Irena Knehtl
irenaknehtl@gmail.com
Yemen has been integrally linked to South East Asia over the course of many centuries. Geographically and socially diverse, one may trace this diversity through the cultural interactions and hybrid architectural fabrics of various regions. Foreign, notably Indian styles, and ornamental features have been introduced as typological and aesthetic changes. At the same time, traditional constructions techniques were flexible enough to incorporate new development.
In this way Yemeni architectural history represents a dialogue between cultures both within and outside, most notably with Indian sub-continent. The hybrid architectural fabric of Tarim, in Hadhramawt, and the early 16th century Al-Amiriya madrasa in Rada`a - probably the most richly decorated building in Yemen - are good examples of this cultural dialogue with India.
Waters of Memory
Since the beginning of civilization man has used the Arabian Sea as a trading route to the world's wealth. The first sea- trading route known to man passed through this sea.
Shortly after 3000 BC ships raced along the coast from and to southern Arabia and India, exchanging copper ore from Oman, teakwood from India, incense from Yemen for wheat and barley.
While civilization spread around the world, the Arabian Sea remained a center of commerce. A regular half-yearly alternation of weather conditions and winds plays a more important role on the Arabian Sea than in any other sea on earth. During this time both Yemen and India refined their shipbuilding techniques, a settled civilization developed and prompted the growth of trade within the Arab Sea. The movement of peoples was paralleled by the development of maritime commerce.
At least five thousand years ago Egypt was trading in the Red Sea, Southern Arabia, and Yemen, and possibly the Indus valley civilization. To little is known of this early trade between India and Yemen to accurately assess its importance but tantalizing hints indicate some exchange of idea and concrete forms of cultural expression.
Certainly the maritime trade was an important feature of the earliest great empires of ancient Arabia, but by the first millennium BC the Arab sea trade with India was regular feature of the economic life.
India too has a long-standing mercantile connection with Western Arabia, notably Yemen, as a part of the ancient network in the Arabian Sea and in the Indian Ocean.
When the army of Alexander the Great conquered the Island of Socotra, an island off the coast of Somalia, which belongs to the Republic of Yemen, it was reported that Indians were living on that island. The famous work "Periplus of the Erythrean Sea", a first century Greek guide for sailors, mentions Indian ships stopping at Socotra from the east African coast to Yemen on their way to and from India. .
Our knowledge of the movement of peoples and goods around the Arab Sea and Southern Arabian, and Yemeni ports is more detailed from the fourth century BC onwards.
There is much evidence of contact between the Middle East, the Yemeni ports and the Indian sub-continent. Yemen supplied Byzantium and Iran with the goods from the Indian Ocean region and Yemeni and Indian traders increased their activity to and from the Indian sub-continent. This commercial interest in turn reinforced the activity of Indian merchants in the Arab Sea, notably, Yemen, who acted as middlemen for Indian trade with the Roman Empire. Ships from Indian ports crossed the Arab Sea, and touched at the ports of Southern Arabia, in particular Aden, and preceded through Bab Al-Mandab and further to Jeddah and Berenice.
In the Indian sub-continent a major process of cultural exchange was taking place prior arrival of the Portuguese. The merchants of Gujerat, Malabar, Coromandel and Bengal looked suddenly west wards, towards the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Hindu merchants were to found all through the Middle East and in all major Yemeni ports, Mukalla, Shihr, Aden, Mokha during seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In the north of India, the Islamic influences were absorbed into the Indian cultural spectrum. Within the Indian sub-continent Muslim power was rapidly increasing particularly in areas which produced India's greatest export item: cotton cloth. The contacts were intensified with the Haj route from India running through Yemen.
For pilgrims coming from Indian sub-continent a station was arranged on the Yemeni island of Kamaran in the Red Sea, off Al-Hodeidah.
Large-scale emigration of Indians to Yemen took place mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries as laborers, traders, professionals and employees of the British government in Aden, a governorate in the present Republic of Yemen.
Economic Profile
During the nineteenth century Britain emerged as the dominant power in the Indian Ocean region, and acquired a huge territorial empire among which also the Yemeni port of Aden. The British developed various types of labor-intensive economies, which lead to large migration of Indian labor. Other types of economic activity attracted yet more settlers from the Indian sub-continent.
By 1839, Aden became part of the British Empire, administered by the Bombay Presidency. The Aden administration was separated from India in April 1939 when a Governor directly answerable to London was appointed. Southern Arabia consisting of Aden Port and its hinterland was geo-strategically and geo-politically important for the British Government. The Aden Port not only had a deep influence on the trade and commerce passing through the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, but provided a natural harbor for developing a naval base for the imperial defense.
As result, Indians not only played an influential role in the Colony's commercial life but held nearly all the posts not reserved for the British in its administration. Economically controlled by Bombay Presidency till 1939, the Indian rupee was the official currency there till 1951.
Commercial importance of the Aden Port owed a lot to the entrepreneurial skills of Indian community there, namely Parsis and Gujeratis, who migrated to Aden in large numbers during the British colonial rule.
In the immediate post-war period Aden's economic activity expanded further due to the general upsurge in world trade and more specifically, to the expansion of Aden port stimulated by the increased tanker traffic to and from the oil fields of the Gulf.
Except for the brief period of 1956- 1957 when the Suez Canal was closed, the port of Aden continued to expand throughout the 1950s and in 1958. Moreover, as the only sovereign British base in the Middle East, the Colony offered security to foreign investors. The local trading agencies made vast profits out of the shipping boom and the increase in port traffic, and most expanded their businesses in new directions.
The Aden government, and especially the British armed forces, added to the boom by building hospitals, schools, barracks, housing and shopping facilities for the military personnel. New labor was attracted to the Colony to execute those projects, an estimated 40.000 laborers, mostly Indian. .
Community life
After the departure of British from Aden, and proclamation of the Peoples Republic of Yemen on 14th October, 1067, the status of the person of Indian origin was 103.000.
When the two parts of Yemen merged and Republic of Yemen was proclaimed, the status of the Indian Diaspora remained the same, 100.000. Today, people of Indian origin are concentrated in southern parts around Aden, Mukalla, Shihr, Lahj and port of Mokha and Hodeidah.
Other Indian expatriates in Yemen are mainly hospital personnel, professionals, academic, skilled and semi-skilled workers. About half of them are from Kerala, the rest are from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Goa and other states of India.
Yemen is aware of Indian capabilities and India of Yemen's business and investment opportunities. Several Indian companies have made exploratory visits to Yemen exploring investment and possibilities. Fields of cooperation and investment include telecommunications, highways and bridges, civil engineering, water management, irrigation schemes, education, health, oil and gas, mineral exploration, power projects, shipping. .
There is a considerable interest in setting up small scale industries with Indian collaboration in the field of providing know-how, manufacture and marketing for export of consumer durables.
Culture
Mohammed Juma Khan is considered as one of Yemen's greatest singers, who enriched Yemen with countless songs that are still sung today not only in Yemen but in the region.
Born in 1903 in Qarn Majid in wadi Doan, Hahdramawt to an Indian father, a soldier whose army was summoned by Sultan Al-Quaiti to establish power in the Hadhramawt region, and a to Yemeni Hadhrami mother.
Hadhramaut is the coastal region of the south Arabia, on the Gulf of Aden in the Arabia Sea. Historically, the name refers to the Hadhramawt sultanates, a collective term for the Quaiti and Kathiri sultanates, which were loosely organized under a British protectorate of South Arabia, guided by the British resident at Aden, until 1967. The northern edge of the Hadhramawt slopes down the Al-Rub al-Khali desert of the Empty Quarter.
Young Khan loved music and used to sing since his childhood. He learned from singers how to sing and play various musical instruments. He was appointed as member of the Sultans music band, and became later its leader. After his retirement he moved from place to place in Hadhramawt and used to sing his songs to people.
He recorded many of his songs on phonographs disks, the only available means of recording then. He is credited for revival the traditional Hadhrami songs and ballads. His song and text derive from the local rhymes of daily life and dances.
Khan passed away in 1964