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
