Islamic history

The presence of the Persians in Yemen brings us to the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad in Hijaz, and the steady conversion to Islam of the Arab tribes throughout the peninsula. Again, the details of the conversion of Hadramawt are not known. Professor A. F. L. Beeston of Oxford has drawn attention to a curious account of resistance to the conversion on the part of 'harlots', whom he interprets as priestesses of the ancient South Arabian religion in the wadi. There is also circumstantial evidence of the resistance to Islam of the ancient aristocracy and some of the tribes, extending over a considerable period. Indeed, tradition has it that at one time only the city of Tarim maintained the Islamic faith. Nevertheless, one of the leaders of the Arab armies which conquered Egypt for the Caliph was Qaisabah ibn Kalthum al- Kindi, who came from Shibam in Hadramawt.

It is possible, indeed likely, that the incentives offered to Arabians in order to build up the armies of Islam lured great numbers of farmers and townspeople away from the wadi. This led to the neglect of the irrigation works and of the delicate balance by which nature had been tamed, as well as the depletion of the cities and towns to the point at which the organization of urban life as it had been known could no longer be sustained.

According to the local historians, in A.D. 746 (A.H. 129)' an Ibadi, Abd Allah ibn Yahya, came to ha Hadramawt from Basrah in Iraq to spread the beliefs of the Ibadi sect. This moderately Puritanical sect survives today, mainly in Oman and North Africa, for in South Arabia it was eventually largely suppressed. Abd Allah ibn Yahya, popularly known as Talib al-Haqq, was at first so successful in his mission that he and his lieutenant, Abu-Hamzah, are said to have ruled the whole of southwestern Arabia for a time. They were finally defeated by an army sent by Caliph Marwan. With their leaders killed, the remnants of their adherents were forced back to Hadramawt, where they regrouped under Talib al-Haqq's governor, who still remained in power. Marching out to do battle, somewhere near Shabwah, the Ibadi troops were cut off by a night march of the Caliph's forces. The latter took Shibam in the rear, and all the Ibadi supplies, before defeating them in battle. It appears, however, that there was some revival of Ibadism in the wadi when the Caliphate army was finally withdrawn.

In 951 (340) a descendant of the Prophet, Saiyid Abmad ibn Isa al-Muhajir, came to Hadramawt from Yemen. He was accompanied by his son and a party of companions (reputedly eighty families). Saiyid Ahmad ibn 'Isa had left Basrah twenty- two years previously, after he had been prevented from making the pilgrimage by a rebel faction, either the Qarmathians or the Negro Zinj. (The constant mention of Basrah and other places in Mesopotamia as sources for influences in Hadramawt serves to remind us of the relatively busy trade route that existed around the shores of the Arabian Gulf to the African coast.) It is believed that Ahmad ibn Isa and his companions, ancestors of all the later Saiyids in the wadi, played a leading part in driving Ibadism from Hadramawt or at least to the western end of the wadi, where it is said to have survived until recently. At first the Saiyids settled around Hajrain, but later they moved to Husaiyisah, where the white-domed tomb of Abmad ibn Isa is a centre of pilgrimage to this day. An early mosque founded by Saiyid Abd Allah Abmad ibn Isa, the son of Ahmad, survives in a ruined state at nearby Bor.

There is considerable evidence that Ibadi power remained strong in Hadramawt al least in Wadi Dawan in the west and Shibam-for a long period after the arrival of the Saiyids. Ibadi sources mention a governor of Hadramawt on behalf of the Imam of Oman who succeeded in becoming independent in the second half of the eleventh (fifth) century. One historian records that Ibadism was only banished from the Friday mosque of Shibam in 1193 (590). This survival of Ibadism is important, for there are historical references to the fact that learning flourished in the wadi under the Ibadis. Their scholars went to study at Janad in Yemen, and when the Saiyids first came to the capital city of Tarim, 'they found scholars there who consoled them for leaving their native land'.

Unfortunately, the climate of Hadramawt is inimical to the protection of manuscripts from insect attack and decay, and none, except a few fragments of the Koran, is thought to have survived from this period.

Retracing our steps a little, a well-documented benefactor of Hadramawt was the great Ziyadid Wazir of Yemen, Husain ibn Salama, who in the tenth (fourth) century constructed a string of mosques, minarets, shaded resting places for pilgrims, wells and milestones along the caravan route from Hadramawt to Mecca. (It is said that he built a mosque at the end of every stage, in other words, at the end of each day's journey of the pilgrimage.) The Friday mosque in Huraidah is reputed to have once contained an old Kufic inscription identifying it as the work of ibn Salama. He is also known to have repaired the Friday mosque in Shibam, originally constructed in 750 (133) and rebuilt by order of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid in 906 (294).

At some time the Saiyids became adherents of the Shafi'i school of Islam (and were subsequently responsible for spreading Shafiism to countries around the shores of the Indian Ocean). Until the arrival of the Saiyids, the holy and protected places (bawtah) of the wadi had been in the hands of the ancient aristocracy, the Mashayikh, who received the honour accorded to the lords of spiritual power in the region, and who used this privilege to exert some restraint upon the tribes and their sheikhs and sultans. But the Saiyids soon began to found their own bawtahs, which eventually led to the decline of most of the older ones.

At the end of the twelfth (sixth) century, since the two leading Saiyid families descended from the Basrah immigrants had left no male issue, the Banu 'Alawi gave their name to the Saiyid clan, who were subsequently known as the Alawi Saiyids. In the early thirteenth (seventh) century one of these Saiyids, Muhammad ibn Ali, known as al-Faqih al-Muqaddam, turned to Sufism. He enjoined all the Saiyids to abandon arms and devote themselves to religious and moral pursuits. Henceforward the Saiyid class was characterized by strong Sufi influence in its thinking and way of life. Saiyid writers began to devote themselves to poetry, both religious and secular, and to the writing of genealogical histories.

The first record of Yemeni conquest of Hadramawt in modern times is of tribal occupations dating from 1019 (410). In 1219 (616) the ibn Mahdi, followers of the Ayyubids who had conquered Yemen in the preceding century, captured Shibam and ruled much of Hadramawt. They retained a tenuous alliance with the Rasumlids of Yemen, successors of the Ayyubids. They must have been thought too independent, however, for in 1276 (674) the great Sultan Muzaffar of Taizz brought an army through the wadi on its way to conquer Dhofar, and left instructions to his general to take and hold Hadramawt. The tantalizingly scanty records suggest that, after the successful capture of Dhofar, the Rasumlid armies fought a long and difficult campaign to achieve the conquest of Hadramawt. It seems that, after the appointment of a governor, the armies departed; although Hadramawt remained nominally part of the Yemeni Sultanate, the strength of subsequent Rasumlid control of the wadi is uncertain One historian records that the ancient fortress at the east end of the wadi, Hian al- Urr, was defended by Arabs, but was finally ruined and abandoned in 1258 (657) under circum- stances that are not made clear.

In another reference to the same era, this was said to be the period of greatest prosperity of the hilltop town of Sanahijah, the ruins of which can be seen between Sai'un and Tarim. The minbar of the mosque was recorded as bearing the date 693 (A.D. 1293). Presumably a secure life under fairly strong government led to the development of stable agricultural and commercial life in the wadi at this time.

The year 1488 (894) marks the arrival in Hadramawt of the Kathiri tribe, originally from an area near San~' in Yemen. The Kathiris began by conquering territory for themselves at the west end of the wadi, and then along the coast. Within 100 years they had extended their power sufficiently to assume the title of independent Sultans of Hadramawt, with their inland capital at Tarim. (It is recorded that in 1504 (910) cannons were being used in local wars, and it may well have been the Kathiris' importation of this superior weapon that led to their rapid ascendancy.) Later the Kathiri Sultans appear to have preferred to reside in Sai'un and their finest surviving palaces are there.

In the sixteenth (tenth) century the Yafi'i tribes began to take over power in the wadi, to which they had been imported as mercenaries (from Yemen) by the Kathiris. Their efforts resulted in the creation of a new Sultanate at the western end of the wadi, ruled first by the Kasadis and then by the Qu'aitis, with their seat of power in Qatn.

There is evidence from several sources that by the sixteenth (tenth) century the wadi's agricultural output had fallen to a very low level, and there were frequent famines due to drought.

In the year 1809 (1224) the Wahhabis, under the leadership of Naji ibn Kamla al-Naji al-Wahhabi, raided the wadi, 'to save Hadramawt, as they asserted, from idolatry'. The Wahhabis, who were opposed to all memorials to the dead and to much else, destroyed all tombs (and any fine buildings) wherever they went, and tipped cupboardfuls of books into the wells. Hundreds of ancient buildings and thousands of valuable manuscripts were lost in this way. The Wahhabi incursion was of limited duration, however. Soon peace returned and the inhabitants set about repairing the damage done to the tombs, minarets and houses.

In 1830 (1246) a dispute broke out between the Kathiri Sultan of Hadramawt and the Qu'aiti Sultan of Qatn over the possession of Shibam. Originally, a sum of money had passed between the Qu'aiti Sultan and the Kathiri, in exchange for which control of the city of Shibam, with all its great commercial wealth, was jointly shared between them. But the Kathiri soon took advantage of the absence from the city of most of the Queaiti men (they were at a festival) to murder those who remained. The resulting warfare lasted intermittently until 1857 (1274). In the interim, the Qu'aitis besieged Shibam for sixteen years, during which time the inhabitants were reduced to eating leather. At length the Saiyids of the al-Aidarus family were asked to arbitrate; their finding was that the original agreement for the division of Shibam, with joint rule by the two Sultans, should be reinstated.

Nothing daunted, the Kathiri Sultan Mansur, while at a feast, attempted to blow up the entire Qu'aiti leadership with gunpowder. Warned in time, the Qu'aitis attended only in small numbers. In return, they invited the Kathiri Sultan to one of their houses and slit his throat. All those Kathiris who managed to escape the ensuing massacre fled the city of Shibam. Thenceforth the city was under Qu'aiti rule, with the border between the two territories slightly to the east of the walled city. From that time onwards, until modern times, there was very little communication between Shibam and Sai'un, though the two cities are only 19 km apart.

This was the situation until Great Britain's strengthening of the central authority brought about a relative peace in the 1940s. The coming of independence for the whole country, with the creation of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and an end to the traditional institutions of government, finally resolved the century-old hostilities between east and west.

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