There is a translation just published by Stanford University Press of the 19th century travel account of Hayyim Habshush. This is entitled A Vision of Yemen: The Travels of a European Orientalist and His Native Guide, A Translation of Hayyim Habshush’s Travelogue. The translator is Alan Verskin. Details are here.
This post continues the story of Joseph B. F. Osgood (1823-1913), whose Notes of Travel or Recollections of Majunga, Zanzibar, Muscat, Aden, Mocha, and other Eastern Ports (Salem: George Creamer, 1854) describes the Arabian coastline, like a 19th century Ibn Baṭūṭṭa. For Part #1, click here; for Part #2, click here.
Here is Osgood’s description of providing water to Aden, and the local weather…
[p. 131] While under the dominion of the Turks, the strength of the place was greatly increased by fortifications, erected under the direction of Turkish engineers not easily to be excelled in sound judgment and extraordinary skill. A rampart with bastions, now known as the Turkish Wall, was carried from sea to sea across the isthmus to protect the city against an attack from the land side. An aqueduct was built of stone, five feet wide, and two feet above the ground, from the town to a spring, eight miles into the country; and the reservoir at its end, located in a deep ravine in the mountains, was defended by a redoubt mounted with artillery. This monstrous structure was intended to obviate the laborious, and in times of war, dangerous practice of bringing all water into the city in skin vessels on camels. In the year 1530, on the authority of Resendius, it required daily the employment of from sixteen to twenty hundred camels, to supply Aden with water.
[p. 132] As a farther provision for an ample supply of water, three hundred wells were bored by the Turks, mostly through rock, and numerous tanks were built and lined with chunam or stucco. The island of Serah was also fortified by watch towers and ramparts, and furnished with massive ordnance. The constant revolt of the Saracen tribes and the probable resignation of all hope to accomplish their desires of conquest in India, led to a final withdrawal of the Ottoman troops in the year 1633. At the time of its evacuation by the Turks, Aden is said, notwithstanding the decay of its Indian trade, to have contained nearly thirty thousand inhabitants. After its evacuation by the Turks, the throne of Yemen was ascended by the royal family of Sana, whose great ancestor was Kassem Abu Mahomed, a prime mover in the successful revolt against, and conspicuous in effecting the expulsion of the Turks. From this time the city was continued in the hands of its former owners, rapidly declining and decaying under the rapine of an Arab population, until after various vicissitudes and runious change of masters, in 1839, it again changed hands in a manner equally remarkable and oppressive with any former seizure, and became the first European settlement on the shores of Arabia.
[p. 153] In the winter months the air is often pure and elastic, and the mercury seldom rises above the ninetieth degree by Fahrenheit from the first of October to the last of March. April, May and June are the hottest months, when the mercury frequently reaches the one hundred and twentieth degree, and even higher than that. During June, July and August a dry wind, called Shumal, blows from the west, bearing suffocating clouds of dust and sand.
more to come
This post continues the story of Joseph B. F. Osgood (1823-1913), whose Notes of Travel or Recollections of Majunga, Zanzibar, Muscat, Aden, Mocha, and other Eastern Ports (Salem: George Creamer, 1854) describes the Arabian coastline, like a 19th century Ibn Baṭūṭṭa. For Part #1, click here.
Here is part of his account of Aden, which at the time was under the control of the British:
[120] “Further down the coast are Shahire and Maculla, ports of some importance, having considerable trade with the Red Sea ports, Bombay, and ports in Africa tributary to the Imaum of Muscat. Maculla is the [p. 121] seaport of Hadramaut, and has been visited in former times by American vessels. All bugalas going to and from the Red Sea stop here. A few Banian traders have established themselves here. The trade of the place has very much declined since the occupation of Aden by the English.
Approaching from the seaward the rugged outline of earth which shapes Cape Aden looms up like a vast island off the south coast of Arabia Felix. As the distance diminishes and the black boundaries of the cape are more distinctly defined they resolve into sharp towering peaks, gothic spires, castellated ridges, and craggy masses overhanging awful precipices. These extend over an area five and a fourth miles long by two and a fourth miles broad. It is well worth one’s time and trouble to land on the cape, even, if for nothing else, to learn from the irony responses from the beaten rocks and the large quantities of ferruginous conglomerate lying everywhere around that, in some age long gone by, igeous action had there opened a safety valve in the earth’s solid crust to relieve it of an oppressive and heated sigh. If ambitiously disposed one may climb the hot serrated heights, stepping where never human foot before has trodden, and from the highest summit look down seventeen hundred and forty eight feet upon the smiling “old ocean,” no longer “cheered with the grateful smell of “Sabean odor, from the spicy shore Of Araby the blest,” that one John Milton said used to be blown by the [p. 122] northeast winds from the delectable hills of Aden or the ”Land of Promise,” as its name signifies. ”Land of sterility and starvation !” will one involuntarily exclaim as he gazes forth upon the bleak, barren, unenlivened expanse of rock and sand, undiversified by the lizard hue of cultivation. No waving grain, no groves, no trees, no vegetable dress whatever, not even a solitaiy bachelor blade of sickly withering grass in all that semi- circumference of prospect to relieve the aching eye-balls from the blinding glare of the parched plains and heated rocks that day after day for several years have felt an ”unclouded blaze of living light,” tempered often at one hundred and twenty degrees of heat. During the ten years previous to my last stay at Aden there had been but two showers of rain.
Continue reading Travels to Aden and Mocha in the mid 19th Century, #2
Ottoman officers and Mahris in the very early 20th century
source
The current battle for Hodeidah is not the first time it has been the target of foreign intervention. In October, 1924 the young Idrissi ruler took over Hodeidah, much to the chagrin of Imam Yahya, who was forging his kingdom after the departure of the Ottoman Turks. It was short-lived. Below is an account given by the U.S. Consul in Aden in an official dispatch.
The following papers relating to Yemen will be presented at the upcoming MESA meeting in San Antonio in November. Details are available at: https://mesana.org/mymesa/meeting_program.php?program_bookyr=2012
It is rare to find photographs of Yemenis in the 19th century, especially ordinary people and not members of the elite. A series of photographs were taken of individuals within the Ottoman Empire for a book entitled Les Costumes Populaires de la Turquie en 1873. This was compiled for the Turkish Imperial Commission for the Universal Exposition in Vienna. The book is available as a pdf at archive.org.
While only four individuals are identified as Yemeni, there are many other people across the empire in the photographs. The two photographs here, each with three individuals, are presented below, followed by the description of each in French.
left to right: Scholar in al-Ḥudayda (#1), woman of Ṣan‘ā’ (#3)
middle-class man of al-Ḥudayda (#2)
This new volume edited by Trevor Marchand will be of interest to a wide variety of people. It should be noted that some of the proceeds will go to UNHCR’s assistance to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. It can be ordered from the University of Chicago Press.
Pinterest has a number of photographs from the late Ottoman era in Ṣan‘ā’. Here are a few:
The Bekreyia Ottoman mosque ca. 1895
Ṣan‘ā’ scene around 1900
Ottoman military barracks around 1900
Ottoman soldiers in Manākha around 1911
Ottomans and Yemenis around 1900