Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in The Indian Ocean, 1839-1937 Scott S. Reese No Waiting Time
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Imperial Muslims
Scott S. Reese
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
The right of Scott S. Reese to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related
Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Acknowledgments vii
Map 1 British Aden x
Map 2 The Indian Ocean and its commercial routes xi
Map 3 Yemen in the nineteenth century xii
Notes 168
Bibliography 196
Index 206
Looking back, it seems almost inevitable that I would write a book on Aden, to
many an—undeservedly—obscure colonial outpost in Southern Arabia. But it was
hardly a direct path. Nearly thirty years ago I was returning from my first extended
period living and working in the Middle East when I passed through London in the
hope of looking at various graduate programs. I had occasion to meet Professor
Michael Twaddle at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Having an interest
in both Islam and the British Empire, but not wishing to work in the “traditional”
Middle East I asked him how these two may be combined. Among other things,
he noted the dearth of scholarship on Aden and that something quite interesting
might be done there. Given that this was 1989 and Aden was still the capital of
the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), I didn’t give his sugges-
tion much thought. I went on to do my Ph.D. research on Sufism in Somalia. Fast
forward to 2001 and a chance encounter with a librarian from the University of
Washington at a meeting of the Middle East Studies Association. He was an Adeni
Somali who regaled me with fascinating stories of Aden’s patron saint, Sayyid
Abu Bakr Aydarus. I was intrigued, but, again, I was working on other projects and
filed this encounter away as interesting, but not really part of my research agenda.
Finally, two years later, I was in London for a month, ostensibly to study a Sufi text
with a Somali scholar resident in Britain. As luck would have it, he could find little
time for me and so I was left at a loose end with four weeks to kill. Largely out of
boredom, I went to the India Office Library looking for references to Somali reli-
gious scholars. What I found were the Aden residency records and their unbeliev-
ably textured accounts of daily life in the Settlement that form much of this book’s
core. I finally took the hint.
Even so, this is a book with an inordinately long gestation period. After finally
deciding that the fates wanted me to write a book on the Muslim community in
Aden it is a project that has been beset by delays. While conducting the preliminary
research for Imperial Muslims, I was also completing my first book Renewers of
the Age. A near fatal bout of endocarditis (a bacterial infection of the aortic valve)
and, later, open heart surgery delayed the project even further. Instability in Yemen
made trips to the region at first difficult and then impossible. In other words, there
are many reasons why this book should have never seen the light of day. I can only
aver that its ultimate publication is due to the fact that Sharif Aydarus and the other
awliya’ of Aden wished it to be so. I can only hope that they will not be displeased.
Saintly assistance aside, a project of this length naturally accrues many debts—
professional, personal and institutional. I am enormously grateful to those institu-
tions who have funded my work in various ways. These include my home institution,
Maha Nasser, Fallou Ngom, James Onley, Caroline Osella, Marit Ostebo, Carl Petry,
Ali Karjoo Ravary, David Robinson, Kaya Sahin, Rüdiger Seesemann, Omnia El
Shakry, Heather Sharkey, Rebecca Shereikis, Edward Simpson, Elke Stockreiter,
Lakhshmi Subramaniam, Eric Tagliacozzo, Muhammad Sani Umar, Jessica Winegar
and Ipek Yosmaoglu.
I must also thank many of my dear colleagues at NAU who have been a source
of great support and friendship over the years. Thanks to Sanjam Ahluwalia, Jason
BeDuhn, Joe Boles, Alexandra Carpino, Susan Deeds, Tim Darby, Paul and Ruth
Donnelly, Paul Dutton, Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, Aly Jordan, Sanjay Joshi, Cynthia
Kosso, Bjorn Krondorfer, John Leung, George Lubick, Michael Rulon, Linda
Sargent-Wood, Anne Scott, Bruce Sullivan and Rick Tillman. Special thanks to my
Chair, Professor Derek Heng, for both his friendship and support as I’ve struggled to
complete this project. I would also be remiss if I did not acknowledge the incredible
patience of my long-suffering spouse, Marilya, our kids Svea and Kai, and my
parents William and Dixie Reese. The joys of family life are always a welcome
distraction from what, if one is not careful, can become an all-consuming obsession.
I would also like to thank the editorial staff of Edinburgh University Press
(EUP), especially Nicola Ramsey, Ersev Ersoy and Rebecca Mackenzie, who have
made this a relatively painless process.
Last but certainly not least, I must thank those most closely associated with
Yemen and Aden for all of their help in completing this project. In Aden, I would
like to thank the volunteer staff of the Hambala Centre whose small, but incredibly
unique, library collection made this a much more nuanced book. Also, my gratitude
goes out to the staffs of the University of Aden as well as the National Library who
graciously welcomed me into their midst and made every effort to make my time
there productive. There are also many individual Aden “hands” without whose help
I could not have completed this book. In particular, Adel Aulaqi in London has been
a constant source of inspiration and generosity in helping me make contact with
various people and gain access to numerous sources. Thanos Petouris arranged
for me to give a talk in London to the British Yemen Society as well as provided
introductions to a number of useful contacts. It was also due to his penchant for
rummaging through people’s attics that I found out about the “lost” Hamza Luqman
typescript discussed in Chapter 1. Maher Luqman, of Jeddah, and his sister Huda
Wildy, two surviving children of Muhammad Ali Luqman, were unstinting in their
efforts to assure my access to their late father’s writings. Again, without their help,
this book would be far less rich. Similarly, Dr. Shihab Ghanem was indispensable in
helping me develop basic biographies for the Luqman brothers. Shelagh Weir needs
thanking for her bottomless hospitality and more than one Sunday lunch that turned
into drinks and dinner as well. It is always a joy to sit at her table and talk of all things
Yemen. Finally, two dear friends who did not live to see the publication of this book,
John Shipman and Leilah Ingrams. Both these incredible and generous individuals
were instrumental in bringing this work to fruition. This was in part a result of their
encyclopedic knowledge of Yemen but it was more so due to their great generosity of
heart and willingness to assist someone they hardly knew. I miss them both.
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In late 1910, Sharifa Aliyya bint Ali, the sister of the Adeni saint Sayyid Hashim
al-Bahr—and a pious, saintly woman in her own right—was gravely ill and at death’s
door. Looking to the not too distant future, the district Qadi, Umar bin Abdullah Sharaf
and “other notables of Aden,” petitioned British officials for permission to bury the
waliyya next to her brother within the same shrine. Residency bureaucrats decided
that, although there was a strict ban on burials in residential areas, an exception should
be granted in this particular instance. As long as she was properly entombed, they
noted, there would be nothing unsanitary about the interment and it would “give great
satisfaction to the Mohamedan [sic] community.” More importantly, “the burial of
the lady here would probably increase the popularity of the yearly ziyara [the festival
associated with her brother]” and would in all likelihood be a boon to local merchants.1
The collection of Arab, Indian and Somali merchants petitioning for the Sharifa’s
burial next to her brother would not have disagreed. They were well aware of the eco-
nomic benefits of the annual festivals.2 Their motives in this case, however, were not
entirely pecuniary. Sharifa Aliyya was as sanctified as her brother. While permission to
bury her next to him would save them the added expense of building a separate domed
tomb, as a “pious and sacred woman” who was “cherished,” the petitioners also hoped
they and the faithful would derive “the benefit of her blessing,” from the grave.3
By the time of this episode, in the opening decade of the twentieth century,
Britain was a global empire. But what is often less recognized by lay persons and
scholars alike is that by the end of the Victorian age, the British Empire was, demo-
graphically at any rate, arguably the largest Muslim state in the world. As Cemil
Aydin notes, by the conclusion of Queen Victoria’s reign her government ruled over
nearly 40 percent of the globe’s Muslim population.4 As such, British authorities and
Muslim subjects intersected on a daily basis in the course of the Empire’s admin-
istration and thus the interest of imperial authorities in the burial arrangements of
a local holy woman should come as little surprise. This vignette, however, also
provides a window on to the lives of Muslims and the communities they constructed
under the aegis of imperial rule.
The notables who lodged this petition were permanent residents of the British
Settlement of Aden, but hailed from across the Indian Ocean. As such, one impor-
tant element that connected them was their imperial subjecthood. The lives of all
Aden’s residents were shaped by the pervasive colonial state. They arrived in Aden
as the result of imperial design and need; their movements, their personal, political
and religious associations, along with their economic and domestic activities were
subject to the colonial surveillance regime and their civil lives were regulated by the
Indian Penal Code. The Muslims of Aden were, in this sense, quintessential subjects
of the Empire. Their ability to find common footing as a community, however, was
not premised solely on their imperial subjecthood. While Muslims in Aden may find
common cause in either their opposition to, or accommodation of, the system that
governed them, they were bound together by more positive forces: their faith. The
importance of faith as a social bond among the believers of Aden is frequently evident
through relatively concrete, or at least observable, institutions, such as mosques,
shrines and Sufi orders. In other instances, it can be found in more ineffable concepts
such as the baraka (blessings) of a deceased holy woman. Imperial Muslims explores
the dynamics of these relationships within the context of colonial Aden during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Located in Southern Arabia near the mouth of the Red Sea, at the time of its incor-
poration into the Empire in 1839, Aden was home to only a few hundred people.
While it was a port with a long and storied history, by the nineteenth century it had
fallen on very hard times. That changed with the advent of the colonial moment. Aden
emerged as a critical transportation and communications hub within Britain’s Indian
Ocean Empire, attracting thousands of new residents. While the town counted Hindus,
Jews, Parsis and Christians among these, the vast majority were Muslim. Developing a
corporate identity that was quite distinct, this was a community whose fabric was
woven from threads that ran across the western Indian Ocean. Throughout the colonial
period these people portrayed themselves as a unified group, “the Muslims of Aden.”
A great deal has been written about the networks created by Britain’s post-
Napoleonic Indian Ocean Empire. Most have focused on the political, legal or
economic consequences of empire, devoting far less attention to the personal and
social. This book examines the development of a local community within the
spaces created by imperial rule from the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of
the Second World War.5 It explores how individuals from widely disparate back-
grounds brought together by the networks of empire created a cohesive commu-
nity utilizing various aspects of their shared faith. On the one hand, this study
concerns itself with the use of discrete religious institutions—including mosques,
tombs, pious endowments and the law—to delineate the parameters of community.
However, it goes beyond these “observable” bodies to explore how an Islamic
ontology and shared concepts of the universe, along with the “agency” of the
unseen (al-ghayb), manifest in concepts such as baraka, similarly shaped the
communal lives of believers within the confines of imperial rule.
economic and political power.6 Among the most notable are Sugata Bose and Thomas
Metcalf, whose approaches are primarily structural in nature, concerned with the
administrative, economic and political effects of Britain’s Indian colony on its wider
Imperial realm. David Lambert and Alan Lester have noted in their book Colonial
Lives across the Empire that, while such forces certainly played an important role
in shaping empire, the communities that emerged from this process were created
through the intersection of multiple trajectories of “people, objects, texts and ideas.”7
While excellent works of scholarship, these and others focus largely on the political,
economic and legalistic consequences of empire.8 Few address the social con-
sequences inherent in Britain’s creation of what was effectively an Indian Ocean
empire that brought literally millions of subjects under a single political umbrella for
the first time in the modern era.9 None examines the impact of empire on the region’s
single largest confessional community: Muslims.
Scholars of Islam, as opposed to historians of empire, have devoted a great
deal of attention to the impact of nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism
on Muslim societies. Much of this has focused largely on the highest levels of reli-
gious discourse and the notion of religious reform.10 Qasim Zaman’s writings on
the evolution of reformist thought in the late colonial period and Samira Haj’s work
on Muhammad Abduh have greatly enhanced our understanding of Islamic reform
within the colonial context.11 They demonstrate that, while informed by widespread
ideals of religious scripturalism current within the “Islamic international,” specific
reformist ideas were always shaped by local conditions and concerns. More
significantly, scholars such as Haj and Talal Asad argue persuasively that rather than
a simple reaction to a monolithic Western imperialism, modern Muslim reformist
discourse must be understood as only one element in an evolving discursive
tradition concerning correct belief and practice embedded in a variety of historically
contingent institutions, practices and forms of power within particular communi-
ties and contexts.12 This is undoubtedly an important insight, however, focus on
the shaping of the highest levels of debate has led to a preoccupation with Islamic
reform movements.13 In doing so, other aspects of Muslim spirituality and society
that were also responding to colonial rule via the discursive tradition are left under-
examined.
Imperial Muslims seeks to remedy what is frankly a critical gap in our under-
standing of Muslims under colonial rule in a number of ways. The case of Aden
entails the examination of a community that was actually created by the so-called
colonial moment rather than simply shaped by it. As such, it allows us to explore
how individuals, drawn together from enormously diverse geographic, cultural and
social backgrounds, actually managed the everyday realities of living together. It
also provides insight into how empire itself facilitated the emergence of what were
effectively new communities created in part through the movement of ideas and
people—as well as imperial design—leading to the rise of new social contexts, con-
structs and novel constellations of authority. Reformist discourse and the imperial
milieu form important parts of this book, but they are only elements of a larger story.
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