Hadhramaut
—  Governorate  —
محافظة حضرموت
Hadhramaut
Coordinates: 15°58′56.14″N 49°1′10.40″E / 15.9822611°N 49.019556°E / 15.9822611; 49.019556
Country	Yemen
Area
• Total	193,032 km2 (74,530 sq mi)
Population (2005)
• Total	2,028,556
• Density	10.5/km2 (27/sq mi)
Time zone	Arabia Standard Time (UTC+3)
• Summer (DST)	No DST (UTC)

Kingdom of Hadhramaut (violet) in the 3rd century CE.

Hadhramaut, Hadhramout, Hadramawt or Ḥaḍramūt (Arabic: حضرموت‎ Ḥaḍramawt) is the formerly independent Qu'aiti state and sultanate encompassing a historical region of the south Arabian Peninsula along the Gulf of Aden in the Arabian Sea, extending eastwards from Yemen to the borders of the Dhofar region of Oman.^[1] The name of the region is currently retained in the smaller Hadhramaut Governorate of the Republic of Yemen. The people of Hadhramaut are called Hadhramis and speak Hadhrami Arabic.

Etymology[link]

The origin of the name is not exactly known. There are various theories. One theory is that the region is named after a nickname of Amar bin Qahtan (عمرو بن قحطان), meaning "death has come", from /ḥaḍara/ (Arabic for "has come") and /maut/ ("death"), the reason being that whenever he entered a battle, there were always many people who died.^{[citation needed]} Another theory is that after the destruction of Thamud, the Islamic prophet Saleh relocated himself and about 4,000 of his followers to the area known as Hadhramaut and it was here where he died and thus, the region was called "death has come".

Flag of Hadhramaut with three forts representing the principal cities Al Mukalla, Shibam and Ash Shihr.

Another theory^[who?] is that it is related to Hazarmaveth in Genesis 10:26^[2] and 1 Chronicles 1:20^[3] in the Bible (meaning "court of death", according to various Bible dictionaries). There, Hazarmaveth is the name of a son of Joktan, one of the sons of Shem in the table of the Sons of Noah^[4] in Genesis 10—i.e., the founders of nearby nations including Sheba, also a son of Joktan. As Southern Arabia was and is one of the homelands of the South Semitic language subfamily, a Semitic origin for the name is highly likely. If the name did reflect a biblical- or pre-biblical-era naming convention in the Near East, this would make it ancient indeed, pre-dating both Islam and Greco-Roman civilization.

A third theory is that the name derives from the Greek υδρευματα (hydreumata), or enclosed (and often fortified) watering stations at wadis. A hydreuma (singular) is a manned and fortified watering hole or way station along a caravan route. Juris Zarins, rediscoverer of the city claimed to be the ancient Incense Route trade capital Ubar in Oman, described that site in a Nova interview:

The site that we uncovered at Shisur was a kind of fortress/administration center set up to protect the water supply from raiding Bedouin tribes. Surrounding the site, as far as six miles away, were smaller villages, which served as small-scale encampments for the caravans. An interesting parallel to this are the fortified water holes in the Eastern Desert of Egypt from Roman times. There, they were called hydreumata.^{[citation needed]}

Geography[link]

Region close to Seiyun in the Hadhramaut Valley

An ancient sculpture of a griffin, from the royal palace at Shabwa, the capital city of Hadhramaut

Narrowly, Hadhramaut refers to the historical Qu'aiti and Kathiri sultanates, which were in the Aden Protectorate overseen by the British Resident at Aden until their abolition upon the independence of South Yemen in 1967. The current governorate of Hadhramaut roughly incorporates the former territory of the two sultanates. It consists of a narrow, arid coastal plain bounded by the steep escarpment of a broad plateau (al-Jol, averaging 1,370 m (4,490 ft)), with a very sparse network of deeply sunk wadis (seasonal watercourses). The undefined northern edge of Hadhramaut slopes down to the desert Empty Quarter.

In a wider sense, Hadhramaut includes the territory of Mahra to the east all the way to the contemporary border with Oman.^[1] This encompasses the current governorates of Hadramaut and Mahra in their entirety as well as parts of the Shabwah Governorate.

The Hadhramis live in densely built towns centered on traditional watering stations along the wadis. Hadhramis harvest crops of wheat and millet, tend date palm and coconut groves, and grow some coffee. On the plateau, Bedouins tend sheep and goats. Society is still highly tribal, with the old Seyyid aristocracy, descended from the Prophet Muhammad, traditionally educated and strict in their Islamic observance and highly respected in religious and secular affairs.

Hadhrami diaspora[link]

Since the early 19th century, large-scale Hadhramaut migration has established sizable Hadhrami minorities all around the Indian Ocean,^[5] in South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Africa including Hyderabad,^[6][7] Bhatkal, Gangolli, Malabar, Sylhet, Java, Sumatra, Malacca and Singapore.^[8]

In Hyderabad, the community is known as Chaush and resides mostly in the neighborhood of Barkas.

Several Indonesian ministers, including former Foreign Minister Ali Alatas and former Finance Minister Mari'e Muhammad are of Hadhrami descent, as is the former Prime Minister of East Timor Mari Alkatiri.

Hadhramis have also settled in large numbers along the East African coast,^[9] and two former ministers in Kenya, Shariff Nasser and Najib Balala, are of Hadhrami descent.

Other notable Hadhrami people include the Bin Laden family and the Ghassanids.

Modern history of the Wadi Hadhramaut[link]

The Qu'aiti sultans ruled the vast majority of Hadramaut, under a loose British protectorate, the Aden Protectorate, from 1882 to 1967, when the Hadhramaut was annexed by South Yemen.

The Qu'aiti dynasty was founded by 'Umar bin Awadh al-Qu’aiti, a Yafa’i tribesman from Southern Arabia, whose wealth and influence as hereditary Jemadar of the Nizam of Hyderabad's armed forces enabled him to establish the Qu'aiti dynasty in the latter half of the 19th century, winning British recognition of his paramount status in the region, in 1882. The British Government and the traditional and scholarly sultan Ali bin Salah signed a treaty in 1937 appointing the British government as "advisors" in Hadhramaut. The British exiled him to Aden in 1945, but the Protectorate lasted until 1967.

In 1967, the former British Colony of Aden and the former Aden Protectorate including Hadramaut became an independent Communist state, the People's Republic of South Yemen, later the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. South Yemen, along with Hadramaut, was united with North Yemen in 1990 as the Republic of Yemen. See History of Yemen for recent history.

The capital and largest city of Hadhramaut is the port Al Mukalla. The Yemeni government is encouraging northern Yemenis to "re-populate" the Hadhramaut in order to change its demographics and reduce the number of ethnic Hadhramis thereby quelling separatist sentiment. The population of North Yemen is quickly crowding into Hadhramaut's cities and exhausting their already limited resources: Al Mukalla had a 1994 population of 122,400 and a 2003 population of 174,700, while the port city of Ash Shihr has grown from 48,600 to 69,400 in the same time. One of the more historically important cities in the region is Tarim. An important locus of Islamic learning, it is estimated to contain the highest concentration of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad anywhere in the world.^[10]

See also[link]

• Arab Singaporean
• Al-Mazeedi
• Bawazir

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website of the Al-Qu'aiti Royal Family of Hadhramaut
• Architecture of Mud: documentary Film about the rapidly disappearing mud brick architecture in the Hadhramaut region.
• UN map of Yemen showing Hadhramaut (.pdf file)
• Nova special on Ubar, illustating a hydreuma
• Book review of a biography of Qu'aiti sultan Alin din Salah
• Hadhrami migration in the 19th and 20th centuries
• The Linguistics of Loanwords in Hadrami Arabic
• Ba`alawi.com Ba'alawi.com | The Definitive Resource for Islam and the Alawiyyen Ancestry.