Hadrami links with Africa and Asia

The history of Wadi Hadramawt cannot be understood without reference to the continuous links which have existed between the wadi and countries abroad, particularly in modern times. Perhaps it was the very isolation of the country, cut off from the rest of Arabia by deserts, which led to the preservation of a unique traditional Arabian way of life in the wadi and yet also to a desire for contacts and trade with other countries by sea.

Saiyid writers say that the large migrations to Africa took place in the fourteenth and fifteenth (eighth and ninth) centuries. (There is a tradition that in 1433 (837) some forty-four Hadrami Saiyids landed at Berbera in Somaliland.) Hadramis have thus greatly influenced the development of Islamic culture on the East African coast. To this day guardians of bawtahs in the wadi travel to Africa to collect money for the maintenance of shrines. The people of Wadi Daw'an and the Tamimi tribe have had particularly strong connections with Africa.

Hadramis are first said to have gone to India to settle in important commercial, cultural and political centres such as Bijapur, Baroch and Surat in 1220 (617). Later, they spread to all the major centres of the west coast, and Hadramis were among the senior officers in the irregular forces of Hyderabad in the nineteenth (thirteenth) century.

From the close of the sixteenth (tenth) century onwards, Hadrami businessmen, particularly 'Alawi Saiyids from Tarim and Sai'un, were active in Java and the Indonesian archipelago. In the early nineteenth (twelfth) century they extended their activities to Singapore, and it was to these areas that the greatest Hadrami migrations took place, especially with the growth of anarchic conditions in the wadi 150 years ago.

It was unusual for a Hadrami to stay away for more than twenty years without paying a visit home. Although he often married a Javanese or an Indian bride, it being reckoned a disgrace for the women of the wadi to emigrate, he generally brought his wife and family back to live in Hadramawt when he retired. It was also a common practice for sons born abroad to be sent back to be educated, to spend five or six years becoming intimate with the family traditions and with the life of the wadi.

The returned businessman would devote himself first to the erection of a mosque, an act of piety which expressed his thanks to Allah for his good fortune. (This has resulted in an enormous number of small mosques in the wadi and its tributaries.) Only then did he see fit to erect a new home, sometimes incorporating, as was conspicuous in the case of the numerous al-Kaf homes, fashions from India or Singapore. Generally, however, he was content to build in the traditional way, simply including furnishing or appliances, ranging from pressure lamps to motorcars, which revealed his contact with advanced technologies overseas. The revenues from abroad became the main source of what wealth there was in Hadramawt for hundreds of years, until the foundation of the modern state.

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