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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 800-842-6796 Fax 812-855-7931 © 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

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