Page 137 - Arabian Studies (V)

The Yemeni Poet Al-Zubayri 127
101. Op. cit137. This incident throws an interesting light on conditions
in San‘a\ but it is not as Zubayrl relates it. Al-ShawkanI says that during
the very month he was penning this biography the tribes entered San‘a’
treating the San'anis in their usual contemptuous way and robbing in the
streets. When they came to the Imam’s Gate a townsman saw a cow of his
with them which he attempted to take back but the Bakil tribesman with it
drew his sword on him. The ordinary San‘anls at the Imam’s Gate were
stirred by this to throw stones at them and then they took their camels from
them and all their other beasts including those of which they had plundered
the San‘anis as well as most of their guns and other weapons, killing four
more of them. On one group of them they inflicted so much harm that they
were forced to flee to the mosques and privies (mahallat qada’ al-hajah). If
the Khalifah (Imam) had not restrained the ordinary folk they would not
have left any one of them (alive). This brought them into deep humiliation
—‘may God increase their humiliation and diminish their numbers’ adds
al-Shawkanl.
102. The Arabic was explained as laysat jawhariyyah.
103. Zubayrl*s conclusion may have some validity but his historical
quotations cannot be said to have proved his point.
104. Or ‘enslaved’.
105. A verse by ‘Abd al-Rahman a poet of the rival house of Sharaf al-
Din expresses the hostility of this leading family to the Hamid al-Din.
Fa-inna Banu 'Adnana dhuqna mararat-an
Bi-jawri Bani Yahya sakanna ’l-maqabira
Fa-la anta Mahmud-un wa-la anta Kamil-un
Wa-la anta bi-’l-Hadi wa-la anta Nasirun.
We Banu ‘Adnan (the Sayyids) have tasted bitterness.
Through the tyranny of the Banu Yahya (Hamid al-DIn)
we are become dwellers of cemeteries.
You are not Mahmud (lit. ‘praiseworthy’, but the name of a young
favourite of Imam Ahmad) nor are you Kamil (lit. ‘perfect’ but the
name of Mahmud’s brother).
Nor are you al-Hadl (lit. ‘guiding’, but the name of the first Zaydl
Imam) nor even Nasir (lit. ‘victorious’ but the name assumed by
Ahmad on becoming Imam).
106. Qasim Ghalib’s commentary (p.32) specifies these as al-iqtd'iyyat
and the extension of them, probably meaning ‘feudal fiefs’, and plundering
of peaceful fellow-countrymen tribes (al-qaba’il al-muwatinun al-
aminun)\ Iqta'i, feudal, was part of the political jargon of the Nasserite
era, but in Rasulid Yemen there were actual iqta* fiefs as part of the
administrative system. The Hamid al-Din do seem to have acquired some
tribal lands, in one case known to me, by the legal method of ihya* al-
mawat or bringing waste land under cultivation. Lands held by the Imamic
House were an insignificant proportion of the total cultivated area, and I
am reliably informed by a Republican official that the Imams were scrupu­
lous that neither they nor their officials should acquire land by illegal
means.