Category Archives: Aden

Picturing Yemen’s History

Aden, Yemen


View of a busy marketplace in Aden. Staggering unemployment rate of around 35% hampers serious socio-economic development of the nation. People finishing high school and possessing university degrees are affected the most and according to a government survey published in 2008, 54% of graduates are unemployed/under employed. (Photo: Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak)

There is an interesting historical study of Yemen through photographs on the Foreign Policy Journal website. Click here to see the full article and pictures. Here is the opening explanation:

Recent events in Yemen have brought the country into limelight again. While Houthi rebels in the north and northeast of the country have an on-off political agreement with the government in Sanaa, al-Qaeda affiliated groups are flexing their muscles by attacking the authorities across the country. Political forces in southern Yemen are also unhappy with the economic development the region has seen since its union with the north two decades ago and talk of secession is ripe.

Though strategically located at the junction of the world’s most important waterways, the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the channel that connects world’s western shipping lines to the east, Yemen has failed to capitalise on its potential and emerge as a regional powerhouse. Instead, the country is at the brink of political mayhem and stands at #18 in the Failed States Index 2009 [1].

This photo story sheds light on Yemen’s ancient as well as recent history and discovers the factors that have hampered the country’s economic and socio-political development and brought it to the brink of disintegration.

Yemen – the return of old ghosts

Aden, Maps, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


The British Residency Office, Aden

YEMEN – THE RETURN OF OLD GHOSTS

by Adam Curtis, BBC blog, January 8, 2010

What I find so fascinating about the reporting of the War on Terror is the way almost all of it ignores history – as if it is a conflict happening outside time. The Yemen is a case in point. In the wake of the underpants bomber we have been deluged by a wave of terror journalism about this dark mediaeval country that harbours incomprehensible fanatics who want to destroy the west. None of it has explained that only forty years ago the British government fought a vicious secret war in the Yemen against republican revolutionaries who used terror, including bombing airliners.

But the moment you start looking into that war you find out all sorts of extraordinary things.

First that the chaos that has engulfed the Yemen today and is breeding new terrorist threats against the west is a direct result of that conflict of forty years ago.

Secondly it also had a powerful and corrupting effect on Britain itself. To fight the war both Conservative and Labour governments in the 1960s set up international arms deals with the Saudis. These involved bribery on a huge scale which led to the Al Yamamah scandal that still festers today. Continue reading Yemen – the return of old ghosts →

Cartoonist in Yemen

Aden, Contemporary Art, Egypt, Yemen

“Return to Aden:” Rediscovering Yemen, the land of a thousand tales

By Dr. T.I.Farag, The Ambassadors Online Magazine, January, 2001

This issue’s megastar and renowned political cartoonist, Ahmed Toughan, is preparing a gallery illustrating his journeys in Yemen, through his artistic drawings. During his ten visits to the country over a period of 40 years, Toughan has compiled a library of works about Yemen and developed a strong bond with the tribes, the communities, the buildings, the environment, and all that he came in contact with. Since that time, Toughan has produced galleries of water paintings, sketches and cartoons about Yemen that have been published in seven books and presented in several international exhibitions. In true and genuinely-arousing colors and strokes, Toughan’s pieces presented here capture a Yemen that transcends time and space, whose ambiance is penetrative and transporting. His art exudes a mystique that penetrates materiality while embodying all that moves his aesthetic essence. We hope that these images will move you the same way they moved me. Continue reading Cartoonist in Yemen →

Bury on Yemen

Aden, Travel, Yemen

[Note: One of the early 19th century travelers to Yemen was the British birder G. Wyman Bury. His Arabia Infelix, or The Turks in Yamen (London: MacMillan, 1915) is a personal and informative account of his visit to the southern part of Yemen, especially Aden and its hinterlands. Near the end of his book, he discusses the political climate of his day, when Britain was firmly in control of Aden as part of its Indian Empire. Clearly biased in favor of his own British order, there is nevertheless a note of irony for a country which until this day has yet to attain stability.]

The Yameni is not fanatical. He has his own religious views, but realizes, from the sects into which his own people are divided, that there are at least two sides to every religious question.

He is a patriot ; and who, indeed, could help loving a country like the highlands of Yamen, in spite of past and present woes ? His patriotism, however, does not blind him to the fact that his local rulers have done and can do little for the welfare of his country. He would gladly throw off his present yoke for any change of government that promised more stability. Continue reading Bury on Yemen →

Monkeying Around in Old Aden

Aden, Animals, Photography, Yemen

Here is an old photograph entitled “Donkey Man with Trick Monkey,” taken in Aden during the days of the British protectorate. It is not just any kind of “monkey,” of course. Sitting on the donkey is Papio hamadryas, the baboon, usually called rubâh in Yemen. It appears, in deference to the British colonial presence, that the monk is wearing britches.

In and Out of Aden

Aden, Archaeology and Antiquities, Books You Should Read, Islamic Economics, Islamic Texts, Rasulids, Travel, Yemen

[The following is an excerpt from a recently published historical analysis of the Yemeni port of Aden in the 13th and 14th centuries by Roxani Margariti (Emory University), who reconstructs port life vividly through archival records in the Cairo Genizeh, relevant Arabic texts and archaeological research. This is a fascinating look at one of the most important medieval ports in the Red Sea/Indian Ocean trading network that ultimately linked Europe with the Far East before Portuguese galleons changed the complex equation of global trade.]

by Roxani Eleni Margariti

In the current era of giant container ships, GPS, and e-commerce, a single vessel can carry forty-eight hundred trailer-sized containers of merchandize from Bremen, Germany, to Elizabeth, New Jersey, in a single voyage. The exact position of a ship is knowable at the push of a button and the blink of any eye, and one can place an order one minute and have confirmation of its receipt in the next. It is therefore difficult to grasp the medieval dimensions of dimensions and time. A respectably sized medieval Arab ship held the equivalent of about two trailer-sized containers. Continue reading In and Out of Aden →