Page 107 - Arabian Studies (V)

The Yemeni Poet Al-Zubayri 97

and Mountain folk, no tribes and peasants (ra'aya), but only
Yemenis!
There is much more in similar vein, some coming near to repeat­
ing ZubayrTs tract verbatim.
Muhammad Nu‘man (fils) is credited with the development of
the ‘Adnan-Qahtan rivalry as a pressing political question. It was
later to be taken up by ‘Abdullah al-Sallal. Sayyid Ahmad al-
Shaml asks with mischievous innocence why the Hashimite House
should be considered foreigners in the Yemen when they have been
there for 1,100 years, for the Iryanis for example would not be
called foreigners because they came from Iraq 300 years ago! In the
preface to his poem Damighat al-Dawamigh15 Ahmad al-Shaml
makes a well documented refutation of the attack on the ‘Alawls
citing the relevant historical sources and concluding with verses
from Zubayrl himself whose inconsistent attitude he underlines.
Wa-Banu Hashim-in 'uruq-un karlmat-un land min judhur-in
Ya'rubiyyah.
Banu Hashim are noble stocks belonging to us, from our
Ya‘rubl roots.
In another counter-attack The myth of Arabia Felix16 which he
dedicates ‘to those who have distorted/defamed the history of the
Imamate in the Yemen’, al-Shaml points out that, in the major
physical or political disasters that have afflicted the Yemen, no
Imams were involved, and he alludes to those who recently have
been writing on Hashimls and Qahtanls, and al-Atraf al-
ma€niyyah, Muhammad Nu‘man’s well-known booklet.17
In fact Yemeni literature seems devoid of the anti-Hashimite
motive after the days of Hamdanl and the 6th/12th century
Nashwan b. Sa‘id,18 until pamphlets (manshurat) on this topic
began to appear in the early 1940s. It is said that the sons of Imam
Yahya, of whom there were fourteen, were opposed to the QadI
class, presumably because of rivalry arising from the appointment
of the princes to high'government office, and it is implied that this
may have given rise, in part at least, to anti-Hashimite propaganda.
Imam Ahmad however, in his day, made no distinction in this
respect between Sayyids and Qadis.
The Nasser regime in Egypt, in its hostility to the Hashimites and
monarchies, against which it campaigned so assiduously, was more
than sympathetic to the anti-Imamic line developed by the Liberals.
The context of Zubayri’s polemic is, nevertheless, wholly Yemeni
and he did not want the Yemen to rely on any external power
including Egypt—this was the major point of difference with the
Egyptian agent al-Baydanl.

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