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The Sāda in History: A critical essay on Ḥaḍramī historiography

In attempting to write a religious and political history of Ḥaḍramawt in the Middle Ages one inevitably encounters a number of methodological and historiographical problems some of which will be addressed in the present article. The first arises from the overall scarcity of historical documentation on the period in question. More importantly, the sources that are available are riddled with underlying agendas and biases, which often hinge on considerations of genealogy and clannish honour. These genealogical or clannish agendas and biases are evident in the sources dealing with practically every aspect of Ḥaḍrami history. However, they are especially conspicuous in the historical texts which describe the spread of the Shāfi'ī school of law in Ḥaḍramawt, the cult of local saints and the origins of local religious and educational institutions. In my recent study of Ḥaḍramī shrines and seasonal pilgrimages, I have brought out the genealogical underpinnings of the theological polemic around the cult of local holy men and women - a polemic that grew especially intense in the first decades of our century and flared up with a vengeance during the recent civil war between the Northern and Southern parts of unified Yemen. In this paper I will demonstrate how these hidden agendas have manifested themselves in the historical accounts of Ḥaḍramī Islam with special reference to the rise of the Shāfi'ī madhhab and the dissemination of Ṣūfism.