Yemen Traditionalism Vs Modernity

In Yemen, where current poverty is combined with a rich cultural heritage, the distinctions between the traditional and the modern are particularly difficult. First published in 1979, this is a study of social change as experienced and perceived by the women of San’a, the capital city of North Yemen. It presents a synthesised view of the process of change rather than focusing on the issues of exploitation and emancipation, and draws upon observations of women’s daily routine and ritual activities as well as the media and the provocative insights of Yemeni poets. The veil is the focus of the study because it can be seen as a symbol of the contradictions inherent in Yemeni society, not just about the female but also about all social relations. It can be interpreted as both an instrument of oppression and the incitement of liberation and is thus illustrative of deep cultural ambiguities. This book will be of interest to those studying women, gender, Islam, the Middle East and anthropology.

This book presents some papers presented to a symposium on contemporary Yemen held in July 1983 by Exeter University's Centre for Arab Gulf Studies in collaboration with the Universities of Aden and San'a', and deals with history, internal and international politics, and administrative subjects.

The development of North Yemen in the twentieth century was one of the most interesting features of the Arabian Peninsula. After the traumas of the civil war which embroiled Nasser’s Egypt, the country emerged from its traditional tribal heritage into the modern world. Sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Marxist South Yemen, the country had an awkward and delicate problem in balancing its political affiliations and in resisting external pressure on its internal affairs. This book, first published in 1982, traces the history of the Yemen from the 1930s and looks at the way in which the traditional political structures were modernised and how the country coped with these strains both internally and externally.

The Yemeni Manuscript Tradition contributes to the study of the manuscript codex and its role in scholastic culture in Yemen. Ranging in period from Islam’s first century to the modern period, all the articles in this volume emerge from the close scrutiny of the manuscripts of Yemen. As a group, these studies demonstrate the range and richness of scholarly methods closely tied to the material text, and the importance of cross-pollination in the fields of codicology, textual criticism, and social and intellectual history. Contributors are: Hassan Ansari, Menashe Anzi, Asma Hilali, Kerstin Hünefeld, Wilferd Madelung, Arianna D’Ottone, Christoph Rauch, Anne Regourd, Sabine Schmidtke, Gregor Schwarb and Jan Thiele.

In Jewish-Muslim Relations and Migration from Yemen to Palestine in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Ari Ariel analyzes the impact of local, regional and international events on ethnic and religious relations in Yemen and Yemeni Jewish migration patterns. Previous research has dealt with single episodes of Yemenite migration during limited spans of time. Ariel, instead, provides a broad sweep of the migratory flows over the 70 year time span during which most of Yemen’s Jews moved to Palestine and then Israel. He successfully avoids the polemic nature of much of the literature on Middle Eastern Jewry by focusing on the social, economic and political transformations that provoked and then sustained this migration.

Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen tells a story of a Yemeni hereditary elite which was overthrown in the 1962 revolution in North Yemen. For over a millennium, they had enjoyed exclusive rights to the leadership of the Imamate, the religiously sanctioned state. Following the violent removal from power of King Faysal of Iraq in 1958, the overthrow of the Yemeni Imamate - the longest lasting Hashimite rule in the Middle East - confirmed the decline of Hashimite power (held by ruling generations claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad). However, rather than concentrating on recent political history, Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen highlights the personal predicament of those targeted by the revolution, in which they served as the foil for the new regime's moral and political ascendancy. Focusing on the cultural politics of memory, the book explores how members of the elite remember in the process of making sense of their current lives and formulating responses to adversity.