Jeffrey Black | Middle East Diaries

Once Aden was the happiest of places. Or so thought the Greeks, who had the luxury of being able to pass by. They called it Eudaemon, supposing it and its environs to be endowed with all that life requires.

In the late classical era, Aden was the main rival to Alexandria as the trading entrepôt between the Mediterranean and India. Diodorus Siculus wrote in the 1st century BC of Eudaemon being visited by “sailors from every port of the world, and especially from Potana, the city which Alexander the Great founded on the Indus river.”

However, by the time of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which was written in the first century AD, the city seemed to have fallen on hard times – the result of a good sacking by the Romans. The Periplus was the Greek maritime way of knowing how to get around, where to harbour, where to re-supply. Or where not to. The first kind of travel guide, in a way. It records Eudaemon thus:

Eudaemon Arabia was once a fully-fledged city, when vessels from India did not go to Egypt and those of Egypt did not dare sail to places further on, but came only this far.

In the middle, then, of a convenient trader’s hiatus. Reason enough for a city; to be the chandlers, store-men, bookkeepers and postmen for generations of transient seafarers. Fortunes made notching up commissions on goods bound for some other place. In this case, spices moving westwards to Europe, and later, manufactures eastward to Asia. But everyone in some way a passer-by, on their way to somewhere else.
(more…)

I’ve been digging around in the informational jumble sale that is the interweb, for some nuggets on Aden, a deep-water port that was once one of the British Empire’s most useful possessions. All good colonial jaunts begin with a sense of righteous grievance – after all, one can’t just wade in and take over. Not the done thing. Hence:

In 1837 a ship under British colors was wrecked near Aden, and
the crew and passengers grievously maltreated by the Arabs. An
explanation of the outrage being demanded by the Bombay
government, the sultan undertook to make compensation for the
plunder of the vessel, and also agreed to sell his town and port
to the English. Captain Haines of the Indian navy was sent to
complete these arrangements, but the sultan’s son refused to
fulfil the promises that his father had made. A combined naval
and miltary force was thereupon despatched, and the place was
captured and annexed to British India on the 16th of January
1839.

From the very helpful and fittingly outdated britishempire.co.uk

Over the past week or so, I have been attempting to dispel at least some of my ignorance of what the Sanaa collection of manuscripts contains. I haven’t been very successful.

On the off-chance that it might be open, on Sunday I walked down past the Great Mosque, past the beggars and the kids not at school, to the House of Manuscripts. The gates were solidly locked and closed, but after a few mumblings from the security I was admitted through a side door, and ushered into the entrance hall. There, a harassed-looking man surrounded by a group of people was counting a sheaf of 500-Riyal notes. He was obviously paying the staff of Dar al-Makhtoutat, who, it being nearly midday, were anxious to be off home with their gains. A small, even more harassed-looking man who had plainly not received his wage yet, spotted me and asked what I wanted. (more…)

When you are fourteen, you get the Jambia – a fearsome-looking weapon. There was a time when it wasn’t safe to go out without one. Things aren’t so bad now. But when your cousin or brother gets married, you unsheath the blade. And then you dance with it.

Orientalists have a lot to answer for. They theorised, justified and organised the projection of European power in the Middle East for centuries, starting with Napoleon. They’re not finished yet–although these days, they are more apologetic about the power bit.

One of the side effects of the business of Orientalism in the 19th and 20th centuries was the transportation of large amounts of art and artefacts back to Europe, to tantalise world-hungry and wistful westerners for generations to come.

I have been one of those wistful types. The Chester Beatty Library in Dublin contains Europe’s finest private collection of Quranic manuscripts (which may even rival that of the Louvre). It was the first place that I encountered the marvel of Islam’s early religious art. An example contained there, by 11th Century Baghdad scribe Ibn al-Bawwab, was a treasure. Before I learned to read Arabic, as an undergraduate I remember pressing my nose against the display cases wondering what all those carefully inscribed lines and marks actually meant.

Consequently, from a personal point of view, the discovery this week that Sanaa holds an astonishingly large collection of early Quranic manuscripts was a delight. However, from the point of view of the Yemeni government, muslim believers, and just about everyone else, this fact is something of a headache. (more…)

Just one of the many manifestations of a growing collector’s craze: genuine pre-invasion Saddam memorabilia. It’s everywhere in this town.

Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and often Bobby Sands, follow me wherever I go. Despite having left Ireland years ago, I have not been able to leave the giants of the Irish Republican movement behind. This is because, somehow, they have made it into the liberation lore of the Middle East’s taxi drivers.

Over the past week here in Sanaa, I have been repeatedly congratulated on my kinship with these gentlemen. The frequency of this event seems to increase the further away I get. This is a little uncomfortable. In the bit of Ireland where I grew up, Adams and McGuinness were not heroes. They were murderers.

In Sanaa, however, they have joined the great pantheon in the sky where successful anti-imperialists go when their work is done. (more…)

I’m a fan of cheap and tasty. If it comes quickly, so much the better. Most Arabs seem to agree. Fast food is big business in the Middle East, and these days most cities on the peninsula are slathered in every take-out chain from Hardee’s to KFC (Kan’t Find the Chicken). This is a shame. There is a better way, and it is still thriving in Yemen. Take Fasouliya for example. It’s a bean stew, made with dried fasoul beans, onions, garlic, and tomatoes. You can rustle it up in large quantities, quickly.

(more…)

Rattle bang wallop. A ringing, rounding crash, and a glittering alleyway disgorges a running score of the wild-eyed and delighted. Clash and hullabaloo. Bright and shining objects go flying in the night. A fight! In the silver souq. The crowd attracts and contracts to the epicentre of the action – and now I can hear the recriminations. Plaintive, harmed, wronged. The threats. Ugly tones of impending violence. Shock. Glee.

And a small, bustling sheikh makes his way down the hill. How did he know? Was he just passing? Full of intent. Quran under the arm snug as a gun. What’s this about? Still the push-sounds, the shoves, the shouts, the stumbling over tea-trays and big brass kettles. The thrill of almost danger. The crowd moves to the thump and beat of a right old ding-dong. They love it. Talk of guns. The flash of a knife? Hot fun and adrenalin in the lean-to streets.

Move away now. Danger here. But I want to see! As does our sheikh, now burrowing through to the core of trouble. Where’s the noise gone? A vacancy. Stragglers become bored, and turn to other things. No noise. Here he is, the law-bearer, at the dead centre, judicious now with the culprits in an emptying scene. Nothing to see here. Nothing had ever happened. No problem. It’s only money.

In a Middle East full of clamour, brash money and noisy politics, there is always the temptation to write Yemen off. It’s the back of beyond, the end of the world, a nowhere, a semi-failed state. Nothing really happens here, or so people told me before my departure. If you could name one world-famous Yemeni, you’d be doing well, others said. Through the diplomatic niceties, even other Arabs look down Yemen, it seems. Apparently, it is the embarrassing cousin of the Arab family, who has an unfortunate habit of showing up for parties blasted on Qat and waving a knife everywhere. If that’s the case, oh dear. Perhaps I oughtn’t to have bothered.

A moment’s pause though. Where are we talking about? What sort of place? There must be other sources other than hearsay. A rustle through the archives, a delve into the files, retrieves some startling descriptions of this corner of the Arabian Peninsula: (more…)