Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition

359 Pages·2005·3.746 MB·English

by  Gabriele vom Bruck (auth.)

n
o
cti
e
S
c
hi
p
a
gr
o
art
C
N
U
e
h
of t
y
es
urt
o
c
4,
0
0
2
y
ar
u
n
a
J
3,
v.
e
R
7
4
8
3
o.
n
n,
e
m
e
Y
CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION
A series published with the Society for the
Anthropology of Religion
Robert Hefner, Series Editor
Boston University
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
Body / Meaning / Healing
By Thomas J. Csordas
The Weight of the Past: Living with History in
Mahajanga, Madagascar
By Michael Lambek
After the Rescue: Jewish Identity and Community in
Contemporary Denmark
By Andrew Buckser
Empowering the Past, Confronting the Future
By Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart
Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric of Anthropological Representation
Daniel Martin Varisco
Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in
Transition
Gabriele vom Bruck
A Peaceful Jihad: Negotiating Identity and Modernity in
Muslim Java
Ronald Lukens-Bull
The Road to Clarity: Seventh-Day Adventism in Madagascar
Eva Keller
Islam, Memory, and Morality
in Yemen
Ruling Families in Transition
Gabriele vom Bruck
© ISLAM,MEMORY,ANDMORALITYINYEMEN
Gabriele vom Bruck,2005.
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2005 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 and
Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire,England RG21 6XS
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United
Kingdom and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in
the European Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-4039-6665-0 ISBN 978-1-137-11742-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-11742-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vom Bruck,Gabriele.
Islam,memory,and morality in Yemen :ruling families in transition /
Gabriele vom Bruck.
p.cm.—(Contemporary anthropology of religion)
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4039-6665-0 (pbk.:alk.paper)
1.Yemen—History.2.Yemen—Kings and rulers.3.Zaydiyyah—
Yemen—History.I.Title.II.Series.
DS247.Y45V66 2005
953.3—dc22 2004052433
First edition:November 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Transferred to digital printing in 2009.
Memory is not the instrument of exploring the past but its theatre.
It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in
which dead cities lie interred. He who seeks to approach his own
buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. This confers
the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be
afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it
as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.
Walter Benjamin, Berlin Chronicle
Contents
Illustrations ix
Abbreviations xi
Acknowledgments xii
Foreword xv
Introduction Locating Memory: The Dialectics of
Incorporation and Differentiation 1
Part I Framings
1 The House of the Prophet 29
2 The Zaydi Elite during the
Twentieth-Century Imamate 44
3 The Anatomy of Houses 64
Part II Growing to be ‘Alid
4 Snapshots of Childhood 89
5 Performing Kinship 102
Part III Self-Fashioning in the
Idiom of Tradition
6 The Politics of Motherhood 131
7 Marriage in the Age of Revolution 145
8 “‘Ulama of a Different Kind” 163
9 The Moral Economy of Taste 185
viii CONTENTS
Part IV Engaging Difference
10 Defining through Defaming 199
11 Memory, Trauma, Self-Identification 216
12 History through the Looking-Glass 237
Conclusion Frontiers of Memory 248
Appendices 255
Notes 274
Bibliography 310
Glossary 332
Index 338
Illustrations
I.1 The National Pact (window sticker) 11
1.1 Genealogy of the Hashimites 32
1.2 San‘a, 1872 40
1.3 San‘a, the old city 1986 42
1.4 San‘a, suburb of al-Haddah 2005 42
3.1 The Qasimiyyun: Houses that trace descent
to Imam al-Qasim b. Muhammad 66
3.2 Sayyid Yahya al-Sa‘di, former governor
of Sa‘dah and Hubaysh, in front of one of his
ancestor’s tomb, assisting the author. Sa‘dah
province, 1985 70
3.3 Sayyid Ahmad al-Farisi’s wives and children 81
3.4 Layout of Ahmad al-Farisi’s house 82
5.1 Sayyid ‘Abd al-Qadir b. ‘Abdullah b.
‘Abd al-Qadir (right) with his father, 1940s 115
5.2 Sayyid ‘Abd al-Qadir (center) with his
youngest daughter (right) and other children
and grandchildren and a retainer, 1986 116
8.1 Sayyid ‘Ali b. ‘Ali Zabarah, Imam Ahmad’s
deputy in San‘a, Cairo 1952 171
8.2 ‘Abbas b. ‘Ali Zabarah (left, behind his
brother Mutahhar), his maternal uncle
‘Ali al-Kibsi and his brother ‘Abd al-Malik 172
8.3 ‘Abbas (left) with his friends Ahmad b.
‘Abdullah al-Zubayri and Yahya b. ‘Ali Zabarah 173
8.4 ‘Abbas (right) with Muhammad b.
‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil in Beirut, 1959 174
8.5 ‘Abbas with his family, late 1980s 175
8.6 ‘Abid b. Husayn al-Surabi, a shaykh’s son and
businessman, San‘a 2005 176
x ILLUSTRATIONS
9.1 Sayf al-Islam Muhammad al-Badr b.
Imam Yahya (1898–1931) 189
A III.1 Genealogy: Bayt Zabarah 269
A III.2 Genealogy: Bayt al-Wazir 270
A III.3 Genealogy: Bayt Ibrahim 272
A III.4 Genealogy: Bayt ‘Amir, Ahnum 273