finally capturing Sana’a and establishing full occupation of north Yemen.
1839
The British Protectorate is established at Aden after its capture by the British East India Company. A ‘Treaty of Friendship’ between the British and Sultan of Laḥīj, followed by similar treaties with other local rulers of territories adjacent to Aden.
1853
Aden is declared a ‘free port’ by the British East India Company, increasing its commercial revenues.
1856
The Reverend Joseph Salter establishes his Asiatic Strangers Home at London’s East India Docks, aimed at proselytizing amongst the large numbers of non-Christian lascars.
1857
Captain Luke Thomas becomes the first independent British trader to establish business at Aden. A lascar sailors’ home is established in Glasgow.
1869
The opening of the Suez Canal increases Aden’s importance as a regional trading port.
1881
A lascar sailors’ rest is established in Cardiff to cater for the large numbers of Yemeni sailors present at the port.
c.1900
Shaykh Abdullah Ali al-Hakimi, the charismatic spiritual reformer of British Yemenis, is born in a Dhubḥānī village in north Yemen.
1914–18
A convention with Turkey defines the frontier of the Aden Protectorate with the Ottoman Empire. Thousands of Yemeni lascars volunteer to serve on seconded merchant vessels in defence of Britain at the outbreak of the First World War.
1919
A riot erupts at Mill Dam, South Shield docks, when Yemeni lascars are refused work on British ships and are abused and beaten by indigenous white sailors. In the aftermath, 13 Yemenis are arrested and imprisoned and further riots involving Yemeni and English sailors occur in Liverpool, Cardiff and London docks.
1925
The Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order establishes limiting quotas by the British government for ‘Arab and Coloured’ sailors on British vessels along with the compulsory registration within seven days of docking, at local police stations.
1932
Aden is taken from the control of the Government of Bombay and formed into a Chief Commissionership under the central Government of India.
1934
Shaykh Abdullah Ali al-Hakimi receives permission (ijāzah) from his Algerian Sufi shaykh, Aḥmad ibn Muṡṭafā al-˓Alawī, to establish zawāyā (Sufi lodges) among the Yemeni communities settled in British ports.
1936
Under the spiritual leadership of Shaykh Abdullah Ali al-Hakimi, the South Shields Yemeni community purchases The Hilda Arms, a former public house, and establishes the ‘Zaoia Allaoia Islamia Mosque’.
1937
Aden becomes a Crown Colony and is finally ruled independently of India.
1941
Nur al-Islam Mosque, Cardiff, is bombed by a German aeroplane during the war. Miraculously, the praying congregation are all unharmed, but the mosque is destroyed.
1943
The official reopening of the Nur al-Islam Mosque after it was reconstructed with a government grant of £7000 courtesy of the India Office.
1945
‘Second wave’ migration of Yemenis to Britain occurs into the industrial cities of Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield, as a result of post-World War Two single-male, Commonwealth and colonial economic migration to the UK.
1948
The Zaydī Imām, Hamid al-Din, is assassinated by revolutionary antiImāmate forces in north Yemen. Shaykh al-Hakimi launches the publication of Al-Salam, his anti-Zaydī Imām newsletter, which is Britain’s first Arabic language periodical.
1953
Shaykh al-Hakimi leaves Britain permanently for Aden after he is ousted by his former deputy, Shaykh Hassan Ismail and the pro-Zaydī Imām Shamīrī tribesmen from amongst the British Yemeni community.
1956
After almost 30 years of faithful service to the Yemeni community, Shaykh Hassan Ismail returns home to Yemen after his ḥajj to Makkah. His adopted British Yemeni son, Shaykh Said Ismail, becomes replacement imām, aged just 25.
1962
The Zaydī Imām, Ahmad, dies and is succeeded by his son, Muhammad al-Badr, who flees Yemen after just one week of ruling when an assassination attempt fails during a successful coup d’état by revolutionary forces. In Britain, the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962 becomes law, which requires migrant Commonwealth and colonial workers to acquire either a visa or work permit before entering the UK. As a result, large numbers of family dependants join them in Britain.
1970–80
Yemeni wives and children begin to join their ‘second wave’ migrant husbands in the industrial cities of Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield.
1980
Large numbers of Yemenis migrate from Britain as a result of economic depression and mass unemployment to work in the prosperous Arabian Gulf.
1991
North and South Yemen are reunified under the initiative of the North Yemen President, Ali Abdullah Salih.
1991–92
The First Gulf War. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq orders the invasion of Kuwait and the newly-reunified Yemen abstains in a UN Security Council vote to condemn Iraq’s aggression. As a result, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states evict around one million Yemeni workers with immediate effect.
1995–2002
‘Prince’ Naseem Hamid, Sheffield-born British Yemeni boxer, becomes the featherweight boxing champion and defends a series of world champion titles until he retires, undefeated, in 2002. In the process, he puts Yemen ‘on the map’ and imbues young British Yemenis with a sense of pride and
