Ḥaḍramaut

Abstract

The author, who travelled in southern Arabia during the winter 1958/59 together with Prof. H. v. Wissmann and Colonel D. van der Meulen, attempts in this contribution to demonstrate the changes in population and economic geography which have occured in Hadramaut during recent decades. <br /> Ḥaḍramaut as now understood forms the major part of the British Eastern Aden Protectorate. It consists of three physical regions: 1. The coastal area, occupied by sand and pebble deserts, the Harra surfaces of recent volcanic origin and a marginal mountain chain of pronounced relief. 2. The Djöl, a raised platform consisting mainly of early Tertiary limestone which in the west, opposite the highland of Yemen, commences with a clear scarp and submerges northwards under the sands of the Ruh' al-Khäl&#239;. 3. According to physical character the wadies which are incised in the Djöl and which collect in the Wäd&#239; Ḥaḍramaut, a vale of 2—4 Km width running in a west-easterly direction, must be taken as a physical region in its own right. <br /> The potentialities for farming in the Hadramaut are very limited; they only exist in the oases of the coastal region and in the wadies whereas most of the Djöl merely serves as a passage for the Bedouins. Thus Ḥaḍramaut, even under optimum conditions, has only been able to feed about a quarter of its inhabitants with home produced foodstuffs. These unfavourable natural conditions early forced the Hadärim to emigration. Initially it was to nearby areas on the Red Sea coast and in Eastern Africa where South Arabic settlement colonies existed as early as the time of the birth of Christ. From the beginning of the last Century onwards, however, South-East Asia, in particular Singapore, Java and Sumatra, became the most favoured destinations for migration. As a result before World War II the number of Arabs from Ḥaḍramaut in the Dutch East Indies had reached about 90,000. Since the emigrants always aimed to return eventually to their homeland after years of absence, the dose links with Indonesia have found a clear reflection in Ḥaḍramaut itself. It is apparent in the architecture of the urban settlements, in eating habits and also anthropologically in considerable Malayan traces amongst many families of the economically most successful upper classes. <br /> These contacts with the outside world, however, weakened the authority of the religious leaders, the "Seyyids", descendants of Mohammed, who by means of successful business in foreign countries had themselves amassed the greatest wealth. They were neither any longer able to mediate in the numerous feuds which the vendetta made flare up again and again, nor to stem the continuing loosening of the tribal structure and to put an end to the internal disunion of the country which nearly amounted to a latent state of war. Only the truce of 1937, achieved with British help, brought an end to these troubles and provided the possibility of undertaking various development schemes, e. g. the improvement of communications. The most important consequence was the opening of the access to the Wäd&#239; Ḥaḍramaut which the conservative and strongly anti-foreign Population had prevented so far. A period of drought during World War II, which reached catastrophic proportions, and a recession of emigration, which because of the changed political Situation could no longer be resumed on the former scale even after the war, have eventually forced Hadramaut to take all measures to use the indigenous possibilities to a greater degree and increase agricultural production. Irrigation, both by utilisation of the episodic floods (seyls) and permanent irrigation by means of wells, has especially been developed. <br /> Many newly built dams utilise the floods; the success achieved by this means in Ḥaḍramaut itself is only modest whereas, in Abyan, about 50 Km to the east of Aden it was possible to develop seyl irrigation on a large scale resulting in considerable progress. By means of compact installations for distribution of the water and an extensive network of irrigation ducts which are safeguarded against "seyl erosion" it was possible to expand the cultivated area, especially for cotton growing, to 18,000 ha and to provide the basis of existence for 5,000 farm units. <br /> In the case of the development of irrigation from wells it was less the construction of new installations but the introduction of technological improvements for lifting the ground water, viz. the installation of diesel pumps into the existing well shafts. At the end of 1958 about 1,000 wells, approximately half the total of the Wädi Ḥaḍramaut, were used that way. As a consequence the oasis economy of the Wädi Ḥaḍramaut experiences not only an increase of its area but also a shift towards cultivation of crops with higher yields in which process wheat comes to dominate agricultural production to a higher degree than hitherto. <br /> High production costs are, however, a handicap to the development of agriculture. They are a consequence of the still inadequate communications and the unhealthy social conditions of the agricultural population; these arise from the share cropping and tenant farm Systems of the Middle East and further from the contempt in which agricultural work is held by large sections of the population.