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Tribal Rebellion, Marxist Revolution 125

the sada by the lesser orders of Hadrami society - the mashaikh, tribal or
religious shaikhs, thejabail, or tribesmen, and the niasakin, the heterogeneous
legion of the downtrodden. To them the revolution in the Yemen in 1962
appeared as the harbinger of their own imminent deliverance from sada
dominance. For the sada it was, for the self-same reason, the knell of doom.
Like so many proletarian revolts, the anti-sada movement in the Hadramaut
depended for its effectiveness upon the defection to its ranks of members of the

class whose overthrow it was seeking. A number of the younger sada, educated
abroad and widely travelled, were among the more vociferous and zealous
advocates of the destruction of the existing social and political order. Some of
them carried their self-imposed alienation from their own kind to extreme
lengths, not only joining forces with its enemies at home but also seeking to
collaborate with revolutionary groups elsewhere in the Arab world which were
bent upon the overthrow of hereditary and conservative governments. Had-

ramis, as we have seen, were highly active in the politics of Aden during the
1950s and 1960s, especially at the underground level. The resident colony of
Hadramis in Aden was, for the most part, composed either of respectable
merchants, whose lively intelligence, commercial acumen and adventurous
dispositions had earned them a leading place in the community, or of labourers
who had come to earn a living and to support their families at home. There

were other Hadramis, however, of a very different kind, young men (as often as
not from the saiyid class) who were educated, quick-witted, and proud of their
superior knowledge of the world, afire with political ambition, and intoxicated
from their prolonged imbibing of the strong waters of nationalist and socialist
dogma. For them the expulsion of the British and the overthrow of the
protectorate rulers were only part of a grander struggle to bring progress, unity
and brotherhood to the whole Arab world - and, incidentally, their own ascent
to political power.

As we have seen, when the Federation of South Arabia was inaugurated in
January 1963 the two Hadrami sultanates, the Qaiti and Kathiri, along with the
Mahra territories, were excluded from it. One reason for the exclusion was the
apprehension felt by the Qaiti and Kathiri sultans that any revenues they might
receive from the discovery of oil in their territories, of which they still had high
hopes, might eventually have to be shared with the members of the federation.
Another and perhaps more pertinent objection on the part of the Qaiti sultan

was that he foresaw a serious decline in his revenues from customs duties, if the
rates of duty levied in the Hadramaut were to be lowered to bring them into line
with those current in the federation. The Mahra country was the wildest and
most inaccessible corner of the Eastern Protectorate. Nominally it was under
t e suzerainty of the sultan of Qishn and Socotra, who kept permanent
residence on the island of Socotra, more than 200 miles away. His authority,
however, extended only to Qishn and the other coastal villages: inland a kind of

ormahzed anarchy reigned among the Mahri tribal nomads and cultivators.