Page 123 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

120 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

less by conditions in Dhufar than by what was happening to the westward, in
the Hadramaut and the Mahra country, and even more by what was to happen
in the late 1960s as a consequence of the British abandonment of Aden in 1967
and the inception of the People’s Republic of South Yemen. It is to these
developments, in the Hadramaut and the rest of South Arabia, that we must
turn first before attempting to trace the origins and course of the revolt which
was soon to break out in Dhufar.

The Hadramaut, like the Mahra country to the east, had long led an existence
separate from that of the amirates and shaikhdoms of the old Western Aden
Protectorate. Like most of South Arabia it was a harsh and forbidding land - its
very name means ‘death is present’ - yet the energies and enterprise of its
inhabitants had made it relatively prosperous, at least by Arabian standards.
Geographically its most remarkable feature was the great Wadi Hadramaut,
which extended for 250 miles into the interior from the coast near Saihat.
Between the coast and the upper reaches of the wadi lay theyo/, a broken, rocky
plateau which rose abruptly from the narrow coastal plain and stretched inland
for a hundred miles. A thriving agriculture and a number of imposing towns
(the best known of which were Shibam, Saiyun and Tarim) were to be found in
the fertile regions of the Wadi Hadramaut, while the ports of the coast, the
chief of which were Mukalla and Shihr, were the centres of a wide-ranging
maritime commerce. It was not the native economy of the Hadramaut, how­
ever, that was the main source of its prosperity but the wealth accumulated by
the large colonies of emigre Hadramis settled overseas, especially in the East
Indies, Singapore, the Philippines, India and East Africa. The constant inter­
course they kept up with their homeland, and the steady flow of remittances
they sent to it, were in large measure responsible for the Hadramaut’s progress
in the years before the Second World War; and it was through their efforts and
initiative that innovations and improvements in agriculture, commerce and
transportation were introduced to the country.
Sovereignty over the Hadramaut was exercised by two hereditary rulers -
the Qaiti sultan of Shihr and Mukalla, whose territory extended for some 200
miles along the coast and a further 150 miles inland, to Shibam and its related
towns and settlements in the Wadi Hadramaut; and the Kathiri sultan of
Saiyun and Tarim, whose lands formed an enclave athwart the Wadi Had­
ramaut with no access to the sea. The writ of neither sultan, however, ran much
beyond the environs of the coastal and inland towns. Elsewhere the tribes, and
especially those whose diyar (dirah, tribal range, in the singular) controlled the
routes across the jol to the coast, acknowledged no authority save that of their
own shaikhs and the more influential sada. The sada (saiyid in the singular)
were the wealthiest and most prominent class in Hadrami society, claiming
descent (and with it social precedence) from the Prophet himself. The ceaseless
feuding and brigandage of the tribes was the principal obstacle to the further