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Historians and Historiography of Ḥaḍramawt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

R. B. Serjeant
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Extract

Hadramawt, properly speaking, is the name of the Wadi, a province separated from its coast by an empty stony plateau. Each of these provinces is a distinct entity

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 1962 , pp. 239 - 261
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1962

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References

page 239 note 1 cf. our joint article, ‘A new map of southern Arabia’, Geographical Journal, cxxiv, 2, 1958,163Google Scholar–71. I relied greatly on ‘Alawī b. 1E6Cāhir's . infra. Further geographical material from al-Nisbah ila’l-mawā1E0Di‘wa-’l-buldān (‘Materials’, I, no. 11) is published as ‘Two sixteenthcentury Arabian geographical works’, BS0AS, xxi, 2, 1958, 258Google Scholar–75.

page 240 note 1 ‘Materials for South Arabian history’, BSOAS, xIII, 2, 1950, 281–307Google Scholar, xIII, 3, 1950,581–601, referred to in this essay as ‘Materials ’, I and II.

page 240 note 2 Published London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1957.

page 240 note 3 ‘Hūd and other pre-Islāmic prophets’, Le Muséon, LXVII, 1–2, 1954, 121Google Scholar–79.

page 240 note 4 Beeston, A. F. L., ‘The ritual hunt’, Le Muséon, LXI, 3–4, 1948, 183–96Google Scholar.

page 241 note 1 ‘The so-called harlots of Ḥaḍramaut’, Oriens, v, 1, 1952, 16–22Google Scholar.

page 241 note 2 I have a neat demonstration of the growth of legend to appear shortly in my Portuguese material, a Mahrah tale current to-day, which I have checked against Bā Faqīh al- annals.

page 241 note 3 I have used the index published by his son in Aden, without date.

page 241 note 4 Ṭabaqāt fuqahā’ al-Yaman, ed. Saiyid, Fu'ād(Cairo, 1957), p. 152Google Scholar.

page 242 note 1 Istīdrākāt… (Aden, 1956), p. 6.

page 242 note 2 pp. 291–2, no. 2.

page 242 note 3 Jany al- (Aden, A.H. 1369), p. 30.

page 242 note 4 ‘Materials’, I, p. 299, no. 8, and infra, p. 245.

page 242 note 5 cf. ‘Materials’, II, p. 582, no. viii. It is also a source of the Qilādat al-naḥr. I have seen vol. II with Saiyid Ḥusain b. ‘Abd al-Qādir Āl al-Kāf and collated its contents with chronicle.

page 243 note 1 cf. ‘Materials’, II, p. 583, no. xii. I have extracted the material relative to .

page 243 note 2 Saiyid ‘Alī Bā ‘Abūd who has written a number of articles in al-Risālah (Cairo, 1941)under the general title of ‘Min Ḥaḍramawt al-siyāsī’, told me that he had at one time a transcript of a copy of belonging to Saiyid ‘Alawī b. Ṭāhir, but that he had lost it during the war with a number of other papers.

page 244 note 1 cf. ‘Materials’, II, p. 589, no. lvii. I have seen a copy of this in Saiwūn and another in Ḥuraiḍah. For the Bā cf. ‘Materials’, I, p. 305, no. 18, from which I have made extracts. In Ḥuraiḍah, Saiyid ‘Alī b. Sālim has a copy of Miftāḥ al-sa‘ādah wa-’l-fī manāqib al-Sādah Banī , some of which I have used. Saiyid ‘AIī b. Sālim has also a MS with ‘Amudī, Hurmuzī, Bā ‘Abbād, and Bā Wazīr biographies, in four individual treatises. I have also an acephalous MS of Bā Hārūn, possibly Uns al-sālikīn (b. , , p. 193), commencing at tale no. 78 of the total of 303 tales.

page 244 note 2 cf. my Saiyids, 21.

page 245 note 1 The British Museum MS of al-Sanā’ al-bāhir, fol. 208a–209b, confirms that died in 920/1514–15.

page 245 note 2 Jany al- (Aden, A.H. 1369), p. 30.

page 245 note 3 cf. ‘Materials’, I, p. 299, no. 8. He is quoted by al-Fawā'id al-sanīyah (‘Materials’, I, p. 296, no. 5), which calls him a, faqīh.

page 245 note 4 ‘Abdullāh … al-Saqqāf, al-‘arā’ al-Ḥaḍramīyīn(Cairo, 1353– ), I, p. 180; ‘Materials’, I, p. 300, no. 9. The TSH puts his death at al- in 995/1587, and seems to prefer to call him Bā .

page 245 note 5 Quoted in ‘Materials’, loc. cit. He probably deduced this from the extracts in Bā Faqīh al-.

page 245 note 6 ‘Materials’, I, pp. 292–5, no. 3.

page 246 note 1 cf. ‘, 11, p. 19. This is additional to al-Sanā’ al-bāhir. For al- cf. the latter work, BM MS, fol. 312a.

page 246 note 2 Jany al-, p. 30.

page 246 note 3 al-Bi‘al-Miṣrīyah li-taṣwīr al-al-‘Arabīyah, taqrīr … (Cairo, 1952). For example Professor Nāmī showed me in Cairo (p. 37, no. 22) al-Nūr al-fī fatḥ al-which is a very early work on the conquests east of the Yemen.

page 247 note 1 ‘Materials’, II, p. 582, no. vii. Sources are quoted in the MS, p. 23, Ibn ‘Inabah, and pp. 162, 169, 175–6 seq.

page 247 note 2 Ṭurfat al-aṣhāb fī ma'rifat al-ansāb, ed. K. W. Zettersteen (Damascus, 1949), a late seventh/ thirteenth century work.

page 247 note 3 ‘Materials’, I, p. 301, no. 15.

page 247 note 4 Jany al-, P. 46. The Ta'rif al-ansāb of al-‘arī is listed in Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl., I, 558. This seems to have been a source for Abū .

page 247 note 5 cf. GAL, II, 185, Suppl., II, 238, and ‘Uqūd al-almās, II, p. 51.

page 247 note 6 Ob. 1275/1859. Cf. ‘Materials ’, II, p. 585, no. xxxi; Muḥ. b. , , p. 117.

page 247 note 7 cf. ‘Materials’, I, 301. He is described byBā Riḍwān as living in Bā ‘Abbād, and his mother was a daughter of the scholar Muh. b. ‘Umar Baḥraq. A copy of this work might possibly be found in Ṣīf of Daw'an.

page 248 note 1 ‘Umar b. Ṣalāḥ can be traced in Hurgronje, C. Snouck, ‘Zur Dichtkunst der Bâ ‘Aṭwah Ḥadhramôt’, Orientalische Studien Theodor Nōldelce, ed. Bezold, C. (Giessen, 1906), 97–101Google Scholar.

page 248 note 2 Ingrams, W. H., Report on … Hadramaut (Colonial 123) (London, 1937Google Scholar).

page 248 note 3 Prose and poetry from Ḥaḍramawt (London, 1951), Ar. text, pp. 54–60Google Scholar.

page 248 note 4 Voorhoeve, P., Handlist of Arabic manuscripts in the Library of the University of Leiden … Leiden, 1957), p. 470Google Scholar, no. Or. 7005; cf. p. 266 for‘Collections of qaṣīdas by poets of Ḥaḍramawt’.

page 248 note 5 ‘Materials’, I, p. 297, no. 6. I have ascertained that the correct vocalization of the name Ḥamīd and not Ḥamīd, and my previous error should be so corrected.

page 249 note 1 cf. The saiyids, 22.

page 250 note 1 I have before me Saiyid ‘Abdullāh (‘Abd al-Ilāh ?) b. Ḥasan Bal-Faqīh al-‘Alawī’s Risālatān published about 1954 (place unknown), one risālah of which is entitled Tafnīd mazā‘im al-Ṣalāḥ al-Bakrī fī taḥigquqi-hi bi-nasab al-Imām Aḥmad b. ‘Isā al-Naqīb al-‘Alawī al-Baṣrī.

page 250 note 2 Al- also collects Ḥadramī proverbs, averring that is the home of proverbial sayings and that many Aden proverbs are really Ḥaḍramī. He was also selecting a chrestomathy of poems by young Ḥaḍramīs, and he showed me some poems in praise of Ingrams who was compared with T. E. Lawrence, this probably in 1947.

page 251 note 1 vi, 1, 26 May 1954, in an article, ‘ Ḥawl kitāb Ḥaḍramawt’.

page 251 note 2 The descendants of the latter are accused of stealing Ḥaḍramī girls during the wartime famine to sell as slaves to the Bādiyat al-Rimāl who took them to sell in the Hejaz. An appeal is said to have been made to the al-Azhar against this, which is said to have been printed in some Egyptian magazines.

page 251 note 3 No. 225, 17 June 1954.

page 251 note 4 Al-Maqdisī says of the capital of Ḥaḍramawt and its people, Lahum fi ’l-‘ulūm wa-’l-ilā, anna-hum sumratu-hum. I have, here, to correct a reference in my Saiyids to the tribe of Hamdān known as B q, by Hamdānī, Iklīl, x, ed. Muḥibb al-Dīn al- (Cairo, 1948), p. 122, wa-’l-N qīyūn bait KĀnū, mulūk-an. Mas‘ūdī, Murūj(Paris, 1861–77), V, p. 67, says that in 332/944 Ḥaḍramawt was almost entirely Ibāḍī. Cf. Ibid., v, p. 231.

page 251 note 5 Oddly enough a fiqh book of Abū Isḥāq has survived, Rieu, Suppl. to the catalogue of the Arabic MSS in the BM, no. 1209/I, a Yemenite MS entitled K. mā la yasa'u jahlu-hu (GAL, Suppl., II, 249), but after a quick perusal I have not found this manuscript to contain any historical information. Brockelmann also mentions his Dīwān as printed in Cairo without date. This interesting fact seems unknown to the Ḥaḍramīs. Saiyid ‘Abdullāh Bal-Faqīh criticizes the position accorded Abū Isḥāq in his Istidrākāt wa-taḥarriyāt, p. 16 seq. Lewicki, Tadeusz,‘Les Ibāḍites dans l’Arabie du Sud au moyen âge’, Folia Orientalia (Kraków), I, 1,1959, 3–17Google Scholar(résumé in Canard, M., Revue Africaine (Alger), cIII, 460–6, 1959Google Scholar, 370), basing his statements on al-Sālimī's well-known history of Oman, says that Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Qais b. Sulaimān al-Ḥaḍramī al-Hamdānī, was ‘governor’ of Ḥaḍramawt on behalf of the Imām of Oman in the second half of the fifth/eleventh century. He became independent and succeeded in becoming Imām of Ḥaḍramawt. Ibāḍī sources allude to two more Imāms of Ḥaḍramawt, Sulaimān b.‘Abd al-‘Azīz, and Muḥammad b. Sulaimān, but without indication of the date of their reigns.I am very uncertain how much significance should be given to these statements of al-Sālimī, accepting that he has based them on documentary evidence. From other indications I doubt if this Imām could have held more than a part of Wādī Ḥaḍramawt, perhaps the Wādī Daw‘an and . On the other hand does commence his history only in A.H. 500 when it might be that Ibāḍī power was on the wane, though I incline to think this is merely because little was known to him of the earlier period.

page 252 note 1 The Āl Bā Wazīr Manāqib which has been printed in Cairo, was dubbed, perhaps rather unkindly, by Muḥ. b. , Kasr al-zīr fī manāqib Āl Bā Wazīr. One of the sources mentioned by Sa‘īd Bā Wazīr is ’iq iwa-qadīmah fī Āl Bā Wazīr, no doubt a very sound source collection.

page 252 note 2 Some of these historians, and also Ṣalāḥ al-Bakrī, I have discussed in an article ‘ al-mu’ al-Ḥaḍramīyīn, al-Mustami’ al-‘Arabī (London), xi, 9, 1950, 8–9.

page 253 note 1 These are not examined here. A work entitled al-Nafḥat al-‘anbarīyah fī ansāb khair albarīyah, of which he thinks only one copy exists-in the hands of the recorder of the ‘Alawīansāb in Batavia, ‘Alī b. Ja‘far al-Saqqāf, is to be found also in several places in Europe (cf.GAL, Suppl., II, 239). A 1930 number of al-Nahḍal al-Ḥaḍramīdyah mentions that even then he was writing a history. His knowledge extends also to Mahrah on whom he published an article in al-Rābiṭat al-‘Alawīyah, II, p. 97.

page 253 note 2 ‘Uqūd cd-almās, II, pp. 28, 32, 44. While actually writing this essay I was delighted to receive a letter from ‘Abd al-Hādī al-Tāzī of the Ministry of Public Instruction at Rabat, Morocco, who gave me the following abbreviated note from the MS ḥawālat ḥabsīyah in Morocco:

page 253 note 3 He has been in correspondence with many scholars, among whom I might mention Anastase Marie al-Kirmilī with whom he discussed questions of the ancient Ḥimyarite language.

page 253 note 4 He must have died in 1955 or 1956. van der Meulen, D., Aden to the Hadramaut(London,1947), 179Google Scholar–80, gives further biographical details. I published a photograph of him in al-Mustami‘al-‘Arabī, loc. cit.

page 254 note 1 This version has sentences missing as it was taken down in the mosque while delivered, but the history supplies the lacunae.

page 254 note 2 Numbered ‘History 312–3’. Sa‘Id Bā Wazīr, Ṣafaḥāt, p. 258, also mentions as printed(but unknown to me), Nasīim al-ḥājir.

page 254 note 3 Al-‘Ūd al-Hindī ‘an majālis fī Dīwān al-Kindī.

page 254 note 4 Al-Imāmīyāt (Cairo, c. 1345/1926–7).

page 254 note 5 His Dīwān was at the time reviewed in al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Siyāsat al-usbū‘īyah. He wrote frequently for the Egyptian press when he was in Singapore, though little was connected with Ḥaḍramawt. He has published in Apollo, II, 6,1934, 495, and II, 9,1934, 856, 858, 865 Fi ’l-fustān al-aḥmar. His dīwān Layāli ’l-maṣīf has been printed, but I do not think his next dīwān, ‘’ al-ḥayāt has yet appeared. Cf. GAL, Suppl., III, 498.

page 255 note 1 Al-Mustami‘ al-‘Arabī, loc. cit. It was only after I had written this article that I came across a recent number of al-Ṭalī‘ah (al-Mukallā 18 August 1960), no. 62, p. 5, by Ḥusain al-Bārr, entitled and realized that our old friend had left us. The article which is laudatory in tone, refers to his ḥakamī and ḥumainī; poetry, and it seems also that he had written, but not published al-Islām ilā Indonesia, and al- ‘ala ’l-Yaivāqīt.

page 255 note 2 Al-Rihlat ila ’l- (Cairo, A.H. 1350).

page 255 note 3 al-Dawlat al-, pp 127 seq, mentioning, p. 128, a MS work, al-Ḥabīb Ṭāhirof ‘Abdullāh b. Aḥmad Bā Sawdān. A list of his works is given by b. ,, p. 131.

page 255 note 4 ‘Min Ḥaḍramawt al-siyāsī’, loc. cit. It seems that b. also published some historical articles in ṣafḥat al-’ al-Ḥaḍramī. I have a brief article of his, ‘al-Zaidīyah bi-Ḥaḍramawt’, al-Afkār (Aden), I, 8,1947,23–5.

page 256 note 1 I have heard his name so, but he seems to write it as ‘Abdullāh.

page 256 note 2 Risālātān. The first is on the name al-Naffāṭ, also discussed at length in the ‘Uqūd alalmās by ‘Alawī b. ṣāhir, applied in the ‘Umdat al-ṣalib of Ibn ‘Inabah to the Saiyid ancestor Aḥmad b. ‘Isā. For the second risālah entitled Tafnīd mazā'im, see p. 250, n. 1.

page 256 note 3 Istidrākāt wa-taharriyāt ‘aiā; Ḥaḍramawt fī (Aden, 1956). His Naḥwa’l-. infra., n. 7, also contains a reply to Bā Wazir's article in al-Nahḍah (Aden,16.10.1373 A.H.).

page 256 note 4 Reported also as Ṣilat al-ahl bi-tadwīn manāqib …. Muh. Bā Faḍl is described as al-adīb al-‘ir, and he died, if I am correct, in 1953. ‘Uqūd al-almās, n, p. 65, calls it Ṣilat al-ahl bi-tadwīn mā tafarraq min manāqib Banī Faḍl.

page 256 note 5 Jala’ al-haqā’iq tva-tamḥīṢ al-naql hawl mā awradahu mu’allif Ṣilat al-ahl fī ’l-tarjamah li-Faḍl b. Muḥammad wālid al-Imām Sālih b. Faḍl- Cf.Saiyids, 14.

page 256 note 6 His name appears in history.

page 256 note 7 For another MS work cf. Saiyids, 20. Saiyid ‘Abdullāh b. Ḥasan has lately sent me a copy of his most recent publication, al-bāḥ muḥtāṭ fī ’ūn wa-tārī al-Ribāṭ (Aden [1961]), with an introduction by ‘Abd al-Rahmān b. Ḥāmid al-Sirrī, containing some biographical details on Saiyid ‘Abdullāh Bal-Faqīh. It appears that he has written though not yet published, except in the medieval form of MS circulation perhaps, a Taqrīẓ (Jawāb āhir) to Muḥammad b. history. In the press is Lamḥah min zāwiyat al-al-Ḥaḍramī, but Naḥwa ’l-ila ’al-Hadramī is still in MS form. Among the other works mentioned (p. 9 of al-) is a criticism of the qā‘idah of Ibn . It could be that this last-named study contains a significant contribution to literature on Ibn , given Saiyid ‘Abdullāh Bal-Faqīh's sound scholarship. The al- is an essay on the celebrated Ribāt of Tarīm where so many Ḥaḍramī, Malayan, and East African ‘ulamā’received their training, including the text of thewaqfīyah deed of foundation.

page 257 note 1 Biographical note in b. , Riḥlah, pp. 65–7. He was head of the Jamā‘at al-Difd‘‘an al-Sādat al-‘Alawīyīn bi-’l-Qāhirah. He was writing on Hadramī poets in the Singapore paper al-Nahdat al-Hadramīyah in its first year of publication in 1933.

page 257 note 2 To add to the biographical works I have mentioned in ‘Materials’ or my Saiyids, is Muh. b. Muh…. Zabārah, Midhaq to al-Badr al-tāli‘ of Muh. b. ‘All al- (Cairo, A.H. 1348).

page 257 note 3 TSH, in, p. 114.

page 257 note 4 Salāh al-Bakrī, , II, p. 169, quotes 150 verses approximately of this poet which he states are all that have survived.

‘Alī Bā ‘Abūd, in his article in the RAAD (Damascus), xi, 7–8, 1931, 440–1, informs us that his father Muh. b. ‘Aqīl had Hamdānī's Iklil, I, al-, Zabid wa-dhailu-hu, and mulūk Ḥimyar the measurements of the latter being approximately 15 X 20 cm. He does not know where these MSS are now though he thinks the last-named may be in Taimūr library. There was also a copy of the Maqāmāt Bā ‘Abūd. None of these works are known to Brockelmann.

page 258 note 1 It begins

page 259 note 1 Again I have not repeated ‘Materials ’, I and II, unless new information is available.

page 260 note 1 ‘Alawī b. ṣāhir in . p. 41 states that Sālim b. Ahmad b. ‘Alī b. ‘Umar al-Miḥḍār took notes from al- Āl Muḥ. b. ‘Umar al-al-Mālikī-wa-min-hum Āl wa-Āl Isrā’il in al-Rawḍah, and Āl al-Faqīh ‘Alī in his Ḥawṭah. He collected this material from ‘Ta‘ā‘līq’, among which was the of the faqīh Muh. b. ‘Abd al-‘Alīm al- (0b.1124/1712–13), and that of the faqīh Muh. b. Ahmad b. Muh. b. ‘Abdullāh al- called Bū Nijmah al-‘i Bā Nāfi1‘, and other sources. The ‘Uqūd al-almās, 11, p. 47, has some notes on the Wāhidī scholars, relevant in this context.

page 261 note 1 I have accumulated material for a history of the press in South Arabia, but it is far from complete, especially where papers printed abroad, as in Indonesia, are concerned.