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Journal of Arabian Studies: Arabia, the
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Yemenis and Muwalladīn in Addis
Ababa: Blood Purity and the
Opportunities of Hybridity
Sophia Pandyaa
a Religious Studies at the California State University Long Beach,
1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90804, USA
Published online: 25 Jun 2014.
To cite this article: Sophia Pandya (2014) Yemenis and Muwalladīn in Addis Ababa: Blood Purity and
the Opportunities of Hybridity, Journal of Arabian Studies: Arabia, the Gulf, and the Red Sea, 4:1,
96-114, DOI: 10.1080/21534764.2014.918337
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21534764.2014.918337
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Yemenis and Muwalladīnin Addis Ababa:
Blood Purity and the Opportunities of Hybridity
SOPHIA PANDYA
Abstract: This is an analysis of the Yemeni Muslim community living in diaspora in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, through the ethnographic lens of the politics of religious and ethnic
identity, with a particular focus on transnational and multiracial hybridity, and gender.
Living in diaspora has created pressure both to identify as ‘Yemeni’and to assimilate into
Ethiopian society. Ethiopians and Yemenis in Ethiopia have discriminated against those
considered not to be maintaining ‘pure’ethnic or religious boundaries. The muwalladīn,in
particular, experience degrees of discrimination in the Yemeni community, due to
perceptions that they are not ‘pure-blooded Yemenis’or that they are simply inferior
because they are black. Does this hybridity also create a space in which exclusionary
definitions of culture and religion can be rejected? This study examines the factors working
for and against assimilation for the Yemeni (chiefly Ḥaḍramī) and muwallad community in
Addis Ababa, and the social opportunities and implications of their migration (or that of
their ancestors), considering socio-religious class distinctions, political and economic
contexts, and gender. It explores the ways in which they have established themselves,
reimagined community, and redefined their identities.
Keywords: Yemen, Ḥaḍramaut, Ethiopia, muwallad, gender, sᾱda, hybridity, Islam, migration,
diaspora, Horn of Africa, East Africa, Muslim-Christian relations, race relations
1 Introduction
This study examines the Yemeni Muslim diasporic community in primarily Christian Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, through the ethnographic lens of the politics of religious and ethnic identity,
with a focus on transnational and multiracial hybridity, and gender. Here ‘Yemeni’refers
broadly to those whose natal or ancestral origins are from Yemen (either North or South,
unified in 1990). While statistics regarding the numbers of those of Yemeni descent in Ethiopia
are unavailable, approximately 34% of the population of this country, located in the Horn of
Africa, is composed of Muslims, some of whom are of Yemeni or of mixed Yemeni and Ethiopian
descent.
1
Most (but not all) of the Yemeni immigrants, and those of Yemeni descent who were
born in Ethiopia, claim descent from the Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut region of southern Yemen and are known
as Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs. The previously independent Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut region was composed of the Qu‘aiti state
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
Sophia Pandya is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the California State University Long Beach,
1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90804, USA, sophia.pandya@csulb.edu.
Author’s note: I extend my gratitude to the American Institute for Yemeni Studies for funding my research.
I also thank my graduate student research assistants Keri Hughes and Brenda Oliden.
1
Orthodox Christians comprise 43.5% of the total population of Ethiopia, Protestants 18.6%, Muslims
33.9%, Traditional Religionists 2.6%, and Catholics 7%. US Govt, CIA, “Ethiopia”,The World Factbook
(2013–14).
Journal of Arabian Studies 4.1 (June 2014) pp. 96–114
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21534764.2014.918337
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and Kathiri sultanate, subsumed by the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1967. The
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut is long associated with Islamic learning, Sufism, and trade with Africa. Its proximity
to Ethiopia helped spread Islam in the region.
In Addis Ababa, those of mixed Yemeni-Ethiopian descent refer to themselves as muwallad
(f. muwallada, pl. m. muwalladīn,
2
pl. f. muwalladᾱt). The term carries a variety of meanings,
despite a dictionary glossing as ‘born and raised among Arabs (but not of pure Arab blood)’,
‘half-breed’, and ‘half-caste’.
3
Huub de Jonge notes that in the Indies, the muwalladīnare “chil-
dren of mixed marriages”, in this case Indo-Ḥaḍramīs,
4
Matthew Gordon points out that in
Abbasid Samarra the word was used in reference to the local Iraq population, as distinguished
from the Turks,
5
and Engseng Ho identifies “muwallad”as “Ḥaḍramīoffspring born of foreign
[to the Ḥaḍramaut] mothers”, and a synonym for “creole”.
6
What the term means is shaped by
context and perspective; however, Ho’s usage —extended to those of Yemeni (not only
Ḥaḍramī) and Ethiopian parents —reflects contemporary practice in Ethiopia.
7
Overwhelmingly,
the muwalladīntrace Yemeni descent through paternal lines.
Living in diaspora creates pressure both to identify as ‘Yemeni’(or for most, specifically as
‘Ḥ
ad ̣
ramī’) and to assimilate into Ethiopian society. Stephen Castles and Mark Miller have argued
that contemporary transnational theory analyzes how “technological and cultural shifts linked to
globalization allow migrants to maintain close and durable links with their places of origin”.
8
Those of Yemeni descent are indeed more able, today than before, to travel to Yemen, or to com-
municate with relatives there, although I found that many, while retaining ties to Yemen, have
actively remapped communal identity in Ethiopia. In his analysis of the Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīdiaspora,
Leif Manger notes that there is no identifiable, essential, and fixed “collective we”to describe,
and that diasporic space is contested.
9
As Benedict Anderson writes, membership in a shared
community (he refers to the construct of nationalism) is imagined and a lived reality —a creation,
but not a “falsity”.
10
Samson Bezabeh refers to “boundary making processes”—how members,
in this case of the Yemeni diaspora (including the muwalladīn) in Ethiopia, manifest this imagined
community —a focus of this study as well.
11
Considering ethnicity, Castles and Miller further point out that it “only takes on social and
political meaning when it is linked to processes of boundary-drawing between dominant
groups and minorities”.
12
Given religious, cultural and ethnic tensions, it is important to
observe how those with mixed or multiple identities —such as those with degrees of Yemeni/
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīand Ethiopian descent —navigate.
2
The plural of muwallad in Arabic is muwalladūn; here I use the colloquial muwalladīn.
3
Cowan (ed.), Hans Wehr: A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (1994), p. 1286.
4
de Jonge, “Selective Accommodation: The Hadhramis in Indonesia During World War II and the
Struggle for Independence”,Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 31.2 (2011),
p. 344.
5
Gordon, “The Turkish Officers of Samarra: Revenue and the Exercise of Authority”,Journal of the
Economic and Social History of the Orient 42.4 (1999), p. 475.
6
Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility Across the Indian Ocean (2006), p. 68.
7
Ho, “Hadhramis Abroad in Hadhramaut: The Muwalladīn”,inHadhrami Traders, Scholars, and Sta-
tesman in the Indian Ocean, 1750s–1960s, eds Freitag and Clarence-Smith (1997), pp. 131–2.
8
Castles and Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World
(2009), p. 70.
9
Manger, The Hadrami Diaspora: Community-Building on the Indian Ocean Rim (2010), p. 2.
10
Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2006), p. 6.
11
Bezabeh, “Muslim Hadramīsin‘Christian Ethiopia’: Reflections on Boundary Making Processes”,
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 30 (September 2010), p. 333.
12
Castles and Miller, Age of Migration, p. 37.
Yemenis and Muwalladīnin Addis Ababa 97
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These ideas are significant to this analysis: as with other aspects of communal identity, race,
ethnicity, culture, and religion cannot be considered fixed and immutable, but imagined, resulting
in lived realities, and contested. Terms such as ‘Yemeni’,‘Ḥ
ad ̣
ramī’,‘muwallad’,or‘Ethiopian’
are also constructions which manifest actualities; the use of those markers is informed by those
interviewed. Grant Cornwell and Eve Stoddard remind us that, “far from being ‘natural’or ‘objec-
tive’, categories of difference are highly contingent on the vagaries of place and time wherein they
are deployed.”
13
While terms of identity generally must be understood as subjective, fluid, cre-
ations, and in transition, nonetheless, clear strands of continuity can be identified. Many scholars
of diaspora, including myself, “do not fully subscribe to the idea that all objects and objects of
research have become entirely fluid”.
14
Discourse on the long history of Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīemigration has analyzed the processes and impli-
cations of the integration of Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīimmigrants to their host communities. Françoise Le
Guennec-Coppens notes that integration in East Africa was more successful for those
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs of higher socio-religious status, and in general led to a process of social leveling.
15
Martin Slama contrasts the experiences of Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs in Java and Sulawesi, arguing that in Java
in the 1850s, the Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs were forced by the Dutch colonial administration to live in
separate quarters from the natives. Yet in Sulawesi, they lived far from colonial attention and
were not segregated. Because of this, in Sulawesi, integration was more successful, leading to
the strengthening of Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīorganizations and the blurring of Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīclass distinctions
based on bloodlines between Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs themselves.
16
Most muwalladīn, in particular, experience degrees of discrimination in the broader Yemeni
community due to perceptions that they are not ‘pure-blooded Yemeni Arabs’, or that they are
inferior because they are black, regardless of whether or not they were able to claim sᾱda status,
or descent to the Prophet Muhammad, which is considered to pass through the paternal line regard-
less of maternity. Marwan M. Kraidy rightly argues that analyses of cultural hybridity should be
grounded in specific political and economic contexts, taking into account both “agency and struc-
ture”, a process he terms “critical transculturalism”.
17
The question is whether the cultural and/or
racial hybridity of muwalladīnand diasporic ‘pure-blooded’Yemenis in Ethiopia serves to reject
older “bounded definitions of race, language, and nation”, as Haj Yazdiha argues.Does this hybrid-
ity also allow exclusionary definitions of culture, religion, and gender to be rejected?
18
Sally Gallagher argues that women are limited by both external structures and actors with self-
determination. Gender constructions are shaped by family, community, class, the state, and by
individual aptitudes to ‘bend’gender norms.
19
Transnationalism and hybridity also likely
13
Cornwell and Stoddard (eds), Global Multiculturalism: Comparative Perspectives on Ethnicity, Race,
and Nation (2001), p. 23.
14
Kokot, Tölölyan, and Alfonso (eds), Diaspora, Identity and Religion: New Directions in Theory and
Research (2004), p. 4.
15
Le Guennec-Coppens, “Social and Cultural Integration: A Case Study of the East African Hadramis”,
Journal of International African Institute 59 (1989), pp. 190–3.
16
Slama, “Paths of Institutionalization, Varying Divisions, and Contested Radicalisms: Comparing
Hadrami Communities on Java and Sulawesi”,Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
East 31 (2011), pp. 331–6. Literature on Hadrami migration includes Dale, “Conversion and the Growth
of the Islamic Community of Kerala, South India”,Studia Islamica 71 (1990), pp. 155–75, and Mandal,
“Popular Sites of Prayer, Transoceanic Migration, and Cultural Diversity: Exploring the Significance of
keramat in Southeast Asia”,Modern Asian Studies 46 (2012), pp. 355–72.
17
Kraidy, Hybridity: The Cultural Logic of Globalization (2005), p. 149.
18
Yazdiha, “Conceptualizing Hybridity: Deconstructing Boundaries Through the Hybrid”,Formations
1 (2010), p. 32.
19
Gallagher, Making Do in Damascus: Navigating a Generation of Change in Family and Work (2012).
98 Sophia Pandya
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shape gendered possibilities. Considering factors working for and against assimilation for
the Yemeni (chieflyH
̣
ad ̣
ramī) and muwallad community in Addis Ababa, and the social oppor-
tunities and implications of their migration (or that of their ancestors), the following explores the
ways in which members of this diverse group have established themselves and redefined their
identities.
Toward this goal, this study offers a portrait of the way those of Yemeni descent have
mapped themselves onto the Addis Ababa landscape and provide context regarding their
history in Ethiopia. Analyzing questions of (perceived) blood purity and its relation to social
status within the Yemeni and Yemeni-Ethiopian community in Addis Ababa, I identify oppor-
tunities and drawbacks experienced by those self-identified as of mixed descent. Manger states
that we must be “concerned with people’s own narratives, through which we can see the group
memory evolve”.
20
To collect these narratives, I spent three weeks in Ethiopia during January and two weeks in
June 2011, during which time I interviewed thirty-two people: thirteen Yemenis, nineteen muwal-
ladīn, including fifteen women and seventeen men, all Muslim. I also interviewed eight Ethiopian
individuals: five men (three Muslim and two Christian), and three Christian women, and one
Indian woman who had converted to Islam from Christianity. My ethnographic research tech-
niques included participant-observation, interviews, and discussions with any self-identified
Yemeni, Ethiopian, or muwallad who would chat with me. I took notes during interviews
because of people’s reluctance to be recorded. Most interviews were carried out in English, but
a few in Arabic. I met informants at restaurants, the Yemeni Embassy, the Yemeni Community
School, weddings, and people’s homes. I have also observed muwalladīnand Yemeni social hier-
archies in Yemen in 2000, 2006, 2007, and 2009.
2 A Yemeni tour of Addis Ababa
A trip through Addis Ababa with a Yemeni who wanted to show me how rooted Yemenis are in
the capital presents context to the question of identity and illustrates communal mapping. I met
Ahmed,
21
aH
̣
ad ̣
ramīYemeni in his forties, in Yemen al-Saeed, one of at least five Yemeni restau-
rants there, where Yemeni, Ethiopian and muwallad men gather outside in groups drinking tea,
smoking, and speaking Arabic, and where men and women meet inside to eat enormous plates
of spiced rice, chicken, lamb, goat, and vegetables. Arabic-language programs are broadcast,
and a room is provided for Muslims to pray if desired. Such venues provide social opportunities
for people of Yemeni descent to meet others in the community, whether narrowly or broadly
defined. The owner of Yemen al-Saeed kindly referred me to Ahmed, and the following day
he generously gave me a tour of Addis Ababa, population 2,979,000 (2011 estimate).
22
As he
explained that the Yemeni community has a profound history in Ethiopia, we passed a tall,
upscale building, owned by a muwallad billionaire named Muhammad Husayn al-Amoudi
who had amassed his fortune in the oil and construction industries in Saudi Arabia. He is the
sixty-first richest person in the world, worth around $12.5 billion.
23
Al-Amoudi owns the Sher-
aton Hotel, the most opulent in Addis (the popular abbreviation), and his class status is a reminder
that some muwalladīnhave transcended stigmas.
As we sped along the busy, dusty and bumpy roads of Addis, we passed two elegant mosques.
Al-Noor Mosque, originally built by a Yemeni, was restored by the late Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan
20
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora,p.7.
21
I have changed the names of my informants to protect their privacy.
22
UNdata,“Ethiopia: Summary Statistics.”
23
Anon., “The World’s Billionaires,”Forbes, March 2012.
Yemenis and Muwalladīnin Addis Ababa 99
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Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi. Anwar Mosque, emerald green and white with golden domes, is the
largest mosque in Ethiopia; the Italians commenced construction in the 1920s, although a com-
mittee of Muslims, the Islamic Association, oversaw its completion.
24
While Ahmed credited
Yemenis for its completion, I was not able to verify this. In July 2012, the Anwar Mosque was
the site of Muslim protests against the Ethiopian government regarding religious freedom.
25
Most Muslims in Ethiopia are Sunni of the shafiʿīschool, although some are ḥanafī; in fact, there
is a wide range of ways in which Islam is practiced.
26
In Mercato, the largest open-air market in
Africa, Ahmed pointed out where there used to be a group of shops called sūq al-yamanī(the
Yemeni market), but indicated that only a few Yemeni businesses remain today in the post-Mengistu
period. Yemeni merchants found Islam to be a means of forging ties with other Muslim Ethiopian
merchants, not only through the mosques the Yemenis had built, but also through the Yemeni Com-
munity School, located in Mercato, where Ethiopians were able to pursue Qur’anic studies and learn
Arabic. Most of the Ethiopian merchants in Mercato were Gurage Muslims, and many learned
Arabic in order to trade with the Yemenis. Members of both groups met at one of the few
mosques in those days —prior to the late 1970s —in order to worship and also to network. Accord-
ing to one Ethiopian Muslim, the Yemenis were known as trustworthy and they traded in Mercato
for years. He said, “Religion made a big impact. AYemeni guy would be more likely to give credit to
a Muslim Ethiopian than a Christian one, and vice versa.”
According to my interviewees, there were many thousands more Yemenis in Addis before the
socialist Derg regime deposed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, and before the dictatorship of
Haile Mariam Mengistu that followed (r. 1977–91).
27
Both wealthy and small-scale traders
were targeted as ‘capitalists’and much of their property was confiscated, leading to a wave of
departures. According to an official from the Yemeni Embassy, the Yemeni merchant community
consists of approximately 5,000–10,000 Yemenis, primarily Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs. Some Yemeni men now
journey back and forth, tending to business in Addis and family in Yemen. Ahmed himself
was born in Addis after his father had emigrated from Yemen. He traveled to Yemen during
the Mengistu years, when thousands and perhaps as many as half a million people were killed
in Mengistu’s‘Red Terror’, and then with the fall of the regime he returned to his birthplace.
28
We passed an entire block of shabby, Italianate buildings in Mercato, previously owned by
Yemenis, and stopped at an ancient well owned for the last eighty years by a Yemeni family —dis-
tributing water to the thirsty is part of Islamic practice. The owners invited us to their apartment for
tea. Once inside, Hussein, one of the well-keepers, said that the entire building was formerly owned
by his family, but that the socialists had expropriated it, leaving them only a small apartment.
When we left their home, I noticed a Yemeni Community Center and a Yemeni Community
School, also in Mercato. Neither is widely used by the local Yemeni community, which struck me
as strange, but I began to understand the reasons for that after meeting Ahmed’s daughter, around
twelve years of age. Unveiled, wearing Western clothes, she chatted with her friends on her cell
phone while we drank tea. She said that she never wanted to live in Yemen. In Addis, she was able
to go swimming, to the movies, and the mall, and that all of her friends were Ethiopian. Her
mother is Armenian and so she attends the Armenian school, considered to be much stronger
24
Ahmed, “Faith and Trade: The Market Stalls Around the Anwar Mosque in Addis Ababa During
Ramadan”,Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 19 (October 1999).
25
Amnesty International, “Ethiopia: Widespread Violations Feared in Clampdown on Muslim Protests”
(26 July 2012).
26
Abbink, “Transformations of Islam and Communal Relations in Wallo, Ethiopia”,Islam and Muslim
Politics in Africa, eds Soares and Otayek (2007), p. 67.
27
Marcus, A History of Ethiopia (1994), pp. 179–80.
28
Ibid., pp. 195–6.
100 Sophia Pandya
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academically than the Yemeni school, which currently receives very little support from the
Yemeni community. Others told me that the Yemeni school does not prepare children for
today’s marketplace, focusing only on Islam and Arabic, and that most Yemenis in Addis send
their children to foreign or international schools. Another strategy, employed more frequently
in the past by Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs, was to send one’s children to be raised in the mahjar (place of immigra-
tion) to the Ḥaḍramaut in their teen years.
29
While older generations of Yemenis in Addis have many ways of maintaining community —
e.g. qᾱtchews (qᾱt,orCatha Edulis, is a mild stimulant —chat in Amharic),
30
socio-religious
celebrations known as mawlids, communal prayer, lunching at Yemeni restaurants —many told
me that the new generation does not give priority to preserving Yemeni identity.
31
In fact, one
evening, attending a qᾱtchew, I asked about the Yemeni Community School. A gentleman in
attendance told me that it used to be supported by the embassies of both North and South
Yemen, but that after unification in 1990, the school was neglected and the merchants who had
funded it died. “I don’t think the younger generation here has anything in common with
Yemenis in Yemen,”he complained.
Merchant-class parents prioritize educational programs in English with practical financial appli-
cations for their children over programs that communicate culture and religion, and this has created a
‘generation gap’: many young people are more interested in Western culture and material gain than
Yemeni culture and religion. Arabic is not widely spoken by Ethiopian Muslims,
32
and formal
Arabic is not always passed on to the children of Yemeni parents living abroad. Manger notes
that most remaining diasporic Yemenis in Addis have chosen to place their children in private edu-
cational venues, while others have left for Saudi Arabia or the Gulf where the economy is healthier.
33
This snapshot of a single outing in which I meandered through the city with Ahmed and his
daughter —I later met his wife and his two sons —gave the impression of a community that has
undergone massive upheavals in the last forty years, a community in transition negotiating mul-
tiple identities. While watching traditional dances at an Ethiopian restaurant, Ahmed pointed out
that Yemeni and Ethiopian cultures have become deeply intertwined. This was reflected in the tour
he gave me, in the events I attended, and in the narratives I was told. The dances represented many
regions of Ethiopia, and at least one was Yemeni in origin. The dancers wore Yemeni scarves and
traditional daggers (jambīyas), highlighting the absorption of Yemeni culture, and cultural
hybridity. In fact, while Ahmed’s daughter appeared to be part of an internationally focused gen-
eration that has received no formal training in Islam or Yemeni culture or the particulars of mawlid
attendance or qᾱtchews, she is nonetheless growing up as a Muslim Yemeni/Armenian/Ethio-
pian, which she will doubtless perform in her own hybrid and globalized way.
3 History of Yemenis in Ethiopia
The relationship between Yemen and Ethiopia goes quite far back. There is evidence of pre-
Islamic Yemenite activities in Africa from as early as 700 BCE.
34
Legends of the interaction
29
Ho, Graves of Tarim, p. 241.
30
The Amharic word developed from the Arabic. [Gebissa, Leaf of Allah: Khat and Agricultural Trans-
formation in Harerge Ethiopia (1875–1991) (2004), p. 26].
31
Amawlid (pl. mawᾱlid) is a socio-religious event that celebrates the birth of the Prophet, other reli-
giously significant people, or to mark a significant life event.
32
Abbink, “Transformations of Islam”, p. 67.
33
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora, p. 102.
34
Le Roux, “In Search of the Origin of the Merchants of the Sena”,Religion and Theology 10 (2003),
pp. 1, 41.
Yemenis and Muwalladīnin Addis Ababa 101
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between the Queen of Sheba (claimed by Yemen and Ethiopia) and King Solomon, and the
history of their son Menelik, from whom Emperor Selassie claimed descent, also point to
pre-Islamic ties. Some ṣaḥāba (companions) of the Prophet Muhammad left Mecca for
Aksum, Ethiopia, in 615 CE in order to seek refuge from a sympathetic Christian Ethiopian
king.
35
Because Ethiopia was considered friendly to the early Muslims, it was not targeted
for jihad.
36
Later Muslim Arabs living under the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) are known
to have traveled to the East African island of Dahlak.
37
For centuries, the ruling class in Ethio-
pia was Semitic. Ge’ez is one of the oldest Semitic languages,
38
from which Amharic (the offi-
cial language of Ethiopia), Tigre, and Tigrigna are derived, and which today is used for
ecclesiastical purposes.
39
Many Ethiopians expressed pride in their Semitic descent and their
connections to the ‘biblical lands’.
40
Semitic migrations from Yemen and southern Arabia to
the Tigray region of Ethiopia took place in approximately the seventh-century BC. The
Arabs who migrated were known as Ḥabashat, and they intermarried with other groups,
including the local Kushites, imparting Semitic culture in the region.
41
The Semitic term
ḥabasha, from which the English word for Abyssinia is derived, has been confused with the
Arabic for ‘mixed’. It has taken on a variety of meanings in different contexts, but among
Ethiopians and Eritreans it has come to refer primarily to an Amhara or Tigray-Tigringa
person of Ethiopian or Eritrean descent, and thus perceived as having Semitic (and not only
African) origins.
42
I have heard Yemenis use it simply to denote people they consider to be
Ethiopian or Eritrean (but not necessarily Semitic), and at times as a pejorative for a person
of African descent.
From the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, (chiefly male) Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs traveled to East
Africa’s Swahili Coast for trade, and also came to be known as religious authorities; some
were known to perform magic, especially the sᾱda (pl. of sayyid).
43
Yemeni society, including
Ḥaḍramīsociety, was and is characterized by stratified social groups or classes. The sᾱda, who
claim to be descendants of the Prophet and who are known for their religious authority, comprise
the most prestigious group, although in the past century the degree of respect for their status has
come to depend on the political environment.
44
More recently, movements of religious reform
have weakened sᾱda privilege.
45
Hagiographic literature typically portrays the sᾱda as religious
ascetics who built mosques and libraries, cultivated palm trees, and frequently donated to the
35
Abbink, “A Historical and Anthropological Approach to Islam in Ethiopia: Issues of Identity and Poli-
tics”,Journal of African Political Studies 11 (December 1998), p. 111.
36
Abbink, “Transformations of Islam”, p. 67.
37
Miran, “A Historical Overview of Islam in Eritrea”,Die Welt des Islams, New Series 45 (2005), pp. 2,
180–1.
38
Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (1965), p. 33. The Sabaen language transformed into Ge’ez before the
rise of Islam.
39
Zewdu, A History of Modern Ethiopia: 1855–1974 (1991), p. 7.
40
An Ethiopian taxi driver, speaking of a Liberian friend, said, “She is black, not Ethiopian,”implying
that Ethiopians are not really ‘black’.
41
Zewdu, History of Modern Ethiopia, pp. 33–5.
42
Habecker, “Not Black, But Ḥabasha: Ethiopian and Eritrean Immigrants in American Society”,Ethnic
and Racial Studies 35 (July 2012), p. 1205; Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia,p.5.
43
Boxberger, On the Edge of Empire: Hadramawt, Emigration, and the Indian Ocean, 1880s–1930s
(2002), p. 45. Boxberger notes that Hadramis of other social castes were also present but not as “visible”
as the sᾱda.
44
Ho, Graves of Tarim, pp. 302–4. For the history of the sada, see Bujra, The Politics of Stratification: A
Study of Political Change in a South Arabian Town (1971).
45
Le Guennec-Coppens, “Social and Cultural Integration”, p. 189.
102 Sophia Pandya
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poor, activities which granted them political, social, and religious power.
46
Other classes are the
mashᾱyikh (religious authorities not related to the Prophet), qabᾱʾil (tribal leaders), masᾱkīn
(townspeople), businesspeople, farmers and other laborers, and slaves.
47
As Ho states, “migration is a chronic feature of Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīlife.”
48
Reasons for leaving included
drought or warfare in the homeland and the desire to spread Islam and engage in trade abroad.
49
Most of those who left in earlier centuries were sᾱda, and they, as well as Ḥaḍramīs from non-sᾱda
classes, traveled to Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Kenya Ethiopia, India, and Indonesia, often marrying
local women. Some wrote travelogs of their experiences, biographies of other noteworthy
Ḥaḍramīs, and connected with networks of other Ḥaḍramīscholars in East Africa and sites of
Ḥaḍramīmigration.
50
Most were of the shᾱfiʿīmadhab (school of thought).
51
The community pos-
sessed texts that discussed diasporic issues as early as the seventeenth century and aided them in
their “transcultural mobility”.
52
Ḥaḍramīs in the mahjar formed new communities, often joining
with others from the same area of the Ḥaḍramaut.
53
Their waves of migration formed “both a trade
diaspora and a religious diaspora”, and from the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century,
when greater numbers of non-sᾱda migrated, a “labor diaspora”.
54
Migrants sent remittances
home, helping to shape the cultural and economic landscape in the Ḥaḍramaut. By the 1930s,
20–30% of the Ḥaḍramīpopulation lived outside of the Ḥaḍramaut region.
55
Yemenis from
other regions also emigrated, both Sunnis and Zaydi Shi‘a.
56
Those Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs who originated near the coast of Yemen tended to travel to East Africa where
a trader needed a host for protection, and had good relations with inland Somalis on the trade
routes during the nineteenth century, and thus an edge over other trading communities.
57
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīSufis and religious scholars began to set up Islamic centers in Ethiopia, and between
these centers and the efforts of Muslim merchants, East Africa began to Islamize.
58
Sufiorders
functioned as channels of conversion.
59
Through the Sufipractice of constructing and venerating
saint tombs, they have mapped sacred spaces wherever they have traveled.
60
Islam in Ethiopia has long been characterized by its syncretism and its interactions with tra-
ditional African religions and various forms of Christianity.
61
It spread without much conflict, in
part because Amhara-Tigray Christians disdained vocations of trade and craftwork, creating open-
ings for Yemeni migrants. In the east, the Muslim city of Harar was a trading post, a locus of inter-
action with Yemen, and a center of Islamization.
62
Local (and willing) converts to Islam were
46
Knysh, “The Sada in History: A Critical Essay on Hadrami Historiography”,Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society, Third Series 9 (July 1999), p. 221.
47
Boxberger, On the Edge of Empire, p. 18.
48
Ho, Graves of Tarim, p. 71.
49
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora, pp. 1–2.
50
Hartwig, “Contemplation, Social Reform, and the Recollection of Identity: Hadrami Migrants and
Travellers Between 1896 and 1972”,Die Welt Des Islams, New Series 41 (2001), pp. 312, 315, 318–19.
51
Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, p. 232.
52
Ho, Graves of Tarim, p. 153.
53
Boxberger, On the Edge of Empire, p. 42.
54
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora,p.1.
55
Boxberger, On the Edge of Empire,p.2.
56
Trimingham notes that the Zaydi emigrants (of his era) in Ethiopia either converted to Sunni Islam or
practiced taqiyya (prudential dissimulation) [Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, p. 232].
57
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora, p. 90.
58
Ibid., pp. 88–90.
59
Abbink, “Historical and Anthropological Approach”, p. 120.
60
Mandal, “Popular Sites of Prayer”, pp. 356, 372.
61
Ibid., pp. 110–12.
62
Zewdu, History of Modern Ethiopia, pp. 19–20.
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attracted because it served to resist Christian authority and to establish connections with Muslims
abroad, previously not feasible for those practicing indigenous African traditions.
63
Jan Abbink
coined the term “religious oscillation”to describe the phenomenon in Ethiopia in which a Chris-
tian convert to Islam returns to the prior religious status, or vice versa.
64
Islamization in Ethiopia was limited by the successes of Christian Emperor Menelik II
(r. 1889–1913), but Haile Selassie granted constitutional equality to all religions in 1930.
65
The end of World War II, which witnessed the formation of nation-states and nationalism, was
a transitional period for the diasporic community in Ethiopia and elsewhere because of pressure
on minorities to become citizens and assimilate to the greater collective national identity.
66
Bezabeh argues: “excluded and depoliticized beings are vital to the politically included beings,
as they are repeatedly used to legitimize those who are the core of the state.”
67
Ethiopian
Muslims and Muslims originally from other countries, experienced discrimination in Ethiopia
where the Christians were dominant for centuries until the 1970s when the anti-religious socialists
took over.
68
State identity has depended on the marginalization of those not considered ‘authentic’
citizens; applied here, Ethiopian state formation has also depended in part on the marginalization
of Muslims and diasporic communities such as the Yemenis. As Clifford Geertz argues, when a
new state is formed, it “roils primordial sentiments”and fuels “parochialism, communalism, raci-
alism”.
69
Ethiopia became a ‘new state’at least twice during the last century: when Haile Selassie
(r. 1916–74) was deposed and the socialists took over, and when socialist Mengistu was toppled in
1991.
70
Communal sentiments certainly ‘roiled’during wartimes, as discussed below.
4 Challenges: caste consciousness, stigma, racism, and the economy
Diasporic reality involves negotiating with local forces to create space for the new community to
flourish. Those in the Muslim community in Ethiopia, including the Yemeni (especially
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramī) diaspora, have long been considered enemies of the central Christian Ethiopian
state.
71
A series of wars between the early Christian state and Muslim sultanates were fought
during the Middle Ages.
72
Clashes erupted when the sultanates refused to pay tribute to the
Ethiopian kings.
73
In more recent times, the Yemeni diaspora in Ethiopia suffered from several political events,
when Yemenis were either suspected of siding with the enemies of Ethiopia and thus becoming
enemies themselves, or considered capitalists and thus foes on another count. During the Italian
occupation (1936–41), the Italians repressed the Ethiopian Christian population while supporting
63
Abbink, “Historical and Anthropological Approach”, p. 116.
64
Ibid., p. 118.
65
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora, p. 91.
66
Ho, Graves of Tarim, pp. 305–6.
67
Bezabeh, “Citizenship and the Logic of Sovereignty in Djibouti”,African Affairs 110.441 (2011),
pp. 13, 20.
68
Abbink, “Historical and Anthropological Approach”, p. 110.
69
Geertz (ed.), “The Integrative Revolution”,inOld Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity
in Asia and Africa (1963), pp. 120, 127.
70
Marcus, History of Ethiopia, pp. xi, 179. Haile Selassie was regent until 1930 when he was crowned
emperor.
71
Abbink notes that while Christianity was never the official “state religion”, emperors had to be Chris-
tian and the state played the role of “Protector of the Church”[Abbink, “Historical and Anthropological
Approach”, p. 1150].
72
Bezabeh, “Muslim Hadramis”, pp. 335–6.
73
Abbink, “Historical and Anthropological Approach”, p. 114.
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the Muslims in a number of ways, furthering Christian-Muslim animosity.
74
During the war with
Eritrea, Yemenis in Ethiopia were thought to have to been aligned with the Muslim community in
Eritrea. In 1952, with the support of the USA, Eritrea and Ethiopia united under a federal agree-
ment. In 1962, the federation ended and Ethiopia absorbed Eritrea as one of its fourteen provinces,
but was met by armed resistance supported by certain Arab governments that wanted to Arabize
the Red Sea region. Yemenis in Ethiopia responded by attempting to convince Ethiopians that
they supported Ethiopia, but they were nonetheless stigmatized by this event.
75
Similarly, the
Yemeni diaspora was considered suspect during the 1977–8 Ogaden War between Muslim
Somalia and Ethiopia.
76
Arabs in Djibouti during the pre-independence era (Djibouti won inde-
pendence in 1977) were also threatened with expulsion and possibly with ‘cleansing’; many left
for Yemen and elsewhere.
77
When Haile Selassie was replaced by the Derg regime (1974–91), the
Yemeni community —as merchants, landowners, and prominent businessmen —were con-
sidered capitalists and cast as rivals of the socialist state. Nonetheless, the Derg was opposed
to any form of religion, whether Christianity or Islam, and while it attempted to eradicate religious
culture, it granted equal rights to the two religions, allowing Islam a ‘public status’not previously
held.
78
In April 1974, nearly 100,000 Muslims demonstrated in the capital for a series of religious
freedoms and rights, some subsequently granted.
79
The stigmatization of the Arab and Yemeni community, fueled by a history of political
tension, led to discriminatory views. Some Ethiopians described Yemeni Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs as crude,
shabby, dirty, feminine (referring to their clothing), and called them camel traders, homosexuals,
and womanizers.
80
Strictly adherent Ethiopian Christians will not eat Muslim ḥalᾱl(religiously
permitted) meat, and if they do, they require ritual purification. One Christian Ethiopian
related that if a Christian eats ḥalᾱlmeat cooked by a Muslim, he or she must have holy water
sprinkled on the body to restore purity. A Yemeni restaurant owner complained that he had
twice been thrown in jail by Ethiopian officials for no good reason. However, others reported
that times have changed and that many Christians and Muslims now will eat meat sold or prepared
by members of the other community.
5 The stigma of blackness: purity, racism, and the Muwalladīnand Muwalladᾱt
While diasporic communities experience internal and external conflicts, diasporic status also
offers opportunities for creative constructs. There has never been a single “collective role and
identity of Ethiopian Muslims”, or of Yemeni or muwallad Muslims living in diaspora.
81
Hierar-
chy exists even among the muwalladīn. A wealthy Ḥaḍramīmuwallad laughingly admitted that he
is so proud of his Ḥaḍramīroots that he considers a Ḥaḍramīmuwallad, likely a merchant, to be
far superior to a muwallad whose paternal ancestry traces to northern Yemen, and who probably
migrated as a laborer. Robina Mohammad argues that the marginalization of a group functions to
enhance its collective identity, but that within that collective identity there are “complex internal
74
Ibid., pp. 116–17.
75
See Bezabeh, “Muslim Hadramis”, pp. 333, 336–7; Manger, Hadrami Diaspora, pp. 97–8. Eritrea
gained independence in 1991.
76
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora, p. 98.
77
Bezabeh, “Citizenship”, p. 13.
78
Abbink, “Historical and Anthropological Approach”, p. 117.
79
Abbink, “Transformations of Islam”, p. 70.
80
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora, pp. 335–6.
81
Abbink, “Historical and Anthropological Approach”, p. 118.
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hierarchies that co-exist with and problematise notions of group identity”.
82
During the earlier
(eighteenth–nineteenth century) Ḥaḍramīdiaspora, there was no single unified group, and con-
flicts emerged between the sᾱda and the non-sᾱda,
83
between Sufis and reformers, and
between ‘pure-blood’Yemenis and the muwalladīn(also known by the unfortunate term ‘half-
caste’). Notions of racial purity are social constructs.
84
Yet in Ethiopia, the muwalladīnsuffer
from not being considered ‘pure-blood Arabs’.
The stigma of ‘blackness’is often keenly felt by many muwalladīnwhen in Yemen or when
dealing with those who identify as ‘pure-blood’Yemenis, although of course this is also contin-
gent on the status of those involved —a wealthy sᾱda muwallad might feel superior to anyone of
‘pure’Yemeni descent of lower religious and socio-economic status than himself, for example.
Yet, an Indian Muslim woman observed that muwalladīnfavor Yemeni (over Ethiopian)
traditions, adopting Yemeni religious rituals, music, culture, and dress, and that even Muslim
Ethiopians emulate Yemeni cultural and religious behaviors, perceiving them as of higher
status. This is not new; Hartwig writes that in the late nineteenth-century processes of “Ḥaḍramī-
zation”took place among Muslims of East Africa.
85
The Indian woman added:
The Muslims in Ethiopia are influenced by Yemeni culture. Much of the Muslim culture is Yemeni
culture. The Yemeni status is perceived as higher. Everybody feels the unspoken secret which is
that the Yemenis feel superior, that they are more Muslim than you are.
Yet, Yazdiha notes that “hybrid individuals can come together in powerful solidarity, rather
than allowing their ambiguous place in racial space to render them invisible”.
86
Hybridity,
whether cultural or racial, creates a “possibility of redefining our exclusionary systems of label-
ing”.
87
Wala, a thirty-year-old woman who also works in a diplomatic office, said that her father, a
trader, was born in the Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut, and her mother was half-Yemeni, half-Ethiopian. She
expressed strong sentiments:
The muwallad status is better. Most muwalladīnin Addis share the same culture and lifestyle. We use
both cultures and we prefer that. For us it is difficult to live with the full yamaniyīn(Yemenis), because
if we [females] have to go live in Yemen, we have to follow our husband’s culture there. It is prefer-
able to marry a muwallad.
At the bottom of Yemen’s caste system are ‘Black Yemenis’, thought to have been slaves of
Ethiopian descent, who are derogatorily referred to as akhdᾱm(Arabic for ‘servants’; this term
also refers to this community) or muhᾱmashīn(marginalized).
88
Abdullah Modhesh writes:
“We were told that the Akhdam are immoral, which we easily believed”.
89
Today many
82
Mohammad, “Marginalization, Islamism and the Production of the ‘Other’s’‘Other’”,Gender, Place
and Culture 6 (1990), pp. 3, 225, 238.
83
Manger, Hadrami Diaspora,p.7.
84
Spencer, “Assessing Multiracial Identity Theory Politics: The Challenge of Hypodescent”,Ethnicities
4 (2004), pp. 357, 362.
85
Hartwig, “Contemplation, Social Reform, and the Recollection of Identity”, p. 316.
86
Yazdiha, “Conceptualizing Hybridity”, p. 33.
87
Ibid., p. 37.
88
The origin of the akhdᾱmis uncertain. Some think they came to Yemen from Ethiopia as soldiers in
the sixth century and were subsequently enslaved. Others believe their ancestors were Yemeni Najahites
enslaved after their reign during the fifth and sixth centuries [Modhesh, “Beyond the Taken-for-Granted Per-
ceptions: The Akhdam and School Attendance in Yemen”,Journal of Philosophy and History of Education
58 (2008), p. 102].
89
Ibid., p. 104.
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akhdᾱmwork as street cleaners, perhaps because they traditionally were made to clean up human
waste.
90
The muwalladīn, distinct from the category of akhdᾱm, are nonetheless also discrimi-
nated against, and are sometimes called ʿabīd(slave), reflecting the stigma of blackness and its
association with enslavement and low status regardless of actual heritage or standing. The
status of the akdᾱm, considered ‘impure’by many Yemenis, likely predisposes the dominant
group to discriminate against anyone of African descent, in Yemen and in Ethiopia.
91
All of
this makes a return, or visit, to Yemen less desirable for those of mixed descent.
92
Some Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīmigrants, in particular, have been exceptionally prideful of the Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut,
considering it to be an ideal model to be exported elsewhere.
93
It has been a site of pilgrimage
and return, where Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs can confirm genealogical identity, socio-religious status, and percep-
tions of Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīsuperiority.
94
While discourse on diasporic communities has focused on the
‘myth of return’to a frozen memory of an idealized homeland, Anders Stefansson writes that
“homecomings”can be “future-oriented social projects that are based on continuous emotional
attachments to natal or ancestral homelands”.
95
The experience of the muwalladīnhas differed
greatly from that of the ‘pure-blooded’Ḥaḍramīcommunity: the muwalladīnin Yemen often
speak of leaving the country.
96
Notions of a ‘pure’Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut as the site of spiritual learning and authentic Islam, in con-
tradistinction to the mahjar or place of emigration as part of a ‘corrupt’outside world, were
used to control the behavior of returning muwalladīn.
97
Their morals were of concern to the
Ḥaḍramīs whose culture “valorizes the local and diminishes or even demonizes the
foreign”.
98
Muwalladīnin the Ḥaḍramaut are often told that their behavior is ḥarᾱm(reli-
giously forbidden). Females who break cultural norms by shopping alone at the market risk
being considered inferior and sexually available.
99
Muhammad, an older Yemeni man
working in a diplomatic office, stated that one’s perception of the muwalladīnis conditioned
by his or her culture and education. However, he added that some muwalladīngo to Yemen
without knowing Arabic, without possessing educational certificates, appearing impoverished
and disheveled. He said, “Some talk very badly and harshly with people. They do criminal
things there. They like to go to Saudi or the Gulf, so they jump to Yemen and try to get
there from Yemen like refugees.”Yet his colleague added that Yemenis have always had com-
passion for the muwalladīn, and that under President Ibrahim al-Hamdi (1974–7), they were
brought to Yemen from Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Vietnam and given nationality
cards as well as employment.
100
90
Willems, “Attempting to Cross the Invisible Divide”,The Middle East, 1 May 2005.
91
Ibid.
92
See Dresch, A History of Modern Yemen (2000), p. 65. While the ʿabīdand the akhdᾱmare distinct
groups (slaves in Yemen did not always come from the akhdᾱm), both terms are used as pejoratives for those
of African descent.
93
Hartwig, “Contemplation, Social Reform, and the Recollection of Identity”, p. 325.
94
Ibid., p. 323.
95
Stefansson, “Homecomings to the Future: From Diasporic Mythographies to Social Projects of
Return”,Homecomings: Unsettling Paths of Return, edited by Markowitz and Stefansson (2004), pp. 5, 11.
96
Ho, Graves of Tarim, p. 227.
97
Boxberger, On the Edge of Empire, p. 45.
98
Ho, Graves of Tarim, p. 68. Also see Marina De Regt, Pioneers or Pawns: Women Health Workers
and the Politics of Development in Yemen (2007), pp. 196–206.
99
Ho, Graves of Tarim, pp. 73, 238–9.
100
Ibrahim al-Hamdi took over in a coup in 1974 and was assassinated in 1977. Dresch (History of
Modern Yemen, pp. 126–9, 130) confirms that al-Hamdi “welcomed home expatriates from the Horn of
Africa”and abroad. Also see De Regt, Pioneers or Pawns, pp. 198–9.
Yemenis and Muwalladīnin Addis Ababa 107
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Muhammad continued discussing gender, sexuality, and the muwalladᾱtand expressed that
uneducated Yemenis classify women as either ‘open’or ‘closed’. Virgins and virtuous married
women exemplify the latter; indeed, women in Yemen are generally considered to be ‘closed’,
yet some ignorant Yemenis consider muwalladᾱtwomen living in Yemen to be ‘open’.He
believed that people did not know any differently; they had not traveled. He explained:
The reputation is that she’s not a virgin. They think she’s free. They think the muwallada has no
family, no parents, so she’s“free”.“Why did she come here?”they wonder. No work, no family,
no home, so they start to think she’s“easy”. But now things are better in Yemen. The youth have tra-
veled to Cairo and Europe and seen different kinds of women.
These days some Yemeni women are also able to travel and meet different kinds of men, and
avail themselves of new gendered opportunities and the possibility of a different range of gender
performances.
Samira, a Yemeni from Taiz visiting Addis, spent time with Amal, her muwallada friend who
lived in the capital. What astonished me about Samira, a spirited, beautiful thirty-year-old divor-
cée with long black hair and a quick smile, was that the day I interviewed them she was wearing a
skin-tight turquoise tank-top and jeans in public, and that she allowed me to photograph her. This
is unheard of in Yemen, where wedding guests are commonly required to check their cameras so
that they will not be able to photograph uncovered women. I worried that she was endangering
herself, but she explained, “In Yemen I have to wear a ḥijᾱb(headscarf) although I am free
to wear the niqᾱb(face veil). In Taiz and Aden, the social environment is lighter. Here
[in Addis], I don’t have to wear the ḥijᾱb.I’m free.”
Samira is Yemeni, but with an East Asian grandparent on her mother’s side and some Turkish
blood from her father’s side. She said that in Yemen the word muwallad denotes half-Ethiopian
ethnicity, and thus despite her East and Southwest Asian ancestry she would not be considered a
muwallada. On her cell phone she showed off pictures of a club she had visited the evening
before, and of a Christian Ethiopian man she had met there. She giggled that he had already pro-
posed to her even though they had just met.
Surprised, I asked her if she would be allowed to marry him. The young Yemeni women I had
met in Yemen were only allowed to marry a Muslim man of whom their father approved, but the
world is changing quickly. Samira said that her father was liberal and would let her marry an
Ethiopian man, or a man from any caste. There are no caste levels in Taiz, she told me, as
there are in Sanaa. (Taiz and Aden are known to be more liberal than the capital.) Once a sᾱda
class Sanaani man fell in love with her but his parents rejected his choice, threatening to disinherit
him if he married her. She said that her father would let her marry any man.
Samira’s friend Amal was half-Ethiopian and half-Yemeni, and only twenty years old. She too
was dressed in jeans with a nose piercing. Her mother was from Tigrigna and her father from
Sanaa. She stated, “I don’t mind the term muwallad or half-caste. Many people don’t believe
me anyway when I tell them I am ḥabasha. They think I’m Indian or Italian.”
Both Samira and Amal said that they never wanted to marry a Yemeni man. Amal was unim-
pressed with them:
They are too lazy, plus they all have anger management issues. There’s no romantic thing. All they do
is sit and chew their chat and smoke cigarettes. They don’t care about their own wives. They don’tgo
out and chill with her. They don’t let her go out at all.
Samira seconded this unforgiving assessment, and Amal added that married Yemeni men still go
out to clubs alone, to cheat. According to both women, Yemeni men are heedless of the future and
108 Sophia Pandya
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they waste their money on useless things. Amal pointed out with disgust that her father still
behaves that way even though he has lived outside of Yemen for years. She continued, “All
Yemeni guys like girls who will chew chat, smoke shisha …”.
Samira quickly interjected,
And belly dance! I want to marry a foreigner, not a Yemeni. I want to go to the cinema, go out to
dinner, take walks …I love walking outside! I would love to go to the cinema with my [future]
husband; that is my dream! One of my friends in Yemen has twenty-two brothers and sisters. Their
father can’t even remember their names. In Yemen, I can’t even decide how many kids I will have.
What I hate about Yemen is, when the husband comes home from work and his wife is taking a
nap, even if she’s pregnant he wakes her up and says, “Make me some food”!
They both laughed, aware of the shocking nature of their (controversial) statements about Yemeni
men. Amal added, “And they like their kids more than their wives. Men only get married to have
kids. My own mom won’t let me marry a Yemeni guy.”
Amal complained that as a muwallada, Yemenis did not treat her with respect: “Just because
you live in Addis, they think you’re easy.”When I left Amal and Samira, a light summer rain had
just begun to fall, as it often does in June. Samira lifted her bare arms to feel the rain and smiled
absently, twirling around on the dusty street.
Not all muwalladᾱtI spoke with felt disrespected by the Yemeni community. Saba is twenty-
nine years old and is one-quarter Yemeni through her Adeni grandfather. Working as a cashier at a
Yemeni restaurant in Addis, we conversed as she perched on her stool next to the cash register.
Saba told me that her mother married a Muslim Ethiopian, and that when she herself was
growing up, she never ate Yemeni food. She said,
I want to see Yemen, but I want to live here [in Addis]. I like Ethiopia too much. I don’t want to go
[live] anywhere else. I have a boyfriend, Armenian/ḥabasha (Ethiopian), and I call myself ḥabasha.I
am ḥabasha, not Yemeni. The Yemenis here [in the restaurant] are good with me, they ask me if I am
Yemeni, and they respect me.
These conversations reflect the realities, opportunities, and challenges that some muwalladᾱt
(and Yemeni women) face in Ethiopia and illustrate Yazdiha’s argument that hybridity allows new
forms of identification (and in this case, gender performance), and the deconstruction of older
labels.
101
In Foucauldian terms, power is not held solely by the elite but also by those who
exert resistance; the muwalladᾱthave degrees of agency as producers of knowledge in resistance.
While power produces knowledge —in this case discriminatory ideas about the muwalladᾱt—
members of this group also possess self-determination to create new ways to understand their
identity and thus are producers of knowledge in resistance. While shaped by external society
and dominant discourses regarding race, religious status, and ethnicity, they can nonetheless
choose to create new and positive ways of understanding personal identity. Women are actors
even while vulnerable, Gallagher argues, through rallying “gender dependency schema”to
mobilize support, and through individual agency regardless of positionality.
102
Wala emphatically
preferred muwallad identity and community, denying the superiority of ‘pure-blood identity’. She
also rejected a return to Yemen, as many muwalladīnin Ethiopia do, because of the perceived
stigma of being of African descent and because she also enjoyed the freedom of her fluid identity,
which allowed her, with limits, to dance between cultures. Samira and Amal, repulsed by their
101
Yazdiha, “Conceptualizing Hybridity”, pp. 32–3.
102
Gallagher, Making Do in Damascus, p. 235.
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perception of stereotypical Yemeni males, resisted playing the role of the ‘traditional Yemeni
wife’. Transgressing Yemeni norms of female behavior, they went clubbing in sexy attire to
meet Ethiopian men. Saba, who chose to identify fully as Ethiopian, embraced the term ‘ḥabasha’.
Clearly, all groups in Addis Ababa, male and female Yemenis, Ethiopians and muwalladīn,
are capable of engaging in mutual ‘othering’, i.e. constructing new exclusive group identities
which include perceptions of group superiority. Of course, Samira and Amal’s blanket-statement
portrayal of Yemeni men was unfair at best, yet it did reflect their own experiences —Samira did
not have a happy first marriage; Amal disliked her father’s behavior. In Yemen, men are just as
‘stuck’in their culture as women are; I have encountered many feminist men who have spoken of
their own gendered victimhood within Yemeni society, and many Yemeni women who prefer the
ways in which gender is performed in Yemen to other manifestations.
103
One cannot essentialize
about culture or gender role performances anywhere; however, these voices capture part of the
story of Yemeni-Ethiopian transnational interaction. Yet, Kraidy’s exhortation to remain
mindful of context while analyzing transnational hybridity is crucial. Despite liberatory and
positive identity constructions carried out by the muwalladīn, as minorities within a dominant
structure their discourses on the subject remain marginalized.
104
6 Gender and marriage
Driving through Mercato with Ahmed that day, I wondered if his daughter would be allowed to
marry a non-Yemeni. Ahmed hesitated, but then firmly declared that she could marry any good
Muslim man. Apparently, while Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīmen may marry Ethiopian women, Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīwomen
are generally limited to marrying Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīs of the same caste, although I have encountered excep-
tions to this tradition.
105
In this paradigm, socio-religious status is inherited from the father.
Scholar Hussein Ahmed notes that marrying Ethiopian wives was “standard practice”for
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramītraders in Ethiopia, as most of them had emigrated alone.
106
In the past, Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīwomen rarely emigrated. Many male emigrants had one wife in the
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut and another in Africa. Hussein, a member of the family that takes care of the
well, introduced me to his grandmother and his aunt who were both wearing traditional
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīclothes. Both she and her mother were Ḥ
ad ̣
ramī, born in Addis and were married to
Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīmen here. Hussein’s aunt said that all of her children were in Addis and that she pre-
ferred life in Ethiopia to the Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut, something I heard frequently while interviewing
members of the Ḥ
ad ̣
ramīcommunity who had settled in Addis. Obviously the capital is now
their home, and loyalty and nostalgia for the ancestral homeland, while part of the diasporic
experience, do not often lead to repatriation. People in Addis often told me that life in the
city, with its restaurants, cinemas, live music venues, and open and international social atmos-
phere, was more ‘fun’than in the relatively conservative Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut. Of course, women are
likely to live where their children have made their lives and where they have already established
friendships.
103
It is sometimes difficult for Yemeni men to marry because often the bride’s family will demand an
exorbitant mahr (dowry). The mahr system has broken many hearts.
104
Kraidy, Hybridity, p. 149.
105
Ho narrates a story featuring a question asked of the Muslim reformer Rashid Rida (1865–1935)
about the permissibility of a “highborn”sayyid woman marrying a non-sayyid man [Ho, Graves of Tarim,
p. 174]. Rashid Rida considered it permissible, which contradicted earlier rulings by Muslim jurists
[ibid., pp. 117–18, 152].
106
Ahmed, “Archival Sources on the Yemeni Arabs in Urban Ethiopia: The Dessie Municipality”,
History in Africa 27 (2000), p. 27, see footnote 18.
110 Sophia Pandya
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At first glance, the Muslims in Addis seem to be fairly liberal regarding gender roles. Many
informants conveyed that the majority of Muslims of Yemeni descent in Addis is not composed of
mutashaddidūn(extremists). The Ḥaḍramīdiaspora community, historically dominated by males
who traveled widely abroad to carry out trade and spread Islam, has long been characterized as
‘cosmopolitan’. The men interviewed expressed adherence to Islam yet many did not refrain
from shaking my hand (refusing to shake hands with a non-related member of the opposite sex
might identify them as Salafi). Nevertheless, Salafis are increasingly making headway in Ethio-
pia, but my informants felt that the social atmosphere among Muslims in Addis is still much more
liberal than that in Yemen.
7Qᾱt chews and the social order: ‘we are all born in nine months’
In Addis Ababa, qᾱtchews have long bound together Ethiopians, Yemenis, and those of mixed
descent, creating communities with different boundaries while invoking nostalgia for the home-
land on the part of the Yemenis. Men get together with male friends in each other’s homes to chew
qᾱtand smoke water pipes in a Yemeni-style room called the mafraj (a living room with cushions
on the floor along the walls), and women with women friends for the same purpose.
Members of one muwallad family in particular, whom I will call the al-Saids, open their house
in Addis every afternoon to anyone —Yemeni or Ethiopian, Christian or Muslim —who wants to
come chew qᾱtand socialize. One afternoon, al-Said kindly had his chauffeur pick me up in a
gray Peugeot, and as we got close to his home, we drove past rows of mansions (many built
by Yemenis) protected by barbed wire. We entered his estate and I was led into the mafraj deco-
rated with Qur’anic inscriptions where several men, apparently in their fifties and sixties,
Yemenis, Ethiopians and muwalladīn, were seated, drinking tea and chewing qᾱt. I asked
al-Said why he opens his home every afternoon in this way, and one of his friends answered
for him: “It is a question of culture. Anyone can have a cup of tea. The most important thing
in life is to be good to people.”
A few men got up and went to pray in the prayer room, which was in the back. Another man
explained that they liked to get together just to chat and philosophize: “The Arab cacophony is an
art. Westerners don’t have it. We find a color between black and white. We find time between yes
and no.”
A third Yemeni gentleman answered my questions about returning to Yemen and about
getting along with Ethiopian Muslims: “We like all Muslims, we’re relaxed. We’re acclimated.
We don’t think about returning to Yemen. Those born in Yemen are happy. Those born here
are happy.”
I met with al-Said’s daughter Rashida and the women she invited to her jalisat al-nisᾱʾ
(women’s socials), which also take the form of qᾱtchews, even if women chew less than men. I
sat in another mafraj in the same house and was offered both Ethiopian coffee and Yemeni tea fla-
vored with cloves. Yemeni incense, redolent of frankincense and myrrh, wafted in the small room.
Rashida told me that her Sunni Muslim women’s group meets to read the Qur’an and collect money
for charity (ṣadaqa). On Saturdays they meet to provide aid to people, funding hospital treatment,
purchasing medicine, and helping the larger Ethiopian community in any way needed, without dis-
criminating based on ethnicity or religion when they decide whom to help.
Rashida’s women’s group was quite diverse. She rejected Yemeni social order. “We have
Yemenis from Taiz, Ḥ
ad ̣
ramaut, Sanaa, from all over,”she said, “but here it is one community.
In Yemen we don’t know each other.”Describing the social atmosphere among Yemenis and
muwalladīnin Ethiopia, she commented, “Now no one cares if someone is a sayyid.Weare
all born in nine months, which means we are all equal. During the Imam’s time, the sᾱda were
the superior race.”
Yemenis and Muwalladīnin Addis Ababa 111
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Those men and women of both Yemeni and muwallad descent who meet, segregated by
gender, in al-Said’s home to perform the Arab/Ethiopian cacophony —really the cacophony
of hybridity —are creating a new community. These events constitute what Bezabeh refers to
as “boundary making processes”.
107
While they reject categories and ‘boundedness’such as
the sᾱda class, they are nevertheless participating in the construction of a collective diasporic
Yemeni community that includes the muwalladīn. This consolidation, while still vulnerable to
hierarchical discourses in both Yemeni and Ethiopian society, tempers their authority.
8 Conclusion
This study began with a tour of Addis Ababa, in which Ahmed’s stories about the city and the
structures he showed me reflected part of the history of Yemeni (especially Ḥ
ad ̣
ramī) and muwal-
lad participation in Ethiopian life. In the past century, the Muslim and Yemeni community in
Ethiopia have experienced periods of tension with the greater Christian Ethiopian community,
especially when Ethiopia was involved in military conflicts. Mutual racism and concepts of reli-
gious purity imperiled inter-community relations. After the fall of Haile Selassie, the socialist
Derg confiscated Yemeni properties, leading many Yemenis to repatriate. The larger community
of those of Yemeni descent and muwalladīnin Addis Ababa has experienced internal tension due
to notions of racial purity and the deprecation of ‘blackness’by some ‘pure-blooded’Yemenis, as
well as to the economic inequity between muwalladīnand Yemenis in Yemen, and their percep-
tion in Yemen as troublemakers. Theories on diaspora, transnationalism, and hybridity have con-
sidered new possibilities for identity formation, involving inclusion and exclusion and altered
forms of group identity. This study also examined the ways in which the muwallad status provides
room for a different schema of gender performances and gendered opportunities, combining those
theoretical lenses with that of gender construction. The boundaries of this collective of people of
Yemeni and Yemeni-Ethiopian descent are fluid, contested, and in transition. While ‘mapping’,
the community is also ‘mapped upon’, both by other cultures in Ethiopia and by the experiences
of forging a diasporic community, finding that it is not always appropriate or possible to maintain
uncompromisingly old notions of communal identity, such as sᾱda status, or the superiority of
racial purity. As minorities, Yemenis and the muwalladīnin Addis remain vulnerable to dominant
forces, yet mitigate them collectively in a number of ways.
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