A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen

4. The Yemeni Connection to Egypt’s Factions

4 The Yemeni Connection to Egypt’s Factions The last chapter demonstrated that Sa˜d and Haram supply an unmistakable Yemeni connection to Egypt’s factionalism, not least because the two tribal blocs may have originated in Yemen. The unquestioned hegemony of the boundaries of the modern Egyptian nation-state in the historiography of Ottoman Egypt, however, has meant that Yemen has received virtually no attention in studies of Ottoman Egypt, despite the fact that Yemen was almost symbiotically linked to Egypt for the century (1538–1636) during which the Ottomans first ruled it. More broadly, Yemen has been a partner, silent or otherwise, in Egypt’s history from remote antiquity until the recent past. This chapter breaks out of the nation-state straitjacket to explore Yemen’s links with Egypt during the Ottoman period, culminating in the exposition of an unexpected Yemeni angle to the inception of bilateral factionalism in Egypt. Yemen’s Pre-Ottoman History and Character Yemen’s distance from any Islamic central authority has made it historically an attractive haven for militant offshoots of normative Sunni Islam, particularly the two smaller branches of Shi˜ism: Ismaili, or “Sevener,” Shi˜ism, and Zaydi, or “Fiver,” Shi˜ism. Zaydism was established in Yemen by the imam Yahya al-Hadi (d. 911), a descendant of ˜Ali’s son Hasan who migrated from Medina to Yemen late in the ninth century and established his capital at the northern highland city of Sa˜da.1 Unlike Ismaili or Twelver Shi˜ite doctrine, Zaydi theology posits an active, visible imam, or leader of the Muslim community, descended from either Hasan or his brother Husayn, who is learned 79 80 A Tale of Two Factions Fig. 4.1. Yemen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 81 The Yemeni Connection to Egypt’s Factions in the religious sciences and who publicly proves himself worthy of leading the Muslim community, in battle if necessary.2 What this has meant in Yemeni history is that scions of numerous lines of Hasanid and, less frequently, Husaynid descendants have proclaimed their da˜was, or “calls”—occasionally simultaneously, so that the supporters of one line were obliged to fight it out with supporters of another. From Sa˜da, Imam al-Hadi attacked the Ismaili proselytes known as Carmatians, who had established themselves in Yemen several decades before, and defeated them shortly before his death in 911.3 He is said, in fact, to have wielded ˜Ali’s sword Dhu’l-Faqar against them.4 Beginning in the following century, however, Yemen entered a lengthy period during which it was continuously an ally, if not a virtual dependency , of Egypt under Ismaili Sulayhid rule (1038–1138),5 then under the staunchly Sunni regimes of the Ayyubids (1173–1227), Rasulids (1227–1454), and Tahirids (1454–1507).6 The Tahirids were ruling the southern coastal region from their capital at Zabid when the Portuguese appeared in the Indian Ocean at the close of the fifteenth century. In 1513, the Portuguese, after a string of unsuccessful attacks on the Yemeni coast, took Kamran island in the Red Sea; this prompted the Mamluk sultan of Egypt to intervene for fear the Portuguese would soon have unbridled access to the Hijaz.7 A Mamluk naval force proceeded to attack the Tahirids on the western and southern coasts in 1514, earning the opprobrium of Yemeni chroniclers.8 This was just the period when the Mamluk sultanate, itself never a formidable naval power, was accepting the aid of its more powerful Ottoman neighbor against the Portuguese. These joint operations led to a very curious interlude in Yemeni history, during which Ottoman naval commanders were, in actual fact, administering the Yemeni port cities. Al-Nahrawali refers to this period as the “era of the levends,” levend being a common Ottoman term for a naval mercenary.9 In fact, Yemen must certainly have loomed large in the Ottoman decision to conquer Egypt from the Mamluks. Mamluk ineffectiveness against the Portuguese in the Red Sea clearly alarmed the Ottomans. Yemen, after all, served as the gateway to Mecca and Medina for pilgrims coming from India, the Far East, and eastern Africa; as such, it was also the first line of defense against any threat to Egypt from those regions. Once they had conquered Egypt, the Ottomans used it as a base of operations against the Portuguese.10 Some of the greatest naval commanders in Ottoman history contributed to...