Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T13:47:07.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Sāda in History: A critical essay on Ḥaḍramī historiography*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Alexander Knysh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In attempting to write a religious and political history of Ḥaḍramawt in the Middle Ages one inevitably encounters a number of methodological and historiographical problems some of which will be addressed in the present article. The first arises from the overall scarcity of historical documentation on the period in question. More importantly, the sources that are available are riddled with underlying agendas and biases, which often hinge on considerations of genealogy and clannish honour. These genealogical or clannish agendas and biases are evident in the sources dealing with practically every aspect of Ḥaḍrami history. However, they are especially conspicuous in the historical texts which describe the spread of the Shāfi'ī school of law in Ḥaḍramawt, the cult of local saints and the origins of local religious and educational institutions. In my recent study of Ḥaḍramī shrines and seasonal pilgrimages, I have brought out the genealogical underpinnings of the theological polemic around the cult of local holy men and women - a polemic that grew especially intense in the first decades of our century and flared up with a vengeance during the recent civil war between the Northern and Southern parts of unified Yemen. In this paper I will demonstrate how these hidden agendas have manifested themselves in the historical accounts of Ḥaḍramī Islam with special reference to the rise of the Shāfi'ī madhhab and the dissemination of Ṣūfism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , July 1999 , pp. 215 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

An abridged version of this article was presented to the international colloquium I Discendenti del Profeta (Sadat/Ashraf) e il loro ruolo nella storia e nella cultura dell'Islam, Rome, 2-4 March 1998. The author would like to express his sincere gratitude to the colloquium's organizers, especially to Professor B. Scarcia Amoretti.

References

1 Freitag, Ulrike and Clarence-Smith, William G. (eds.), Hadrami Traders, Scholars and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1730s–1960s (Leiden, 1997), pp. 199–216.Google Scholar

2 For his biography see Bakr al-Shilli, Muḥammad b. Abū, Al-Mashra' al-rawī fī manāqib al-sāda al-kirām Āl Abī 'Alaun (Cairo, 1319 A.M.), ii, pp. 2–11Google Scholar; cf. al-'Alawī, Ṣāliḥ al-Ḥāmid, Ta'rīkh Ḥadramawt (Jeddah, 1968), ii, pp. 709–40.Google Scholar

3 For their biographies see al-Ḥāmid, Ṣāliḥ, Ta'rīkh, ii, pp. 463–71 and 476–8.Google Scholar

4 al-Ḥaddād, 'Alawī b. Ṭāhir, 'Uqūd al-almās bi-manāqib ai-imām al-'ārif Aḥmad b. ḥasan al-'Aṭṭās, ii vols., 2nd ed. (Cairo, 1968)Google Scholar, see esp. ii, pp. 96–100.

5 See note 2.

6 al-Shāṭirī, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, Adwār al-ta'rīkh al-ḥaḍramī, 3rd ed. (Medina-Tarim-Beirut, 1994), pp. 191–4.Google Scholar

7 Balfaqīh, 'Alawī b. Muḥammad, Min a'qāb al-biḍ'a al-muḥammadiyya al-ṭāhira (Tarim-Medina-Beirut, 1994), iGoogle Scholar, passim.

8 See, e.g., Peters, Emrys, The Bedouin of Cirenaica (Cambridge, 1990), p. 2.Google Scholar

9 On the history of the sāda families of Ḥaḍramawt see the still unsurpassed study by Serjeant, R. B., The Sayyids of Hadramawt (London, 1957).Google Scholar

10 Khirid Bā 'Alawā, Muḥammad b. 'Alī, Ghurar al-bahā' al-ḍawī (Cairo), A.H. 1405.Google Scholar

11 See, e.g., Khirid, , Ghurar, pp. 69–73Google Scholar; al-Ḥaddād, , 'Uqūd, ii, pp. 2–36Google Scholar; al-Shāṭirī, , Adwār, pp. 155–65Google Scholar; Balfaqīh, , Min a'qāb, pp. 121–46.Google Scholar

12 For details see my article “The cult of saints and the rise of reformist discourse in twentieth century Hadramawt,” forthcoming in vol. iv of The New Arabian Studies, 1997.Google Scholar

13 For a summary of the long debate over this thorny issue see Balfaqīh, , A'qāb, pp. 137–9.Google Scholar

14 See, e.g., Samura, Ibn, Ṭabaqāt fuqahā' al-Yaman, ed. Sumayr, Fu'ād (Cairo, 1957), pp. 220–5Google Scholar; al-Janadī, , Al-Sulūk fī ṭabaqāt al-‘ulamā’ wa 'l-mulūk, ed. al-Hiwālī, Muḥammad b. 'Alī (Beirut, 1983), pp. 323–38.Google Scholar

15 Op. cit., ii, pp. 100–16.

16 See ii, pp. 724–5.

17 See, e.g., Samura, Ibn, Tabaqāt, p. 220Google Scholar; al-Janadī, , Al-Sulūk, p. 524–6Google Scholar; cf. Balfeqīh, , A'qāb, p. 98.Google Scholar

18 Al-Janadī, , Al-Sulūk, pp. 524–6.Google Scholar

19 See, e.g., al-Ḥaddād, , 'Uqūd, ii, p. 115.Google Scholar

20 See, e.g., al-Janadī, , Al-Sulūk, p. 525.Google Scholar

21 See, e.g., Khirid, , Ghurar, pp. 77–81Google Scholar; cf. al-Ḥāmid, Ṣāliḥ, Ta'rīkh, ii, pp. 459–62Google Scholar; Balfaqīh, , Min a'qāb, pp. 25 and 107.Google Scholar

22 al-Ḥāmid, Ṣāliḥ, Ta'rīkh, ii, p. 464.Google Scholar

23 See, e.g., al-Ḥāmid, Ṣāliḥ, Ta'rīkh, ii, p. 466.Google Scholar

24 See note 1 and Balfaqīh, , Min a'qāb, pp. 49–62.Google Scholar

25 See al-Shillī, , Al-Mashra', ii, pp. 4–5Google Scholar; al-Ḥaddād, , 'Uqūd, i, pp. 63–96Google Scholar; cf. al-Ḥabshī, Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn, Al-'Uqūd al-lu'lu'iyya fī bayān ṭarīqat al-sāda al-'alawiyyaGoogle Scholar (Cairo, no date).

26 On him see Balfaqīh, , Min a'qāb, p. 98.Google Scholar

27 Al-Shillī, , Al-Mashra', ii, p. 3.Google Scholar

28 See. e.g. al-Ḥāmid, Ṣāliḥ, Ta'rīkh, ii, pp. 466, 744–5, 750–1, 763Google Scholar; cf. Balfaqīh, , Min a'qāb, pp. 16, 52, 70, 84, 107–8, 116–7, 119Google Scholar. etc.

29 al-Ḥāmid, Ṣāliḥ, Ta'rīkh, i, pp. 305–6Google Scholar; cf. Balfaqīh, , Min a'qāb, pp. 134–5.Google Scholar

30 See, e.g., al-Shillī, , Al-Mashra', i, p. 155Google Scholar; cf. Balfaqīh, , Min a'qāb, pp. 138–9.Google Scholar

31 See note 28.

32 See al-Ḥāmid, Ṣāliḥ, Ta'rīkh, ii, pp. 757–66.Google Scholar

33 Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. Thompson, John B., trans. Raymond, Gino and Adamson, Matthew (Oxford, 1991), p. 170Google Scholar et passim.

34 Cf. Peters, , The Bedouin, p. 1.Google Scholar

35 See, e.g., Serjeant, R. B., “Ḥaram and ḥawṭa, the sacred enclave in Arabia,” Mélanges Ṭaha Ḥusein (Cairo, 1962), pp. 41–58.Google Scholar