Page 60 - Arabian Studies (II)

50 Arabian Studies II

(c) The writing of epistles and poems to certain ‘ulama of
religion and notables who, because they were old, or were in
positions remote from the atmosphere of politics, or on account of
their age, or because they were among those in Aden at that time,
stood above suspicion of having participated in the Revolt.
Ustadh Ahmad Nu‘man, for example, wrote several letters
describing the state of the prisoners and their distressed condition to
Ustadh Muhammad Salim al-BayhanT,5 asking him to intercede on
behalf of the unfortunates, and reminding him of his national and
religious responsibility. He also wrote to several others. The
intercession of these people bore fruit and the Imam released tens of
prisoners from Ta‘izz, Aden and Ibb, who had been taken to Hajjah
after the failure of the Revolt, but he did not release any of the ZaidI
prisoners.
I therefore wrote a lengthy message to the revered Sayyids ‘Abd
al-Rahman al-Shami. Qasim Husain Abu Talib, Muhammad b.
Muhammad Zabarah, Qad! Muhammad al-Hajri, QadI Muhammad
‘Abdullah al-Shami, to San‘a\ describing the horrors of the prisons
of Hajjah and reminding them of their responsibilities in this World
and the World to come. I laid great stress in both prose and verse on
those matters which came to my mind. I warned them of a terrible
future if things should continue as they were. I quoted to them the
example of what Shaykh al-Bayhanl had done and how effective his
intercession on behalf of his friends had been.
(d) There were also certain men of letters who were full of
enthusiasm for their revolt, their case and their principles and feared
that these might ‘perish and be buried with them’, as al-Hadranl put
it. These persons were afraid that the history of these momentous
events might be lost, so they recorded the most important of it,
writing about what brought about the events and the men behind
them, in concise literary style. An example of such writings is a book
entitled Law lam taqum Thaw rat al-Dustur, and Kaifa tufham
al-qadiyyah al-Yamaniyyah} Parts of the latter were published under
a pseudonym in the paper al-Fajr when it used to be issued in Aden
in 1957, although in fact the book was written in Nafi‘ prison in
1948. Ustadh Muhammad ‘Abdullah al-Fisayyil, at the time of
writing Yemen Ambassador to Berlin, shared in the writing of this
book, line by line and chapter by chapter, together with the author
of this article. Both the above books have their aesthetic literary as
well as historical value, from the points of view both of refined style
and of abiding by the truth in criticism and analysis. The credit for
their preservation and transcription goes to Shaykh Amin Nu‘man.
As to how we used to obtain writing material and the times we
chose for writing, this is stranger than fiction. To begin with we