Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20th-Century Yemen

224 Pages·2014·3.684 MB·English

by  Mark S. Wagner

JEWS AND ISLAMIC LAW
IN EARLY THCENTURY YEMEN
INDIANA SERIES IN SEPHARDI AND MIZRAHI STUDIES
Harvey E. Goldberg and Matthias Lehmann, editors
JEWS AND ISLAMIC LAW
in Early th-Century Yemen
Mark S. Wagner
Indiana University Press
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone]
Fax [phone]
© 2015 by Mark S.Wagner
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The
Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on
Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSIZ39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wagner, Mark S.
Jews and Islamic law in early 20th-century Yemen / Mark S.Wagner.
pages cm. — (Indiana series in Sephardi and Mizrahi studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01482-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-
01487-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01492-4 (ebook)
1. Jews—Legal status, laws, etc.—Yemen (Republic) 2. Dhimmis
(Islamic law)—Yemen (Republic) 3. Jews—Yemen (Republic)—Social
conditions—20th century. 4. Jews—Yemen (Republic)—Politics
and government. 5. Jews—Yemen (Republic)—History—20th
century. 6. Judaism—Relations—Islam. 7. Islam—Relations—
Judaism. 8. Yemen (Republic)—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
DS135.Y4W34 2015
342.53308'5269—dc23
2014014186
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
For Eli and Oren
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Transliteration xi
Introduction 1
1 The Islamic Judicial System and the Jews 16
2 Changing God’s Law 38
3 Muslim Jews and Jewish Muslims 63
4 Concord and Conflict in Economic Life 96
5 Intercommunal Violence and the Sharī‘a 124
Conclusion 151
Notes 157
Bibliography 189
Index 201
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
I
could not have conceived the ideas explored in this book without Bernard
Haykel, with whom I studied as a graduate student at New York University. In a
2002 Arabic paleography tutorial, Bernard led me through Shawkānī’s treatise on
forcing the Jews of Yemen to collect excrement. Chapter 2 of this book revolves
around this work. In October 2002 Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson
School convened a workshop that focused on Sālim Sa‘īd al-Jamal’s relationship
to Imām Yahyā called “Judaism and Islam in Yemen.” There Bernard delivered
˙
a paper on Jamal’s quest for legal sanction to ride his bicycle, which is also dis-
cussed in chapter 2. In this eye-opening paper, Bernard drew attention to the
value of Jamal’s published collections of documents, which hide in plain sight
in the Jewish history section of most research libraries. Haykel’s interpretation
of the emergence of a branch of Salafism from within the Zaydī school, which
he develops in Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad ‘Alī al-
˙
Shawkānī, is fundamental to this book. Fundamental too is his suggestion of the
willingness of Muslim thinkers who represented this intellectual trend to radi-
cally change the status quo of the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.
The historian Menashe ‘Anzi, from the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, pos-
sesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the literature written in Israel by Jews from
Yemen. He has been a wonderful source of advice for me, and I would like to
express my gratitude to him. Among other things, he taught me that Sālim Sa‘īd
al-Jamal’s writings belong to a broad and rich world of writing by Jews from Ye-
men, some of whom acted as intermediaries with Muslim authorities and many
of whom did not. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to read his 2011
Hebrew University doctoral dissertation, “The Jews of Sanaa in an Era of Transi-
tion, a Historical Discussion in the Public Sphere: From the Ottoman Conquest
until Their ‘Aliyah to Israel, 1872–1950” (in Hebrew), but only after this book had
been finished. Therefore, I leave it to readers to explore his fascinating work. I
thank Sasson Somekh, who inspired me as a teacher and continues to inspire me.
Thanks also to the participants in the workshop “Marginality, Hierarchy,
and Ethnicity in Muslim Societies,” which met in Berlin in 2005 and Princeton in
2006, for their rigorous discussions of my work and its broader contexts. In this
regard I am particularly indebted to Leor Halevi for his thoughtful comments on
an early draft of this book. I also thank Gudrun Krämer and Mark Cohen, the
conveners of this workshop, as well as Stefan Leder, who attended the Princeton
meetings.
ix