Page 100 - Arabian Studies (V)

90 Arabian Studies V

Politico-Economic background
After World War 1, Imam Yahya al-Mutawakkil ‘ala ’llah of the
Hamid al-Din virtually re-conquered a large part of what now consti­
tutes the Yemen Arab Republic. He clashed with the British on certain
areas of the Aden Protectorate over which Britain re-asserted its
influence, under already existing treaties, with the willing co-opera­
tion of the tribes who preferred defacto independence to the paying of
taxes to a centralised government in San‘a*. Most of the Protectorate »
tribal districts were held for only brief periods by the Zaydi Imams.
The sultans or chiefs had expelled Zaydi garrisons long before the
arrival of the British. Yet the Hamid al-DIn never admitted the British
suzerainty over the Protectorates. Had the British, on the other hand,
cared to press a forward policy after World War I they might have
brought much of the Shafi‘I south of the Yemen into Protectorate
status—but this was emphatically not a British interest. Up to the
young officer coup in San‘a* of 1962, a modus vivendiprevailed to the
advantageofbothsidesoftheborder.
Imam Yahya had headed the movement to liberate the Yemen from
the Ottoman Turks. He was greatly respected in the Yemen, and
' Yemenis, especially the Shafi‘Is, rightly in my view, blamed the
corruption of his officials for the various injustices they suffered.
:
Yahya hoarded silver bullion, perhaps as a reserve war-chest against
i emergencies, and he was excessively parsimonious in Government
expenditure. While the Imamate preserved security and ruled and
observed the law—for which it is still praised today—there was criti­
cism of Government shortcomings in the essentially moderate mani­
festo issued by the Yemeni Liberals in Yahya’s latter years.
Yahya attempted to keep the Yemen in isolation. He tried to prevent
the Arabic press from entering the country, and he disapproved of
even such moderate Egyptian reformers as Muhammad ‘Abduh r
whom he considered ‘contemporary* ifasri) which for him meant
‘bad*! However, with such numbers of Shafi‘I Yemenis going from
the southern districts to Aden for employment, but returning period­
ically to their villages, this was clearly an impossibility, for they
contrasted conditions there, especially later, in the heyday of Aden’s
prosperity, with the backward state of their own country. On the intel­
lectual level the disgruntled among the leading administrative families
and those educated on traditional Islamic lines, especially those who
went on to the Azhar at Cairo, grew increasingly critical of Yalta’s
rule while meeting no response from him. In 1944 al-Zubayrl, a Zaydi
of the QadI class, and Ahmad Nu‘man of a leading Shafi‘1 family of
i
am-Turbah fled to Aden where they opened a campaign for political
reform in the Yemen.

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