YEMEN UPDATE

 

Abd al-Aziz al-Saqqaf (1951-1999) by Brian Whitaker http://www.al-bab.com/yemen/saqqaf.htm

Ahmad Muhammad Nu'man (1909-1996) by Cynthia Myntti [YU 39 (1997):31-32]

Imam Badr (1929-1996) by A.B.D.R. Eagle [YU 39 (1997):28-29]

Charles Beckingham (1914-1998) by John Shipman http://www.al-bab.com/bys/obits/beckingham.htm

A.F.L. Beeston (1911-1995) by Lawrence I. Conrad [YU 39 (1997):29-31] and by D. S. Richards http://www.al-bab.com/bys/obits/beeston.htm

Ziad Beydoun (1925-1998) by Jim Ellis http://www.al-bab.com/bys/obits/beydoun.htm

Robin Bidwell (1929-1994) by G. Rex Smith http://www.al-bab.com/bys/obits/bidwell.htm

Doreen Ingrams (1906-1997) by J. G. T. Shipman http://www.al-bab.com/bys/obits/ingrams.htm

Salih abu-Bakr bin Husainun (1936-1994) by J. N. Ellis http://www.al-bab.com/bys/obits/husainun.htm

R. B. Serjeant (1915-1993) by G. Rex Smith and Daniel Martin Varisco [YU 33 (1993):6-11]

Muhammad al-Badr bin Ahmad Hamid al-Din was the last imam and king of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen. A sayyid and thus a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima, al-Badr was also a scion of Imam al-Hadi Yahya bin al-Husayn, who established a Zaydi Shia state in Sa'da in northern Yemen in the last decade of the ninth century. He was thus the last of a succession of more than 70 imams who ruled in the Yemen until 1962. His great-grandfather al-Mansur Muhammad was Imam and his grandfather was al-Mutawakkil Yahya, who became Imam in 1904. Yahya and then his son Imam Ahmad (al-Badr's father) succeeded in maintaining the independence of the Yemen despite the British occupation of Aden and the whole of, what was then, South Yemen.

Muhammad al-Badr was born in 1929 in the town of Hajjah in north-west Yemen, where his father Sayf al-Islam Ahmad was governor on behalf of Imam Yahya. His mother was Sharifa Safiyya bint Muhammad from the sayyid family of al-Issi of Shahara. In Hajjah he received a traditional Yemeni education in the Koran, Islamic religion, Arabic grammar and syntax.

In 1944 he moved to Taizz in the south of the country, where his father had already been the Imam's deputy for several years, to continue his education. Soon after the cruel assassination of Imam Yahya in February 1948 plotted by Sayyid Abdullah al-Wazir, al-Badr arrived in Sanaa, the capital, but apparently only gave tacit support to the new regime. Meanwhile Sayf al-Islam Ahmad had managed to get away from Taizz and made for Hajjah, where he gathered the tribes around him, proclaimed himself Imam with the title of al-Nasir and within a month of the assassination had easily regained control of Sanaa and executed the principal perpetrators of the rebellion.

Sayf al-Islam al-Badr (as Muhammad now became), not yet 20, was clearly able to patch up speedily any misunderstandings with his father, for in late 1949 he was appointed his deputy over Hodeida, the important port on the Red Sea. He was also made Minister of the Interior.

Al-Badr played a prominent role in quelling the revolt against Imam Ahmad in 1955 led by Ahmad's brother Sayf al-Islam Abdullah and afterwards was declared Crown Prince. During the remaining period of Imam Ahmad's rule he held the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs and from 1958 he was also the Imam's deputy over Sanaa. In 1959 he was put in complete charge of the Yemen for a few months during Imam Ahmad's absence in Italy for medical treatment. An assassination attempt on the life of Imam Ahmad in March 1961 left the latter gravely crippled and in October Sayf al-Islam al-Badr took over effective control of the government.

On 19 September 1962 Ahmad died in his sleep, al-Badr was proclaimed Imam and King and took the title of al-Mansur, but a week later rebels shelled his residence, Dar al Bashair, in the Bir al-Azab district of Sanaa and set up a republic.

Al-Badr had, when Crown Prince, like most young Arab leaders of his generation, been a great admirer of the Egyptian President Jamal Abd al-Nasir and had even arranged during his father's absence in Italy for Egyptian experts to come and help modernize the Yemen in all fields, including the military. His father moreover had incorporated Yemen into the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria, which then became the United Arab States. It is thus ironic that the Yemen revolution of 26 September 1962 was largely instigated and planned by Egyptians and that without a massive Egyptian presence in the Yemen for five years afterwards the Yemen Arab Republic could never have survived.

Although the revolution had announced to the world that al-Badr had died beneath the rubble of his palace, he had in fact managed to escape unhurt and set out to the north. As he proceeded on his journey the tribes rallied round him pledging him their unconditional allegiance as Amir al-Mumineen ("Prince of the Faithful"). These tribes were zealous Zaydi Shia for whom unstinted loyalty to an imam from the Ahl al-Bayt (the descendants of the Prophet) was a fundamental obligation of their religion. A few days later he held a press conference over the border in south-west Saudi Arabia. His uncle Sayf al-Islam al-Hasan, who had been abroad and had been proclaimed Imam at the news of al-Badr's alleged demise, immediately gave allegiance to him together with all the princes of the Hamid al-Din family. Soon the entire tribal confederation of Bakil along with most of Hashid who occupied the central and northern highlands of the Yemen and who had been Zaydis for centuries joined enthusiastically the cause of the Imam and the princes to fight the revolutionary regime.

During the bloody civil war which continued for eight years al-Badr, like his cousins, played a vital role. He lived alongside his men the life of a warrior, sharing with them every deprivation and hardship. He set up his headquarters in various places in the scenically spectacular mountainous north-west Yemen, on Jebal Qara, for instance, in the region of Hajur al-Sham and at al-Muhabisha high up above the Tihama plain. These HQs situated in caves fitted out with every basic facility deep in the mountainside were nevertheless constantly under the threat of Egyptian bombardment from the air. In 1967 al-Badr left his HQ at Mabyan near Hajjah for Taif in Saudi Arabia, where he stayed until the end of the war.

In 1970, despite the fact that territorially most of the Yemen remained under the control of al-Badr and the Hamid al-Din family, Saudi Arabia, which had been the principal opponent of the Sanaa regime, recognized the Yemen Arab Republic and other nations like the United Kingdom swiftly followed suit.

Stunned by Saudi Arabia's recognition of the republican regime which had been negotiated without any consultation with him whatsoever, al-Badr refused to stay any longer in Saudi Arabia and demanded that he be permitted to leave the kingdom immediately. He went to England, where he lived quietly in a modest house in Kent, only going abroad to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and to call on relatives and friends in that part of the world. He died last week in London.

Al-Badr was a man of great courtesy, kindness and personal charm. He loved dearly the Yemeni people and was essentially a man of peace. When I asked a few years after he arrived in Britain whether he had plans to return to the Yemen as Imam he replied without hesitation that he would do so only at the invitation of the whole Yemeni nation. He said he would never allow a terrible civil war to rage once again in his beloved country. 

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 A.F.L. Beeston

(1911-1995)

 

First encounters are sometimes memorable affairs, and mine with A.F.L. Beeston was certainly one of this kind. After delivering a lecture at the Oriental Institute in Oxford, I had just arrived at St. John's College for dinner with my host, who had already wondered at least twice why "Freddie" had not attended. Freddie?, I thought to myself. The mystery was soon cleared up in the most dramatic fashion. We made our way across the Senior Common Room to a large man with long flowing white hair falling over the back of his black academic gown. As he turned to face us, I suddenly found myself before A.F.L. Beeston, puffing contentedly on a cigarette with an ash almost an inch long trembling at its tip; his gown hung open to reveal blue jeans, T-shirt, and beach sandals of some sort. I winced as the subject of absence from my lecture again arose, this time with reference to my topic, "Abraha and Muhammad." "Abraha and Muhammad? (ash tumbles) Abraha and Muhammad!," came the booming response; "the seminar program said `Abraham and Muhammad,' so I thought he was one of those Massignon people! Good heavens! Oh well; welcome to St. John's."

 

"Freddie," as preferred to be called, was an only child born in London on the eve of the First World War, and from a young age he was attracted to the study of languages of the Middle East. At fourteen he was elected King's Scholar at Westminster School, and already as a schoolboy he was haunting the galleries of the British Museum, where he could be seen studying and copying ancient South Arabian inscriptions. His early ambition was to become a librarian in the BM's Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books, and to this end he set out for Oxford with a Westminster Scholarship. He read Classics moderations at Christ Church for five terms, and then took up the study of Arabic and Persian with D.S. Margoliouth, who had published some South Arabian inscriptions and had made South Arabian epigraphy one of the special subjects available in the Oxford Arabic course. He graduated with First Class honors in 1933, and began work toward his D. Phil. Opportunities at both the BM and the Bodleian Library in Oxford suddenly arose two years later, and in a move that was to be decisive to his later career, he took the Bodleian position; he had already become very attached to the academic scene in Oxford, and remaining there would in any case make it easier to finish his dissertation on Sabaic inscriptions.

Military service during the Second World War took him to the Near East, and -- first encouraged in this by Margoliouth -- he was a frequent traveller of Arab lands, especially the countries of the Arabian peninsula, at a time when such journeys were still difficult endeavors. Back in Oxford, he worked enthusiastically at the acquisition and cataloguing of non-Western books and manuscripts and on his South Arabian studies (which he always regarded as a kind of hobby). Typical of the demanding standards he set for himself was his eventual dissatisfaction with his unpublished dissertation. "It is absolutely unfair that I should still be held responsible for that thesis (a withering rebuke in Freddie's parlance) fifty years after I finished it," he once complained to me; " it's not my fault that I have lived so long."

 

The departure of H.A.R. Gibb for Harvard in 1955 vacated the Laudian chair in Arabic at Oxford, and doubts were raised at the appointment of Beeston, "a mere librarian" (as a complaining letter to the Times put it), as his successor. But reservations were soon laid to rest, for it quickly proved that the agenda and abilities of the Bodleian's man were very broad indeed. He immediately began to teach, beyond ESA, many of the usual texts and subjects: ancient Arabic poetry, prose literature, the classical historians and geographers, Ibn Khaldün, and so forth. But whereas Magoliouth and Gibb had taught Arabic through such traditional means as assigning Wright's Grammar and Quatremere's edition of the Muquaddima, with instructions to "come back after Christmas so we can begin to read," Beeston made it a priority of his academic career to facilitate students' access to the language. His Written Arabic: an Approach to the Basic Structures (1968) and its supplement of exercises, Arabic Historical Phraseology (1969), were invaluable manuals for students, and his teaching of such texts as the mu'allaqa of Labid, the verse of Bashshar ibn Burd, several essays by al-Jahiz, and al-Baydawi's commentary of Surat Yusuf led to publications that were models of erudition and, again, extremely useful for students.

 

Nor was this all. Though Gibb had played a pioneering role in the study of modern Arabic literature, "Arabic" at Oxford in 1955 still meant, for the most part, the classical language and literature of the medieval period. Beeston soon changed this, not only through his own studies and formidable command of modern Arabic, but by teaching modern authors with unfailing enthusiasm and actively campaigning for a regular modern position at the University. His The Arabic Language Today (1970) was a work that gave him as much satisfaction as the pursuits of his "hobby": Descriptive Grammar of Epigraphic South Arabian (1982), the collaborative Sabaic Dictionary (1982), and his Sabaic Grammar (1984). Indeed, it is difficult to imagine who else could have brought such formidable learning to both ends of this vast range, not to mention everything else in between.

 

Beeston's character could perhaps best be understood in terms of a boundless fascination with and delight in how language works, and the ways in which this translates into the aesthetic and cultural power of ideas, as expressed in literature. While he was best known for his teaching and publications in Arabic language and literature and South and North Arabian epigraphy, his research, learning, and curiosity ranged over a far broader territory. He also wrote on history, culture, and religion, and near the end of his life even on Welsh literature. Classicists and specialists in Middle English knew him and exchanged insights with him, and Oxford students in Sinology discovered that he know more than a little Chinese (an area he had once considered a career option in his youth); a student working on a D. Phil. in Sanskrit grammar soon found himself invited to St. John's when word reached Freddie that Indian philologists had proposed some original and unique ideas in linguistics. Most European languages and literatures were thoroughly familiar to him, and he seemed as much at ease with Italian in Venice as he was with English at home. He was proud of the title of "Orientalist," and often spoke of how useful it was for specialists on the non-Western world to have ready access to each other's expertise and research; he played a key role in ensuring that these various fields were all housed together when Oxford's Oriental Institute opened in 1961.

 

All of Beeston's work was characterized by a meticulous concern for accuracy that manifested itself, on the one hand, in an enormous respect for sources, and on the other, in a rigorous philology sustained by formidable learning in modern linguistics. Though an astute textual critic keenly aware of the problems that could arise in a manuscript tradition, especially those relating to oral transmission, he at the same time esteemed the abilities and accuracy of the medieval scribes, and thus sought first to understand a manuscript as it stood, rather than resolve difficulties by over-hasty conclusion that the text must be wrong. While sympathetic to students' difficulties in learning Arabic, he insisted that the root of these problems was pedagogical, and did not lie in the intrinsic difficulty of the language or literature itself. "Arabic poetry is not hard," he once commented during one of our strolls around St. John's; "it just requires a little knowledge of the context." In discussions with him it was never enough to come up with a plausible solution for a problem or a likely translation for a difficult line of verse or passage in prose--why one's answer was correct was the key to confirming that it was correct. He was also a stickler for correct and elegant English expression, and was fond of citing a piece of advice from A. S. Tritton; "A translation that reads well in English may still be wrong; one that reads badly in English is always wrong."

 

His academic demeanor perhaps accounts for his apparent disengagement from some of the controversies of the times. He had little patience with demagoguery, or work based on what he regarded as ideology or an idée fixée; he addressed such controversial topics when he felt he could contribute light as opposed to heat, but otherwise passed over them in silence. He appreciated revisionist scholarship for its fresh insights and ideas, but held a distinctly positivist approach to the past, and so found certain other perspectives faddish, unnecessarily contentious, and ultimately, not very engaging. Shortly before his death we discussed a new book that concluded with the claim that Arab historians had learned nothing new from the West. Freddie shrugged his shoulders and commented, Muhammad Kurd `Ali once told me that the Arabs have learned everything about history from the West; but either way, what's the point?"

 

His meticulous scholarly side found a dramatic counterpoint in his thoroughly unconventional personality and vivacious sociability. His habits of attire were--what can one say? -- unpredictable, and the ample repertoire of Oxford anecdotes concerning him includes many remarkable episodes; unanticipated swims, for example, and students boosted over the college wall in the wee hours of the night. He was an especially jolly dinner host, and thrived in the company of small groups of colleagues, students, and friends. One invariably exulted in his company, but this was perilous in view of his keen eye for an empty glass. Fearful for the consequences of one especially ruinous episode, I rang him up at home the next day only to find that he had been up for hours, was preparing for a day's work at the Bodleian, and could I clarify my comments on epistemological metaphors. His long white hair (fostered since 1963), greatcoat, hacking smoker's cough, and ever-lengthening ash were personal trademarks instantly recognizable in Oxford, and everywhere they evoked affection and esteem. "Freddie stories" had already been appropriated as part of Oxford tradition during his lifetime, and his passing immediately inspired a concerted effort to collect and preserve them.

 

His eccentric ways were expressive of honest individuality, and were never pretentious. He bore his immense learning lightly, and seldom had a word to say about the honors and recognition that streamed in his direction. A scholar who owed much to the renowned Oxford Semiticist G. R. Driver, who had been a decisive influence in his appointment to both his Bodleian position and the Laudian chair, he in turn devoted himself with selfless enthusiasm to his students. His remarks in conversation were often punctuated with references to promising acolytes. Though one of the world's premier authorities on Arabic poetry, for example, he would easily suggest that "on this poem we had better consult so-and-so," naming a student with whom he was particularly pleased. He tirelessly encouraged younger colleagues with his advice and friendship, and though he never had children of his own, he was capable of great kindness and understanding where those of others were concerned. My own convulsed him one day by asking if he did "professor rubbish like Daddy;" he rewarded them with sweets for this "profound insight," and chuckled over the episode for months.

 

Beeston was a man of intense loyalty, particularly when it came to St. John's, to which the Laudian chairs attached and which elected him as an emeritus fellow after his retirement in 1978. He was Dean of Degrees there for twenty-six years. Anytime I came to see him he preferred to meet at St. John's, and upon my arrival he would want to show me yet another part of the college. Had I seen the Laudian Library yet? Had he shown me the new residential wing in the Garden Quad? Was I familiar with the paintings in this or that room? On one such tour I saw a string of portraits of the Laudian professors which Gibb was conspicuously absent. "Well," he commented dryly in response to my query, "he blotted his copybook and went to America." On another occasion, anxious not to impose predictability on his hospitality, I suggested that we proceed to a nearby pub rather than stay for tea at St. John's. His crestfallen expression confirmed that this had been an awkward mistake, and I was careful not to repeat it.

 

Freddie was a raconteur's raconteur, and I think that he would have approved of my reminiscences of him should both begin and end with an anecdote. My last meeting with him was on 27 September 1995; I had rung up to see if he would be free after I finished some other business in Oxford, and he responded with his usual jovial hospitality. I knew he had been ill, and when we met at the Lodge he seemed frail and weary. But the wit and enthusiasm still burned bright, and within seconds he was asking if I had ever seen the gardens of St. John's. What? I hadn't? Good heavens! Outrageous. Come along, then. It was a glorious autumn day, and we spent the next hour strolling along the college paths and chatting, as usual, about many subjects; poetry, Margoliouth, doublets in the works of the early udaba', historians, St. John's great willow tree (viewed at length from every angle), the organization of proverb collections, merits of conscientious gardeners, a new David Lodge-style novel on campus life that I had just received from Germany. It was much the same over tea, and we parted in high spirits, with plans to proceed with a long-envisaged collaboration on al-Jahiz and mutual promises on visits to London and Oxford. Hardly thirty-six hours later, he collapsed at the gates of his beloved St. John's and was gone. On hearing the news my first thought was not of loss, however, but of our garden stroll, of a friend who had lived such a full and vivacious life, and brought so much to so many. I think he would appreciate the proposition that his field, colleagues, students, and community are not so much the poorer for his death, as the richer for his long, learned, and colorful life.

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 Ahmad Muhammad Nu'man

          

Al-Ustadh Ahmad Muhammad Nu'man, one of Yemen's early modern political reformers, died in Geneva last October 4 at the age of 86. He had been suffering from Parkinson's disease.

 

Ahmad Muhammad Nu'man was born in April 21, 1909 into an influential shaykhly family in Dhubhan, al-Hugariyya of Yemen. He spent seven years of his youth at the famous center of Shafi'i learning in Zabid, and completed his higher education in the 1930s at al-Azhar University in Cairo. He had hoped to enroll in Fuad I University (later Cairo University) but did not have a recognized certificate of secular education.

 

Nu'man had a long career devoted to education. He is credited with founding the first modern school in Yemen, the Madrasa al-Ahliya in his home village of Dhubhan. When imprisoned in

Hajja with other young Republicans after the assassination of Imam Yahya in 1948, he turned the jail into a school for both the other prisoners and the sons of local sayyid officials. Arabic literature and poetry became the linguistic currency of the jail. He also founded Kuliyat Bilqis in Aden.

 

For Al-Ustadh politics was the consummate life. His years in Cairo at al-Azhar exposed the young Nu'man to the political ferment gripping Egypt, Palestine, and other Arab countries. He advocated non-violent reform of Yemeni governance, holding the strong conviction that the key to democracy was an educated citizenry.

 

On his return to Yemen in 1940 he became inspector of schools for Ta'izz. Soon, however, Nu'man and the other young intellectuals (al-shabb) became disenchanted with the rule of the imam. He, along with the Zaydi poet Zubayri and others, fled to Aden where they set up the Free Yemeni Party and began publishing the journal Sawt al-Yaman, which called for democratic reform. He led various successor organizations to the Free Yemeni Party and published a variety of political reviews from Cairo and Aden during the 1940s and 1950s.

 

Nu'man's political views and activities got him into trouble not only with the Yemeni imams but also with the British in Aden and with President Gamal Abdul-Nasser of Egypt. In fact, when leading an official Yemeni delegation to Egypt in 1966 to protest Egypt's prolonged occupation of Yemen, the entire delegation was taken by limousine to prison rather than to the meeting they were expecting. Knowing Nu'man's scholarly and artistic abilities, an exasperated Abdul Nasser is said to have asked Nu'man at a tense moment in this period: "Well, don't you have a poem?" And at another time: "You are not going to convince me by poems or prose!"

 

Nu'man served as prime minister of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1965 and again in 1971 but after his beloved eldest son and political heir, Muhammad was assassinated on Hamra Street in Beirut in 1974, Nu'man retired from politics and lived the rest of his years between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Switzerland.

 

We who had the privilege to know al-Ustadh Nu'man remember him fondly as a man of great intelligence, irreverent wit and irresistible charm. He thought it was possible to persuade and indeed dominate his opponents by rhetorical brilliance, and he used poetry extensively in his political repertoire, from the works of the medieval Mutanabbi to those written by his relative and contemporary al-Fudhul. Referring to this political style, a Saudi friend once said of Nu'man that he was "a commander without soldiers and a warrior without weapons (al-qa'id bila junud, al-maqatil bila silah)." Al-Ustadh was an advocate of the rule of law long before the phrase was coined.

 

Nu'man is survived by a wife, five sons ('Abd al-Rahman, Fu'ad, 'Abd al-Wahhab, 'Abd Allah and Mustafa) and two daughters (Fawziya and Hana'), and many grandchildren. The family plans to compile a book from the many memorials sent to honor al-Ustadh after his death. More information about the publication can be obtained from al-Ustadh's son 'Abd Allah at <noman@iprolink.ch>.

 

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Folk Poet Shaif al-Khaledi

 

by Flagg Miller

News of great men travels. It was therefore no surprise to me that, while reading my email this week, I should learn of the death on December 31 of Yemeni folk poet Shayf al-Khaledi. But email is an unsympathetic medium, and hardly able to translate for me the loss and grief that hundreds of thousands of Yemeni -- from shepherds in the most remote valleys of Lahej and Abyan to multi-millionaires in Jeddah, Paris and New York -- are feeling this month. Many English-speakers will not be familiar with the life and work of this extraordinary man. A brief introduction to al-Khaledi now, after his death, seems not too late given that his voice always had an uncanny ability to transcend its place and time.

 

Shayf al-Khaledi was born in a remote village of Yafi`a (a region spanning Lahej and Abyan) in 1932. While settlement in his area was sparse, his district of al-Qu`iti was known for its fierce and influential role in the history of the region and Yemen as a whole. One of his fellow Qu`iti had in fact migrated to India over two-hundred years earlier, established a powerful sultanate in Hyderabad and then returned to Hadramawt to set up what became known as "the Qu`iti State." al-Khaledi grew up knowing that he had a mighty legacy to continue.

 

He began contributing to local social and political affairs through poetry. In a region where, like many in Yemen, the settlement of controversy and disputes had long been managed through persuasive poems,

al-Khaledi quickly distinguished himself as an eloquent and sagacious orator: an extremely valued member of a tribal society. He spent much of his youth traveling around Yafi`a to negotiate, learning much of his

neighbors, his region and its histories. His experience as a folk poet and mediator vastly expanded when he traveled to Aden for the first time in 1947. In working as a day-laborer in the port for three years, he saw

first-hand the practices and consequences of colonialism for his fellow workers, most of whom were from the former Protectorate areas as well as Northern regions. It was during these years that he began formulating his ideas about nationalism, pan-Arabism and Yemen's place in larger international contexts.

 

 

When the Revolution of 1962 broke out in the North, al-Khaledi abandoned his work in Aden and as a shepherd in Abyan in order to join forces against the Royalists. He spent four years fighting in the North,

later returning to help drive the British out of Aden by 1968. These were powerful experiences for al-Khalidi that shaped and sharpened his ideas about Yemen and its people. As the national projects got underway in the PDRY and YAR respectively, al-Khaledi would become a national poet par excellence. By drawing from a rich tradition of symbolic expression that was profoundly moral and spiritual in outlook, he used his poems

consistently to articulate national objectives from the perspective of the working majority: farmers, mechanics, small store-owners, taxi-cab drivers, as well as the makers and breakers of local politics. His

language was colloquial, not the product of an elite education; yet for that reason his words were at once extremely rich and accessible to popular audiences. By drawing upon wonderful gestes of rural humor, folk

wisdom and local histories, he spoke powerfully about national issues: unity (for which he was a long-time supporter), the need to crack down on corruption and bribery (both by leadership cadres during the years of the

PDRY and after unity), the hardships of economic reforms on the people (since southern regions had experienced enormous swings in economic orientation), the centrality of religious life to good citizenship (including criticism of radical Islamist movements), and many other issues.

 

 

One of the reasons that al-Khaledi became such an influential voice for so many is traceable in no small way to his extremely prolific production. By the dawn of the revolution of 1967 it is said he had composed over one thousand qasaid (a qasidah is a traditional, formal genre of Arabic poetry), and such production continued unabated until his death. While he exceled in many poetic genres (including extemporaneous genres delivered in competetive bouts variously known as rajzah, Sufuuf, balah, daan, etc.), he was a master of the bid` wa jawaab genre (also known as the da`wah wa ijaabah genre) in which one poet sends a qasidah to another poet and the second poet responds with a qasidah that uses the same meter and rhyme structure. This is one of the most exciting and politically charged genres of poetry for many Yemeni audiences, and by the

end of his life al-Khaledi had established a reputation widely as "the poet of ripostes" (shaa`ir al-jawaab), a man whose quick wit and well-tuned responses left the corresponding poet either defeated or gasping for another chance to defend himself.

 

 

It was the audio-cassette that extended al-Khaledi's prolific production and reputation to hundreds of thousands of listeners. While he had begun to use cassettes as early as the mid fifties, by the mid 1990s

his poems were being distributed in huge quantities throughout Yemen as well as the Gulf and abroad. His poems have been sung especially by Yafi`i musicians and are set to the `oud (the well-known Middle Eastern

lute) and sometimes a variety of drums, flutes and tambourines. But emphasis is given less to the music as much as his words. These words became especially relevant to listeners throughout Yemen when, thanks to the cassette, he was able to use poetic exchanges in order to establish a national dialogue with poets from many different regions throughout Yemen. While exchanges over the course of more than twenty years were sometimes hot and often political, he adhered to the tradition of mutual respect for

other poets that has long marked the practice of poetry in Yemen and, might I add, the spirit of democracy that is so fundamental to the outlook of many Yemeni in both rural and urban areas. Cassettes enabled the

extension of a lively genre of poetry that has long existed but which, through al-Khaledi's leadership, developed a particularly popular orientation in recent years.

 

 

The remarkable thing about al-Khaledi was how extremely personable he was. Modest about his accomplishments, he was always quick to give credit to others, to sit with diverse groups of people and to encourage younger poets at every opportunity. His sociability and open-mindedness

made my task all the easier. Working as an anthropologist for several years in Yemen, I was able to collect and translate many of his poems and complete a detailed history of his life just six months before he died. I

remember my first impression of him at the local market in Lab`us, near his village in Yafi`a, where he paced around with a plastic sack in hand, bought the day's groceries and supplies, chatted with others and swapped

news as if the boundaries of the world were just over the hill. As I quickly discovered, the parochial image was deceiving. Everywhere he went in Yafi`a and `Aden people greeted him; delegations visiting from as far

as Hadramawt, Sana`a and Ma'rib regularly sought him out, gave him the podium and devoured his poems; migrant communities in the Gulf, Britain and the United States were passionate about his poetry and the latest

cassettes. Ironically, and most revealingly, he was relatively anonymous in official Yemeni media, academic institutions and circles of the intellectual elite. His poetry, rather than couched in the elevated diction and conventional imagery of classical Arabic poetry, was sung in a familiar, colloquial tongue; his language, rather than replicating the discourses of those in circles of power, spoke to the concerns of popular Yemeni audiences. Ultimately, his poetry filled gaps and interpreted ruptures in political discourses, and for precisely that reason was remarkably mobile.

 

 

The last time I was with al-Khaledi, we attended a rural wedding celebration together. We'd spent the previous evening with our eyes glued to the television set, watching France beat Brazil in the World Cup; he had been an avid observer through the final moments, late into the night, so I assumed that on the following night he would retire early. As dinner at the wedding was concluded and people gathered to dance, a poetic

competition was set up. Poets slowly gathered to compete extemporaneously, and soon al-Khaledi was in the center of a ring of challengers, each vying for an opportunity to produce a few perfectly measured and rhymed verses that could dislodge the "poet of ripostes" from his throne. The drums beat furiously, the dancers romped, and neither the tournament nor al-Khaledi showed any signs of abating by the time I crept

exhausted into bed at two in the morning. I remember being amazed and relieved that al-Khaledi had the constitution to endure longer than a fit 30-year old. It is therefore with deep sorrow that, in writing an obituary, I reflect on how audiences young and old alike have been deprived of a man who had such a love for his country, a commitment to his neighbors and a passion for poetry.

 

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