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YEMEN: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARABIA FELIX

THE PORT OF ADEN at the tip of southern Yemen has been historically described as the ‘gateway to China’ largely because ancient Arab mariners used the port as a midway point in the maritime trading routes between the eastern coast of Africa, the Mediterranean, via the desert caravan routes, and India, China and Malay.¹ The oceanic ‘super highways’ created by Yemeni and Omani merchant seamen ensured that Arab colonies were well established in East Africa and India long before the advent of Islam in the seventh century CE. In the Yemeni context, these important trade routes were traditionally dominated by the two ruling tribes of the Kathīrī and Qu˓aytī emanating from the fringes of Ḥaḍramawt in al-Ruba˓ al-Khālī (‘The Empty Quarter’) desert of the southern Arab Peninsula. Ancient histories of Middle Eastern civilizations make very little reference to Yemen, focusing instead on the wonders of Babylon and Pharoanic Egypt. The general absence of any narrative of ancient Yemen, however, cannot deny its unique importance in the economic development of the region from around 2000BCE until 700CE. In this period, Yemen was a flourishing area ruled by a number of important kingdoms who advanced the region’s prosperity and technological development. The pre-Islamic civilizations of Awsān, Ḥaḍramawt, Ḥimyar, Ma˓īn, Qatabān and Saba’ were ancient kingdoms whose histories shaped the very nature of what we know today as Yemen.² It is only their remoteness in relation to modern population centres that have made the abandoned desert ruins of these previous civilizations the subject of myth and legend.

In more recent times, Yemen’s virtual encapsulation, as a result of almost a thousand years of Zaydī Imāmate-rule, cut the region off from the rest of the world, resulting in a further ignorance of the country’s rich and epic history. It is only in the last 200 years that Western explorers, often at great personal risk, have been able to penetrate Yemen’s unforgiving landscapes of remote and rugged mountains and vast barren deserts to reveal many of its important archaeological sites and lost ancient settlements. Modern excavations of these now isolated sites have revealed not only their former glory as centres of advanced civilization, but also their key role in the extremely lucrative trade in rare spices and expensive incenses. The abandoned ancient trading entrepôts were vital to the commodities and rites of the ancient world. In Pharoanic Egypt and ancient Babylon, the use of frankincense and myrrh in the religious rituals of mummification and the employment of aromatic gums as precious commodities used in medicines, cosmetics and foods was acknowledged across the ancient world. Egyptian demand for these rare goods established permanent trade routes to the incenseproducing areas of Ḥaḍramawt and Ẓufār in Southern Arabia. This lucrative trade was then further extended to later Greek and Roman civilizations to the north of Arabia via the vast camel caravans of the incense routes. This international trade enabled the regional kingdoms and their capitals to flourish that saw the establishment of a number of important seaports including Qānā in the south of Arabia and Gaza in the north.³ Economic cooperation was vital to all the kingdoms of the region and, despite often on-going hostilities between various regional sovereignties, protection for trade caravans was ensured through a system of ‘commissions’ or taxes from the merchants in return for safe passage through tribal territories across the deserts and highlands. However, protected travel could only be assured where traders adhered strictly to a prescribed and widely recognized route and any breaches could often result in the penalty of death.

1.1 – A British stamp from the Aden Protectorate published in the 1960s displaying an early etching of the port.

Whilst relatively little is known regarding the administration and organization of the various ancient kingdoms of the region, archaeological evidence and research suggests that the majority were polytheist, with a number of ancient temples and places of worship dedicated to astrological deities such as the sun, the moon and other celestial entities.⁴ Further, the excavation of burial sites also indicates a belief in an afterlife by the presence of a number of personal possessions included in many graves. Archaeologists also interpret the gradual development of simple stylized sculptural forms into intricate three-dimensional figures, complete with individual features, as suggestive of the wealth and influence generated through the highly profitable incense trade that exposed these relatively isolated societies to more advanced civilizations. The distinctive and fairly rapid shift from simple geometric designs to greater developed floral shapes and patterns indicate clear Hellenistic influences. Architecturally, the design of the original temples, constructed of rectangular buildings flanked with square shaped columns, is contrasted with the later buildings which appear to replicate the hallmarks of Greek and Roman architectural motifs.

ANCIENT RULERS AND KINGDOMS

Although historians generally refer to the overarching ancient civilization of the region as Sabean, the kingdoms of southern Arabia were largely contemporaneous and did not succeed each other. Rather, different kingdoms reached their civilizational peak at different times. For example, by the third century CE, the Ḥimyarite kingdom exercised its hegemony over the neighbouring kingdoms of Saba’, Dhū Raydān, Ḥaḍramawt and Yamnat and, a century later, Ḥimyarite ascendancy included rule over the Bedouins of the highlands and lowlands, forming the first political unification of southern Arabia under a single ruler. Before Ḥimyarite ascendancy, the Sabeans had dominated the region for well over a thousand years, creating a kingdom whose influence reached far beyond tribal tributaries. Equally, the people of the Ma˓īn kingdom in the north of the region were economic stalwarts whose commercial exploits and interests reached as far as the Nabatean city of Petra in central Arabia and several countries around the Mediterranean. However, it was only the kingdom of Ḥaḍramawt that produced the muchneeded luxury commodity of frankincense, from the Dhofar region, which was shipped through the ancient port of Qānā, today known as Bi’r ˓Alī, thereafter transported overland through Shabwah.⁵

In the ancient world, the consumers of the expensive incenses were never informed of their precise origins, hence the legends and myths that surround the early medieval spice and incense trade. For example, Heredotus wrote that incense growers lived in isolated groves and were forbidden marital relations with women or to attend funerals. He also claimed that the mythical groves which produced the precious incense were guarded by winged serpents. But such fables were probably largely the result of overzealous Yemeni incense merchants who wished not only to preserve the high prices sought for their wares, but also to protect the sea routes they had mastered to India and China by learning to negotiate the monsoon winds.⁶ The ancient sea routes brought in further expensive luxuries such as spices and silks which all passed through Yemeni ports on to camel caravan routes through Arabia into Greek and then later Roman domains. So fruitful were Yemeni merchants in the trade of precious commodities, that the Romans believed that the Arabian Peninsula was the producer of all such expensive items, prompting them to describe the Yemen as Arabia Felix (‘Fortuitous Arabia’). But the exotic and mysterious image of Arabia, cultivated by the Romans, overlooked the harsh realities of life in the region in which the majority of the population were held in virtual serfdom, working the irrigated foothills of the highlands in the production of much-needed agricultural produce. Evidence of this early sophisticated agricultural society is best seen in the ancient remains of the huge rock monoliths of the former Ma’rib Dam. These now strange free-standing structures are all that remain of the colossal wādī (valley) sluices that trapped the rainfall running down the valleys, forming a complex irrigation system constructed by the ancient Sabean civilization that is believed to have irrigated more than 16,000 hectares, producing food for an estimated 300,000 people.⁷

The Ma’rib Dam is a legend that even finds references in the Qur’ān (Sūrah 27, Al-Naml and Sūrah 34, Saba’) and is linked historically to the Old Testament Queen of Sheba (or, Bilqīs), who was said to have visited King Solomon’s (Sulāymān) court in ancient Palestine (10 Kings: 1–3, Chronicles: 1–2). Scripture offers only sketchy descriptions of the events and no absolute narrative exists as to the exact detail of the ancient queen, her epic journey to Solomon’s seat and the details of her kingdom. Archaeological excavations of these ancient Sabean sites are slowly beginning to offer further evidence of this once great civilization. The collapse of the Ma’rib Dam in the fifth century CE, and its ill-fated restoration that resulted in its ultimate collapse 100 years later, is seen as the catalyst for the demise of the Sabean civilization. Although historians suggest that the collapse of the Ma’rib Dam was actually only a contributory factor to the wider downturn in the incense trade from the fourth century CE onwards when the Romans discovered their own sea routes to India in search of the origins of the spices and incense they sought. Further, the political shifts within the Roman Empire as the Eastern Empire quickly acceded saw the capital transferred from Rome to Constantinople in 395CE, which meant that a new overland route to India and China opened up through ancient Persia and Afghanistan. Added to this was the spread of Christianity across Byzantium in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, which hailed a major change from the previous pagan rituals that had relied on incense for its religious rites.

As develoments in the Western and Eastern Roman Empires took their toll on the international incense trade in the Yemen, internal transformations within the region also began to have their impact. The relatively sophisticated kingdoms and civilizations that had developed as a direct result of the boom in the incense and spice trades slowly began to deteriorate as the previous wealth that flooded into the region gradually dried up. This serious economic decline in the region brought about a re-nomadification of Southern Arabia as the former prosperous centres suffered from economic deprivation.⁸ Consequently, the highly-developed irrigated agricultural societies that sprouted out of the practical need to feed the booming economic centres also fell into rapid decline. The resultant effect was a complete cessation of market economies based on the luxury commodities of spice, silk and incense. As a consequence, what had previously been hailed by the other great civilizations as the ‘land of plenty’ quickly became the ‘land of empty’.

The northern highlands of the region had for many years been influenced by Byzantine Christianity, both from the Hellenistic world and the Abyssinian Empire. Yet, whilst Christianity had influenced the beliefs and culture of the northern Ḥimyarite kingdom, when the last Ḥimyarite sovereigns converted to Judaism, the situation for the majority Christians in the region of Najrān became that of religious persecution at the hands of the zealot Jewish king, Dhū Nuwwās, prompting an invasion by the Abyssinians around 518CE. Towards the south, the ancient prosperous kingdoms of Saba’, Ma˓īn, Qatabān, Awsān and Ḥaḍramawt, all evaporated as their various populations either reverted to a Bedouin existence, trekking the ancient oasis routes of the Empty Quarter desert or settled the highland slopes to carve out small agricultural communities. The residue of these ancient Yemeni civilizations remains deep-rooted in the collective conscience of their descendants and is often manifest in the modern-day constructions of Yemeni homes, whether they are mountain village dwellings that hang precariously off the rocky ridges, the urban settlements of regional and provincial cities, or the Manhattan-like multi-storey tower blocks of Shibām in Wādī Ḥaḍramawt. Beyond the unique architecture of the Yemen, which pays homage to past civilizational glory, are the ancient tribal customs (˓urf) that encapsulate moral and ethical codes of mutual coexistence and run parallel to the religious codes of the Islamic sharī˓ah and the modern secular legislation of a burgeoning democratic nation-state. Never too far behind the modern tropes and trappings of contemporary Yemen are the ancient reminders of a civilization with a unique and ancient past.

In the pre-Islamic period the Yemeni people are considered to be the ‘original’ Arabs, al-˓arab al-˓āribah, or what Ismail Raji al-Faruqi translates as ‘the Arabizing Arabs’, in contrast to al-˓arab al-musta˓ribah, or, the ‘Arabized Arabs’.⁹ Paul Dresch refers to an Islamic Prophetic tradition, which declares the Yemenis to be the original Arabs, is often used to substantiate this genealogical and civilizational claim.¹⁰ The topography of the Yemen has largely contributed to the social, cultural and political development of the country and there are three principle geopolitical regions that have had a determining effect on the different socio-political groupings and historical worldviews of the peoples of Yemen.¹¹ The western and northern mountain highlands have always been virtually impervious to invasion or outside domination, rendering it autonomous of any imposed and centralized form of national government. The southern uplands have provided a relatively stable and suitable environment for the establishment of more urban and organized societies conducive to structured forms of government or state building. Tihāmah occupies the precarious location between the mountains and the sea, leaving its people open to historic invasions from both directions. This geographical vulnerability has hindered the establishment of any local rule and Tihāmah has historically been the political battleground of foreign and Yemeni ruling powers.¹² Tribal bonds and allegiances have also often stunted the development of any central authority or unifying government. Most Yemenis belong to a tribe, clan or lineage and tribes inhabit defined regions and territories each ruled by a tribal elder, or shaykh. These regions are governed by a combination of their own ˓urf (local tribal customs) and sharī˓ah (Islamic law) according to its specific theological tradition.¹³ Furthermore, each tribe and region preserves inherited genealogies and distinct historical narratives. Yet despite the apparent hindrance of tribalism, there have been several forms of government in the 5000 yearold history of the Yemen. However, few rulers managed to exercise total rule over all regions of the Yemen and even fewer could claim absolute allegiance to their rule.¹⁴

ISLAM AND THE ZAYDĪ IMĀMS

The modern country of Yemen geographically occupies the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, Jazīrat al-˓Arab, bordered on the west by the Red Sea and to the north and the east by Saudi Arabia and Oman respectively. The land mass covers an area of 74,000 square miles with a coastal mountain range and a central plateau that rises to over 12,000 feet above sea level.¹⁵ The land between the mountain highlands and the Red Sea is extremely fertile and is often described as the ‘Garden of Arabia’. It is also the most densely populated region and the place where the capital city, Sana’a, is located. Sana’a is surrounded by many remote highland settlements and mountain villages with isolated rural communities living in harsh and rugged terrain.¹⁶ The average settlement size is less than 90 people. The three main geographical regions of the Yemen are Bāb al-Mandab, Tihāmah and Ḥaḍramawt. Bāb al-Mandab is the strait running from the southern tip along the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. Tihāmah, is a largely barren, desert plain south of the central plateau and, apart from the developing city of Hodeidah and a few traditional trading ports like Zabīd and Bayt al-Faqīh, it is relatively uninhabited. Tihāmah’s expanse leads to the eastern craggy peaks of the central Yemen. Towards the central mountain area lies the city of Ta˓izz and further north other historical and religious centres include, Kawkabān, Ḥajjah, Ṣa˓dah and Shahārah. In the south lie Dhamar, Ibb, Jiblā and Radā’. The eastern escarpment peters away into the great vacuous expanse of Ḥaḍramawt and the Empty Quarter, a vast desert and ancient home to the people of Saba’ and Ma˓īn. Many towns in the far eastern part of the Yemen are reminders of a great civilization long pre-dating Islam – Barāqish, Ma’rib¹⁷ and Ẓafar, a region now only inhabited by Bedouins. The current population of the Yemen is estimated to be around 18 million, four times what is was in 1900. With a growth rate of approximately 3.7% annually, it would appear that the population has almost doubled every 20 years.¹⁸ The region is home to a civilization with both an ancient biblical past and a turbulent modern history.

Yemenis have traditionally been travellers and, long before the Islamization of the Yemen, early migrations to central Arabia and Mesopotamia are traced through ancient tribal histories and genealogies.¹⁹ A Qur’ānic reference to the collapse of the Ma’rib Dam, that had provided essential water irrigation for the ancient Yemenis, is cited as a major catastrophe, which resulted in a massive population displacement through the migration of the ancient inhabitants.²⁰ The tradition of migration continued after the Yemenis accepted Islam and Dresch notes wryly, ‘Yemen, like Scotland or Ireland, has often exported population, and in Islam’s first centuries Yemeni names spread through most of the known world.’²¹ In the first Islamic citadel of Madīnat al-Nabawiyyah,²² formerly known as Yathrib, the two leading tribes of ˓Aws and Khazraj had originally migrated from the Yemen.²³ Both tribes were instrumental in accommodating the migration and asylum of the Prophet Muhammad and his early followers from persecution in Makkah into a city, Madīnah, that soon became the political and cultural centre of Islam. Later, as part of the regional diplomatic missions to the city, a delegation of Byzantine-ruled Christians from the Najrān region of the historical Yemen visited the Prophet. Their discussions lead to a ratification and formalization of a previously-agreed allegiance and tribute, with the Christians retaining their religion and a Muslim emissary, Abū ˓Ubaydah ˓Āmir ibn al-Jarrāḥ, appointed as a judicial authority over their affairs.²⁴ Most of the Yemen came under the fold of Islam within the Prophet’s lifetime and he is reported to have said of them, ‘Here come the people of the Yemen, tender of heart and good intention. Īmān (faith) is Yemeni and ḥikmah (wisdom) is Yemeni.’²⁵ Furthermore, when the Yemeni tribe of Daws converted en masse to Islam with al-Ṭufayl, they also made a mass migration from their homeland to the Prophet’s city.²⁶

1.2 – A postcard of the picturesque Bāb al-Yaman, the entrance to Sana’a al-Qadīmah or ‘old Sana’a’, circa 1970s.

In the Malaysian Archipelago, Yemeni traders and merchants, like the Omanis, contributed to the introduction of Islam in China, Malaysia and Indonesia long before other Muslim settlers from India and Persia. Arabs had long established an ancient sea trade route to China but, as more accurate forms of navigation were developed in the early medieval period by Muslim sailors, trade and travel to the Far East from the Arabian Peninsula intensified. As a result, N. A. Balouch has commented: ‘within the first two centuries of the Hijrah this old sea route developed into an Ocean Highway for international trade and commerce.’²⁷ Yemenis, particularly the Sayyids, the bloodline decendents of the Prophet Muhammad, presented themselves as formidable economic opponents to frustrated Dutch merchants in eighteenth-century Malaysia.²⁸ It would appear that the historical trading links between the Yemen and the Malaysian Archipelago, which pre-dated Islam, were used to extend trade and to proselytize Islam peacefully and mutually rather than by force or conquest.²⁹ South Asia was well known in pre-Islamic Arabia as Hind and the Yemenis had historically traded in spices from the Subcontinent.³⁰ The name ‘Hind’ was a popular female name amongst pagan Arabs and in his eight-volume work titled, Kitāb al-Tabaqāt al-Kabīr, Abū ˓Abdullāh Muhammad ibn Sa˓d gives references of at least 14 women of Makkan and Madīnan origin bearing the name ‘Hind’.³¹ Further, Hind bint al-Khāṡṡ, a pre-Islamic legendary figure in popular Arab folklore was renowned for her eloquence, quick-wittedness and repartee. Her name ‘al-Khāṡṡ’ (‘the special’) implies that she was the offspring of a marriage between a human father and a jinn (‘genie’) mother. The legend is fuelled by the fact that pagan Arabs believed that any human possessing exceptional qualities, brilliance of mind or endowed with any natural gift was probably due to the intervention of the jinn.³² Martin Lings also refers to two prominent women of Makkah, Hind bint ˓Utbah Umm Mu˓āwiyah, the wife of Abū Sufyān, a tribal leader of the Quraysh, and Umm Salamah or Hind bint Abī Umayyah. Hind bint ˓Utbah’s son Mu˓āwiyah was later to become the Muslim governor of Syria and Umm Salamah became a wife of the Prophet after her husband, Abū Salamah, died from the injuries he received in the battle of Badr.³³ Whilst the region of Hind appears to have captured the imagination of pre-Islamic Arabs, in the early spread of Islam in India, perhaps the only Yemeni contribution was the migration of Ismā˓īlī dā˓īs, or proselytizers, into the region of Gujrat.³⁴ One cannot overlook, however, the later influence of eighteenth-century reformist Yemeni scholar, Muhammad al-Shawkānī (1760–1834CE), on the newly developing approaches to sunnah, taqlīd and ijtihād in the traditional legal schools of India.³⁵

The introduction of the Ismā˓ilis to the Yemen was largely as a result of the Egyptian Fatimid hegemony and conquests in Arabia.³⁶ Fatimid ascendancy saw the establishment of a Ṣulayḥid Queen, Sayyidah Ḥurrah (c.1048–1138CE), as a monarch over large parts of the Yemen with special religious authority over the Ismā˓īlī communities of the Yemen and Gujarat.³⁷ Ismā˓īlī proselytizing in Gujarat is said to have begun in the mid-twelfth century CE and is attributed to a dā˓ī (religious prosylitizer) named either ˓Abdullāh or Muhammad (depending on the particular tradition), who travelled from the Yemen. He was apparently burnt alive by Siddha Raja (d. 1143CE), the Brahmin monarch, after he was caught preaching Islam disguised as a Brahmin servant in the palace.³⁸ Annemarie Schimmel confirms the spread of Ismā˓īlī Bohoras in India but does not allude to the legends of ˓Abdullāh. Instead, she links them to the twelfth-century Musta˓liyyah under Queen Ḥurrah in the Yemen.³⁹ The process of Ismā˓īlī proselytizing was further accelerated when the dā˓ī, Sayyidinā Yūsuf ibn Sulāymān (d.1567CE), migrated to Sidpur after the Sunni Ottoman Turks conquered northern Yemen. It was under the Sayyid’s patronage that the original Dā’ūdi faction of the Ismā‘īlī Bohoras was established.⁴⁰

Yemenis were also established as jama˓dārs (‘commanders’) in military service via the Arab army of the Nizam of Hyderabad well into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were mostly of Ḥaḍramī origin from the two rival tribes of the Kathīrī and the Qu˓aytī and as jama˓dārs they were able to amass great wealth and extensive estates in Hyderabad. This wealth was later used to reinvest in the Yemen by acquiring port property, vast tracts of land and financing tribal conflicts between both tribes and rival sultanate struggles for control of Ḥaḍramawt.⁴¹ The British, in their efforts to increase their influence in the region, sided with the Qu˓aytī and both eventually signed a Treaty of Friendship, in 1882, after the British had supported the Qu˓aytī possession of the port city of al-Mukalla a year earlier.⁴² By 1888, the Qu˓aytī signed a full Protectorate Treaty with the colonial occupiers under the rule of ˓Awaḍ ibn ˓Umar al Qu˓aytī, succeeding his older brother ˓Abdullāh, who died earlier in the same year. Both brothers were born in Hyderabad and their interests in the Yemen and India were represented by their various successors in both tribal communities in Ḥaḍramawt and Hyderabad respectively.⁴³ Linda Boxberger quotes a translation of a poem that is said to have been recited by the Kathīrī subtribe, or clan, the Nuwwah, before a battle for the control of the town of Hajr then under their protection. The poem reflects the disdain for the Qu˓aytī muwalladūn⁴⁴ and their ‘foreign’ take-over of the region, it begins,

Tell the Qu˓aytī: so the souk (al-Mukalla) is not enough for you,

And now you want Ḥajr, the protected.

Tell him: it’s impossible, the notion is rejected,

You Indian, we don’t even understand your language. ⁴⁵

As the tribal conflict for control of Ḥaḍramawt continued the Kathīrī Sultan tried to internationalize the hostilities and made moves to enlist the help of the Ottomans, trying to bring them into conflict with the British. However, after appeals to the Zaydī Imām, Yahya, failed, the Sultan’s politicking ‘created [a] conflict of interests among different groups in Ḥaḍramawt and the Ḥaḍ ramī emigrant communities overseas.’⁴⁶ This came about because the Sultan’s advisor, Ibn ˓Ubaydillāh, a prominent member of the ˓ulamā’, wanted to see an Islamic ruler dominating the region rather than a non-Muslim European one. Ibn ˓Ubaydillāh believed that the British had undermined the ˓ulamā’, and therefore Islam, by establishing secular legal and educational institutions. But most Ḥaḍramī Kathīrī communities abroad opposed their own Sultan and instead preferred to support the Qu˓aytī-British rule of al-Mukalla. This choice was devoid of any religious ideological reasoning and was motivated purely by economic pragmatism. The transportation and communication systems between diaspora Yemeni communities in Europe, Indian and the Malaysian Archipelago were controlled by the European powers and opposing them would possibly result in the disconnection of the emigrants and the supply of much-needed remittances to their families and tribesmen back home.⁴⁷

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the hostilities between Kathīrī and Qu˓aytī tribes over sovereign claims to Ḥaḍramawt and the influence of tribal notables in the diaspora was a major factor in both the continued conflicts and the eventual peace negotiations and brokerage between the opposing Sultans.⁴⁸ The transnational tribal hierarchy and organization of both the Kathīrī and the Qu˓aytī exemplifies the fluid nature of tribal identity and allegiance in the diaspora. Whilst emigrant Yemeni communities may experience both integration and hybridity in their new geo-cultural environs, maintaining a direct connection and interest into the political affairs of the tribe and homeland have remained a constant feature of migrant Yemenis. Linda Boxberger remarks, ‘in 1939 there were about 80,000 Ḥaḍramīs in the East Indies whose strong ties with their homeland made them follow events there with the greatest attention.’⁴⁹

Whilst the southern region of Ḥaḍramawt wrestled for tribal hegemony the northern regions of Bāb al-Mandab and Tihāmah were desperately trying to shake off the yoke of oppressive Zaydī Imāmate rule. The Zaydīs were a minority ruling elite who had ruled over the large parts of the Yemen for almost a thousand years. They emerged after the decline of the orthodox caliphate that had directly followed the Prophet Muhammad, a succession of his companions known as al-khulafā’ al-rashidūn (‘the rightly-guided caliphs’),⁵⁰ when the Yemen became an ideal haven and location for Islamic heterodoxy largely under the influence of the Ismā’īlī and Zaydī Shii sects. Al-Faruqi asserts that the Zaydī school of jurisprudence refers to Zayd ibn ˓Alī Zayn al-˓Ābidīn (d.793CE), the third grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Although Zayd was not the founder of this particular sect, the Zaydī adherents regarded him as worthier than his brother, Muhammad al-Bāqir, to succeed his father in the imāmate of the Shia. Al-Faruqi states that the rise of the Zaydīs in the Yemen is,

a situational consequence of the political isolation, once they [the Zaydīs] took over power in Yaman [Yemen] and practically locked themselves up in its mountains for a millennium and a century.⁵¹

Yemen is the only place in the Muslim world where the Zaydī school has followers and as a minority sect it has influenced the whole Yemeni population.⁵² However, in matters of fiqh, the Zaydīs largely follow the Sunni schools and only differ in particular issues; the negation of ablution when bare feet have been exposed but unsoiled, the killing of animals and preparing of food by non-Muslims, marriage to Christian and Jewish wives, and the concept of temporary marriage, or muṭa˓, practised by the majority of Shia but refuted by the Zaydīs.⁵³

The Ismā˓īlīs historically settled in small enclaves throughout the secluded, rugged and difficult terrain of northern Yemen including Jabal Ḥarāz and Najrān. Although the Southern population are majority orthodox Sunni, following the Shāfi˓ī school, a Zaydī Shii school eventually became a distinct minority and unique theological movement within the north Yemen originating from the ninth-century CE Zaydī state in Tabaristan.⁵⁴ The first Zaydī

Imām of the Yemen emerged around the end of the ninth century CE and acceded after mediating between two opposing northern tribes.⁵⁵ However, despite eventually assuming power over the Yemen, the Zaydīs could not control the whole region and their influence was restricted to their strongholds in the northern highlands. Zaydī beliefs are nearer to the Sunnis than the Shia and their theology is largely devoid of the mysticism and occult beliefs of the Ismā˓īlīs and other Shia who subscribe to ‘semi-divine’ Imāms. Robert Stokey has commented on the theological pragmatism of the Zaydī school, saying,

Its practical bent is reflected in its rejection of the idea of a ‘hidden’ [I]mam, expected to reappear with the prophets on the eve of Judgement Day. Rejected also is the notion of an occult exegesis of the Koran and the tradition accessible only to a few and its corollary, the systemic dissimulation practised by the Isma˓iliya and some other shi˓a.⁵⁶

Zaydī Imāms, although receptive to Sunni traditions, must be Sayyids, blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (also known in the Yemen as al-sādah), who are genealogically linked through ˓Alī, the Prophet’s nephew. The Zaydī Imāms claim both Qaḥṭānī and Sayyid lineage, ensuring genealogical credence through Arab tribal purity and religious nobility. The Imām is freely elected by the Zaydī ˓ulamā’ as both religious and political leader, and Zaydī control over the Sunni majority was often imposed through military prowess with occasional periods of peaceful détente. The later Imām, Yahya Hamid al-Din (c.1904–48), was able to exercise his power and increase his influence by presenting himself as a unifying nationalist leader and religious figurehead.⁵⁷ However, the Imām could not transform the ancient institution of Imāmate, known for its historical suppression of the majority Shāfi˓ī Sunnis, into a modern manifestation – as a national leader of a unified nation-state. His reign witnessed the demise of Ottoman imperial rule in the northern region and his projected image as a popular nationalist leader was founded on his aggressive attempts to usurp Ottoman hegemony. Ironically, the Turks had found a friend in the Imām by creating a mutual enemy in the British, who occupied Aden and the surrounding areas in the south. The Ottomans confirmed Yahya as the legitimate Imām and conceded to his autonomous rule in the northern highlands. The Ottoman–Zaydī alliance may well have defeated the southern British-backed Idrīsī Amirate forces had it not been for the outbreak of World War One, which precipitated the Turkish withdrawal after massive Ottoman defeats elsewhere.

The Zaydī Imāmate was internationally recognized as the legitimate successor state to the Ottoman province of the Yemen, but its control was still limited to the northern highlands. When the Turks withdrew from the Tihāmah region, control fell into the hands of the Idrīsī Amirate and although the Zaydī State tried to re-establish sovereignty over the region in 1920 by ousting the Idrīsī Amir, the efforts of the latter were curtailed by a war with Saudi Arabia in 1934. The geopolitical boundaries defined as a result of the Zaydī–Saudi war assumed a permanent boundary that later led to the creation of the Yemeni Arab Republic after the revolution in 1962. After the war with the Saudis, the Imām set about consolidating Zaydī control where the Hamid al-Din family exerted most influence. In the process, Hamid al-Din’s style of rule retrogressively transformed from that of a traditional Imām into one of an absolutist monarch.⁵⁸ This transformation provoked protests from both traditional conservatives and the-emerging nationalist modernists, which resulted in his eventual assassination in 1948. He was soon replaced by his son, Ahmad, after the brief rule of an Imām from another Zaydī family. Ahmad continued in a similar vein to his father, breaking with traditional principles of Imāmate rule in favour of monarchical self-rule, whilst at the same time resisting all efforts aimed at the modernization of the country. When Ahmad died in 1962, he was replaced by his son, Muhammad al-Badr, who survived an assassination attempt after a coup d’état within just one week of his succession. Muhammad fled the country and a protracted civil war broke out between loyal forces of the Imām and the newly-installed revolutionary Republic. In 1970, unification of the Sana’ai state was achieved and in the process the establishment of a genuine nation-state was undertaken in the north. Modern migrations from the Yemen were undertaken firstly by Ḥaḍramīs to the Ottoman-ruled Hijaz, and then by the ‘Adenese’ or southern Yemenis via maritime migrations to Britain and elsewhere. Later, in the mid-twentieth century, North Yemeni migrations to the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia occurred. Paul Dresch has commented on the historical migration of the Yemeni people, stating:

Throughout the country’s history one finds accounts of famine, and in the twentieth century migrant labour funded ordinary people’s lives, as first the Ḥaḍramīs, then Lower Yemenis then Upper Yemenis all worked elsewhere.⁵⁹

The recurring droughts and famines throughout the history of the Yemen have made rural living and agricultural trade practically untenable. The social, political and economic ‘push factors’ in the modern period transformed rural peasants, reluctantly, into merchant seamen. The circumstances that precipitated the colonized Yemeni emigration experiences mirrored those of their Indian and Malay counterparts.⁶⁰ In the modern period, the Yemen has been a consistently poor country and according to UN statistics it is considered to be one of the least developed countries in the world.

THE CREATION OF TWO YEMENS

Despite the creation of two communist states, the former northern socialist Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), and the former southern Marxist Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY),⁶¹ moves towards unifying both independent modern states were established almost simultaneously.⁶² However, genuine attempts at reunification were always a forlorn and half-hearted endeavour as both burgeoning republics vied against each other for the same Soviet economic and military sponsorship.⁶³ Effective civil war in the North between the traditional tribes, who were supported by Islamists and the Saudi government, against the new modernist and secular political elite was a serious distraction.⁶⁴ In the South, political in-fighting between Marxist purists and pragmatic socialists saw a string of political leaders continuously removed and replaced through a series of assassinations. Externally, Saudi forces were keen to restrain the communist influences streaming from the Yemen and employed both invasion through its regular army and insurrection by financing and arming the anti-communist ex-Sultana faction and other dissident groups in the North. The political precariousness of the PDRY in the South was due not so much to invading anti-communist forces, but largely through economic bankruptcy as a result of British colonial withdrawal and the temporary closure of the Suez Canal. However, despite both internal and external pressures and constant hostilities between the Northern and Southern states, the idea of reunification seemed to be the collective will of the people. In order to court the public mood, politicians and leaders from both the YAR and the PDRY tentatively kept reunification discussions on-going, albeit reduced at times to empty exercises in diplomatic rhetoric. However, two major events changed the political and economic climate of the region and in turn accelerated the reunification process: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the discovery of oil in both North and South Yemen.

Whilst outside influences fuelled the north-south division between the two Yemens, Ali Abdullah Salih, the then president of the YAR, proved a skilful negotiator in adopting a pragmatic approach to re-establishing routes to reunification. Furthermore, when Israel invaded the Lebanon in 1982, both Yemeni leaders, Salih and Ali Nasser, toured the region’s capitals in what Latta describes as a ‘joint Yemeni diplomatic initiative to forge a common Arab position.’⁶⁵ Simultaneously, as the Soviet Union began to implode politically, its support for dependent states like the Yemen became less of a priority compared to the internal problems that arose after the introduction of Mikail Gorbachev’s perestroika in Soviet Russia. Therefore, Soviet-inspired Marxist states were also forced to undergo their own liberalizing and democratic reforms in which free market economies and political pluralism quickly became the vogue.⁶⁶ The process of political reform was better accommodated in the North by the tactful initiatives of Salih who instituted a one-thousand-member General Peoples Congress (GPC) in 1982, with himself as the Secretary-General.⁶⁷ With the return of opposition leaders from exile and national stability established, Salih’s political credibility was strengthened. Fortuitously, the North Yemen discovery of large oil reserves in 1984 had an almost immediate impact on the economy, further bolstering Salih’s position to something equalling that of the former Imām Yahya.⁶⁸ Salih used his political muscle effectively to obstruct South Yemen from joining the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC), arguing that the PDRY’s economic policies and Marxist philosophy were incompatible with the other member states.⁶⁹ Whilst Salih continued to exert his influence in order to exclude the PDRY from formal associations with the rest of the Arab world, boycotting its applications to all major inter-Arab political forums, economic development in the North was not as expedient as was politically required. With the discovery of the large untapped Shabwah oil fields in South Yemen, reunification once again became an enticing proposition.⁷⁰ However, hopes of massive oil reserves within the southern desert were also somewhat over-optimistic and whilst oil revenue today constitutes 60% of the state budget, 400,000 barrels per day spreads out thinly amongst a population of 18 million.⁷¹

1.3 – A postcard of the British-built water tanks at al-Tawāhī, Aden, which were built on the site of an extinct volcano crater, circa 1960.

In November 1992, a real breakthrough was reached in the drawn-out reunification process when both sides agreed to adhere to the Aden Agreement that was originally initiated in 1982. Basically, reunification had been achieved after agreements on the establishment of a new transitional government for a new Republic of Yemen within a 12-month period had been reached. The first six months saw a concerted effort by both leaders to win over the sceptics but, as developments ‘snowballed’ and increased fears of tribal factionalism loomed, both presidents hurriedly brought forward the reunification date to 22 May 1990.⁷² The former president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was also instrumental in accelerating reunification and he was anxious for it to be concluded before the Arab League meeting scheduled later that year in Baghdad. Although it was widely known that Saddam wanted to upset the Saudis by facilitating a unified Yemen, his wider motives became apparent very soon afterwards when he invaded Kuwait in 1990.⁷³ On 1 May 1990, despite PDRY objections,⁷⁴ voting for the union was unanimous and the next day a triumphant Salih announced from Aden the birth of the Republic of Yemen.⁷⁵ Sana’a was to become the political capital and Aden was named as the economic capital of the new reunified state. Ali Abdullah Salih was to head the new Republic and Ali Salem al-Bidh was to be Vice-President. Haidar Abu al-Attas, an influential Ḥaḍramī and former President of the PDRY was to head the transitional government and his former Southern state faired well in political representations despite its small population.⁷⁶ However, in rushing through the reunification process a number of important issues including the role of religion, education policy, women’s rights and the details of post-unity relations were not adequately addressed. And, whilst it may be true that to try to resolve these issues before reunification would have further delayed the process, resolving these central policy matters placed tremendous pressure on the interim government and even impeded economic prosperity and political harmony because of pervasive pre-unity political and ideological differences.⁷⁷

YEMEN REUNIFIED

The Gulf crisis of the early 1990s, precipitated by the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990, became a turning point in the history of modern Arabia. For just as the Suez War of 1956 stimulated the rise of Arab nationalism and solidarity, the Gulf War had direct reverse military and economic consequences on the relative unity of the Arab world.⁷⁸ In particular, the impact of the war on the political ideology and realpolitik of the Arab states resulted in a complete discrediting of Arab nationalism. The deep divisions created by the breaking of perceived Arab solidarity in favour of a Western-dominated alliance and security brought into question the validity of any inter-Arab solidarity based on forms of joint Arab security.⁷⁹ The retrogressive development of religious extremism propagated through Islamic fundamentalism, which had ironically originated from the austere scriptural literalism of Saudi-backed Salafiyyah and Wahhābiyyah movements, was becoming a threatening force to pro-Western Arab leaders. When the new Yemeni Republic refused to support the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein, its oil-rich Gulf Arab sponsors and neighbours were angered by the Yemeni position, which they interpreted as ingratitude. The Yemen was precariously placed as the only Arab state among the 15 members of the UN Security Council at the outbreak of the Iraqi invasion and, whilst there was a unified condemnation from the other Council members, the Yemeni position was one of abstention.⁸⁰ As a result of its perceived pro-Iraqi stance, which in reality had been one of neutrality, virtually all aid to the Yemen by foreign donors was either suspended or drastically cut.⁸¹ For example, US aid was cut from $23 million to three million and in addition to punitive measures by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, who curbed billions of dollars of aid to the Yemen, the Saudi government revoked all the special privileges of Yemeni workers in the Kingdom in October 1990. The Saudis also began making arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture and general harassment of Yemenis living and working in the Kingdom.⁸² The resultant mass exodus of some 800,000 enforced returnees to the Yemen was something the new government could ill afford.⁸³ Reliance on the remittances of migrant workers was a significant economic factor and its sudden curtailment would have further serious repercussions on the domestic economy. Furthermore, returnees from both Saudi and Kuwait brought back with them only what they could carry or salvage from the sale of their belongings, properties and businesses, rendering many of them virtually bankrupt. One deportee, Gadri Salih, described to me in some detail, briefly outlined in the Prologue, the trauma of leaving Riyadh during the first Gulf War, where he had lived as a boy after his original migration from the Yemeni community in Eccles, Greater Manchester, where he was born. After spending more than 10 years in Saudi Arabia, the contrast between his life there and the relative poverty of his father’s native village forced yet another migration just two years after his return to the Yemen when his father had died. Using both his, and his mother’s British nationality, he was forced to migrate back to Britain.⁸⁴ The Yemeni government lost further export revenues to Kuwait and Iraq estimated to be worth around $100,000 million.⁸⁵ The first Gulf War had a crippling effect on both the economy and international relations of the new Republic of Yemen, and reconciling itself with the major Gulf donors and the US became a political imperative for Salih. Paradoxically, the Yemeni display of Arab solidarity during the Gulf War would have probably manifested itself differently if it were not for the reunification. The PDRY had not traditionally warmed to Saddam’s regime and it had remained consistently neutral during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88). However, under Ali Abdullah Salih’s leadership, the YAR had idealized Saddam’s dictatorship. Salih was personally impressed by Saddam’s Baathist rule in Iraq and he emulated a ‘Republican Guard’ and a nepotistic bureaucracy monopolized by kinship and tribal influence.⁸⁶

After much protest and dissent from amongst certain sectors of the Northern shaykhdoms and questions concerning how the oil revenues were directed or, rather, misdirected, matters eventually came to a head and resulted in armed conflict. By March 1992, pro-GPC government troops and anti-government Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) forces began to occupy strategic positions throughout the Yemen.⁸⁷ For some time, there was a stand-off as the ruling elite promised political concessions and economic reforms. However, for many these promises were simply political rhetoric and delaying tactics. In April 1994, fighting flared up again and the President’s forces moved swiftly to crush the YSP militias.⁸⁸ Most of the conflict occurred in the north and the Islamists were also active in the fighting, justifying their involvement as a jihād against the YSP kuffār (lit., ‘unbelievers’) ideologies and forces. As the joint government and Islamic forces took control, local power amongst tribal shaykhs and political parties shifted. Aden was sacked and looted and although the war was not between the North and the South, but between political parties, Dresch notes that ‘the effect was felt by Southerners to be a Northern invasion’.⁸⁹ As influential Northerners began to lay claims to land and real estate in and around Aden, it did appear to be a ‘colonisation’ of the South by the North. Further, the Islamists, largely Wahhābīs known to be backed by Saudi Arabia,⁹⁰ desecrated some of the tombs of Sufi saints buried in Aden and around Ḥaḍramawt.⁹¹ The tomb chamber of Sayyidah Ḥurrah, the ancient Ṣulayḥid Ismā˓īlī Queen, was also partially destroyed in 1993 by extremist Salafīs who deemed the established practice of religious visits and pilgrimages to the site to be heretical.⁹² The increased power of the Islamists had also inhibited progressive steps towards the implementation of women’s rights in political participation and education. Protests against social reforms were usually led by female Islamists whose very public demonstrations were, ironically, to demand that women remain in the private domain. In addition, Islamic banking and the increasing numbers of Islamic madāris (plural of madrasah, meaning, ‘school’) augmented the Islamists’ influence throughout the Yemen.⁹³ In the presidential kinship circles, inter-family and tribal marriages ensured a dynastic government prevailed in Sana’a, whilst, at the same time, the President and some of his close family members pursued control over many of Yemen’s best known commercial and industrial companies. Other business ventures included multinational property magnates with interests in London, Paris and New York.⁹⁴

As far as the national economy is concerned, ‘the country is extremely poor, but how poor the [Salih] government may be is hard to judge and those attached to government seem extremely prosperous’.⁹⁵ The contemporary global concerns of market economy capitalism, modernity, terrorism and religious extremism, particularly the rise of Islamic fundamentalism or what is now more obscurely described as ‘Islamism’,⁹⁶ have in recent times appeared as ‘flashpoints’ in the developing new Yemen.⁹⁷ But the Yemen with its combined ancient biblical history and recent political struggles leading to reunification and the creation of the new Republic of Yemen is far more politically progressive and modern than many other Gulf States. In relation to the eventual outcome of its recent turbulent history, it is almost as if the dramatic events between the periods of Imām Yahya and former President Ali Abdullah Salih had never happened. But the hopes amongst some Yemenis of a revival of the Zaydī Imāmate tradition may have been dashed with the recent death of Al-Hassan Hamid al-Din (1908–2003), who died in his sleep whilst in exile in Jeddah on 13 June 2003.⁹⁸ He was the oldest son of Imām Yahya and was exiled in 1954 and spent most of his time between living in America and Saudi Arabia. During the 1962 revolution, the ‘Prince’ fought with ‘royalist’ forces in the far north based around Sa˓dah which was occupied by the republican army. But his failing health saw him withdraw from the conflict in 1968.⁹⁹ A year later, his son was shot dead on his way to Friday prayers at the Hādī Mosque in Sa˓dah. Al-Hassan Hamid al-Din had wanted to be buried next to his father’s grave in Sana’a and the Yemeni authorities agreed to his request in principle. However, restrictions on which members of his family could accompany the bier, for his grandsons could but his sons could not, meant that he was buried instead in the cemetery of al-Baqī˓ in the Prophet’s city of Madīnah.¹⁰⁰

TRIBES AND TRIBALISM

For a traditional Arab society like that of the Yemen, tribal belonging offers a cultural continuity: a history and aṡl (literally, ‘origin’), and provides an authenticity and rooting to a place and a people.¹⁰¹ The structures of tribal societies are heterogeneous, traditional and pre-modern and the particular size and configuration varies from region to region, often determined by the historical socio-politics of the local people. In the Yemen, a tribe may be subdivided into many divisions, each ranging from a few thousand to a grouping as small as a hundred members.¹⁰² Historically, the internal structures of tribes would derive ancestrally from the siblings of one family and its origins are geographically ‘fixed’ whereas individual men and families connected to the tribe need not be.¹⁰³ Tribesmen, regardless of their subdivisions, will usually locate themselves as descendants of ‘one forefather’ (˓min jadd wāḥid’). In this sense, all subgroups belonging to a tribe are ‘brothers’ to each other in the same way that they are all ‘sons’ of one tribal originator.¹⁰⁴ Whilst tribal nomenclature has local variations for a number of reasons, each tribe also further identifies itself in contradistinction from other tribes, despite sharing the same dominant culture, customs and religious beliefs. Paul Dresch offers an informative insight and explanation into the contradistinction of tribal identity when he says,

No village, section, or tribe by itself can properly be said to be a ‘moral’ community – none has sense without its opposite numbers; but the tribes none the less form together a society in that all are encompassed in the same values.¹⁰⁵

This is because the relevance and unifying factors in tribal selfidentification are based, primarily, on structural relations within a particular ‘historical’ context and social setting. ‘History’ in the pre-modern tribal sense can often include mythological and folkloric elements, which does not necessarily conform to a ‘time and space’ or ‘factually accurate’ understanding of history commonly held in contemporary or modern societies.

Patriachally constructed, Yemeni tribes share a sense of family honour, or sharaf, and within their concept of honour both the tribe, as a collective group, and the individual, as a tribal member, uphold the sense of honour and are bound by their shared bonds to protect and preserve tribal honour. For the individual, protecting one’s personal dignity whilst simultaneously honouring the tribe is known as wajh, or ‘keeping face’ and to do otherwise is ˓ayb, or shameful.¹⁰⁶ In the collective context, it is the tribal shaykh who ‘keeps face’ on behalf of the tribesmen. The shaykh usually belongs to an ‘original family’ (bayt aṡlī) who through his family lineage has the honour of representing the tribe at a given period of time, although there is no set law making his leadership a permanent rule. Dresch comments, ‘anyone of the shaykhly family may usually, in practice as well as theory, be chosen shaykh.’¹⁰⁷ Generally speaking, the shaykh acts as an intra-tribal reconciler and unifier and an intertribal representative and mediator. Through the respect and power invested in him by the tribe, the shaykh helps to maintain cohesion between community (tribe) and society (waṭan) via what Dresch describes as a ‘structure of containment’ – a system of codified arbitration.¹⁰⁸

Within the ancient tribal customs and laws, collectively known as ˓urf al-qabā’il, the individual can expect the protection and support of the tribe, be it moral, spiritual, political, financial or otherwise, providing he has not contravened any customary laws, compromising both wajh and sharaf. The tribal ˓urf provides a system by which men recognize a collective set of rules that allows them to act in concert such as resolving how they may financially contribute to a mutual fund, or levy collective payments, or participate in cultivation partnerships.¹⁰⁹ Protecting both property (private and tribal lands and borders) and people (tribal kinsmen/women) is a priority and primary function of the tribe. Whenever the two are violated by an outsider then a recompense, or fidyah, mutually agreed by tribal leaders is paid. Through a detailed and often orally-transmitted system of tribal laws, the violation, protection, sale, travel, occupation and inheritance of land and family rights are codified through the ˓urf. But understanding tribal laws is complex and often compounded by local geo-cultural nuances as Dresch’s detailed study highlights. For example, he notes,

Sometimes one finds a killing between sections or tribes settled by a change of their common border, so that the victim’s tribe acquires some of the other tribe’s faysh [grazing ‘wasteland’] or non-arable land; this is one of the few exceptions to the rule of border’s explicit fixity.¹¹⁰

Dresch’s research also details how methods for collective payments to cover fidyah, and even divisions of wealth, differ from tribe to tribe.¹¹¹ He also argues that without the shaykh and the symbolic office that he represents, ‘there is no assurance that ties between equals will be any more than episodes in mutual contradiction.’¹¹² But even with the social structure of the tribe, which places the wajh of the shaykh vicariously and emblematically in front of other tribes, ‘episodes in mutual contradiction’ still frequently recur and often involve the shaykhs themselves.¹¹³ Dresch observes that the marked distinctions and nuanced micro-cultures of individual tribes provide the most fascinating ethnographic element of this ancient culture. A society in which ‘they are all equal and opposite, not in numbers or size, but as they divide up the moral world, the terms which all tribes share.’¹¹⁴

‘THE REMOTEST VILLAGE’

Yemeni communities in Britain and other countries of migration appear to transport a number of facets of their identity from their place and country of origin. The historical and cultural dimensions of their identity constructions seem to be rooted in their ancient custom of migration, tribal traditions, religious practices and Arabic civilization and language. But the socio-political reasons for migration, both ancient and modern are primarily those of dire economic need or political strife and even sometimes both. Theocracies, imperial invasions and secular dictatorships have all tried to impose their particular ideologies and systems on the Yemeni masses, who have continuously resisted all forms of hegemonic impositions through their tribal customs and bonds. Even in the diaspora, the tribe and the homeland remain important aspects of identity and exiled Yemenis have often organized aid and assisted resistance to support their political struggles back home. Ironically and somewhat sadly, whilst most Yemenis clearly have a great love and affinity for their homeland, the Yemen soil appears to conspire with conquering invaders and despotic rulers in uprooting and expelling them from their qurā (villages) and bilād (country). For many Yemenis carving out a living from tilling the soil is largely a fruitless endeavour. Migrations through drought and famine, occupation and strife seem to be an expectation, if not almost inevitability, for many Yemenis.

However, once in exile for whatever reason, the raison d’être for diasporic Yemenis becomes the preservation of their distinct identity in all its facets. This is largely achieved by maintaining strong physical and psychological links to the homeland through active communal ties between the exilic communities and the communities back in the Yemen. Although diaspora Yemeni communities will no doubt experience the gradual acculturation and integration of their progeny into the new societies and cultures into which they have migrated and settled, a history of generation after generation of migrations from the Yemen perhaps makes the migration process a familiar and somewhat undaunting experience. Further, in many ways migration might be said to be a cultural tradition for Yemenis, who seem neither dissipated nor displaced by the upheavals and unsettling processes of leaving one’s family, community and country.¹¹⁵ Today, as the new Republic of Yemen struggles for economic and political stability, ordinary Yemenis out in their fields or running their small shops, still rely on incoming wealth from migrant worker relatives. Migrations from the Yemen in modern times, are no longer part of a historic traveller/trader tradition – they are an economic necessity. The chief objective of the migrant workers from the Yemen in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was, and is, to bring money home to pay off debts and secure landholding.¹¹⁶

This reality was personally observed after I was asked by one research respondent in Eccles, Greater Manchester, to forward a remittance to his relative in his village during a field trip to the Yemen. Whilst farming the land in one’s bilād or qurā was a traditional means of sustenance, nowadays purchasing land, cultivating and producing crops, all require a massive investment. Besides, the only viable and sustainable cash crop of any value is the production of qāt, a particular social habit which consumes 30% of many families’ gross weekly income. However, until the recent pro-democracy revolt that has resulted in the removal of President Salih, the unified government was able to encourage foreign financial aid with the promise of actively implementing ‘democracy’ and political pluralism in a far-too-slowly developing and progressing civil society in Yemen. Yet, while the recent emergence of the pro-democracy movement has seen hundreds of protesters killed and an assassination attempt on Salih, it appears to offer a glimmer of hope and ripples of excitement amongst the Yemeni population, even if the promise of a multiparty, democratic and united Yemen still hangs precariously in the balance.