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7. Yemen: Muslim and Jewish Interactions in the Tribal Sphere
- University Press of Florida
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7 Yemen Muslim and Jewish Interactions in the Tribal Sphere Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman Yemeni society is tribal in character. Although modern changes, mainly during the twentieth century, weakened tribal organizations, they did not eliminate them, and they are still functioning and affecting the state and its individual citizens. The tribes are sedentary, make their living from agriculture, and are organized as an armed political unit. Until the 1970s, 97 percent of the Yemeni population lived in tribal-rural districts in tens of thousands of small settlements. Similarly, about 85 percent of the Jews lived in tribal-rural areas, alongside Muslim tribesmen in hundreds of small, even tiny, settlements. The remainder lived in the capital of San῾a᾿ and in a number of small towns. Unlike large parts of the Muslim world where colonial powers introduced changes in the status of the Jews and promoted their civil rights, Yemen was not under direct western colonial control, and such processes never occurred there. After the 1630s, following a century of Ottoman occupation, Yemen was governed by Zaydi imams. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Ottomans took over the Red Sea coastal plain, and in 1872 they reoccupied central Yemen and remained until 1918. The rest of Yemen continued to be governed by Zaydi imams. After the Ottoman withdrawal, once again a Zaydi leader took over the government of Yemen, Imam Yaḥya ibn Muḥammad al-Mutawakkil (1918–48). Subsequently , Zaydi imams ruled Yemen until the republican revolution of September 1962. While officially recognizing the imams’ sovereignty, in practice the Yemeni tribes resented the central government’s attempts to 126 · Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman control them, thus resembling the Atlas tribes in southern Morocco that defied the authority of the Sharifian sultans since the sixteenth century.1 The increasing interests of western powers in the Red Sea, mainly following the British conquest of Aden in 1839, exposed Yemen to their indirect influences. The regional and local political changes thus encouraged a slow process of modernization that resulted in connecting Yemen to the world economy. The import of industrial goods and the opening of new economic opportunities, within Yemen and outside, weakened the economic foundation of the Jews, which was based on the crafts and small industry. This article will focus on Muslim-Jewish relations in Yemen in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, until most of the Jews emigrated from Yemen. It will examine Muslim-Jewish contact in the tribal regions and will virtually ignore urban Jews, who although being small in number were more organized and better educated and have been dealt with in a number of scholarly works. The article will focus on tribal protection, the Jewish response to tribal practices and customary law, and the Muslim attitude toward the Jewish religion and Jewish customs. It will also elaborate on the Jews’ position in society as it relates to their perception as possessing mystical-magical knowledge and their discernment as “others.” The study is based on both oral history and written sources. It relies on personal interviews with Yemeni Jews now living in Israel, as well as on letters, archival documents, memoirs, itinerary writings, and relevant published research. Tribal Protection Under the imams, heads of the central government, the Shari῾a was the official legal code. Thus, during the entire period under consideration, Jews were legally defined as dhimmis, protected people. Like in parts of North Africa, where there were no other significant religious minorities, the term dhimmis, originally designated by the Shari῾a to describe nonMuslims living under Islam, became equivalent to Jews.2 The Jews were granted religious freedom and assurances of personal security and property in exchange for their acknowledgment of Muslim political and social supremacy, which was conveyed by the payment of the jizya (poll tax) and obedience to a collection of discriminatory restrictions as detailed in the Shari῾a. For example, Jews were required to wear distinguishing [44.192.53.34] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:41 GMT) Yemen: Muslim and Jewish Interactions in the Tribal Sphere · 127 clothes; they could ride a donkey only sidesaddle and were not allowed to ride horses at all; and their homes could not rise above Muslims’ houses. These restrictions were more strictly observed in the capital of San῾a᾿ and its surroundings and in a few towns where the imam exercised direct control. (The Ottomans tried to equalize the Jews’ legal status to that of other Jews in their empire...