Page 70 - Arabian Studies (II)

60 Arabian Studies II

NOTES
(Supplied by the Editors)

1. Sinayddr is a Yemeni term for the intendant of a mosque.
2. These lists of names, if they mean little to the outsider, arc significantly
informative to the Yemeni as including members of great Sayyid houses such as
the A1 WazTr and Kibsls, prominent members of the Qadl class, and some ShafiT
notables like Ahmad Nu‘man, known by the title of ‘al-Ustadh’ — the Pro­
fessor - the family being centred on am-Turbah. It was from the Sayyid and
Qadf classes that Government officials were drawn during the Imamic regime.
3. Na$ara is here used in a derogatory sense, almost equivalent to ‘infidels’.
Some of the Yemenite Liberals (Ahrar) had fled to Aden in 1944 where the
British allowed them to remain but curbed their political activity against the
regime in the Yemen.
4. Soon after the Editors had invited Sayyid Ahmad al-Shamf to write about
the Hajjah literary circle, a brief article, ‘Madrasat Hajjah: Ibrahim al-Hadranf,
written by the blind Yemeni poet ‘Abdullah al-Baradunf, appeared in al-flikmah,
Aden, 15 November 1971, Yr. I, No. vii, 73-77.
5. The former mufti of Aden, a blind scholar with a number of writings to
his credit, who recently died in the Yemen Arab Republic, a scholar widely known
and respected. He lived next to the ‘Asqalanf Mosque. Those released at his
intercession would presumably then be ShafiTs, like al-Bayham himself.
6. I.e., Had the Revolt of the Constitution not happened, and How is the
Yemeni question to be understood?
7. Al-Sudah is in N.VV. Yemen and had a magnificent, fairly modern castle
and a jail for criminals and hostages. The castle was badly damaged by the
retreating U.A.R. forces probably in 1965.
8. The allusion is to Koran, lxxxi, 8, ‘When the female [infant] is questioned
for what crime she was killed’. Female infanticide in pre-Islamic Arabia is
condemned in this verse.
9. The young man was the late Muhammad Ahmad Nu‘man, son of
‘al-Ustadh*, al-Shamfs companion in prison. Muhammad Nu‘man was
assassinated in Beirut in 1973, it is supposed at the instigation of South
Yemenis.

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