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In recent years the study of Yemenite Jeweryhas reached an innovative and important stage: the use of Muslimsources for uncovering information pertaining to the Jews in Yemen,material either unknown or only partially comprehensible from Jewishsources. In the first meeting of the International Congress ofYemenite Jewish Studies, I tried to demonstrate the greatsignificance of the legal Zaidi writings in Yemen for that purpose. In the current meeting I would like to draw attention of mycolleagues, the students of Islamic Yemen, to the relevence of Jewishsources for the history of Yemen in general, and thus to make amodest contribution to an interreligious understanding between theMuslim population in Yemen and the former Yemenite Jewish community, most of which has now returned to the land of its forefathers.
Parenthetically, it should be pointed outthat most Yemenite Jews in Israel, as well as in the United States,are no longer original natives of Yemen but belong to the second andthird generations, zealously retaining a highly diversified culturalwealth created in Yemen and imported from there. It would be enoughto mention the folk arts and customs: cooking, music, dances,clothing, emboidery, siversmith's work and material culture ingeneral. All of these proudly spread all over the Western World bythe Jews who left Yemen, or even their children and grandchildren. But we ought not to ignore the fields of spiritual creativity, suchas philosophy, religious values, written poetry and chronicles, inwhich we can also find bonds connecting the two religions in Yemen:Islam and Judaism.
It is important to note that as much as thevarious writings of Yemenite Jews may teach us about Islamic Yemen inrecent centuries, they include nothing in regard to the pre-Islamicera, precisely the time during which Judaism climbed to its politicaland economic acme under the rule of the Judaized kings of tthe Himyardynasty. From the middle of the 17th century, however, the YemeniteJewish scholars - poets and rabbis - wrote much about the life oftheir brethren in Yemen while also refering to non-Jewish Yemeniculture. That literature, written mostly in Hebrew, sometimes inJudeo-Arabic, was basically untouched by Yemeni Muslim scholars, whodid not know the Hebrew characters, and it is still virtually unknownto modern researchers.
Even those few scholars in Yemen who hadsome interest in Judaism turned to Jewish scholars when they wantedto learn about Jewish views or to ask them to produce Arabicrenditions of Jewish sources. This was the case, possibly unique, ofthe transcription to Arabic characters of The Guide to thePerplexed, the philosophic work of Maimonides, originally writtenin Judeo-Arabic. The transcription was done during the 15th centuryin Yemen, probably by a Jew requested to by a Muslim scholar who,although informed about Maimonides and his famous book, was not ableto read a text written in Hebrew characters. It seems that this verymanuscript was used by al-Shawkani, the well known Muslim jurist (d.1834), as may be learnt from his polemical book against the Jews of Sanaa when he refers to the Maimonidean philosophy. His directappeal to the Jewish San'ani scholars in order to be equipped withthe Jewish material derived from the short, but famous, treatisewritten by them to answer his question pertaining to the issue ofmaterial or spiritual reward in the world to come according to Jewishconviction.
However, their is no reason for modernresearch about Yemen to ignore the relevant Jewish sources. Thelinguistic obstacle of either Hebrew or Judeo-Arabic texts may beovercome by publishing them in Arabic characters or in translation toany European language current in modern scholarship.
As a generality we may say that Jewishauthors wrote frequently about contemporary events during times ofcrisis like war or famine, rather than in consequence of persecutionof the Jewish community. We may distinguish between two major kindsof texts with general historical significance: 1. Either short orlong chronicles detailing the events with accuracy, following theMuslim chroniclers in Yemen (the descriptive style is very concise,almost without any personal reaction or sensitive response by thewriter); 2. Poems, basically in reaction to certain events that wereaccompanied by acts of persecution in the Jewish community(naturally, the writer was less specific and less accurate whendescribing the events themselves, but he was expressing at large hisnationalistic feelings).
1. Chronicles
The length of these chronicles shifts fromsome few lines to a whole composition. They may be divided intogroups according to their length and nature. In the following I willmention one example of each group.
a. Colophones
In what follows the colophon at the end ofone of his works, R. Moshe Albalidah describes in brief the events ofthe year 5265 (=A.D. 1505) in Sanaa the same year he wrote the book.His report starts with the words urîd a'alamak ("I wouldlike to inform you") and it is divided into two parts. In the firsthe mentions the exact date of the occupation of Sanaa byAmîr ibn 'Abd al-Wahhâb, the last of the Tahirid dynasy. This part also includes the names of two defeated governors of Sanaa:Imam al-Washalî and Ibn al-Husain Muhammad. These details aresomewhat significant since they are not to be found in sources suchas al-Wâsi'î's well-known work on Yemeni history. In thesecond part the author gives in detail the high rates of the pricesof various grains: wheat, barley and sorghum, and of raisins, all ofwhich are essential items of Yemenite diet. A specifically Jewishpoint of view is very limited; there is one short phrase at the end:dawla zâlima wa-dawla dâbita wa-amân fîdawlatihi ("one rule oppresses and the other supresses, there isno security except in his kingdom"). These two components, the chainof military events and the resulting economic situation, are typicalof almost all Yemenite Jewish chronicles, the shorter as well as thelonger ones.
b. Shorter Chronicles
These chronicles refer to a local limitedevent, although not necessarily an important one. R. Yihye Bashiri,one of the most distinguished spiritual personalities of YemeniteJewry in the first half of the seventeenth century, left a shortJudeo-Arabic chronicle. A Hebrew version exists as well in somemanuscripts, but it is not clear if it was composed by him or wastranslated by some other person. In that chronicle, Bashiri relatesthe revolt of Imam al-Qâsim and his three sons against theTurkish government in Yemen, the occupation of the capital Sanaa andthe deportation of the Turkish governor and his army from thecapital. Notes about the escalating prices of the various grains andpulses as a result of the hostilities and the siege are part ofdetailed description of that event. In this chronicle too aspecifically Jewish focus is very scanty: Jewish San'ani citizens aswell as Muslims fled beyond the walls of the besieged city, hopefulof finding some food. We may conclude therefore that in the authorsmind the Jews were not deliberately persecuted by the authorities ordiscriminated against by them during this event.
c. Longer Chronicles
Two works are known,, while we have a lot ofcolophones and shorter chronicles:
1) Mesuqut Teman (The Distresses ofYemen) by R. Sa'd 'Arûsî, who belonged to the tiny circleof enlighted Jewish scholars in Sanaa in the second half of thenineteenth century (d. 1909). This work was written in Judeo-Arabic,but was published by R. Yosef Qafih only in Hebrew translation. Inits entirety it is no more than an annual, detailed price list of theessential commodities in Sanaa, starting with the year 1856 up to1906. The writer explains the reasons for the rising prices as dueto drought, locust, and hostilities. Only seldom does he refer toJewish issues. The immediate motive for writing this chronicle wasthe events of hawzat al-nafar ("the siege of the handful" in 1903-1905), during which Sanaa was besieged by the rebelliousImams al-Mansûr Muhammad Hamîd al-Dîn and his sonal-Mutawakkil Yahyâ. During this time an extraordinarilysevere drought hit Yemen for three consecutive years. Although nodeliberate anti-Jewish policy was conducted during this period, noless than two thirds of the Sanaani Jewish population perished. TheJews of Yemen had never faced a loss of lives on such a scale. As aresult, 'Arûsî began to think about the causes of thatgrave situation and of the critical state of the Jewish Yemenitecommunity in general. The outcome of this sociohistorical reflectionwas, on the one hand, the description of the economic vicissitudes ofYemen, so dependent on rain and subject to internal wars, and, on theother hand, a special list at the end of the book in which theauthor enumerates the negative causes: "the disadvantages of Yemenand its defects in the past and nowadays". It is clear that thechronological report of the grain prices and of the wars, as well asthe list of the disadvantages, were done from a comprehensiveapproach to Yemen as a country, rather than just from the limitedoutlook of the Jewish community. In the list of thirteen items, onlyone refers to the Jews: the hatred of the country's population and ofits governors towards the Jews, the injustices they are subject to,and their humiliation. All other items refer to the natural climateof Yemen, the undeveloped economy, the social and culturalbackwardness at the time, andcorruption of the government.
2) Eshkelot Merorot, byShelomo-Slaiman Hibshush, brother of the famous Hayyim Hubshush whoescorted the explorer Yosef Halevi in northern Yemen in the early1870's. In this work the author describes in remarkable detail oneof the most important events in modern Yemenite history: therebellion of Imam Yahyâ against Turkish rule in the firstdecade of this century. What is unique about this work is that theauthor relates almost nothing in regard to the Jews of Yemen. ThisHebrew text was first published from manuscripts more than fiftyyears ago by S.D. Goitein, a distinguished Islamist and also thesenior scholar of Yemenite Jewry. The study of Yemen wouldundoubtedly benefit from a western language rendition of thisbook.
2. Poems
The genre of historical poems is one of themost fruitful among Yemeni Muslims and Jews. The Yemenite poems aremostly not in Judeao-Arabic rather than Hebrew. R. Sa'adia Durain inthe first half of the seventeenth century described in his poems theuprising of Imam al-Qâsim and his sons against the Turks. Ofcourse, this genre is widley represented in Shabazi's poetry, inwhich he writes not only about the expulsion of the Jews to Mawza' in1679, but about the belligerent actions of Imam Ahmad as well, priorto his expulsion decree, and the hostilities between the Yemeniforces and the Turkish troops. We have many poems of this genre, toomany to be mentioned here. But we should at least note the two poemsof Yishaq ben Yefet al-Shâ'ir about faqîhSa'îd (1840) and about the Sharîf Ismâ'îl(1847), who rebelled against the central rule in Sanaa and wanted toexpel the British from Aden. Yishaq ben Yefet describes in detailthe povocation of the faqîh and of the Sharîfagainst the Jews at the time. He places their activities from acomprehensive perspective and provides us with some details not foundin common Yemeni Arabic sources.
In conclusion I would like, on behalf of allthe sponsors of the congress, to appeal to all scholars involved inYemeni Studies whereever they are - in Yemen, in Israel, in theUnited States or Europe - to cooperate for the sake of studying Yemenas well as Yemenite Jewry.
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