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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Any Jewelry, post: 4545275, member: 2844&quot;]Yes, Yemen.<img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie49" alt=":happy:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> They make black coral beads with &#039;silver&#039; inlay, but also black faturan beads with the same inlay. Both are much more valuable than Mauritanian wooden beads.</p><p><br /></p><p>It looks like yours are black coral, I think I see some brown.</p><p>Yemeni black coral was found in the waters around the island of Socotra (&quot;the most alien place on earth&quot;). Socotra lies in the Indian Ocean and has the same type of black &#039;akar bahar&#039; coral as Indonesia, on the other side of the Indian Ocean. That means that you can see brown layering or striation, like in the detail of one of my Yemeni necklaces below:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]402731[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The silvertone beads on yours were probably imported from nearby India, an important source of trade goods in Yemen. The &#039;cage&#039; beads on mine were made in southern Yemen.</p><p>The construction of your necklace, a string of beads with chains and no end cones, is southern Yemeni, just like mine:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]402735[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>(The silver &#039;cage&#039; beads have been cleaned since.<img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie79" alt=":shame:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />)</p><p><br /></p><p>Because these inlaid coral beads are also used for tesbih, prayer bead strings, they are also known as Yemeni prayer beads.</p><p><br /></p><p>Should you ever come across Yemeni black faturan beads, they are easy to recognize. They are an even black colour, which the coral ones aren&#039;t, and because they are bakelite mixed with native frankincense, they smell of incense.</p><p>I have a Yemeni &#039;silver&#039; inlaid black faturan tesbih, but can&#039;t find a photo of it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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