ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: THE GULF
Volume 9
THE JEWS OF THE YEMEN
18001914
THE JEWS OF THE YEMEN 18001914
YEHUDA NINI
Translated from the Hebrew by
H. GALAI
First published in 1991 by Harwood Academic Publishers
This edition first published in 2016
by Routledge
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1991 Harwood Academic Publishers
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-138-11959-8 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64190-4 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-18356-8 (Volume 9) (hbk)
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The Jews of the Yemen 1800-1914
Yehuda Nini
Translated from the Hebrew by
H. Galai
Copyright 1991 by Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH, Poststrasse 22,
7000 Chur, Switzerland. All rights reserved.
Harwood Academic Publishers
Post Office Box 90
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data
Nini, Yehuda
The Jews of the Yemen 1800-1914 / by Yehuda Nini.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 3-7186-5041-X
1. JewsYemenHistory19th century. 2. YemenEthnic relations. I. Title.
DS135.Y4N55 1990
953.32004924dc20 | 90-4552 CIP |
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Phototypeset at Oxford University Computing Service. Printed in Singapore,
Contents
In memory of my late father, Rabbi David ben Shimon Nini
Bless the Lord ye his angels that excel in strength that do his commandment (Psa. 103:20)
and my great teacher and master the late Rabbi Yosef Tamm
Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction (Psa. 119:92)
The history of the Jews of the Yemen in the nineteenth century recounted in this book is the product of long and multiform research. It began as a Ph.D. dissertation written in the Department of Jewish History and the Department for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel-Aviv University, under the supervision of Professor Shlomo Simonsohn and Professor Hayyim Shaked. Several years later I re-edited the thesis for its publication in Hebrew in a book entitled Yemen and Zion. When preparing it for publication I made an effort to reduce the number of references and to make the text as clear and readable as possible. Particularly important, I thought, was the clarification of the source material. By comparative analysis I have learnt that, as a rule, the Hebrew documents had certain advantages over the Arab, Ottoman and European sources: they were more accurate concerning dates and other details, and their authors revealed a deeper insight. In the present version, therefore, I have omitted all material which was not crucial to an understanding of the text. One may only hope that these efforts and considerations have produced the desired results.
I should like to express my gratitude to the many friends who helped me prepare this book. In particular I wish to thank Professor Geza Vermes from Oxford University. For financial support I am grateful to Professor Itamar Rabinovitz, then Head of the Dayan Centre, Professor Moshe Manni, President of Tel-Aviv University; the Shiloah Institute; the Shalom Yanir Foundation and to the Yisrael Yeshayahu Foundation. Special thanks are due to Mr. Stephen Ashworth for carefully editing the text, and to David Levinson for his proofreading and enlightening remarks. I wish to thank cordially Eliezer Yemini, a dear friend, for his help in correcting the proofs and transliterating. And last but not least, special thanks to Dr. David Patterson, President of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, without whose support this book could not have seen light. A blessing to them all.
For my children, Assaf and Shlomit, I wish to fulfil the precept And thou shalt show thy son.
This is a study of the Jewish community in the Yemen between the end of the eighteenth century and World War I, examined within the context of events which were transforming its Muslim environment.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Yemen enjoyed a period of political stability and relative prosperity. But in the first decade of the nineteenth century, outside forces began threatening its territorial integrity and economic well-being. From the north the Wahhbite movement, which emerged in Najd, began sweeping over the Arabian peninsula, spreading southward and conquering the Tihma, while its allies captured the key ports on the Red Sea and severed the Yemen from its major economic sources. On the coast of the Indian Ocean, British naval imperialism was strengthened by its hold on the Port of Aden and the island of Perim. The lack of sources of revenue from abroad undermined the rule of the Imm, and the Yemen entered a period of chaos. The confederations of shid and Bakl, which had been the mainstays of the rule of the Imm, turned against it and periodically put a siege on the capital an. The Ottoman Empire regained its hold in the Arabian peninsula in the wake of the rise of the Wahabite movement and attempted to take over the Yemen. The first attempt, in the 1850s, failed, but once the Suez Canal was opened and social and political anarchy in the Yemen reached its peak, the Yemen was to become an Ottoman province from 1872 until the end of World War I.
