage, the video camera recorded only black. This type
of equipment malfunction is not unusual around the Baurootwell. Not
two years before al Kindi and his team would make
(13:46):
their attempt, a local YouTube channel called Hadramut came up
with a brilliant idea if there seemed to be problems
every time a person was lowered into the well, why
not just fly a drone. In the results of their
attempt to do just this, we're stunningly cataloged in a
video published on their YouTube channel. At first, the drone
(14:08):
descends normally, and a view of the inside of the
well begins to come into focus. But then the drone
suddenly stops, then begins moving erratically. I literally can't control it,
the pilot says. It goes to the sides, it goes vertical,
and then suddenly it goes to the wall. You can
barely bring it up again. When the pilot manages to
(14:30):
recover the drone, he finds that its camera froze only
a few seconds into the descent and now does not
work at all. That's when things start to get really bizarre.
All of a sudden, strange noises begin to come out
of the well, which sound like groaning howling. In the
words of the channel's host, now we hear some sounds,
(14:52):
scary sounds, sounds of wind, sounds of something weird, to
be honest. The video ends with the men visibly sh
and the host proclaiming, truly, whoever comes here will feel scared.
Whoever comes here, I don't think he will get any
benefit except just taking a look and leaving with Something
similar to these stories happened to all Kindy and his
(15:14):
team when they attempted their descent into the well. It
is interesting that shortly before their expedition, Yemeny officials seemed
to wash their hands of anything which might happen once
the team entered the well. The director of the region's
Geological Survey and Mineral Resources Authority, Salah Babat, gave an
interview in which he skeptically stated, it's very deep. We've
(15:38):
never reached the bottom of this well as there's little
oxygen and no ventilation. We have gone to visit the
area and entered the well, reaching more than fifty to
sixty meters down into it. We noticed strange things inside.
We also smelled something strange. It's a mysterious situation. In
other words, Babet seemed to be informing al Kindi and
(16:02):
his team that they had already tried and failed to
get to the bottom of the well, and if things
did not go well, local authorities would not be to blame.
With all of this in mind, and the weight of
centuries of history and legend on his shoulders. Al Kindy
took a deep breath and began his descent into the
well of Barut, repelling himself downward by a rope attached
(16:25):
at the surface. At first, everything was going smoothly. As
soon as I went down the first thirty meters, al
Kindy said, I could start seeing the details of the
cave in its formations. It was a very happy moment,
just going down, enjoying the scene. But then, without warning,
there was a sharp jerk on the rope, and al
(16:46):
Kindy stopped moving, leaving him dangling in the dark alone
in the well of Hell. After a few moments, he
realized that his rope was not long enough. He had
come to the end of it without reaching bottom. Calmly,
he pulled out his walky talkie and called up to
the surface for a longer rope. When it was sent down,
(17:08):
he continued his descent, going further than any one ever had,
and in fact making it all the way to the bottom.
His body was not severed, the walls had not closed in.
He was not set upon by evil spirits, nor did
he disappear into another dimension. Instead, he stood on the
(17:30):
floor of what appeared to be a somewhat normal cave.
There were, in his words, loads of beautiful cave deposits,
including stalagtites and stalagmites reaching as much as thirty feet tall,
and an incredible deposit of cave pearls. There were also
numerous birds, beetles, toads, and lizards, as well as most notably,
(17:55):
an enormous colony of eerily translucent snakes. But they won't
bother you unless you bother them, al Kindy joked. From
the walls of the cave ran gleaming waterfalls of clear water.
Far from terrifying, it was, in the words of all Kindie,
quite spectacular. Following all Kindie the rest of his team
(18:16):
repelled in and together they spent the better part of
five or six hours exploring. Their cameras did not malfunction,
and they were able to take astonishing photographs of the
inside of the well. Yes, there was a foul odor,
but that came from decomposing animal carcasses, including many dead birds.
(18:37):
Al Kindie even drank a bottle of the water which
flowed within the cave, later proclaiming I'm still alive, before
adding it's very fresh, very normal water. Before returning to
the surface. The team collected samples of water, rocks, soil,
and some dead animals, with the intent to have them
(18:57):
analyzed before publishing a full report on what they'd found.
Shortly thereafter. When they emerged from the well, the locals
waiting on the surface were stunned. They bombarded the team
with questions, which the daring explorers patiently answered, even showing
the crowd photos and samples. Al Kindi strongly believed that
(19:19):
by venturing into the Barutwell he had dispelled centuries of
legend in a single afternoon. As he put it, what
we did here, I think is essential, because we changed
people's minds at least about one of these places. After
all those years, the great mystery of the Barutwell the
Well of Hell had been solved, not with a bang
(19:42):
but a whimper, Or had it? For some There remain
unanswered questions about the Well of Barut, details yet to
be filled in which leave the mystery alive and well. Why,
for example, did al Kindi and his team not find
any human remain and the well alongside those of animals.
(20:03):
The explanation which is most often given for the numerous
strange disappearances around the well is that people were simply
careless and fell in. So where were their bones? If
they had fallen in, it seemed as if they had
disappeared into thin air. More importantly, in the weeks and
months that followed the team's exploration of the well, the
(20:26):
promised report on the samples taken never materialized. If everything
was as straightforward as the team suggested it was, then
where was the report. Those more tied to the religious
history of the well went even further. First of all,
why were there so many snakes? And since the Gin
are said to manifest in our world as snakes, could
(20:49):
the existence of so many snakes actually provide evidence for
it being the abode of the Gin rather than against it. Moreover,
if the Baro Dwell really was the sort of gateway
to another dimension, a prison of dark spirits, would it
not make sense that this gateway would open and close,
(21:09):
that it would not always be visible to human eyes.
There's something else, though, something related back to the original
words of Mohammed to the well of Barut being the
worst water on the face of the earth. Is it
possible we misunderstood the meaning of Mohammed's metaphor all along?
In the late eighteen hundreds, there was no more famous
(21:31):
a team of travelers than Theodore and Mabel Bent. Each
year after their marriage in Liverpool, England in eighteen seventy seven,
they would travel abroad, with Theodore writing and drawing sketches
and Mabel taking photographs and keeping a diary. Over the
course of the next fifteen years, the couple would document
(21:52):
their travels through Italy and Greece, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, and elsewhere.
In eighteen ninety three, they would set off on their
most dramatic journey of all, an attempt to explore deep
into Yemen, which at that point was mostly unknown to Europeans.
On these travels, they would approach the area which was
(22:13):
home to the Well of Barut. As Theodor WoT, we
were very anxious, indeed, as to whether we could proceed
any farther or should have to go back, and whether
we could do either safely. We wanted to go right
along the Wadi Hadramut and to see Bier Barut or Barut.
Their anxiousness was understandable. They had been told all about
(22:34):
the well of Barut. It is an adite well in
a dry desert and a gloomy valley. Theodore records in
his notes a well whose waters are black and fetid,
where the souls of infidels make their abode. But there
was more than that, an even more sinister characteristic. The
Bends had been told about Masudi in the Tete Sentry
(22:56):
speaks of it as the greatest volcano in the world,
and says that it casts up immense masses of fire
and that its thundering noise can be heard miles away. Indeed,
they saw signs of volcanic activity as they approached the
area on the heights, near as much Brimstone, Theodore chronicles
before ominously adding they consider this place as the mouth
(23:19):
of Hell. Unfortunately for the Bents, the area encompassing the
Well of Barut was at that point in time part
of the Ottoman Empire, and was thus off limits to
British explorers like them. They were forced to return home
without ever exploring this alleged great volcano. Reading their accounts today,
(23:41):
one might ask if this was simply a case of
myth making by locals gobbled up by eager travelers, or
could the area really be home to a dormant supervolcano,
a mouth of Hell which threatens the world In modern times,
one thing is for certain. The area surrounded the Well
of Barut is one of the most active tectonic boundaries
(24:04):
anywhere in the world. Yemen is located at a triple
junction between three tectonic plates, which are constantly pulling away
from each other and creating new oceanic crusts. It has
been established that there are at least eleven Holocene volcanoes
in the country, and there are volcanic rocks and cinder
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cones associated with lava flows all through the area. In fact,
much of Yemen's coast is known to have been created
by lava flows. Throughout the area's history, volcanic activity has
played a prominent part, from reports of an eruption in
the area of barutwell in the tenth century to accounts
(24:45):
that a volcano was still smoking in eighteen thirteen. Even
in modern times, eruptions are common, including in two thousand
seven when an island off the coast of Yemen was
engulfed in fire than disappear eared, killing a number of
Yemeny soldiers who were stationed there, and in twenty eleven,
when a different eruption off the coast of Yemen lasted
(25:09):
for nearly a month and created an entirely new island
in the sea. Is it really possible that amidst all
this volcanic activity lies a dormant supervolcano which may one
day erupt. Perhaps this is what Mohammed really meant when
he said that the Well of barutad the worst water
(25:30):
on the face of the Earth, the worst water a
metaphor for a volcanic eruption which could literally destroy the Earth.
Perhaps the Well of barut really is a well of hell,
that is, a supervolcano which could turn the world into
a living hell.
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