Strangers in Yemen: Travel and Cultural Encounter among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Colonial Era 9783110710618, 9783110710298

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David Malkiel Strangers in Yemen

David Malkiel

Strangers in Yemen Travel and Cultural Encounter among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Colonial Era

This book was published with the support of the Carl and Helen Klein Chair for the History of the Rabbinate during the Modern Period at Bar Ilan University.

ISBN 978-3-11-071029-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-071061-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-071064-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944796 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover illustration: “Ali Bou Bakr, mon propriétaire (Côte Yemen).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 90/123. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Preface Vast numbers of people are on the move in search of a better life, some fleeing war, oppression or natural disaster in their homeland, others simply striving to improve their lot. The migrants bring with them their values, way of life and heritage, and face a very different social and cultural environment. Their reception at the hands of the host society is mixed, with expressions of compassion, tolerance, and support as well as fear, suspicion, and bigotry. Today’s first-world societies are culturally heterogeneous, without the “melting pot” they once espoused, and while diversity is often hailed as a virtue, it also arouses resentment and hostility. The experience of encountering someone from a different environment, whose way of life and belief system strike locals as strange, is a challenge of crucial importance for our time, and one we must study in order to understand it and to recognize the emotions and behaviors it stimulates. The encounter between stranger and host is the subject of this book, which studies travel in nineteenth-century Yemen. Two of the foreign travelers come to Yemen against their will, but the rest come with a purpose, or rather with a variety of purposes: there are two missionaries, an artist, a rabbi, a scientist, a merchant, an explorer and two soldiers. These are tales of adventure, not only because they include moments of peril, but simply because these travelers wander in an exotic land for months or years, without family and friends, and they must fend for themselves, with their wits and with the resources at their disposal. What is particular to the Yemen experience is that this is a land without a Christian population. There are Jews, who are not very numerous but who are ubiquitous, and have lived in Yemen since time immemorial. Some of the travelers, too, are Jews, and their encounters have the unique feature of cultural overlap with the local Jews, notwithstanding their foreign origins. Yemen’s Jews play a significant role for non-Jewish travelers as well, simply because they are a minority and in this sense outsiders in their own land. We find visitors approaching them for information about the local environment, natural and human, and the strangers also find them interesting because of observable similarities and differences from the Jews of their native lands. Our story, then, is about a three-way encounter, between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, in a Muslim country with no native Christian population. The following chapters follow the travelers’ narratives and examine their experiences for insights into the nature of their interactions with locals. To gain a better understanding of these encounters, we pay attention to the gifts that the strangers give their hosts and vice versa, gifts both material and cultural. This methodology is based on the theory of gift exchange put forward a century ago by Marcel Mauss, who maintained that gift exchange is a universal and https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-202

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fundamental aspect of human interaction. The present book is a pioneering attempt to deploy the tool of gift exchange for analysis of the travel experience.1 Some of the travelers to Yemen also sojourned in other lands and comparing their Yemen experiences with their other odysseys grants a valuable perspective on their personality and their Yemen adventure. Ethiopia, across the Red Sea, is most often the traveler’s other destination, but one traveler continues on to India, Asia and even Australia. We gain further perspective by comparing the accounts of Yemen travelers in other lands to those of other strangers in these countries. The chapters are structured by types of travelers, and they are ordered chronologically, from 1833 to 1895, with most of the voyages from the middle decades of the century. We begin, however, with a chapter on travel to Yemen in the early modern era, beginning with the journey of Ludovico Varthema in 1503. This discussion is particularly valuable because it establishes patterns of thought and behavior that recur throughout the main body of travel narratives, although these also change over time, with changes in the political and cultural conditions. Some of the accounts studied here are known, but they have been studied for the information the travelers brought back about the country: its physical environment, and its political, economic, social, and cultural climate. What is new in this book is its focus on the stranger-host encounter: how visitors and locals perceived one another, and particularly how the preconceptions and values of each side came into play when they came face to face. The sources require careful interpretation, for we almost always depend on the tale told by the traveler, with no access to the host’s point of view; this is an unfortunate limitation. Moreover, not only are the travelers’ accounts slanted by their alien perspective, they are also written with their audience in mind, an audience the

1 Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le don: forme et raison de l’echange dans les societes archaiques (Paris, 1923). This is not the place to list the prodigious literature that followed in the wake of Mauss’ pathbreaking essay. For a similar approach, see Nile Green, Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam (New York, 2014). Paul Dresch argues, on various grounds, that Mauss’ portrayal of gift-giving as cyclical does not apply to Islam. Primarily, he explains, Islam emphasizes the role of God in dispensing material goods, and hence generosity is a gesture directed “vertically,” at God, an attitude that implicitly ascribes value to gift-giving to the degree that the act is disinterested. See Paul Dresch, “Mutual Deception: Totality, Exchange, and Islam in the Middle East,” Marcel Mauss: a Centenary Tribute, ed. Wendy James and N.J. Allen (New York, 1998), 111-33. Admittedly, the reciprocal or cyclical aspect of gift exchange is an important element of Mauss’ thesis, however gift exchange is of interest in this book simply for its potential to shed light on the interactions of stranger and host, based on the simple premise that every encounter is an economy of sorts.

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writers sought to entertain as well as edify, which inevitably affected what they chose to share, and how. The novelty of the approach taken in this book becomes clear when it is contrasted with the fieldwork studies published by twentieth-century anthropologists. Bronislaw Malinowski, in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), is generally credited with having propagated a view of social anthropology as a positivist discipline, requiring field researchers to maintain a detached and objective perspective on the objects of their research.2 The anthropologist’s experience was defined in marked contrast to that of the nineteenth-century traveler, and thus Dennis Porter explains that “ethnography must define itself in opposition to travel writing.”3 Only late in the twentieth century did scholars come to grips with the tension between the anthropologist’s detached tone and lived experience. The generalization that the perception of an other is also a reflection of one’s self, which has been recognized as an essential feature of travel – the experience and the genre – has become accepted as a principle of ethnographic writing.4 Hence, nineteenth-century travelers have come to be regarded as ethnographers avant la lettre, and scholars have begun integrating their writing into the legacy of their discipline.5 A series of Yemen anthropological field studies were undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s, and their published results duly map the country’s social structure and dynamics, with insights that find their place here and there in the chapters to come.6 However, this body of scholarship largely adheres to Malinowski’s 2 Note, however, that Malinowski’s A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1967) testifies to his personal experience, the subject he pointedly omitted from his monograph. 3 Dennis Porter, Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing (Princeton, 1991), 253. 4 Eric J. Leed, The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (New York, 1991). 5 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge MA, 1988), 92-113; Idem, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge MA, 1997), 52-91; Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford, 1988), 73-101. See also: Writing, Travel and Empire: In the Margins of Anthropology, ed. Peter Hulme and Russell Mcdougall (London, 2007); Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics and Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley, 1986), and especially Mary Louise Pratt, “Fieldwork in Common Places,” Ibid., 27-50. 6 Abdalla S. Bujra, The Politics of Stratification: A Study of Political Change in a South Arabian Town (Oxford, 1971); Steven Charles Caton, Peaks of Yemen I Summon: Tribal Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe (Berkeley, 1990); Paul Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen (Oxford, 1989); Tomas Gerholm, Market, Mosque and Mafraj: Social Inequality in a Yemeni Town (Stockholm, 1977); Anne Meneley, Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemeni Town (Toronto, 1996); Brinkley Morris Messick III, Transactions in Ibb: Economy and Society in a Yemeni Highland Town (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton

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doctrine, and passes over in silence the researchers’ own cultural encounter. In contrast, the present volume reflects the more recent anthropological approach, for it focuses, not on the society of Yemen and its cultural riches, but rather on the meeting of stranger and host, and particularly on the response of both parties to this experience. For this purpose, the travelogues spurned by the traditional anthropologists constitute an excellent corpus of primary sources. This book also contributes to the study of Orientalism, if only because its subject is foreign travelers in the Middle East during the colonial era. The term Orientalism has a complex and controversial history, and its importance for this study requires that its use here must be situated in the context of the relevant scholarly literature. The original use of the term was a slight misnomer, because before there was Orientalism, there were Orientalists, namely European scholars in the early modern era who studied ancient civilizations, especially of the Middle East. For instance, the Danish expedition, whose story is told in the first chapter, rested on the assumption that Yemenite culture could shed light on the biblical period. Currently, the term Orientalism inevitably relates to the polemical treatise by Edward Said bearing that title.7 Acknowledging the term’s historical origins, Said deployed it to refer to a western, primarily European, way of thinking about humanity. This mindset, which can be traced back to well before the early modern era, is binary, categorizing nations into east and west, and generally stereotyping the former with negative attributes. The heyday of this attitude was the nineteenth century, when European colonialism was on the rise, and thus Said maintains that European culture and politics were intertwined, with writers and artists – including travelers – willy nilly serving their nation’s imperialist agenda. Said’s Orientalism provoked a barrage of critical responses, testifying to its profound impact, impact which has yet to fade. Robert Irwin offers a laundry list of the book’s factual errors, adding that “one could go on and on” in that enterprise.8 This is noteworthy, but trivial in comparison with broader criticisms,

University 1978); Martha Mundy, Domestic Government: Kinship, Community and Polity in North Yemen (London, 1995); Daniel Martin Varisco, Water Right and Water Use in the Yemeni Highlands: the Phenomena of Ghail (Binghamton, 1980); Idem, “Pars Pro Toto Observation: Historical Anthropology in the Textual Field of Rasulid Yemen,” History and Anthropology 26 (2015), 92-109; Gabriele vom Bruck, Islam, Memory and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition (New York, 2005). 7 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978). 8 Robert Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents (New York, 2006), 282-83.

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which divide into comments pertaining to the book’s cogency and to the accuracy of its representation of nineteenth-century European writing and art. Readers have noted that by damning Orientalist thinkers, Said implies that they acted freely, and yet he flirts with Foucault’s idea that cultural bias is inescapable and with Nietzsche’s skepticism of the existence of objective reality.9 The complaint that Said misrepresents the field is, however, far more widespread. Said’s critique is sweeping, making him a “lumper,” and, predictably, “splitters” accuse him of overgeneralizing. Critiques of Orientalism marshal an array of arguments along these lines. Sadik Jalal al-ʻAzm accuses Said of stereotyping Orientalism and misrepresenting Islam, and Ernest Gellner notes, ironically, that in this respect Said implicitly accepts the binary thinking that he attacks.10 More specifically, critics point to what Said includes and excludes. Thus, Said uses the term Orient in reference to the Arab World, while ignoring India and Asia, and focuses on British and French sources, while ignoring German and Arab scholarship.11 This selectivity serves Said’s purpose, because it disregards Orientalist voices that do not support his thesis. Ali Behdad notes that Said’s binary thinking is an inevitable consequence of his refusal to acknowledge difference, ambivalence and heterogeneity.12 Edward Lane and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt are frequently cited as counter-examples to Said’s Orientalist image, since their attitude toward Arabs and Islam was anything but condescending or disparaging.13 John Mackenzie protests that artists felt “deep wells of sympathy and

9 James Clifford, “Orientalism,” History and Theory 19 (1980), 204-23; Peter Childs and R. J. Patrick Williams, An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory (London, 1997), 98-99; Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge, 289; Aijaz Ahmad, “Orientalism and After,” Colonial Discourse and PostColonial Theory – A Reader, ed. Williams and Laura Chrisman (London, 1993), 164-65; David Kopf, “Hermeneutics Versus History,” Journal of Asian Studies 39 (1980), 495. 10 For al-ʻAzm, see Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge, 299. See also: Ernest Gellner, “The Mightier Pen: Edward Said and the Double Standards of Inside-out Colonialism,” Times Literary Supplement (19.2.1993), 4; Daniel Martin Varisco, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle, 2007), 49. 11 Dale F. Eickelman, The Middle East – an Anthropological Approach (Englewood Cliffs, 1981), 24; Clifford, “Orientalism,” 215; Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge, 287-93. For Germany, see Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge, 2010), and on German travel to the Near East in particular, Ibid., 143-53. 12 Ali Behdad, Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution (Durham, 1994), 11-13; Childs and Williams, An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory, 115. 13 Carl Thompson, “Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing,” The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, ed. Nandini Das and Tim Youngs (Cambridge, 2019), 117; Rana Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient: Devise and Rule (London, 1986), 97-99; Varisco, Reading Orientalism, 224-30.

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respect” for the East, and this is apart from his criticism that Said ignores the creative and performing arts.14 The stereotypes in Orientalist writing and art include the depiction of the East as locked in the primitive world of antiquity, and as a society characterized by violence, erotic excess, venality, and sloth. Accordingly, David Kopf maintains that Said uses the term Orientalism “to represent a sewer category for all the intellectual rubbish Westerners have exercised in the global marketplace of ideas.”15 But the East was also seen in positive terms. The enormously popular French and English translations of 1001 Nights made the Arab world seem romantic and exotic. Orientalist writers portrayed the Arabs, particularly the desert tribesmen, as pristine, simple, noble, and free, a characterization which Said and his supporters interpret as a refusal or inability to face the Orient squarely. His critics would agree, but they regard idealizations by writers such as Byron and Flaubert as a reflection of discontent with modern European life, which renders Said’s argument moot.16 Discussions of Orientalism devote a great deal of attention to travel accounts, and the same issues emerge. Said’s critics often describe these texts, not only as self-referential but also as diverse and nuanced in their portrayals of Oriental society. Billie Melman notes that they are inflected by gender, class and nationality, and that early travelers differ from later ones. John Mackenzie observes that they contain comments of all sorts, reflecting the travelers’ convictions, their overall travel experience and momentary states of mind.17 Thus, while for Said’s Orientalism argument T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom would seem to be low-hanging fruit, nonetheless Dennis Porter depicts it as “characterized by a great heterogeneity,” with elements of contradiction and self-doubt.18

14 John M. Mackenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester, 1995), xviii. 15 Kopf, “Hermeneutics Versus History,” 498; Clifford, “Orientalism,” 220; Rana Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 6. 16 Billie Melman, “The Middle East / Arabia: ‘the cradle of Islam,’” The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge, 2002), 113; Mackenzie, Orientalism, 55, 67; Behdad, Belated Travelers, 16; Idem, “The Politics of Adventure: Theories of Power, Discourses of Power,” Travel Writing, Form, and Empire: The Poetics and Politics of Mobility, ed. Thomas Kuehn (London, 2009), 80-94; Porter, Haunted Journeys, 175-76; Geoffrey Nash, From Empire to Orient: Travellers to the Middle East 1839-1926 (London, 2005), 2. 17 Melman, “The Middle East / Arabia: ‘the cradle of Islam,’” 107; Mackenzie, Orientalism, 64; Hector Roddan, “‘Orientalism is a Partisan Book: Applying Edward Said’s Insights to Early Modern Travel Writing,” History Compass 14 (2016), 171-72. 18 Dennis Porter, “Orientalism and its Problems,” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, 155-56, 224-28. See also: Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Travel Writing and Ethnography,” The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, 256.

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The sources studied in the following chapters are definitely Orientalist by Said’s definition, insofar as they put forward the standard list of stereotypical qualities, with scenes involving violence, erotic encounter and expressions of what westerners would have considered primitive thinking. But there are expressions of admiration as well as disdain, and readers will have to decide whether they interpret these as contradicting or supporting Said’s thesis. In short, the preconceptions of those days are on full display.19 The range of travelers studied here buttresses the call to recognize the heterogeneity of the Orientalist experience. On offer are travelers of all three Abrahamic faiths and they hail from various lands in western Europe and the Ottoman empire. And their experiences and perceptions are anything but monolithic, which is to be expected, given the diversity not only of their origins but also of their goals and activities. Ultimately, the accounts give a sense of a true encounter, with the stranger coming to grips with real people and their way of life, without the flattening that is to be expected from the kind of racist and ethnocentric bias lambasted by Said. We are witness both to the prevalence of preconceived notions of the Arab world and to the flexibility of the travelers’ application of the general image to their particular experiences. To witness the stranger’s surprise when he realizes that he has much to learn from the culture he now confronts is to be inspired with the hope that in our own day the stranger-host encounter can lead to genuine understanding and enrich the lives of all concerned. Research for this study was supported by a generous grant from the Israel Science Foundation (#1262/13), for which I am profoundly grateful. These funds enabled me to avail myself of the keen mind of my research assistant, Menachem Fischman, a Hebrew University undergraduate, whose creative thinking raised intriguing questions even as his critical acumen steered me away from implausible hypotheses. Many colleagues gave generously of their knowledge in areas pertinent to this study. I received warm encouragement from Ora Limor and Joan-Pau Rubiés, whose expertise on travel, the experience and literature, has been a source of inspiration. Ilana Silber advised me on gift exchange, a field in which 19 By and large, the travelers studied here give no evidence of a colonialist agenda, and do not support Said’s argument that Orientalist texts are invested in the politics of the day, except perhaps subconsciously, a claim that can be neither confirmed nor refuted. And yet, Hermann Wamberger or Arminius Vambéry, a Hungarian Jew – ultimately mentor to Ignaz Goldziher – who traversed the Ottoman empire in 1862-1863, writes that the traveler to the Orient “is, so to say, dragged into the field of political speculation and cannot help becoming a politician himself:” see Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire, 151.

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she is an international leader. On matters Yemenite, Yosef Tobi kindly fielded queries and Menashe Anzi gave patiently and unstintingly of his profound learning. Susan Rutland advised me on Australian Jewry, and Yaron Perry and Adam Mendelsohn on missionary activity. Thanks also to Rev. David Pileggi of Christ Church, Jerusalem, for allowing me access to the CMJ archive. Isabelle Bräutigam, Director of Musée Bartholdi in Colmar, not only allowed me access to the vast collection of the artist’s work, but painstakingly exhibited the items to me, one by one, on a hot July morning, assisted by two staff members. Research and writing for this book were conducted during stints as a visiting scholar at The Medieval and Early Modern Centre at the University of Sydney (2015), and at the University of Pisa’s Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Ebraici (CISE) (2018-2019). Thanks are due to my hosts at these institutions for their hospitality and friendship. Adam Mendelsohn of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town kindly invited me to speak about Jacob Sapir’s journey to the East (2016), and I presented a version of that lecture at the Seventeenth World Congress of Jewish Studies (2017). I lectured on the Danish expedition at the Second International Conference of the Center for the Study of Yemenite Jewry (2018), and again at the SEFER Center Annual International Conference on Jewish Studies (2019). Thanks are due to the organizers of these events for allowing me to present my findings. I am grateful to Angel Chorapchiev of Yad Vashem and Yaniv Berman of Global Arabic Translation Services for arranging translations of the accounts of my two soldiers. Thanks are due to Julia Brauch, the De Gruyter Acquisitions Editor in Jewish Studies and History, for the highly professional conduct of the publication process. I had technical help with the illustrations from Christian Kempf of Colmar and Chaim Gross of Artplus, Jerusalem. The Israel and Golda Koschitzky Foundation supplied a much-needed grant in aid of publication. My most loyal supporters are, of course, my family. I extend my deepest appreciation to my wife, Brenda, and to my children, Lily, Nitzan, Sarah, Tehila and Yakov. I dedicate this book to Judy Kupferman, my big sister, who is always there for me.

Contents Preface

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Precursor 1 Sixteenth Century: Captives and Renegades Seventeenth Century: Mercantilist Politics The Eighteenth Century: Coffee 14 The Danish Expedition 21 The Last Precursors 39 Missionary 43 Joseph Wolff 49 Henry Aaron Stern 68 Yemen 71 Persia and Abyssinia 81 Epilogue 90 Artist 95 Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi Yemen 104 Portraits 125

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Emissary 147 Jacob Sapir 147 To Sana’a 151 Sana’a and Beyond 164 India, Asia, and Australia 172 Solomon Reinmann 184 Scientist 189 Halévy and Hibshush 194 Sana’a 196 Arhab and Nihm 203 Jawf 213 Najran 220 Mareb 226

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Assessment 230 Halévy in Ethiopia 235 Merchant 243 David Samuel Carasso 244 From Hudaydah to Ta’izz 246 From Jarrahi to Zabid 248 In Ta’izz 251 From Hudaydah to Sana’a 257 In Sana’a 258 Conclusion 264 Explorer 267 Renzo Manzoni 267 Aden to Sana’a (20.9.1877 – 15.10.1877) Sana’a (15.10.1877 – 22.3.1878) 273 To Aden and Back (23.3.1878 – 1.8.1878) Jews 279 Sana’a 2 (1.8.1878 – 19.1.1879) 282 Somalia, Aden, Sana’a 282 Soldier 285 Hristo Stambolski 285 From Hudaydah to Sana’a 287 Sana’a 289 Summary 293 Saʻīd ibn Muhammad Al-Suwaysī Dhamar 300 Images 305 Skin 308 Contrasts 313 Gifts 317 Conclusion 324 Bibliography Index

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Cover: “Ali Bou Bakr, mon propriétaire (Côte Yemen).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 90/123.

Precursor Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Peter Forsskål, painted in 1760 by P. Dahlman. Photographer: Julia Gyllenadler; property of Uppsala University Art Collection. 23 Baurenfeind’s drawing of an Arab woman in the Tihama. Source: Reisebeschreibung, Tab. LIX (n.p.). 30 Baurenfeind’s drawing of the audience with the Imam. Source: Reisebechreibung, Tab. LXIX (n.p.). 33

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Missionary Fig. 1 Joseph Wolff. Source: Joseph Wolff, Researches and Missionary Labours, frontispiece. 51 Fig. 2 Henry Aaron Stern. Source: Isaacs, Biography, frontispiece. 69 Fig. 3 Stern in Yemen. Source: Isaacs, Biography, opposite p. 102. 72 Artist Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Fig. 12 Fig. 13 Fig. 14 Fig. 15 Fig. 16 Fig. 17 Fig. 18 Fig. 19 Fig. 20 Fig. 21 Fig. 22

“The Desert” (1867), by Gustave-Achille Guillaumet. Property of Musée d’Orsay, Paris. 98 “Laghouat, Sahara algérien” (1879), by Gustave-Achille Guillaumet.. Property of Musée d’Orsay, Paris. 98 Bartholdi, 1854. Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf. 100 Self-Portrait with Gérôme. Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/ 2. 102 “Ma maison à Aden.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/67. 106 “Horloge publique à Aden.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 62/94. 107 “Voiture à Aden.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 65/ 97. 108 Funeral of a Banyan in Aden. Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 210. 109 “Anes, porteures d’[…] (Aden).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 64/96. 110 “harem en voyage (Arabie).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 134/180. 111 “La halte au café.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 81/ 113. 112 “Campement de Bédouins.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 48/75. 112 “Mocka.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P4/88. 113 “Appartement des Femmes – Moka.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 57/89. 114 “Café à Zebid.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/82. 114 “Zébid fontaine.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/81. 114 “Beit el Fakié – ma maison.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P4/79. 115 “Route de Beit el Fakié.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/ 68. 116 “Hodeidah – Maison de girgis sawa.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P4/99. 117 “Hodeidah, Magasin de […]” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P4/83. 117 “Intérieur Arabie.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 137/ 124. 118 “Fait pour le pacha – Hodeidah.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/71. 119

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Military parade. Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 146/ 197. 119 Fig. 24 “Hodeidah (circoncision) Arabie.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 53/82. 120 Fig. 25 “Hodeidah (mariage) Arabie.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 52/85. 120 Fig. 26 “Huttes Arabes (Lahaouia).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 133/179. 122 Fig. 27 “Ile de Périm détroit de Bab el Mandeb côte.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 113/154. 123 Fig. 28 “Escorte (Yemen).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 88/ 121. 124 Fig. 29-30 “fille du royaume de Sana’a (Arabia).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 136/182; I ADC 136/183. 127 Fig. 31 “Femme Somali, Fatma.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 131/176. 128 Fig. 32 “Fatma, Femme Somali.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 131/177. 128 Fig. 33 “Ali Mohammed (Soumali) – 13 ans env.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 130/174. 128 Fig. 34 “Ali Mohammed – Soumali.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 130/175. 128 Fig. 35 “Jeune nègre, côte d’Afrique.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 115/156. 129 Fig. 36 “(Ibrahim).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 114/155. 129 Fig. 37 “Somali - mon guide responsible sur la côte d’Afrique.” Musée BartholdiColmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 107/147. 130 Fig. 38 “Somali - Jusuff Sueilla.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 107/148. 130 Fig. 39 “Jusuff Sueilla - Somali - Draperie blanche.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 126/169. 130 Fig. 40 “Moka – Mabrout eunuque d’Abder Rassan.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 58/90. 131 Fig. 41 “Constanti - grec – hodeidah.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 51/80. 131 Fig. 42 Girgis Sawa. Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 55/86. 132 Fig. 43 “Salaha, Yémen.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 84/ 116. 133 Fig. 44 “Ali Bou Bakr, mon propriétaire (Côte Yemen).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 90/123. 134 Fig. 45 “Fadal, fils d’Ali Bou Bakr.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 91/124. 134 Fig. 46 “Coiffeurs (Aden).” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 59/ 91. 135 Fig. 47 “Homme de l’Yemen - Bet el Fakie.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 86/118. 136 Fig. 48 “Parsi.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 151/202. 136

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“Bagnan.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 71/103. 137 “Indoustani.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 73/105. 137 “Somali.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 94/127. 138 “Femme d’ouvrier Indoustanie.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 92/125. 138 Fig. 53 “Femme d’ouvrier.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 132/ 178. 139 Fig. 54 “Femme Indienne.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 74/ 106. 139 Fig. 55 “Chamelier de l’Arabie.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 97/130. 140 Fig. 56 “Chamelier de l’Yemen.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 87/119. 140 Fig. 57 “Sibahi – Sergent de Ville Indien” [Yemen]. Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 77/109. 141 Fig. 58 “Arabe porteur d’eau.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 150/201. 141 Fig. 59-60 Figure d’un homme, en pied, vi de dos: Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 95/128; Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 96/129. 142 Fig. 61 “Turc de Syrie, Égypte.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 49/77. 143 Fig. 62 “Prière dans la Mosquée.” Source: https://www.gallery19c.com/artworks/ 9370/. 143 Fig. 63 “Marchands Indiens.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 68/100. 144 Fig. 64 “Juifs.” Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 60/92. 144 Fig. 49 Fig. 50 Fig. 51 Fig. 52

Emissary Fig. 1 Scientist Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4

Explorer Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Jacob Sapir. Source: Jewish Encyclopedia, 11:51.

147

Himyarite Inscription. Source: Wellsted, Travels in Arabia, facing p. 424. 191 Joseph Halévy. Source: Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia, opposite p. 202. 194 Hayyim Hibshush. Source: Hayyim Hibshush, Travels in Yemen: An Account. n.p. 194 Daniel. Source: Faitlovich Collection, Sourasky Library, Tel-Aviv University. 240

Renzo Manzoni. Source: Manzoni, El Yèmen, frontispiece. “Jewish ostrich feathers merchant.” Source: El Yèmen, 265. “a Jew of Aden.” Source: Ibid., 445. 281

267 281

List of Figures

Soldier Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Hristo Stambolski. Source: Bulgarian Archives State Agency. 286 Gustav Bauernfeind, Jaffa, Recruiting of Turkish Soldiers in Palestine. Source: Small, A Distant Muse, 31. 294

XIX

Precursor Sixteenth Century: Captives and Renegades Ludovico Varthema of Bologna is the first European to visit Yemen and leave a narrative of his sojourn, which, while not altogether factual, is certainly an excellent source for exploring his perception of his surroundings and experience.1 Varthema traveled widely through the Near East, even making the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Clearly, his was the soul of an adventurer, and his travel account makes for lively reading, but our concern is with his brief stay in Yemen, where he arrived from Jeddah in 1503.2 Varthema lands at Aden and is promptly imprisoned as a spy for the Portuguese. After languishing in Aden for two months, he is brought in chains to the local sovereign at Rada’a, located about halfway between Aden and Sana’a. Interrogated about his identity and purpose, Varthema purports to be a renegade, a convert to Islam, which supposedly would have vitiated the charges brought against him, but he proves unable to recite the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, and is thus imprisoned once again. After three months, he attempts to regain his freedom by feigning madness, but his captors are unconvinced. Ultimately, he wins the favor of the local queen, whom, he reports, is attracted to him because he is fair-skinned, and eventually she convinces her husband to free Varthema of his iron chains. Suspecting that the queen has her own designs upon his future, Varthema resorts to subterfuge a third time. He pretends illness and prevails upon the queen to allow him to seek treatment in Aden, where he promptly takes ship for India. For Varthema’s Yemenite hosts to regard him with suspicion was perfectly reasonable, given the recent rise in the commercial and political might of the

1 Beyond the scope of this study is the travel account of Yusuf ibn Yaqub Ibn al-Mujawir: A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia: Ibn al-Mujawir’s Tarikh al-mustabsir, trans. G. Rex Smith (Aldershot, 2008). Mujawir was a businessman, from somewhere in the eastern Islamicate realm, who traveled in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. His book is an itinerary, but it lies beyond the chronological scope of our investigation, and is in any case devoid of the element of personal encounter, dwelling rather on geography, politics, history and folklore. 2 The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema . . ., trans. John Winter Jones (London, 1863), 59–73. Varthema was preceded by Niccolò di Conti and Hieronimo di San Stefano, who stopped in Aden en route to India, the latter spending four months there, but neither of whom left an account of his sojourn. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-001

2

Precursor

European nations, particularly the Portuguese.3 Varthema expects nothing else, and he repeatedly anticipates or responds to the suspicions of his Arab hosts by concealing his identity, the device which earlier enabled him to visit Mecca, a capital crime for an unbeliever under Islamic law. Personal identity was generally uncertain in Varthema’s age, which is rife with tales of dissimulation, impersonation, and disguise.4 Paradoxically, these incidents reflect an increased need for confidence, if not certainty, in such matters. But the travel experience typically has a destabilizing effect, for travelers tend to reflect upon their identity when and because they find themselves out of context, a situation which often tempts them to experiment with other identities and present these to strangers.5 The host’s hostility towards the stranger, including the traveler, is also a familiar anthropological pattern. Typically, when a stranger arrives, locals will seek to take his measure, and often present him with a challenge or ordeal to test his mettle before incorporating him into their society.6 Thus strangers are often motivated to placate their hosts with gifts of knowledge. Varthema’s encounter fits nicely into these patterns, which by no means effaces his particular historical and cultural context. Sixteenth-century Europeans who find their way to Yemen continue to encounter a hostile reaction, which mirrors the ongoing Mediterranean warfare between the Ottoman empire and European powers. It comes as no surprise that Fernão Mendes Pinto, a Portuguese mariner, was brought to Mocha in chains in 1537, along with six other survivors of a bloody naval encounter with Turkish warships. Their fate was enslavement, and Pinto was bought at auction

3 Note, however, the European image of the Arabians as barbarians. Solomon Usque, of Portuguese Jewish descent, writing in 1550, describes the inhabitants of Arabia Felix as “inhuman brutes,” and reports that the son of the Sultan in Sana’a “bit people to death (Iike a rabid dog) and satiated himself on their flesh:” Samuel Usque’s Consolations for the Tribulations of Israel, trans. and ed. Martin A. Cohen (Philadelphia, 1977), 220. 4 Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi, an apocalyptic writer in sixteenth-century Jerusalem, attests that Yemenite Jews traveling to the Holy Land on pilgrimage conceal their Jewish identity during the journey for safety reasons. See Malachi Bet Aryeh, “A Letter on the Ten Tribes by Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi dated 1527/28” [Hebrew], Qoveṣ al Yad n.s. 6/16 (1966), 2:376. On dissimulation in the early modern period, see: Percy G. Adams, Travelers and Travel Liars, 1660–1800 (Berkeley, 1962); Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Harmondsworth, 1983); Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 1990); Miri Eliav-Feldon and Tamar Herzig, ed. Dissimulation and Deceit in Early Modern Europe (London, 2015). 5 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler. 6 Mauss, Essai sur le Don; Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 85–87.

Sixteenth Century: Captives and Renegades

3

by a Greek renegade. His master then sells him to a Jew named Abraham Mussa of Tor, who brings him to Hormuz, a Portuguese colony, where he is redeemed by local officials.7 The Greek renegade in Pinto’s tale teaches us that there was at least one European living in Mocha at the time, and unlike Varthema, this fellow’s conversion was genuine. The presence of a European renegade dovetails with the fact that in Yemen, Christians were not tolerated as inhabitants, regardless of the Islamic tradition that accepts the presence of dhimmi, protected minorities, especially Christians and Jews, the famed People of Scripture. Yemen seems to have enjoyed the same sacred status as the Hejaz, the part of the Arabian peninsula that includes Mecca. At about this time, Yemen comes under Ottoman rule, after the Mamelukes prove ineffective against the Portuguese in the Red Sea, the eastern gateway to Mecca.8 Mocha and Aden are occupied in 1538 and Sana’a in 1547. Sana’a is briefly liberated in 1567, but the Ottomans return and rule uncontested in 1572–1604. The main objective of the Ottoman conquest was control of the Yemen littoral on the Red Sea, which could serve as a base for trade across the Indian Ocean, primarily with Surat, in Gujarat.9 European powers, too, were initially interested in Yemen as a jumping-off point for trade with India. Yemen’s importance for relations with India also finds expression in the presence in Yemen of Indian merchants, known as Banyans. This population group was non-Scriptural, and its sustained presence proves that the intolerance exhibited towards Varthema and later Pinto was specific to European Christians, and no reflection of a general antipathy towards non-Muslims. As such, it reflects political considerations as much or more than cultural prejudice.10 At this historical juncture, a work of fiction contributes to our understanding of the stranger-host dynamic in Yemen. Following the overthrow of Ottoman rule in 1567, the local Yemenite victors imprison the male members of the Sana’a Jewish community, presumably on suspicion of loyalty to the Ottoman regime.11 These circumstances form the backdrop of several tales in the fictional Hebrew 7 Fernão Mendes Pinto, The Travels of Mendes Pinto, ed. and trans. Rebecca D. Catz (Chicago, 1989), 9–12. 8 Jane Hathaway, A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen (Albany, 2003), 79–84. 9 With the same idea in mind, the Ottomans also occupied Massawa, on the Eritrean coast. 10 The Banyans merit intensive investigation in our discussion of merchants, but primary sources are scarce. 11 For the persecution of the Jews of Yemen during the messianic period of Sabbatai Sevi, see Bernard Haykel, Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani (Cambridge, 2003), 117–24.

4

Precursor

collection, Sefer Ha-Musar (The Book of Moral Instruction), by the Yemenite, Zecharia al-Dahiri. The tales concern an itinerant Palestinian rabbi who arrives in Sana’a at this difficult time with Hebrew printed books for sale, which the local Jews snap up. The protagonist, who is one of those incarcerated, then writes the visitor a letter, asking his help in obtaining particular books, and a pair of tefillin from the Holy Land.12 Dahiri’s tales are of the Arabic variety known as maqama, rhymed prose interspersed with metered poems. But although they are fiction, the strangerhost encounter in these stories is rooted in the period’s historical conditions. Rabbinical emissaries from Palestine begin circulating in the diaspora at about this time to raise funds, and many bring with them books on Jewish law and doctrine.13 These would have been highly prized in Yemen, which did not yet have a Hebrew printing press. The emissaries sometimes also travel with soil from the ancestral homeland, which is particularly esteemed. The tale thus authentically reflects the early modern encounter between the Palestinian rabbinical emissary and the typical Diaspora community. Moreover, Dahiri’s tales profile Yemenite Jewry as strong in Bible, Hebrew language and midrash, rather than Talmud and Jewish law, and this profile, which is historically accurate, supplies the cultural context for the tale of the Palestinian rabbi’s gifts.14 Ironically, this tale, too, is one of captive non-Muslims, although in this case those incarcerated are local infidels, rather than Europeans. About a generation later, Pedro Pàez, a Spaniard, leaves us the next story of a European in Yemen, with familiar elements. Unlike Varthema and Pinto, Pàez and his traveling companion, Antonio Monserrate, are Jesuit missionaries, and they are captured at sea in 1589, while traveling from Goa to Ethiopia. The two are held prisoner in Yemen for six years, 1590–1596, after the Turks accuse them of espionage, claiming that the Fathers’ true purpose is to convince the Ethiopians to attack the Turks in Yemen. They are brought to Hainan, in the Hadhramawt region, where the local sovereign questions them. A Burmese woman, who accepted Islam forty years earlier following her own capture, serves as interpreter. After four months, they are sent on to the Turkish Pasha,

12 Zacharia Al-Dahri, Sefer Hammusar, ed. Yehuda Ratzaby (Jerusalem, 1965), tales 25 (285–303) and 40 (423–30). See also the editor’s introduction, 70, and see Adena Tanenbaum, “Of Poetry and Printed Books: Between the Jews of Yemen and the Land of Israel in Zecharia al-Dahiri’s Sefer Hamusar,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12 (2005), 260–80. 13 Abraham Ya’ari, Sheluḥei Erets Yisra’el: toledot ha-shelihut meha-arets la-golah me-hurban Bayit Sheni ‘ad ha-me’ah ha-tesha-‘esreh (Jerusalem, 1950/51). 14 Yitzhak Tsvi Langermann, Yemenite Midrash: Philosophical Commentaries on the Torah (San Francisco, 1996).

Sixteenth Century: Captives and Renegades

5

or more accurately beglerbegi or viceroy, at Sana’a. Pàez notes that on the way they saw the ruins of large buildings at “Melquîs,” as well as rocks with ancient letters, which the locals are unable to decipher. They are told that these rocks are relics of the kingdom of Saba, and this is, thus, the earliest reference to the archaeological remains of the ancient Himyarites. At length they reach Sana’a, where they are housed with twenty-six Portuguese and five Indian Christians, all captured by the Turks. After two years in Sana’a, the Pasha’s wife arranges a meeting with the Fathers. She has them meet her little boy, to whom they offer a bottle of rose water – “of which they are fond” – “since it is the custom among them to take something the first time they go to visit some great man.”15 When the boy leaves, she approaches and instructs them to petition the Pasha to release them to go to Jerusalem, since they are penniless and useless to him; she offers to give them money for the journey. The Pasha agrees but changes his mind when his overseer persuades him that the missionaries could be worth a fortune in ransom. They languish in captivity for another year and a half, after which they are finally sent to Mocha to be ransomed. The Pasha, Pàez relates, hoped for an astronomical 5,000 cruzados, but after a year he releases them to an Indian merchant for a tenth of that extraordinary sum, whereupon they sail for India.16 Pàez and Monserrate are the first Jesuit missionaries we know of in Sana’a, though Yemen was not their destination. They are also the first Europeans to come upon relics of the ancient Himyarite kingdom, a theme we shall investigate in depth. Their experience conforms to the pattern in which the earliest European Christians in Yemen are captives. Varthema differs in having entered Yemen voluntarily, but like them, he, too, was imprisoned for spying. The sympathy of the Pasha’s wife is another element in Pàez’s narrative that echoes Varthema’s story, but the missionary’s tale has no erotic element; rather, Pàez’s relates that the wife is sympathetic because she herself is the daughter of Christians brought to Yemen as captives. In fact, Pàez maintains that nearly all the Turks he met were of Christian origin, including the Burmese female interpreter. This theme delightfully complicates our approach to the

15 Sources from different periods attest to the Yemenite custom of hosts refreshing their visitors by sprinkling them with rose water and other scents: Carsten Niebuhr, Beschreibung von Arabien. Aus eigenen Beobachtungen und im Lande selbst gesammelten Nachrichten (Copenhagen, 1772), 59; Meneley, Tournaments of Value, 32, 102. 16 Pedro Pàez, Pedro Pàez’s History of Ethiopia, 1622, ed. Isabel Boavida, Hervé Pennec and Manuel João Ramos, trans. Christopher J. Tribe (London, 2011), 2:104–37. See also, C.F. Beckingham and R. B. Serjeant, “A Journey by Two Jesuits from Dhufar to San`a in 1590,” The Geographical Journey 115 (1950), 194–207.

6

Precursor

European-Yemen encounter, for we realize that Yemenite identities can be complicated, with some locals having European, Christian, roots and family connections, and thus multifaceted selves. The anecdote about the rose water offers a clear insight into one of the norms of gift exchange in this particular cultural context. The key to this moment is the custom of taking, not giving, and hence there can be no doubt that the fathers were coached, presumably by the Pasha’s wife, who engineered the interview. The gift is interpreted as an act of homage to the “great man,” namely the Pasha’s son, and hence his acceptance of the rose water is to be understood as an act of regal generosity. We may infer that the gift’s acceptance typically constitutes an a priori expression of sympathy toward an anticipated request, which would suit the present occasion, even though in this case the supplication was to be made to the boy’s father. Therefore, such a gift exchange represents the logical extension of the great man’s willingness to grant the supplicants an audience.

Seventeenth Century: Mercantilist Politics European efforts to gain a commercial foothold in Yemen supply the context for the next stage of the country’s stranger-host encounter. The leading politicaleconomic contenders are the English and Dutch, rather than the Portuguese, with a smattering of nationals from other European lands. Initially, the Red Sea ports are valued simply as markets for commodities from India and the Far East, although later the focus shifts to the role of Yemen, and especially Mocha, as the world’s premier producer of coffee. Accounts of this diplomatic and economic activity are rich in cultural encounter, and sometimes clash, with gift exchange a perennial motif. In 1609, a British East India Company ship docks at Aden, local officials promise the visitors excellent commercial terms, and the latter go ashore for further negotiations. John Jourdain, a crew member, relates that Aden’s sandjakbegi, i.e. governor, receives them graciously, with a musical performance – a hospitality gift – as well as material gifts of garments of gold cloth.17 They are brought to a comfortable house and fed a sumptuous meal, but the favorable atmosphere sours when the visitors are denied permission to return to their

17 Jourdain was unaware that the garment was a khilʻa, a ceremonial robe of honor, which we shall encounter repeatedly in tales of encounters between European visitors to Yemen and local government officials.

Seventeenth Century: Mercantilist Politics

7

ship until the response to their request for trading privileges arrives from the Turkish Pasha at Sana’a. Tense negotiations ultimately lead to Jourdain’s traveling to Sana’a to present the Pasha with the case for British trading privileges.18 The traveling party is accompanied by two interpreters, one Italian and the other French, both of whom are renegades, the former a servant of the captain of the Mocha galleys, the latter in the service of the Pasha at Sana’a. Clearly, Christian residency in Yemen was still not tolerated, and yet the utility of such individuals was apparent to those whose office or business required them to conduct relations with European nationals. In Ta’izz, following their stay in Sana’a, Jourdain and his party meet a third renegade, this one Portuguese, who ridicules the locals for regarding him as a witch and saint, and regularly kissing his hands and asking him to pray for them.19 This incident fits into the pattern of locals assuming that the stranger has occult powers, simply because he comes from an alien environment, and demanding that he use his knowledge to solve their problems, commonly to heal the sick.20 The assumption that strangers possess occult power also reflects is but one side of the coin; the other is the stranger’s ability to grant his hosts the gift of knowledge, a theme to which we shall return. It is also apparent that the Portuguese fellow is still regarded as a stranger, and probably always will be, regardless of his conversion to Islam and of the duration of his residence in the city. The story addresses the broad question of when or whether a stranger can become integrated into the host community. This issue, which we shall encounter in later chapters, is always a thorny one, with no simple or universal answer. A second gift-exchange story in Jourdain’s saga highlights a different universal motif. En route to Sana’a, the British contingent spends the night at “Hatch” (apparently al-Hawtah), but on the following day they are detained, and Jourdain suspects the Aden governor of plotting to have them killed in order to seize the money that he claims in customs duties. Later, Jourdain understands that, on the contrary, the governor sought to ensure that the English would not add to his commercial debt the value of the gifts they had given him.21 Traditionally, the commercial culture of the Islamic realm emphasizes the personal relations between merchants, in an atmosphere in which gifts are entirely appropriate. The governor’s action may stem, therefore, from 18 The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608–1617. Cambridge, 1905. 19 The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608–1617, 96–97. 20 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 98. 21 The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608–1617, 81–82.

8

Precursor

the shrewd perception that European commerce has none of the flexibility and informality of transactions in the Arab world.22 Jourdain’s departure from Aden does not end the cycle of gift exchange. During the journey to Sana’a, Jourdain receives from the governor the gift of a dressed goat, and the governor thoughtfully has one of his officials accompany the gift and stay for dinner, lest Jourdain suspect that he is to be poisoned. Jourdain reciprocates with the gift of a knife blade, which he could expect would be appreciated, iron in general and weapons in particular being a European commodity in high demand in the Arab world. Of course, this gift object might reasonably be interpreted as an ominous statement of European power.23 The story of the British expedition also provides the first documented evidence of a Jewish presence in Mocha. The British merchants unsuccessfully attempt to sell merchandise to the Banyans through a local Jewish intermediary named David, but the British commander rejects a fair offer, and afterwards the Banyans refuse to buy at any price.24 This Jew may be the same fellow mentioned, disparagingly, in the account of William Rennett, Jourdain’s shipmate, who writes that he and his companions stayed at the home of “an insinuating, wicked Jew . . . a talkative, lying and covetous fellow,” and we read that the strangers accepted the Jew’s offer of hospitality because he could speak the Christian tongue.25 Rennett’s low opinion of his host smacks of the age-old stereotypes of Jews rooted in the writings of early Christianity, which is not surprising, given that there were no Jews living in England following their expulsion in 1290. More significant is his remark about the role of the Yemenite Jews as mediators between locals and visitors, on account of their linguistic facility. This particular effort to establish a British trading base in Yemen founders after the Pasha in Sana’a informs Jourdain that only the Sultan, in Istanbul, has the power to make such a decision. In a parallel account of this episode, we read that the Pasha takes “for a present” the cloth which Jourdain and his shipmate have with them, and then grants them permission to buy and sell free

22 Marina Rustow; “Benefaction (Ni`ma), Gratitude (Shukr), and the Politics of Giving and Receiving in Letters from the Cairo Geniza,” Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions, ed. Miriam Frenkel and Yaacov Lev (Berlin, 2009), 365–90; Jessica Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: the Geniza Merchants and their Business World (Cambridge, 2012). 23 The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608–1617, 84–85. 24 Ibid., 99. 25 Ibid., 353. I have modernized the spelling.

Seventeenth Century: Mercantilist Politics

9

of customs duties, “because of the cloth which I detaine in my hands.”26 This incident involves theft, gift and transaction, the three modes of transferring objects of value, and it eloquently expresses the way the line separating them can become blurred, whether out of malice or in innocence.27 Jourdain’s vessel and party cannot remain in Yemen to await a decision, and so they weigh anchor and depart.28 A year later, the British East India Company sends Henry Middleton and thirty men, in three ships, in pursuit of the same goal, trading privileges in Mocha. They meet with almost exactly the same reception. Landing at Aden, Middleton’s ships quickly move on to Mocha after learning of their predecessors’ commercial success. Turkish government agents bring Middleton a present from the governor, and when Middleton comes ashore, he is received with musical entertainment. He presents his government’s official letter, along with gifts for the governor at Aden and the Pasha at Sana’a, and in return is given a silk garment of crimson and silver. The governor continues to send him small gifts over the next few days, and all seems well. Abruptly, however, the English guests and their ships are assaulted and suffer casualties. The survivors are marched in chains to Sana’a, from where they are ultimately freed and returned to Mocha, but without establishing a stable commercial presence.29 Nine years pass until the third – successful – British attempt.30 Edward Heynes, the author of this particular travel account, relates that in April 1618, the Anne Royall anchors off of Mocha, and a gift exchange cycle begins with food gifts from the city’s governor. The English explain who they are and what they want but will not go ashore without guarantees of their safety. A Jew (born in Lisbon) and an old Venetian renegade are sent that very afternoon to give the visitors verbal assurances, but these do not suffice.

26 Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (Glasgow 1905), 3:67. 27 Carol M. Rose, “Giving, Trading, Thieving and Trusting: How and Why Gifts become Exchanges and Vice Versa,” Florida Law Review 44 (1992), 295–317. See also Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy, trans. Howard B. Clarke (Ithaca, 1974), 48–57. 28 The Journal of John Jourdain, 1608–1617, 89–90. 29 Henry Middleton, “H. Middleton at Zacotora and Aden,” Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (Glasgow, 1905), 3:121–26; Idem, “An Account of the Captivity of Sir Henry Middleton by the Turks at Moka,” Jean de Laroque and Sir Henry Middleton, A Voyage to Arabia Felix through the Eastern Ocean and the Streights of the Red-Sea . . . An account of the Captivity of Sir Henry Middleton at Mokha . . . (London, 1732), 250–77. 30 “The Voyage of the Anne Royall from Surat to Moha, in the Red Sea, for setl[!]ing an English Trade in those parts: Anno Dom. 1618, extracted out of Master Edward Heynes his Iournall Written thereof,” Hakluyt Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes (London, 1625), 1: 622–29.

10

Precursor

Contact is resumed the next day, with food gifts from the governor’s scrivano, his chief deputy. More important, two “old men of good quality” board the Anne Royall to serve as pledges or hostages, to coax the British ashore. Now the latter are satisfied, and a British delegation lands, and presents the governor with six yards of broadcloth stammell, six yards of green material, a shotgun and mirror. It is striking that the British respond to their hosts’ food gifts with gifts of technology and industry. This form of reciprocity sends a message of power, for not only does it reflect the greater sophistication of their economy, it also implies that the Yemenites are no match militarily. The hosts may have been pleased with the British gifts, but their message would scarcely have gone unnoticed, which dramatically illustrates the sociologists’ principle that, while gifts represent friendship, they are often fraught, and produce anxiety as much as good will.31 The British tell the governor that they want a firman allowing their country free trade. The governor asks why they were afraid to come ashore without pledges, and they recount the Middleton tale. The governor assures them that his predecessor was ill, and has long since been removed from office, and currently lives in disgrace in Istanbul. He swears that no harm will come to them and assigns two of his staff and the “Jew-merchant” to tend to their needs. Two days later, the Anne Royall receives a visit from the scrivano, their pledges, the Jew, and twenty other locals, who bear a new round of food gifts. The ship’s visitors also bring a cake containing baked hens and chickens, which Edward Heynes, author of the account, describes as “very well dressed and pleasing enough to a dainty palate.” Apparently, strangers and hosts feast together, and the British welcome their guests with quince pie and crabs, along with alcoholic beverages to cement the new friendship. The drinks are sake and “strong water,” which shows consideration for the guests, to whom, as Muslims, wine is forbidden. A week later, the scrivano sends word that the Pasha at Sana’a has commanded the governor to treat the English well and permit them free trade, but a complication arises two days later with the arrival of a new governor. The pledges return to the ship bearing another round of food gifts, and they confirm the trade privileges. The English go ashore to meet the new governor and

31 Gadi Algazi, “Introduction: Doing Things with Gifts,” Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, ed. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard Juseen (Göttingen, 2003), 9–27. Similarly, in 1721, the English present five guns as a gift to the Imam’s ministers: see Nancy Um, ‘Order in the “Arbitrary:” The Distribution, Content and Temporal Cycles of English Merchant Tribute in Eighteenth-Century Yemen,’ Journal of Early Modern History 18 (2014), 249.

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reiterate their purpose. Heynes adds that they inform the governor that if he denies their request, they will prevent the ships of other nations from landing at Mocha, effectively strangling the city’s commercial life. The governor quickly offers his firman, and Heynes observes wryly that he was motivated more by fear than love. This encounter reveals the British sense that the balance of power has shifted in their favor since the Middleton episode. They continue to flex their muscles, demanding an explanation of the Middleton incident. Again they are told that the previous governor was an evil man, but their hosts push back a little, noting that his attitude was adversely affected by uncivil behavior on the part of the English visitors: “pissing at the gates of their churches, forcing into mens’ houses to their women and, being daily drunk in the streets, would fight and quarrel with the people.” The image of the British as drunkards may be no more than a reflection of the Islamic taboo on wine. On the other hand, when the guests are summoned to attend the ceremony at which their firman is to be publicly proclaimed, they procrastinate, because one of their number has become intoxicated after buying sake from a local Jew. Moreover, following the delayed ceremony, the British ask the scrivano to have someone produce sake for their “sick” countrymen. They also request that the Jew be prohibited from selling their men any further sake, and the scrivano complies, allowing only for a Jew appointed by himself to brew the sake in the foreigners’ quarters. These circumstances support the image of British drunkenness and suggest that they were probably also guilty of the other forms of uncivil behavior imputed to them. In due course, after receiving the firman from the Pasha at Sana’a, the Anne Royall departs for India, having achieved the British goal, though perhaps with a slight loss of dignity. Apart from the implication that the British sensed an increase in their power, the story of the Anne Royall also reflects a change in the position of Mocha’s Jews. Abraham Mussa of Tor, the Jew who redeems Fernão Mendes Pinto and later sells him at Hormuz, was not necessarily a Mocha resident. “David,” the Jewish commercial agent who hosts Jourdain’s Jew-hating shipmate is obviously local, but even if Mocha had other Jewish constituents, Heynes’ narrative of the Anne Royall expedition depicts the city’s Jews in a very different light. Here Jews crop up at various junctures and in different capacities, suggesting that they constituted a discrete ethnic group or community. They even act as government functionaries or agents, in an official or semi-official capacity, meaning that they have a presence in the public life of the society and government. Their outsider status is the crucial factor in their augmented status, for their increased utility to society and state derives from their linguistic facility and cosmopolitan cultural profile. Furthermore, their religious identity enables them to provide alcohol,

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which is important to Europeans, although this does not create a social bond between the latter and the Jewish locals. The Dutch experience fewer difficulties than the British in their efforts to secure trading privileges, perhaps simply because they came later. In August 1614, Pieter van den Broecke of the Dutch East India Company, established in 1602, travels to Yemen on the Nassau. He and members of his crew land at Aden, and request permission to found a permanent trading station. Ali Agha, the governor, receives them cordially, and they give him a gift of cloth and “Nuremberg wares.” However, a few days later Agha insists, as before, that permission to establish a permanent trading station must come from Constantinople. Van den Broecke departs for ash-Shihr, located up the Gulf of Aden to the east, where the local sovereign offers them food gifts, and does grant permission to leave “two or three” people, supposedly to learn the language. At Qishn, too, Van den Broecke receives permission to leave people until his return. It is not clear why the Turks treat the Europeans more leniently here than at Aden; perhaps the coastline of the Arabian Sea was less sensitive to Muslims than the Red Sea, the gateway to the Hejaz. Van den Broecke’s initial experience is, thus, consistent with the English experience, both in terms of his hospitable reception and, conversely, of the requirement of a firman from Constantinople. He returns in January 1616, this time landing at Mocha but otherwise replicating the previous circumstances: the Dutch are met at the jetty with a fife and drum performance; they are feted by the governor, and Van den Broecke is given a cloak of gold brocade. He is forced to travel to Sana’a, to ask the Pasha, Djafar Pasha, for permission to found a permanent trading station at Mocha. At Sana’a, the Dutch and Turks exchange gifts, with Van den Broecke again receiving a cloak of gold brocade. Once again, the Yemenite authorities insist on a firman from Constantinople, for they suspect that the Dutch claim that they seek peaceful trade is insincere, since a visit to their vessel reveals that it is heavily armed and carries black slaves from a ship taken at Ceylon. In his account of the 1616 sojourn, Van den Broecke notes that his journey to Sana’a took him past Dhamar, whose governor was originally Hungarian, as is Djafar Pasha, as well. The Ottomans had ruled Hungary since 1541, which makes this perfectly plausible. The Hungarian origins of these rulers supports the point about the complicated nature of the Yemenite encounter, for we find Europeans, albeit Muslims, in power in Yemen, and managing the confrontation with foreign visitors.32

32 Further evidence of the prior European presence in Yemen is Van den Broecke’s mention of a castle of blue freestone in Dhamar, which he says was built by an Italian: Beckingham,

Seventeenth Century: Mercantilist Politics

13

Ultimately, in mid-1618, the Dutch ambassador at Constantinople, Cornelius Haga, procures the desired firman, which is granted on condition that the Dutch proceed no further up the Red Sea than Mocha; clearly, this condition was intended to prevent Europeans from approaching the sacred soil of the Hejaz. Van den Broecke returns to Mocha in July 1620, to serve as director of the station, but in 1621 relations sour, after Dutch ships capture five Indian commercial vessels. Mocha’s governor, Ahmad, arrests a number of Dutch citizens, including their current leader, Van der Burcht, and confiscates goods and money, and the Dutch respond by taking Turkish hostages. Protracted negotiations ensue, but the conflict is not resolved.33 The Turks are expelled from Yemen in 1635, following a rebellion by the Qasimids, a local clan, under whom Yemen is ruled by Hussein, the Imam or religious leader. The Dutch Cornelius Van de Graeff negotiates a renewed agreement for the renewal of trade, but a new Dutch station is not established at Mocha until 1696. Thus, the Dutch success at establishing a permanent presence in Yemen, owing to their diplomatic efforts in Constantinople, ultimately fails to grant them an advantage over their English rivals. The Ottoman ouster from Yemen following the Qasimid revolt is a factor in the seventeenth-century shift we have noted in the balance of power in favor of the European nations. At the time, the Ottomans were a superpower in the Mediterranean and Near East, and their defeat in Yemen weakens the country. But the change is also, simply, a function of the inexorable global empowerment of Europe’s mercantilist nations. A subtle illustration of this political tilt is the list of gifts offered by Van den Broecke upon his 1620 arrival in Aden, as itemized in his “book of resolutions.” Fabric (satin, etc.) and spices (pepper, cloves, etc.) are standard fair, and there are also serving dishes. Most unexpected, however, is the last item on the list – a painting. All of the Europeans’ material gifts are of a different sort than the food objects they receive from their Yemenite hosts, but why the Dutch think the Yemenites would appreciate a European painting is unclear. Perhaps the “Dutch Travellers in Arabia in the Seventeenth Century,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1–2 (1951), 74. 33 C.J. Brouwer, “Under the Watchful Eye of Mimī Bin cAbd Allāh: The Voyage of the Dutch Merchant Pieter Van den Broecke to the Court of Djacfar Bāshā in Sana’a, 1616,” Itinerario 9 (1985), 42–72; Idem, “Le Voyage au Yémen de Pieter van den Broecke (serviteur de la V.O.C.) en 1620, d’après son livre résolution,” The Challenge of the Middle East, ed. Ibrahim A. ElSheikh et al. (Amsterdam, 1982), 1–11; Idem, Dutch-Yemeni Encounters: Activities of the United East India Company (VOC) in the South Arabian Waters since 1614 – A Collection of Studies (Amsterdam, 1999). See also Beckingham, “Dutch Travellers in Arabia in the Seventeenth Century.”

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Dutch viewed works of art, simply, as the products of craftsmanship, like the serving dishes or like the Yemenites’ cloaks of gold brocade. Alternatively, they may have found it appropriate to offer an object whose value was aesthetic, rather than utilitarian. Perhaps the Dutch assumed that beauty is not culturally dependent, such that the Yemenites would be able to appreciate their art. However well-intentioned such gestures may have been, they express the European tendency to project their tastes upon the peoples of the lands they visited.34

The Eighteenth Century: Coffee During the seventeenth century, Mocha’s trade undergoes a fundamental change, for whereas formerly Yemen, and especially Aden, was attractive because of its location along the Red Sea trade route to the East, gradually Mocha becomes important for its role in the production of coffee. Coffee growers bring their product to the market at Bayt al-Faqih (between Hudaydah and Ta’izz), where it is sold to dealers for shipment abroad. In 1700–1750, the heyday of the Mocha coffee trade, English, French and Dutch trading companies maintain a permanent presence at Mocha, and there are also merchants from the Persian Gulf and India. The ethnic landscape of Mocha is thus considerably more diverse than before, and richer in cultural encounters. The first French arrivals to leave a record are the merchants from St. Malo, in Brittany, who come to Mocha in 1709 to trade in coffee. They are received hospitably and converse with the governor of Aden by means of a Portuguese renegade, who serves as interpreter.35 In Aden, an influential resident invites Godefroy Gollet de la Merveille, the ship’s captain, to his home, where he asks whether the crew includes a physician, who might heal his sick child, local doctors having failed in their efforts. The captain promises to send his physician, and when word of this spreads through the town, the governor asks that the doctor be sent to heal him of a stomach disorder.36 This is a classic example of the stranger’s gift of knowledge, often medical knowledge, as we have seen.

34 Van den Broecke notes that the gifts were given based on usantien van den lande, i.e. regional custom, and naturally Brouwer wonders how the Dutch knew what was called for: Brouwer, Dutch-Yemeni Encounters, 72–73. 35 Jean de la Roque, A Voyage to Arabia Felix through the Eastern Ocean and the Streights of the Red-Sea (London, 1732), 42. 36 Ibid., 46–47.

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The French expedition sails for Mocha, and upon arrival they are greeted by the Dutch and by two Italian missionaries, the first documented presence of missionaries in Yemen. This international presence contrasts dramatically with the reality of the previous century, when renegades were the only Europeans to be found. On the day following the ship’s arrival, the missionaries come on board the ship and accede to the request that they arrange an audience with the town governor.37 In Mocha, the narrator, Jean de la Roque, offers a detailed and dramatic account of the French visitors’ encounter with four young ladies from the neighboring house, the oldest of whom seemed to be about twenty-five. These girls spend the hot evenings taking the air on the balcony overlooking a shared courtyard, shielded from the foreigners’ gaze by a lattice-work screen. However, after the French crew members begin singing and dancing in the courtyard, the ladies open their screen, at first slightly and later more freely. Soon they are singing and clapping to the foreigners’ tunes and dancing to the beat of little drums. De la Merveille, observing them from his balcony, describes the ladies with admiration, and without the salacious flavor of Varthema’s account of the queen of Rada’a. The captain is particularly taken with one maiden, who makes repeated appearances, each time in a different hairstyle and outfit. To express his appreciation, the captain holds up for her admiration some ribbons and fans from a small cabinet of curiosities. She promptly sends over a girl, and the captain shows her the contents of the cabinet and gives her a gilt fan and gold ribbon for her mistress, which the latter proceeds to display from her balcony in gratitude. A few days later, the charming lady reciprocates the captain’s gift with a bouquet of small white flowers.38 This story is an almost literal enactment of the uncivil behavior attributed to Middleton’s crew, and de la Roque’s narrative makes plain that the British were hardly the only Europeans to disrespect local mores. The Frenchman’s version of events suggests a process in which initial barriers between stranger and host are lowered. This particular host population is female, rendering the story erotically charged, and so, implicitly, the girls’ concealment is at least as much an expression of modesty as of xenophobia. De la Roque emphasizes the Frenchmen’s politeness, and indeed the captain exhibits no anxiety that the encounter will cause a scandal. In reality, however, in another echo of the Middleton scandal, at the end of the Frenchmen’s six-month sojourn, the governor admits to De Merveille, though ostensibly without rancor, that he has

37 Ibid., 77–78. 38 Ibid., 92–98.

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received complaints about the visitors’ “not scrupling to pry into the most private apartments of the women from the tops of their terraces.”39 Two years later, in 1711, during a second coffee trade mission of St. Malo merchants in Mocha, the Imam of Sana’a suffers from an abscess in his ear, and his viceroy recommends the French physicians. The French send their surgeon, with a twenty-man delegation, and the Imam is healed. The delegation presents the Imam with a large mirror, a pair of pistols and some cloth, all representative of Europe’s advanced technology and thus also its might.40 This episode resembles the medical incident of two years previous, but with subtle yet significant nuances. In 1709, the request for medical aid may be merely an example of the universal assumption that the stranger has occult knowledge and power. During the second visit, however, it is clearly the success of the initial experience that stimulates the Imam’s request, such that the relationship between the Yemenites and French must be construed as hierarchical, rather than equal. The symbolic significance of the encounter shifts from a human encounter between two civilizations to one of European domination, without negating the benefits that Europe brought to the Third World in this instance, as indeed in others. The choice of physician is equally noteworthy. De la Roque remarks that the surgeon dispatched to the Imam, though experienced, was not their chief surgeon, who remained in Mocha to serve the crew of his ships. This was a complicated decision, because it opened the door to the possibility of the surgeon’s failure. This could have grim consequences should the Imam not recover, for not only would the Europeans lose prestige, they might be suspected of foul play, identified as enemies of the regime, and forfeit their liberty if not their lives. This is not an unrealistic scenario, given that when the delegation headed for Sana’a, they had yet to be advised of the nature of the Imam’s medical problem, which, fortunately for all concerned, was benign. This incident is, thus, also a further example of how fraught gift giving can be when it can result in an outcome worse than no gift at all. The French involvement in the medical care of the Imam picks up a narrative that begins in 1706, when the governor of Mocha asks the Dutch to send

39 Ibid., 137. 40 Jean de la Roque, “An Account of a Voyage from Mocha to the Court of the King of Yaman . . . in the Second Expedition, in the Years 1711, 1712, and 1713,” Ibid., 189. The French rendered medical assistance to the Imam again in 1722, for which they were rewarded with a privilege of six hundred bales of coffee duty-free per year, a benefit already awarded to the English: Nancy Um, “Foreign Doctors at the Imam’s Court: Medical Diplomacy in Yemen’s Coffee Era,” Genre 48 (2015), 277.

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Otto Mueller, the surgeon of a Dutch ship docked at Mocha, to travel to Mawahib to treat the ailing Imam.41 The Dutch refuse – twice! – but feel obliged to accept a third request. Apparently, the treatment succeeds, for the Imam sends a letter of thanks to Joan Josua Ketelaar, the senior Dutch merchant in Mocha, with the gift of a khilʻa, a robe of honor, of the kind we have already encountered. The Imam gives horses to Mueller, Ketelaar, Joan van Hoorn (the late governor-general of Batavia – clearly, the Imam was unaware of his death), and to the soldiers accompanying Mueller on the journey to Mawahib. The governor asks the Dutch to leave one horse behind in Mocha, and they decide to give him two, as a gift.42 Despite this success in medical diplomacy, in 1711 the Dutch factors at Mocha notify their superiors of their decision to refuse to render the Imam any further medical assistance, apparently for precisely the reason mentioned, namely the fear that the Imam might die under their care, with potentially dire consequences. In this case the likelihood of complications was high, since the Imam was known to be taking all sorts of medications, prescribed by physicians of various nationalities. At this point, the governor approaches the French, as de la Roque relates.43 This incident exemplifies another aspect of gift exchange, namely the refusal to offer (or accept) a gift, a risky decision for stranger or host. Up to this point, the fundamental and overarching theme of our story, the stranger-host encounter in Yemen in the early modern era, is the expansion of the European – Christian – presence, with various nations pursuing their quest for international trade routes and privileges. The commercial phase exhibits patterns familiar from the anthropological literature. Material gifts are exchanged, in what are ostensibly gestures of hospitality and friendship, but, as always, the gifts communicate social and cultural messages that are not always or entirely friendly. The gift of medical knowledge makes several appearances in the sources, and we have noted that although this phenomenon is nearly universal, it has particular connotations in the cultural context under examination. In the sixteenth-century tales of Varthema and Pinto, the only European Christians are renegades, but over time, political and economic factors combine to

41 This was after, in 1702, a physician in a Persian diplomatic delegation to Yemen, successfully treats the Imam for hemorrhoids. See Um, “Foreign Doctors at the Imam’s Court,” 271. 42 Um, “Foreign Doctors at the Imam’s Court,” 272–74. Similarly, in 1721 the Imam of Sana’a sends a horse as a gift to William Phipps when he arrived in Mocha from Bombay to serve as chief factor – Um, ‘Order in the “Arbitrary,” 248. 43 European domination escalates to the point that in 1737 the French bombard Mocha to express dissatisfaction with the government’s trade conditions, which the latter are forced to annul: see Eric Macro, Yemen and the Western World (London, 1968), 12.

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nudge Yemen away from insularity. The Ottoman control of Yemen is one such force, and it behooves us to remember that the Turks were foreigners themselves, albeit Muslims. Of course, mercantile pressure from Europe is the leading factor in the process we are discussing, and the English and Dutch leverage their Istanbul connections to make inroads at Yemen, especially at Mocha. The result is the near disappearance of renegades from later narratives and a concomitant increase in the presence – in diverse roles – of non-Muslims of all sorts. Missionaries fan out across the colonial world and make their Yemen debut in de la Roque’s narrative. For Jews, the new openness is expressed in a presence that now includes government service and permanent residence. Two very different sorts of stranger-host encounter conclude this section of the precursor period. Our first source is the account by the qadi, Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Haymi of the diplomatic delegation to Ethiopia under his leadership in 1648, but the story begins with the 1642 delegation to Yemen sent by Fasiladas, the Christian king of Ethiopia, following the 1635 revolt against the Turks in Yemen led by the Imam Mu’ayyad, then resident at Shahara.44 Gift exchange is fundamental to such diplomatic delegations. Fasiladas boasts about his wealth when he writes that his envoys are bringing the Imam “just a trifle:”45 twenty slaves and an Ethiopian female donkey. This list does not entirely accord with Haymi’s statement that the Ethiopian emissaries presented “slaves, civet (zabad) and Ethiopian weapons.”46 The latter combination of items is unlike any we have examined thus far, for although obviously these commodities have economic value, they are of different sorts: slaves are purely utilitarian, perfume is an aesthetic object as well as a precious one, and weapons represent military power. The gifts are accompanied by the request that the Imam exchange diplomatic emissaries with Fasiladas, vaguely implying a plan for diplomatic cooperation. The Ethiopian strangers also deviate from familiar patterns of gift exchange in explicitly asking for gifts in return. Specifically, they request two horses: one a big thoroughbred, able to bear a fully-armed warrior, the other a nondescript animal, even one that is short or female. A second request is for armor, including a large, strong, coat of mail and a beautiful large helmet. The gifts requested are of a

44 Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Haymi, A Yemenite Embassy to Ethiopia, 1647–1649: al-Haymi’s Sirat al-Habasha, ed. Emeri Johannes Van Donzel, (Stuttgart, 1986); Van Donzel, Foreign Relations of Ethiopia 1642–1700: Documents Relating to the Journeys of Khodja Murad (Istanbul, 1979), 4–12; For the initial letter from Fasiladas to the Imam and the latter’s reply, see Van Donzel, A Yemenite Embassy to Ethiopia, 32–35, 36–51. 45 Van Donzel, A Yemenite Embassy to Ethiopia, 35. 46 Ibid., 89.

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military nature, apart from the detail that the helmet be beautiful. The Imam appreciatively acknowledges the king’s gifts and echoes the king’s boastful sentiment when he estimates the gifts the king has requested “a trifle indeed, and, as a matter of fact, insignificant.” He, therefore, adds that he is also sending a sharp sword, “decisive in front of the enemy,” demonstrating his grasp that Fasiladas values gifts of military hardware.47 Mu’ayyad dispatches an envoy, with “magnificent gifts,” but there is no record of the results of this exchange of emissaries and gifts. Five years later, in 1647, Fasiladas sends a second embassy, led by the Muslim, al-Hadj Salim ibn ‘Abd al-Rahim, and an unnamed Christian.48 Fasiladas sends gifts (again – not detailed), but states in his letter that, as before, his main purpose is to ask the Imam to send him a Yemen emissary. En route to Yemen, the two Ethiopian envoys learn that the Imam has died but press on. The new Imam, Mutawakkil, asks the envoys what the king actually wants, and is told that his true desire is to convert to Islam. This convinces the Imam to comply with the king’s request. He charges al-Haymi with the assignment, instructing him to clarify the king’s real intentions, and to cooperate with him if he really intends to convert. Haymi comes bearing gifts: “robes of honor of marvelous brocade, magnificent new regal gowns, sharp cutting swords, plentiful long coats of mail, and splendid muskets which hit the mark, together with some precious horse harnesses and shields fit for any ruler.”49 The robes of honor are a Yemenite staple, as we know, and the rest of the items are military hardware of the type Falisadas previously requested and was bound to appreciate. The embassy leaves Shahara in July 1647 and reaches Gondar in March 1648. Haymi’s account of what transpired leaves many questions unanswered, but it becomes clear that converting to Islam was never the king’s intention. Rather, he seems to have sought the Imam’s assistance in resisting Turkish control, though scholarly opinion is divided with respect to his strategy.50

47 Ibid., 51. 48 The Christian is mentioned by Joachim Legrand, in his contribution to Joachim Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia. 49 Van Donzel, A Yemenite Embassy, 99. 50 J. Spencer Trimmingham, Islam in Ethiopia (London, 2008, 2nd ed.), 102, has a different version, based on Peiser: Falisadas expelled the Jesuits, and then, in 1642, sent an envoy to Imam Mu’ayyad, asking him to banish or kill any Portuguese he encounters. In 1647, he sends an embassy to Mutawakkil, to communicate to him that he desires friendly relations, and would not oppose the Imam’s sending Muslim missionaries to Ethiopia. In 1648, the Imam sends a scholar, but the people receive him so negatively that Falisadas sends him away, albeit with costly gifts.

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The Ethiopian diplomatic initiative is unlike the encounters studied so far in a number of respects. It is the first case of a strictly diplomatic mission, neither party to the exchange is European, and one delegation involves Yemenite emissaries, or strangers. The gift exchange also has novel elements, including not only the selection of items but also the act of submitting a list of gift requests, which though unheard-of in Yemen, must have been an Ethiopian tradition. Fasiladas explains: “We want and ask this from You only because of Our great friendship for You, and because We know that Your hand reaches far and because We are in a position to experience that.”51 In other words, he deems asking for a gift an honorable act, a gesture of friendship and respect, rather than an insolent liberty, presumably because it expresses recognition of the wealth and largesse of the sovereign being solicited. It may even be deemed a friendly act, by sparing the latter the need to select the objects to be offered in return, which is universally a source of anxiety. By extension, however, we may deduce that the refusal to comply with the gift request would be interpreted as a hostile act, which further illustrates the principle that gift exchange is often fraught. This observation may be especially valid in cases of diplomatic exchange, with emissaries nervously striving to achieve their political objectives. The Yemen sojourn of Sayyid Abbas b. Ali al-Musawi al-Makki brings this section of our discussion to a close. In 1728–1732, Musawi shuttled between Sana’a, Mocha and Mecca, finally settling in Mocha, where he wrote Nuzhat aljalis, an autobiography and travel account.52 Musawi’s narrative is the only known Arab travel account to Yemen from this period, and it offers a valuable perspective on the Yemenite stranger-host encounter. What stands out is the Yemenites’ appreciation of poetry. In Mocha, Musawi stays at the home of the qadi, who receives him with a valuable gift and a qasida poem of welcome.53 In Sana’a, Musawi sends a qasida of panegyric to a politically-connected local, who responds with promises of largesse, but fails to deliver. Later, again in Mocha, Musawi pens a qasida of complaint about his shabby treatment at the hands of one of his hosts.54 Clearly, a poem was an esteemed gift, whether by stranger or host, and of course it is one accessible only to cultural insiders.55

51 Van Donzel, A Yemenite Embassy, 35. 52 Nancy Um, The Merchant Houses of Mocha: Trade and Architecture in an Indian Ocean Port (Seattle, 2009), 73–75. 53 I Viaggi in Oriente di Sayyid Abbas b. Ali al-Makki Letterato e Cortigiano (1718–1729), ed. Marco Salati (Venice, 1995), 54. 54 Ibid., 67, 70. 55 Cf. Caton, Peaks of Yemen I Summon.

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The Danish Expedition The precursors era of European travel to Yemen has presented two distinct phases thus far, with a shift in the focus of the voyages from the involuntary encounter of captives to the efforts of mercantilist nations to conduct international commerce in Yemen. In the third phase, in the mid-eighteenth century, scientific exploration becomes the latest force motivating Europeans to visit Yemen, a force that will play a central role in the nineteenth century.56 A new national protagonist enters our field of vision, Denmark.57 This is the era of the birth of modern biblical criticism, and in 1756, Johann David Michaelis of Göttingen University, a leading Hebraist and biblical scholar, proposes to the Danish foreign minister that some of the missionaries dispatched each year to Trankebar, a Danish colony in southeast India, be directed instead to the Arabian peninsula. Initially, the voyagers are only expected to collect Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts, but the plan grows more ambitious.58 Michaelis formulates a set of one hundred problems which they are to attempt to solve, in the fields of biblical geography (including flora and fauna) and philology (inter alia the relationships between Semitic languages). Michaelis also postulates that behaviors of the biblical Israelites can still be found in remote communities of Arabia, and thus advocates ethnographic inquiry.59 Essentially, then, the expedition’s goal was to find historical evidence in support of the Old Testament.60

56 On the novelty of scientific exploration and its relationship to Orientalism, see Hans F. Vermeulen, “Anthropology and the Orient: C. Niebuhr and the Danish-German Arabia Expedition,” Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment (Lincoln, 2015), 219–20. 57 Denmark had already sent a scientific expedition to Egypt and Sudan, in 1737–1738, led by Frederik Ludvig Norden, whose travel account was published in 1755 to great success, which undoubtedly contributed to the creation of the Arabian expedition. 58 Vermeulen, “Anthropology and the Orient,” 226. 59 The set of problems are printed before the conclusion of the expedition: J.D. Michaelis, Fragen an eine Gesellschaft gelehrter Männer, die auf Befehl . . . des Königes von Dännemark nach Arabien reisen (Frankfurt a.M., 1762). On the intellectual context of the Danish expedition, see Michael C. Carhart, The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany (Cambridge MA, 2007), 27–44; Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire, 26, 38–40. 60 Vermeulen, “Anthropology and the Orient,” 264. The focus on biblical philology, a Europocentric perspective, contrasts with the concentration on natural history and ethnography which ultimately defined the expedition’s achievements, putting front and center the natural and human environment of the Middle East. See Lawrence J. Baack, “From Biblical Philology to Scientific Achievement and Cultural Understanding: Carsten Niebuhr, Peter Forsskål and Frederik von Haven and the Transformation of the Danish Expedition to Arabia

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Michaelis’ initiative has a number of cultural contexts. Michaelis was an Old Testament expert, a field dominated by Protestant scholars since the sixteenth century, especially in central Europe. The interest in geography and natural history is a direct outgrowth of the efflorescence of these fields in the early modern era, beginning with the explorations and discoveries of the fifteenth century. Some explorers tried their hand at the ethnographic description of aboriginal peoples, and this type of writing is a common feature of accounts by Europeans on the Grand Tour in Europe or the Near East, particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Old Testament scholarship often involved some degree of contact with Jews, and there is abundant evidence of Jews tutoring Christians and supplying texts in various lands of early modern Europe. The experience of encountering “real” Jews did not always cause scholars or travelers, however educated and sophisticated, to view Jews sympathetically. Michaelis is a prime example, for notwithstanding his devotion to the study of Hebrew and the Old Testament, he is well known for his anti-Jewish views, including his opposition to Jewish emancipation.61 This issue is important to our inquiry of the Yemen experience, particularly in light of Michaelis’ interest in local customs. Turning from the concept of the initiative to its execution, Michaelis recommends that a Göttingen student train the missionaries for their assignment. Friedrich Christian von Haven (b. 1727), a Danish Göttingen student of philology and ethnology with knowledge of Arabic, is selected. Von Haven, in turn, demands the assistance of a mathematician, to assist with geography and cartography, and Carsten Niebuhr (b. 1733), a German surveyor studying mathematics and astronomy at Göttingen, is hired. They are joined by Peter Forsskål (b. 1732), a Swedish botanist and zoologist who trained with the famed Carl Linnaeus, and who at age twenty four is already a member of the German Academy of Science.62 Forsskål also studied Oriental languages with Michaelis

1761–1767,” Early Scientific Expeditions and Local Encounters. New Perspectives on Carsten Niebuhr and The Arabian Journey, ed. Ib Friis, Michael Harbsmeier and Jørgen Bœk Simonsen (Copenhagen, 2013), 61–77. 61 See Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770–1870 (New York, 1978), 91–93; Jonathan M. Hess, “Carsten Niebuhr, Johann David Michaelis, and the Politics of Orientalist Scholarship in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Early Scientific Expeditions and Local Encounters, 78–84. 62 Baack, “A Naturalist of the Northern Enlightenment: Peter Forsskl after 250 Years,” Archives of Natural History 40 (2013), 1–19. Note, however, that the invitation to Arabia came shortly after the university at Uppsala rejected Forsskål’s Ph.D. dissertation. Note, too, that Forsskål was only one in a series of scientific travelers trained by Linnaeus: Glyn Williams, Naturalists at Sea: Scientific Travellers from Dampier to Darwin (New Haven, 2013), 57–58.

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at Göttingen, and his knowledge of Arabic is a distinct asset. Another addition is Georg Wilhelm Baurenfeind (b. 1728), a German artist and engraver. Christian Carl Kramer (b. 1732), a Danish physician, completes the professional staff, and Lars Berggren, a Swedish cavalryman, is brought along as orderly.

Fig. 1: Peter Forsskål, painted in 1760 by P. Dahlman.63

A period of preparation ensues, during which time Niebuhr studies Arabic. By the time the team finally embarks, the original concept of training missionaries has long since been replaced with that of an independent scientific expedition of two- or three-years duration. The hierarchy among the various participants has also changed. Von Haven was the nucleus of the staff, but Forsskål insists that the expedition’s members enjoy equal status. His apparent motivation is zeal for his own autonomy, but the result is that the two scholars have authority neither over one another nor over their less illustrious comrades. Further overturning the hierarchy, the Danish authorities appoint Niebuhr, the youngest member and by no means a scholar, treasurer of the expedition, probably due to his personality rather than his training in mathematics. A formal statement of the King’s instructions details the expedition’s responsibilities. The primary assignment is to answer Michaelis’ questions or

63 Photographer: Julia Gyllenadler; property of Uppsala University Art Collection.

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those proposed by other scholars. Another is to acquire ancient manuscripts relevant to study of the Bible and ancient Near East. Familiarizing themselves with the landscape is a fundamental task, and the voyagers are to map the topography and study the climate. The team is also to investigate the beliefs and behaviors of the local inhabitants. The King’s directions also define the responsibilities of individual team members. Forsskål is to collect plants and animals, particularly those related to Michaelis’ questions, and von Haven is to copy ancient manuscripts and scrutinize local customs. Geography and cartography are Niebuhr’s bailiwick, while Baurenfeind is to illustrate. Kramer’s brief is to study local diseases, especially smallpox, collect materia medica, and assist with zoology. He must also tender medical assistance to “distinguished Arabs” (vornehme Araber),64 which, the document notes, will earn good will. Good will is also the thrust of an article devoted to appropriate interaction with the local population: All members of the company shall show the greatest courtesy to the inhabitants of Arabia. They are not to raise any objections towards their religion, more than that, they shall give no indication – not even indirectly – that they despise it; they shall refrain from that which is the abomination of the inhabitants of Arabia. And also, as necessary in the course of their tasks, they should proceed in such a manner as to draw the least attention as possible, shrouding anything which might arouse the suspicion among the ignorant Mohammedans that they were searching for treasure, practicing sorcery, or spying with the intention of harming the country. They must never awaken the Arabs’ insatiable jealousy or vengeance through bestowing European liberties upon women, or embarking upon intrigues of a similar nature. So far as it is the intention of these instructions to remind them of the simple demands of morality, it is thus forbidden for them to cast attentions of any kind of love upon such persons, married or unmarried, which might arouse the Oriental desire for revenge.65

The subject of these instructions is the stranger-host encounter, precisely our concern, and they are important for the light they shed on European assumptions and expectations before the expedition gets underway. Three potential problems are raised, beginning with the concern that the visitors will express disdain for the beliefs and practices of Islam. Clearly, that they harbor such disdain is taken for granted. The other two problems relate, not to the preconceptions of the strangers, but rather to the image their people had acquired in

64 Vermeulen, “Anthropology and the Orient,” 228. 65 Stig T. Rasmussen, “Journeys in Persia and Arabia in the 17th and 18th Centuries,” The Arabian Journey: Danish Connections with the Islamic World over a Thousand Years, ed. Kjeld von Folsach et al. (Århus, 1996), 59–60.

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the eyes of their hosts. And this image does indeed rest upon the experiences of earlier voyagers. Beginning with Varthema, Europeans were routinely suspected of espionage or of stealing foreign treasure, and whether or not these suspicions were justified, obviously the foreigners were aware of their reputation. Taking liberties with women, or the suspicion thereof, is another issue we have already confronted, and it would seem to be the extension of a general lack of respect for another society and culture. Finally, the references to the “insatiable jealousy” of the Arabs and “the Oriental desire for revenge” testify to the stereotype of the emotional Oriental, which stands in direct opposition to the European male’s self-image as a rational being, in control of his emotions. Embarking from Copenhagen in January 1761, the crew of six travels by way of the Mediterranean to Constantinople, where they exchange their European garb for Oriental attire. Niebuhr explains that this is better suited to the climate and mores, but there is a discernible pattern of Europeans dressing as Arabs during their visits to the Near East, and this behavior reflects the dislocation that is part of the travel experience, with the attendant destabilization of one’s group identity.66 We detect this tendency also in Niebuhr’s decision to exchange his name for Abdallah.67 Reaching Egypt in September, the team proceeds from Alexandria to Cairo. The following August, 1762, they explore the Sinai peninsula, and then sail for Jedda and on to Yemen, landing at Luhayyah at the end of December. Two years after sailing from Europe, the expedition begins to founder, when, in Apri1 1763, von Haven falls ill in Mocha, apparently with malaria, and dies within a few weeks. Soon all the travelers experience symptoms. Forsskål writes, prophetically, that for such a journey, “one had to be prepared to give one’s life in the service of science,” and in late June he is stricken, and on July 11th dies at Yerim, en route to Sana’a.68 The four survivors, by then all quite sick, return to Mocha and sail for Bombay. It is August, and they have spent just eight months in Yemen, rather than the projected two or three years. Baurenfeind and Berggren expire at sea, and Kramer succumbs in Bombay the following February. Niebuhr slowly recuperates and leaves for Denmark in

66 Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern (Zurich, 1992), 78. This decision is taken in consultation with van Gähler, the Danish ambassador in Constantinople. 67 Beschreibung, 42. In the highlands of Yemen, Niebuhr and Forsskål’s guide never realizes that they are European, because both have long Arab beards and apparel, and have assumed Arab names: Reisebeschreibung, 337–38. 68 “Peter Forsskål’s Journal,” trans. Silvester Mazarella, The Linnaeus Apostles: Global Science and Adventure, ed. Lars Hansen (London, 2009), 4:284.

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December 1764. After three years and numerous side trips, he reaches Copenhagen in November 1767. He publishes a series of works based on the expedition’s experiences, including a travel account, which is an immediate sensation and is quickly translated into several languages.69 The team’s arrival in Yemen immediately involves gift exchange, in the tradition we have already encountered. Landing along the shore between Jedda and Luhayyah in search of provisions, the travelers encounter the local Arabs, who notice the Europeans’ mistrust, and hasten to gain their confidence by throwing down their lances. Two local women appear, and ask the visitors for kohel and henna, which, to Niebuhr’s regret, they are unable to supply. Nonetheless, the ladies offer a meal of milk and butter, with “very bad bread, which was, however, the best they had.”70 Both aspects of this exchange bespeak a remarkably low level of tension. The women think nothing of requesting a gift, and neither do their guests deem this rude; likewise, the ladies accept the gift’s refusal in good grace, and proceed to extend their best hospitality. In Luhayyah, curiosity runs high about the visitors’ scientific instruments, whose capabilities the strangers gladly demonstrate, shocking the locals by showing them an enormous image of a louse under Forsskål’s magnifying glass. Niebuhr describes their astonishment when a woman seen through his astronomical telescope appears to be walking upside down. These anecdotes present European technology and knowledge in the form of entertainment, but European medicine is immediately useful. Berggren, the cavalryman, treats the governor’s ailing horse, while Kramer is besieged by all and sundry. Kramer gives one patient a medication that makes him vomit violently, which so impresses the locals that everyone demands the same drug. The Europeans, too, receive gifts of knowledge, Niebuhr mapping the town and studying the population, and Forsskål gathering numerous plant specimens and learning their names from a local notable, whose assistance he gratefully acknowledges.71

69 The account appears in German in 1772, in French a year later, and in English in 1792, although this last is an abridged version. In 1837, a complete German edition is published, with all of Niebuhr’s observations, as well as his portrait. Forsskål left an account in Swedish: see Arvid Hj Uggla, ed. Resa till lycklige Arabien. Petrus Forsskåls Dagbok 1761–1763 (Uppsala, 1950); “Peter Forsskål’s Journal,” 4:283–380. See also Friedhelm Hartwig, ‘Carsten Niebuhrs Darstellung von Jemen in seiner “Beschreibung von Arabien” (1772) und dem ersten Band Seiner “Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien” (1774),’ Carsten Niebuhr (1733–1815) und seine Zeit: Beiträge eines interdisziplinären Symposiums vom 7.-10. Oktober 1999 in Eutin, ed. Josef Wiesehöfer and Stephan Conermann (Stuttgart, 2002), 155–202. 70 Reisebeschreibung, 294. 71 Resa till lycklige Arabien, 138–39; “Peter Forsskål’s Journal,” 4:354.

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The strangers also offer their hosts the gift of music, albeit reluctantly. Niebuhr and Baurenfeind play the violin together in the evening hours, and a wealthy merchant invites them to play in his home. They refuse, in a powerful example of gift withholding. Their refusal is rooted in Niebuhr’s concern that the team would lose social currency if they were viewed as musicians, which shows an extraordinary sensitivity to the importance of the impression made on the native population, a consideration aired in the King’s instructions. The matter does not end there, for a townsman proceeds to ride over to their dwelling to invite them personally to play in his home, and now they feel compelled to accept. The appreciative townsman attempts to pay the visitors, but they refuse, and he is amazed, for “no Arab likes to give back a present.”72 Thus, in a single encounter we find the two Europeans refusing a gift after having withheld one. They may have sought, once again, to avoid giving the impression that they are mere fiddlers by profession, but more broadly, their behavior illustrates the generalization that accepting a gift places the recipient in debt to the donor, which can be interpreted as debasing one’s honor. Yet, the proffered payment may have been no more than a polite gesture of gratitude, in which case the townsman was amazed, not at the possibility of someone refusing a gift of money, but rather of someone being so rude as to spurn an expression of appreciation. Gift exchange accompanies the team’s departure from Luhayyah, as it did their arrival. The governor offers to return a pair of binoculars he had been loaned, but the visitors prevail upon him to keep it and he is pleased to comply. They offer him another gift of European technology, a watch, and Niebuhr notes that the governor had never seen one.73 This is a stark illustration of the European tendency to offer gifts of their more advanced technology to nonEuropean recipients, although here the objects connote general technological superiority rather than military might in particular. The governor sends Berggren ten crowns for having cured his horse, but the team refuses his gifts of silk and money, which amazes him, for, as Niebuhr notes, Turkish travelers routinely expect “travel money” (Reisegeld).

72 Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung, 302. 73 The governor of Luhayyah was a former black slave from Africa: Baack, Undying Curiosity: Carsten Niebuhr and The Royal Danish Expedition to Arabia (1761–1767) (Stuttgart, 2014), 173–74. Robert Boyle relates that “those Civiliz’d Chineses . . . took the first Watch the Jesuit brought thither, for a Living Creature:” A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things (London, 1688), 230.

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It is February 1763 when the expedition crosses the Tihama, the arid Red Sea littoral. Leaving Luhayyah, they travel to “Dsjalie” en route to Bayt alFaqih and present a letter of introduction from the Luhayyah governor, ordering the locals to give them a sheep. Initially, the travelers refuse the gift, but later they accept it, after learning that the local ruler proceeded to demand that the people pay the equivalent sum, which he intended to pocket.74 This incident illustrates the European’s tendency to refuse gifts, possibly out of consideration for their hosts, but perhaps also to assert superior status. Both in his travel account and in his description of Arabia, Niebuhr waxes eloquent on the exceeding generosity of Yemenite hospitality. He singles out the treatment he and his companions received at Meneyre, en route to Bayt al-Faqih. Normally, he explains, guest houses offer travelers a room, with sorghum bread, camel’s milk or butter, and qishr, a drink made from the skins of coffee beans. When, however, the innkeeper at Meneyre notices that the Europeans are not used to camel’s milk, he offers them cow’s milk and wheat bread. Niebuhr comments that guesthouses in Europe would have many more visitors if they offered similar hospitality, although he tempers this comparison by adding that in the Tihama such facilities are much farther apart from one another. At Meneyre, too, the Europeans grapple with local norms of gift exchange. The travelers learn from their Arab servant that the innkeeper would be offended if they were to offer to pay him. However, Niebuhr adds that he later discovered that perhaps a small gift would have been accepted, and in the meantime the innkeeper’s servant discreetly solicits a tip.75 Plainly, here it is consideration rather than parsimony that motivates the travelers to refrain from offering a gift, and indeed it is important to realize that sometimes a gift is perceived as an insult, and withholding it as proper behavior. In this case, the visitors later realize that their act of consideration was a misstep, for they were oblivious to the distinction between payment for hospitality, a crass commercial transaction, and a gift. Passing Hudaydah, after five days they reach Bayt al-Faqih. Situated midway between Mocha and the coffee bean hills, Bayt al-Faqih was the hub of the once-thriving coffee trade, which, however, was already in decline. The next two months are the high point of the Yemen expedition. The team members fan out in pursuit of their scholarly assignments, individually or in different configurations, and we are treated to a wealth of stranger-host encounters.

74 Reisebeschreibung, 313–16. 75 Reisebeschreibung, 312–13; Beschreibung, 47.

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Encounters begin with greetings, and Niebuhr notes that Muslims greet each other with Salam Aleikum and respond Aleikum Salam but will not greet Christians that way. He explains that Yemenites, who rarely see Christians, do not practice this custom as rigidly as in Egypt and Syria, and this probably explains his own behavior: “Several times I greeted Arabs with Salam Aleikum and sometimes received the usual response.”76 Previous European travel experiences in Yemen have already demonstrated their fascination with local women and erotic experience, and the Danish scientists evince a similar interest, though we do not read of any scandalous behavior of the type mentioned in the king’s instructions. At Luhayyah, Niebuhr relates, girls age five or six walk in public wearing only their pretty hairdos, and although it is understandable that their casual nudity strikes him as curious or even shocking, this observation shares the prurient quality of earlier travel accounts.77 The stranger-host encounter elicits the Yemenites’ assumptions concerning their exotic visitors. A local alchemist asks von Haven, whom he knows is a linguist, the meaning of a particular term, thinking that this would enable him to produce gold.78 In Bayt el-Fakih, Niebuhr’s stargazing is held to represent occult science,79 although elsewhere he remarks that no one suspects him of a nefarious purpose, such as sorcery or the hunt for hidden treasure.80 Likewise, people notice that the visitors spend prodigious sums but earn nothing, and conclude that Forsskål’s botanizing must be intended to facilitate the production of gold.81 Some locals assume that Forsskål, as a botanist, must know medicine, and he good-naturedly fields numerous solicitations for medical knowledge.82 During his scientific excursions, Forsskål is taken aback by the attire of country folk who come to visit him, the first European they have come across: If I had not been forewarned about local customs I would have had reason to be surprised and to fear the worst from folk who came in not only with a broad knife in their belts but a small shield at their sides and a long straight sword or a spear in their hands. Here this

76 Beschreibung, 48–49. 77 Reisebeschreibung, 344. In Cairo, Forsskål and Baurenfeind express their desire to see the effects of female circumcision, i.e. clitorectomy, and their host immediately summons an eighteen-year-old Arab girl and allows them to examine her anatomy: Beschreibung, 80. This incident, reported in a clinical tone, is an even more glaring example of the European voyeuristic fascination with Arab girls. 78 Beschreibung, 141. Tab. LIX (n.p.). 79 Beschreibung, 141. 80 Reisebeschreibung, 336–37. 81 Reisebeschreibung, 320. 82 Reisebeschreibung, 336–37.

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Fig. 2: Baurenfeind’s drawing of an Arab woman in the Tihama.83

passes for respectable formal dress, and should not cause alarm or give rise to hostility any more than when people in Europe wear a sword in the company of those they trust most. I could not begrudge the ordinary people their customary garb; they had the good name and prestige of their town at heart.84

83 “Peter Forsskål’s Journal,” 353. 84 Ibid., 352. Scholars note that a tribesman wears his dagger upright in a curved sheath at the front of his belt, and that the dagger represents his tribal identity and his honor: see Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen, 38–39.

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These observations are in keeping with Forsskål’s mentor Linnaeus’ directive to travelers to study the local way of life.85 Nonetheless, Forsskål’s empathy is remarkable, and decidedly at odds with the Orientalist image of the European’s disdain for the local culture. Forsskål also writes that he expected the governor of Luhayyah to be amazed by the microscope, “something even our own scholars discover new marvels with every day.”86 Here, too, Forsskål objectively compares Yemenite and European behavior, expressing no sense of cultural superiority. Niebuhr expresses a similar objectivity and neutrality when he observes that Arabs are as hospitable towards strangers as “we” are towards Muslims that visit Europe. Moreover, he opines that incidents of inhospitality towards Europeans in Yemen are likely the result of insulting behavior on the part of the visitors, a view whose historical basis we have already noted.87 In April, the six voyagers descend to Mocha, with Niebuhr and von Haven already suffering from malaria. Their encounter with the local officials is disastrous, the latter manhandling the baggage they had sent from Luhayyah and destroying many of the specimens, which strike them as disgusting and even dangerous. The team is hard-pressed to secure lodging after word spreads that they have brought supplies with which to poison the population. This suspicion even causes the dola, or governor, to refuse treatment by the Danish doctor, after he is accidentally shot in the leg on the day following the expedition’s arrival in Mocha. European travelers in Arabia often encounter the suspicion that they harbor a desire to poison the local population. The Dutch experience of some fifty years earlier illustrates the close association in people’s minds of medical treatment and poisoning, particularly because both involve the ingestion of potent potions or powders. Typically, this association seems confirmed when a patient dies despite a physician’s diligent ministrations, especially if the victim is a powerful figure, surrounded by jealous subordinates. Surprisingly, at this supremely tense juncture, a vigorous round of gift exchange clears the air. Forsskål offers the dola a hefty bribe, and the latter promptly sends the team a food gift, and has their belongings released from the customs house. Kramer is summoned to treat the dola’s leg, erasing the ill will

85 Instructio Peregrinatoris, (Uppsala, 1759), 12–13. Likewise, Niebuhr, searches for antiquities during his travels in the Tihama. 86 “Peter Forsskål’s Journal,” 353. 87 Beschreibung, 40–41.

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and completing the cycle of exchange. Now Von Haven dies, and the five surviving team members travel to Sana’a, to continue their mission. En route, at Ta’izz, the governor gives them a house and some food gifts, and they reciprocate with a roll of Indian linen (“silkette”),88 which reflects how lightly they were travelling. The dola makes several efforts to thwart the travelers’ plans for research excursions and continued travel, which ultimately Forsskål overcomes through deft diplomatic maneuvers. He falls ill but insists that they soldier on, only to die en route, at Yerim. The remaining travelers, now four in number, reach Sana’a. They are the first Europeans to reach the city in forty-four years, and 150 years had passed since westerners stayed there for any length of time. The Imam supplies them with a house and all the trimmings of hospitality: candles, wood, rice, seasonings and five sheep. He receives them in audience, and offers them purses of small change, which Niebuhr assumes are meant to be useful in the marketplace. Niebuhr, now the team leader by virtue of his partial knowledge of Arabic, reciprocates with gifts of technology, namely watches and scientific instruments, and notes that whereas the Turks view presents from European visitors as tribute, the Imam and his officers harbor no such expectations.89 The expedition members return to Mocha and board an English ship for Bombay. They leave Sana’a after another audience with the Imam, who gives each of the visitors a suit of clothes, as well as a khilʻa for Niebuhr and camels and donkeys for the return trip to Mocha. The Imam also gives them a letter to the dola of Mocha, ordering him to give them two hundred crowns as a parting gift. They worry that the Imam might have assumed that, like Turks, they had come to Sana’a to ask him for money or that this had been the motive behind their gifts. However, since the dola had extorted fifty Venetian ducats from them in return for permission to leave the city, they elect to present the letter for payment and he is forced to comply.90 Niebuhr does not reciprocate the gift, perhaps because by then he was so unwell that, to his embarrassment, he was

88 “Peter Forsskål’s Journal,” 4:360. 89 On Niebuhr’s view of the Turk’s attitude to gift exchange, see below. Similarly, in 1718, the English gave Yemenite officials watches – Um, ‘Order in the “Arbitrary,” 241. Note, however, that textiles and cash were far more common gifts – Ibid, 227–53. 90 Reisebeschreibung, 422. Niebuhr similarly disparages the Turks’ attitude towards gifts when he notes that when Turks return home from pilgrimage, they stay in Sana’a for free for four to six months, and then ask for money for their travel expense; the Imam obliges, probably to make sure to be rid of them: Reisebeschreibung, 425–26.

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Fig. 3: Baurenfeind’s drawing of the audience with the Imam.91

even forced to cut short the final audience. The four race down to Mocha and take ship for India, marking the expedition’s gloomy finale. The team’s attitude towards Yemenite mores begs our attention. Far from scorning the Arabs’ way of life, Niebuhr articulates an accepting and openminded position, forthrightly declaring that the behaviors of Europeans would seem as bizarre to the people of other lands as their practices seem to European visitors. For instance, he considers the Middle Eastern taste for locusts no

91 Reisebechreibung, Tab. LXIX (n.p.).

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stranger than the European fondness for seafood.92 This relativizing perspective belies the notion that early modern European travelers were culturally primed to disdain Oriental peoples as barbarians, and that they habitually did so. Forsskål’s experience, too, does not support the view that members of scientific expeditions dominated their hosts. Like Niebuhr, Forsskål acknowledges his indebtedness to local informants, and demonstrates respect for the knowledge and culture of the people with whom he interacts. During his botanizing peregrinations, his “footprint” was light, for he traveled with no armed entourage, and depended on the hospitality and cooperation of the local population.93 Yemen’s Jews, the only sizeable non-Muslim population, occupy a particular place in the country’s social and cultural life, and their interactions with the Danish team merit special attention. Niebuhr compares the Jews of Yemen to their European confreres, observing that they resemble the Jews of Poland, but beg less and have a more proper air.94 Elsewhere he remarks that in Yemen and Shiraz the Jews seem to be at least as despised by the Muslims as they are by the Christians of Europe. He also notes, however, that in Yemen, as elsewhere in the Orient, the Jews pursue all sorts of occupations, which they are prohibited from doing in Europe.95 These comments have a neutral, ethnographic, air, which expresses an attitude toward the Jews – of Yemen or Europe – that is vaguely positive at best, though the only critical note is the reference to the begging in Poland. The Danish expedition encounters the Yemenite Jews’ role in the production of alcohol, also encountered by earlier travelers. Niebuhr reports this regarding the Jews of Sana’a but notes that they carefully restrict their activity to Jewish consumers, as the Muslims are strongly averse to the consumption of alcohol. He himself discusses the subject with Sana’a townsmen, and assures them that Europeans disapprove of drunkenness, for which they had obviously earned a bad reputation, as we have seen. Indeed, the team brought alcohol on the voyage, but when they exhausted their supply in Luhayyah, they decided not to avail themselves of the wine and spirits produced by the Jews of Sana’a,

92 Beschreibung, 171. See Baack, “From Biblical Philology to Scientific Achievement and Cultural Understanding,” 71. 93 For the imperialist interpretation, see Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, 2008, 2nd ed.),7–8; regarding Forsskål, see Baack, “A Naturalist of the Northern Enlightenment,” 13–14. 94 Beschreibung, 66. 95 Ibid., 45.

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because these could only be transported in copper vessels, which would render the beverages unhealthy.96 Orœki is currently the most important Jew in Sana’a, if not all Yemen.97 Niebuhr reports that two thousand Jews live in Sana’a, dwelling outside the city’s walls but working within them during the day, where they are Arabia’s best artisans, especially the potters and goldsmiths.98 Orœki, however, is one of the most eminent of the city’s Jewish merchants, and he had been responsible for customs duties and for the royal buildings and gardens for fifteen years under the current Imam, and for thirteen years under his predecessor. Two years before the arrival of the Danish expedition, he fell from favor and was imprisoned, and forced to pay fifty thousand crowns. Just fifteen days prior to their arrival, the Imam ordered him released, and awarded five hundred crowns. Orœki’s fall from grace caused the Imam to order twelve of the Jews’ fourteen synagogues demolished, along with all of their houses higher than fourteen fathoms; they were also forbidden to build higher ones in the future. Their stone wine pitchers were smashed as well, mixing political disfavor with social tension. We are told that a relative of Orœki’s accompanied the Europeans from Cairo to Luhayyah as their servant, and he must be the source of Niebuhr’s description of Orœki as a learned old gentleman, who was also so modest as to dress like his coreligionists, without taking advantage of his permission to wear a sash or turban. Orœki learns of the Europeans from his relative, and wants to meet them, but they withhold the gift of their audience, deeming it imprudent to consort with someone so recently released from prison. But apparently Niebuhr does meet him, for it is to Orœki that he attributes his information about the revenues of the Imam of Sana’a, although the Jew cannot enlighten him about the Imam’s expenditures.99 Niebuhr speculates that Orœki’s relation accompanied them from Cairo either to enjoy their company and travel in greater safety – since the Turkish pilgrims traveling from Cairo to Jedda despise and even abuse the Jews – or to spare himself the expense, “since the Arabian Jews know the value of money as well as do the European ones.”100 This last remark is blatantly anti-Jewish, but perhaps unself-consciously so, in the sense that Niebuhr may have simply expressed what he considered to be a universal consensus, rather than a meanspirited slur. The comments we have already examined are presented in an

96 Reisebeschreibung, 298–99, 415–16; Beschreibung, 421. 97 I.e. Shalom ha-Kohen Iraqi. 98 Reisebeschreibung, 416–17. 99 Beschreibung, 209. 100 Reisebeschreibung, 407.

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objective and neutral tone, the same tone in which he describes other sectors of Yemen’s population, so it would seem out of character for him to have singled out the Jews for opprobrium out of religious prejudice. Orœki’s relation visits them and brings along a coreligionist whom Niebuhr describes as one of “their” greatest astrologers, to explain the Hebrew names of stars mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. This friendly visit is disrupted by the arrival of the Viceroy’s secretary, who is outraged that the Jews dared to visit the European guests before their audience with the Imam, and chases them out of the house, forbidding the visitors’ Muslim servants from allowing anyone to visit before the appropriate time. Niebuhr speculates that the secretary probably assumed that the Europeans would not find the Jews’ company any more pleasant than he did, and that he was doing them a service by freeing them of it. This assessment reflects Niebuhr’s impression of the Muslim attitude towards Jews, without implying hostility on his own part. The astrologer incident highlights the usefulness of the Jews to the Danish team for their knowledge of Hebrew. Likewise, at Ta’izz, Niebuhr hears of a strange inscription in an old wall in Hodafa, between Dhamar and Sayyan along the way to Sana’a, and writes that he heard from Jews in Sana’a, who repeatedly examined the inscription, that it is neither Hebrew nor Arabic.101 The Yemenite Jews’ expertise in Hebrew, which addresses a central goal of the Danish expedition, is also a classic illustration of the special nature of the European encounter with Yemen’s Jews. Forsskål, the team’s naturalist, surprises with a few comments on his own encounters with Yemen’s Jews. In an ethnographic report from Luhayyah, that is in keeping with his education but outside the narrow scope of his instructions, he describes the Yemenite custom of granting a murderer refuge, and adds: “It is very understandable that something similar can also be found in the Jewish community.” This refers either to biblical law or to some other community, for he has already noted that Luhayyah has no Jews.102 Forsskål encounters the Jews of Magrába, outside Ta’izz, in mid-June. His account deserves to be presented in full, not only because it has yet to merit scholarly attention, but primarily because it is without parallel in detail and

101 Reisebeschreibung, 409. Here, strangely, there is a lacuna in the Zurich edition. In Muscat, which Niebuhr visits on his return to Denmark, most of his information comes from the head of the Jewish community, who helps him answer questions 30 [p. xxxvii], 54 [xxxviii] and 99 [xli] from Michaelis’ list: Beschreibung, 14. 102 “Peter Forsskål’s Journal,” 346.

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richness among all the accounts of European travelers to Yemen in the early modern era: Magrába is a village outside the town below the citadel and it is inhabited by the Jews. They had no manuscript codex with vowels marked, but only some modern Tora rolls. Their synagogue had also suffered during the plundering of the town. Saadia’s paraphrase of the pentateuch manuscript in Arabic written in Hebrew characters is their principal book next to the Bible. They had printed Bibles with Targum and Rabbis’ commentaries, which had been brought here via Suez and Cairo. I also saw a History of the Jews printed in Hebrew in Amsterdam in twelvemo, by a jew called Joseph ben Gerson; this [title] also gave the date when the book was printed. Also named was ‘Jesus of Nazareth and his Miracles Explained through Schem hamphorasch’. The Jews here were not used to disputation, so they were unprepared to answer me when I said that the same power to work miracles was in the possession of all the Old Testament prophets without any divine help other than this name, which not even the Jews consider reasonable; so that there could be no distinction between a true prophet and an impostor; and it could also be unacceptable to God’s greatness to let something be taken from him which he did not himself wish to give. The Caraitic Jews in Cairo always deny that Jesus wrought miracles, but this was something they could contradict from the evidence of their own eyes even if they were unable to cast any light on it. They were astonished to see a European reading Hebrew, something that had perhaps not occurred here in recent times. Then they asked, why do we Christians not obey the Laws of Moses? I tried to convince them that the later prophet known as the Messiah had abolished a large part of the Laws of Moses and incorporated everything in himself, so that he himself is the correct Law. To this they gave the usual answer, that the Law of Moses is Leolam, or what is interpreted: eternal and unchangeable. To this I replied that the word Leolam should not always be interpreted to mean Eternity. I gave an example: that Moses himself abolished the regulation that blood sacrifice must take place at the Tabernacle. They said that the word Olam has nothing to do with slaughter and the law concerning it, but refers to the law that forbids sacrificing to any other than the Creator. Then I remonstrated with them about the meaning of Schiloh, about what the depictions of Isaiah were, and how the calculations of Daniel fitted in. They were silent, but no more responsive to reasoning and belief. These Jews do not pronounce Hebrew the way Spanish Jews and European philologists do, but like German Jews; for example, here they say bereschis boro aelouhim. They claimed that they had been living in Yemen since before Ezra’s time and that they never came to the second temple, though he invited them in accordance with the saying: ‘The Law shall go forth out of Zion’. In those days they lived in Tennaim,103 a town a day’s journey east of Sanaa, and believed themselves to have lawyers as wise as those in other places, so that their attitude had been ‘The Law shall go forth out of Taennaim’. But if they really did live there from time immemorial as they claim, why do they use Ezra’s or the so-called Chaldean Hebrew script, instead of the old Samaritan variety, and where did they get the Masora and Talmud from?104

103 I.e. Tan’em, twenty three kilometers east of Sana’a. 104 Ibid., 361–62. The paragraphing is mine. My thanks to Professors Ib Friis and Philippe Provencal for their help with the English translation.

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The first claim to Forsskål’s attention is the Jews’ books, and initially their Bibles, in various forms and languages, including their commentaries. This subject is well within the scope of Michaelis’ initial project, but it was the responsibility of the recently deceased von Haven. And yet, apart from filling the gap left by von Haven’s death, here, as earlier, Forsskål expresses broad intellectual horizons, of the sort endorsed by his mentor. The bibliography moves on to post-biblical writings. The History of the Jews is surely Yosipon, the Hebrew textbook on Jewish history that was traditional fare for medieval Jewry throughout the world, and was indeed printed in Amsterdam in 1733, although its purported author is Joseph ben Gorion, not Gerson. The comment about the the book’s title refers to the bibliographical practice of using the numerical value of the Hebrew characters to provide the year of publication. The reference that follows seems to be to Toledot Yeshu, another medieval classic, and the only Hebrew work about the miracles wrought by Jesus through use of the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter Hebrew name of God.105 Jesus’ alleged use of the divine name opens the door to religious disputation, and Forsskål deftly points out that the very possibility of this magical technique effaces the distinction posited by the Jews between Jesus and legitimate prophets. Forsskål’s purpose seems to be to uphold the authenticity of Jesus’ miracles by casting doubt on the Tetragrammaton strategy.106 The entire exchange is amazing. Linnaeus’ student is doing battle with the Jews in defense of Christianity, and practically acting as missionary. After this exchange, the Jews take the initiative and debate the eternality of the Law, which focuses on the meaning of the Hebrew term “`olam” (“eternity”), and Forsskål continues to exhibit wide-ranging erudition and proficiency in Oriental languages. In the concluding portion of this text, Forsskål directs the debate to the age-old controversy over “Shilo” (Gen. 49:10), still in the role of fidei defensor, and, like countless forerunners, he takes little comfort in having silenced his adversaries, 105 It is unclear whether Forsskål refers here to two works or one, but I share the inclination of Professors Friis and Provencal, and of Professor Lawrence C. Baack, that two works are intended. However, these scholars have suggested that a more accurate English translation might read “There was also mentioning of ‘Jesus of Nazareth . . . ” rather than “Also named was ‘Jesus of Nazareth,” which raises the possibility that the Jews discussed the second work with Forsskål without him actually seeing it. I gladly express my sincere thanks and appreciation to these esteemed colleagues for their assistance. 106 On Christian responses to Toledot Yeshu, see Yaacov Deutsch, “The Second Life of the Life of Jesus: Christian Reception of Toledot Yeshu,” Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited: A Princeton Conference, ed. Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch (Tübingen, 2011), 283–95.

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for they remain “no more responsive to reasoning and belief.” The antiquity of Yemenite Jewry is the subject of the last lines of this document, in which Forsskål relates their tradition, evaluates it critically, but leaves the matter unresolved. Forsskål’s account leaves no doubt that this was the first experience these Jews had with the kind of religious polemical exchange that had been part and parcel of Jewish culture in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Given the miniscule Christian presence in Yemen, this may be the first recorded encounter of this kind in the Arabian peninsula since the rise of Islam. It is without doubt the richest encounter between a European traveler and a Yemenite Jew up to this time, and among the most important.

The Last Precursors The Danish expedition left its mark on subsequent European travelers to Yemen, whose narratives often refer to Niebuhr’s writings, which seem to have become standard reading for travelers to Yemen. George Annesley, the Viscount Valentia, who visits Mocha in 1804, describes the practice of the dola of Mocha and his officers to throw the javelin on Fridays “in the manner described by Niebuhr.”107 Elsewhere, Annesley takes issue with Niebuhr’s high regard for the Arabs’ character, and is particularly critical of the moral fiber of the dola of Mocha, which is ironic, given the trouble the Danish expedition suffered at the hands of this official. On the other hand, Annesley shares Niebuhr’s opinion of the sterling character of the bedouin nomads, whose hospitality he singles out for praise. With a nod to Rousseau’s ideal of the noble savage, he attributes the nomads’ moral superiority to their being “less civilised” than their compatriots.108 These examples illustrate a new phenomenon, one we shall encounter repeatedly, of “intersections,” namely instances of European travelers comparing their experience with those described in the narratives of those who came before, among whom Niebuhr deserves pride of place. This was only one aspect of the enduring legacy of the Danish expedition, but it is a leitmotif of the travel experiences and narratives we shall study. For the most part, European travel accounts from the subsequent half century or so reiterate familiar motifs. In 1788, a French visitor to Mocha named

107 George Valentia, Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt, in the Years 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1806 (London, 1809), 345. 108 Ibid., 355.

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Cloupet titillates his European audience with tales of an amorous encounter like that of his countrymen eighty years earlier. In Bayt al-Faqih, the center of the waning coffee trade, he befriends a local merchant named Sarafi, asks to meet Sarafi’s “very pretty” sister, and is told that this would be best accomplished if Cloupet would marry her and accept Islam. He agrees, but the sister rejects him, because he does not have a long beard, and dismisses his protestations that he will grow one. Cloupet expresses humiliation but consoles himself by declaring that “her odd outfit, her long painted nails, and her breast covered in convoluted drawings of love symbols in the Arab taste, were unattractive to my European feelings.”109 Cloupet elaborates upon his salacious preoccupation, which obviously he assumes is shared by his readers, with a comment harking back to de le Roque. He relates that Mocha’s Europeans have very tall houses, enabling them to spy on their Arab neighbors, “who may be lying down with one of their wives in the morning on an open veranda.”110 Clearly, Cloupet considers such behavior entertaining, rather than rude, implicitly expressing disdain for the local population in a manner stereotypical of Europeans in the colonial era. Alcohol is a second subject concerning which Cloupet expresses a similar disrespect for Yemenite mores. Yemen’s Arabs, he relates, have a particular fondness for alcoholic beverages, notwithstanding their religious taboo. Amused by their hypocrisy, he offers some of the city’s respected citizens sherbet spiked with alcohol without their knowledge. They express appreciation, and some even request bottles of the beverage, which he sends as a gift, for which he is thanked. The tale concludes with the moral that laws should not flout Nature.111 Cloupet intends to entertain his readers with this tale of his easy manipulation of the childlike natives. The detail about his largesse buttresses his emphasis on the Europeans’ superiority. The final moral scoffs, not at the innocent butts of his practical joke, but rather at Islam itself, which is ridiculed as backward in comparison with the French sophisticate. In 1835, Edmond Combes and Maurice Tamisier, Cloupet’s countrymen, visit Yemen en route to Abyssinia. Their account makes it clear that certain

109 De La Roque. A Voyage to Arabia Felix (1708–10) . . . Together with New Travels in Arabia Felix (1788), M. Cloupet, trans. Dominique de Moulins and Carl Phillips (Cambridge, 2004), 390–93. On the other hand, Cloupet concedes admiration for the women’s use of kohl to decorate their eyes. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 393. In citing the moral, Cloupet refers to Raynal: see G.T.R. Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens & du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Amsterdam, 1770).

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dynamics persist. One such pattern is the European’s gift of medical knowledge. Landing at Luhayyah, they are promptly besieged by locals, who have heard that they are physicians. Protests of their ignorance of the medical art fall on deaf ears, for the locals are convinced that all Europeans are knowledgeable in medicine, an expectation and cultural tradition which we know to be the fruit of long experience.112 Alcohol, too, displays a stubborn ubiquity in European narratives of their interactions. At Hudaydah, Combes and Tamisier offer the sheikh a finjan of brandy, which he politely refuses. They ask whether it is unfit for consumption, and he explains that it is simply forbidden. They ask whether the Prophet dislikes liquor and is told that he dislikes anything that troubles reason. They question this, by pointing out that Mohammed appreciates women, which amuses the sheikh, and leads him to accept a second offer of a cup. To put him at ease, the Frenchmen proffer an interpretation of the pertinent Quran verses that evades the prohibition on alcohol. The sheikh is pleased by their familiarity with the divine text, and admits that he avoided the same hermeneutical exercise, so as not to imply a skeptical attitude towards the Quran’s divinity.113 Once again, European travelers disrespect the Muslim’s taboo on alcohol, but the visitors’ familiarity with the Quran grants this anecdote a friendly and even intimate air, which explains the sheikh’s ultimate flexibility. Notwithstanding the continuity regarding medicine, women and alcohol, the travel literature evinces signs of change. For example, the travel narrative of Abraham Parsons, an English merchant, who visits Mocha in 1778, makes no mention of gift exchange: all of his transactions are commercial, and he relates the prices of various foodstuffs and even of water.114 More revealing is Parsons’ report that he and some English companions go on a hunting expedition for wild fowl.115 Like their compatriots across the Empire, these Englishmen make themselves at home by importing their pastimes, and this even in a land that is not a colonial possession. What has shifted unalterably is the Yemenites’ awareness of the Europeans’ immeasurably superior military power. An encounter recorded by Annesley obliquely testifies to this development. Annesley relates that Mr. Pringle, the British resident at Mocha, visited the Imam at Sana’a and presented him with a generous selection of female clothing items for his harem, which were well

112 Edmond Combes and Maurice Tamisier, Voyage en Abyssinie, dans le pays des Galla, de Choa et d’Ifat, 1835–1837 (Paris, 1838), 1:44. 113 Ibid., 48. 114 Abraham Parsons, Travels in Asia and Africa (London, 1808), 270–71. 115 Ibid., 278–79.

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received. On a second visit, however, Pringle offered sabers and pistols, and the Imam evinced displeasure, though he remained polite and even cooperative.116 We cannot know why Pringle’s second round of gifts went unappreciated, but perhaps it was because of its political implication. By comparison, Jourdain’s gift of a knife blade was well received, but in the early seventeenth century the locals saw themselves as on an equal footing with their European visitors. By the late eighteenth century, the gift signified the overwhelming might of the British empire. Parsons starkly expresses the new standing of the Europeans in Yemen: “The Arab has essentially altered his conduct towards Christians, who may now walk about the streets of their towns without being liable to insult.”117 There can be no doubt that Parsons’ experience reflects the advent of the colonial era. Evidence of the new security Europeans enjoyed in Yemen is the presence of the first female European traveler. Anne Elwood visits Mocha in July 1826 with her husband Charles en route to Bombay. Elwood shares a novel and uniquely feminine perspective on the eternal subject of Yemenite women. One evening, when Charles is out visiting a military exercise, she is invited to visit a harem. She compares clothes with the ladies, and all let down their hair. She pays them a second visit, much like the first, except that she is also given a tour of the house.118 For European men to fraternize with Yemenite women was strictly taboo, and this first recorded interaction between European and Yemenite women dramatically marks the beginning of a new era in the Yemen stranger-host encounter.

116 Valentia, Voyages and Travels, 382. This Mr. Pringle seems to be a different individual from the Dr Pringle who visited Yemen in 1801: R. L. Bidwell, “Western Accounts of Șanʻā 1510–1962,” ȘAN’Ā` an Arabian Islamic City, ed. R. B. Serjeant and Ronald Lewcock (London, 1983), 110, based on an unpublished Ms. in the India Office Library, P381/27. Bidwell relates that Pringle’s gift of a large looking glass was well received by the Imam, who later sent for him to explain some technological devices, mainly in the realm of navigation. 117 Ibid., 356. 118 Ibid., 334. Women’s visits is the subject of Anne Meneley’s study of her field work in Zabid in 1989–1990: Tournaments of Value. Significantly, her study highlights the role of women’s visits in establishing the social hierarchy.

Missionary Anne Elwood, who sojourns in Mocha in 1826, lends some locals a Bible, and, unphased by its prompt return, declares that in Arabia “there is a vast field for their [the missionaries’] exertions.”1 Vast, indeed, in the sense that the Arabian peninsula was solely inhabited by Muslim and Jewish infidels. After less than a decade, Joseph Wolff undertakes a missionary expedition to the Jews of Yemen, and a generation later he is followed by Henry Aaron Stern.2 These missionaries are among the first of a diverse cohort of European travelers to Yemen in the mid-nineteenth century. They come with various purposes in mind, but share the qualities of leaving home alone, that is without their families, and traveling to Yemen, a distant, exotic land. Some of the travelers are Jewish, and though Wolff and Stern are Christians, both are Jewish converts to Christianity. They share another Jewish connection, in coming to Yemen to convert Jews rather than Muslims. The missionary enterprise has been the subject of modern historical scrutiny, in several phases. The first studies were the work of “insiders,” who portrayed the missionaries sympathetically, at times even hagiographically, emphasizing their empathy with indigenous populations, as well as their contribution to the latter’s material and spiritual welfare. Critical scholarly evaluation followed, often severely critical, depicting the missionaries as agents of European colonization and imperialism. In historical accounts, the benefit to developing countries was outweighed by the detrimental impact of the European powers on the peoples they ruled and, in some cases, enslaved. Less critical accounts countered that missionaries often identified with the local population, in opposition to the political authorities. In any case, generally the missionaries have continued to be tarred with the brush of colonialism, because they shared the European sense of a responsibility to enlighten the benighted peoples of foreign lands. The present inquiry follows the direction of scholars who eschew judgmental analysis of the missionary project and scrutinize the missionaries’ experience as foreign travelers. Mary Campbell cites the missionaries’ contribution to the development of travel writing as a genre, and notes that, unlike pilgrims and explorers, the missionaries’ purpose forced them to intensely engage with

1 Anne Elwood, Narrative of a Journey Overland from England (London, 1830), 1:329. 2 Aviva Klein-Franke, “J. Wolff and H. Stern: Missionaries in Yemen,” Interpreting the Orient: Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, ed. Paul and Janet Starkey (Reading, 2001), 81–95. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-002

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the locals.3 Joan-Pau Rubiés locates in late-medieval missionary accounts the qualities characteristic of the period’s travel literature. Readers appreciated realistic depiction, based on direct observation and experience, and like geographers and diplomats, missionaries strove to grant an authentic flavor to their accounts. The narratives of John of Pian de Carpini and William of Rubruck, missionaries to the Mongols, and those of Odoric of Pordenone and John of Marignoli to China, pioneer this sort of writing in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, planting the seeds of ethnography, as they evince a genuine effort to understand an alien culture.4 In the spirit of these scholarly forerunners, our examination of missionary travel to nineteenth-century Yemen will look at the protagonists as travelers, whose encounter is comparable to that of other categories of visitors, notwithstanding its idiosyncratic features. Wolff and Stern play a tiny role in the vast missionary enterprise, with its venerable history of countless sojourns. Christian mission is as old as Christianity itself, beginning with Paul’s travels across Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean to spread the truth of Christ. Europeans became increasingly aware of the Islamic realm and faith following their violent encounter during the Crusades, and in the twelfth century, Peter the Venerable pioneered the European study of Arabic and Islam. He was followed by Francis of Assisi, who is believed to have risked life and limb in missionary voyages to Morocco and Egypt, and for centuries thereafter the Mendicant orders spearheaded the missionary campaign, among Muslims and Jews alike.5 The scope of missionary activity expanded exponentially in the early modern era, beginning in the fifteenth century, when Spanish and Portuguese

3 Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, 1988), 116. Andrew Porter notes that study of the missions has given way to the use of missionary accounts as sources for the study of local peoples: see his Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (New York, 2004), 5. On the relationship between missionary literature and anthropology, see Patrick Harries, “Anthropology,” Missions and Empire, ed. Norman Etherington (New York, 2005), 238–60. 4 Jaś Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés, Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London, 1999), 25–40; Rubiés, “Introduction,” Medieval Ethnographies: European Perceptions of the World Beyond (Farnham, 2009), xvi-xxxvii; Idem, “Missionary Encounters in China and Tibet: From Matteo Ricci to Ippolito Desideri,” History of Religions 52 (2013), 267–82. 5 Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1964), 78–107. Europeans also encountered Asia in the thirteenth century, through Marco Polo’s narrative of his voyage to China and – directly and terrifyingly – during the Mongol invasions. These experiences failed to stimulate missionary activity to Asia, but Muslims, as an Abrahamic faith, would have seemed approachable in comparison with the heathen of the Far East.

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mariners traversed tremendous distances, discovering new routes, lands and even continents. Travel led to colonization, and these same European countries founded outposts in India, Asia and the New World.6 As a rule, wherever European travelers set foot, missionaries were never far behind, and the missionary project entered a new phase of energetic activity that embraced much of the globe. From this point on, missionary and colonial activity proceed in tandem, though not always or entirely harmoniously. Missionaries of diverse orders played a role in the early modern phase, including Capuchins, Franciscans, and others, but better known are the Jesuits, who were extremely far-flung and organized, and left a great deal of documentation. Francis Xavier, cofounder of the Society of Jesus, baptized thousands along the Pearl Fishery coast of India, and later proceeded to Asia, reaching Malacca and Japan. China was notoriously unreceptive to western overtures, and Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit operating initially from the Portuguese base in Macau, failed to win a substantial number of converts, although he was remarkably successful at convincing the Chinese of the essential compatibility of Confucianism and Christianity.7 Ricci epitomizes the Jesuit ideal of cultural accommodation, which is the strategy of effacing the differences between Christian and local religious doctrines and underlining common concepts and beliefs. Obviously, this required the Jesuits to thoroughly acquaint themselves with the culture of their hosts, educating themselves in the local language, values, and mores. Ricci excelled in this respect, but his equation of Shangdi, the Chinese term for “God on High,” with his own concept of Tianzhu, “Lord of Heaven,” caused the Church to suspect him of going too far, and preaching a version of Christianity which seemed pagan to those in Rome.8 For our purposes, the sixteenth-century Jesuits are important for their grasp of the importance of engaging honestly and profoundly with their hosts’ beliefs and practices. In this respect, they make a significant contribution to the development of ethnography, as they closely scrutinize the lifestyle and worldview of the peoples they met and set down their impressions in writing. 6 For Yemen, we have already noted the experiences of Pedro Pàez and Antonio Monserrate, Spanish Jesuit missionaries captured at sea in 1589. 7 The classic study of Ricci is: Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York, 1983). See also: Rubiés, “Missionary Encounters in China and Tibet” (note 3); Idem, “Ethnography and Cultural Translation in the Early Modern Missions,” Studies in Church History 53 (2017), 272–310. 8 Matteo Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (T’ien-chu Shih-i), ed. Edward Malaresa, trans. Douglas Lancashire and Peter Zhu Guozhen (St. Louis, 1985). See: R. Po-chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610 (Oxford, 2012), 224–44; Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: the Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge MA, 2008).

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Spain and Portugal gradually cede international power to the Dutch and English in the seventeenth century, and the shift in mercantile and political dominion is accompanied by a shift in control of the missionary enterprise, although towards England rather than Holland.9 Catholic mission continues, with Gregory XV asserting papal authority by establishing the Congregazione di Propaganda Fide in 1622, but once Protestantism prevails in its struggle to survive, new missionary institutions of various denominations become the driving force behind the global effort. Britain assumes a leadership position in the latter seventeenth century, when Restoration of the monarchy follows decades of civil war.10 The turn of the eighteenth century marks the first wave of British missionary activity, which reflects the rise of the belief in “justification by faith,” a more sanguine view than the doctrine of Calvinist predestination it gradually replaced. This shift in religious thinking was of a piece with the benevolent and optimistic spirit of current philosophical thinking, such as the notion of the noble savage.11 Thomas Bray and other Anglican clergy founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in 1698, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) in 1701.12 England experiences a surge in religious enthusiasm in the latter eighteenth century, known as the evangelical Protestant revival, which involved intense eschatological expectation and speculation. The French and American revolutions seemed portentous of the End of Days, and the English, who had long viewed their nation as divinely favored, directed new energy to distant lands, for religious as well as political ends. A heightened awareness of geography, fed by accounts of the travels of Captain James Cook and others, contributed to the expansion of British horizons. These cultural developments engender a second wave of missionary institutional initiatives. The Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) is founded in 1792, following the publication of William Carey’s An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen, and Carey himself set out for India 9 A pioneering Protestant missionary effort is the establishment, by Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg in 1706, of the Danish mission at Tranquebar, on the eastern coast of India, the mission mentioned in the context of the Danish expedition. 10 Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon, Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East (New York, 2012), 69–77; Claude Prudhomme, Missioni cristiane e colonialismo, trans. Ida Bonali (Milano, 2006), 35–46. 11 Porter, Religion versus Empire?, 28–32; Idem, “An Overview, 1700–1914,” Missions and Empire, 40–53. 12 Other nations continued to participate in the missionary enterprise. Apart from the Tranquebar mission, Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf established the Moravian Brethren in 1722, which undertook missionary activity.

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in the following year.13 The London Missionary Society (LMS) (founded 1795) was non-denominational and voluntary, while the Scottish Church established the Edinburgh and Glasgow Missionary Societies (founded 1796), and the Anglican Church founded the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) in 1799. The new societies were mainly active in Britain’s overseas possessions. The LMS has been called “the largest evangelical institution peddling its spiritual wares in the arena of empire.”14 The CMS concentrated on the heathen in British colonies, and the Society for Missions to Africa and the East, or Church Missionary Society (founded 1812), was active around the world. The missionary movement becomes part and parcel of the colonial establishment, notwithstanding the friction between the two sets of institutions, stemming from differences in their agendas. The missionary enterprise spanned the globe, its theater of operations covering Europe, Asia, Africa and New World, and pagan religions of every variety, but the Protestant missionary societies were also committed to converting Abrahamic infidels, namely Muslims and Jews. Proselytism was outlawed in Islamic lands, but India, with a substantial Muslim population, came under British control, and it was there that Henry Martyn translated the Bible into Arabic and engaged in disputation with Muslim clerics.15 In 1829, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (ABCFM), a Presbyterian organization, sent missionaries to Tunisia and Persia, though these efforts yielded few converts. The focus of missionary activity in Islamic lands quickly shifted to their Christian population, such as the Maronites of the Maghreb and Egypt’s Copts, who were deemed in need of reform.16 The conversion of the Jews was fundamental to Christian eschatology, and hence a high priority. The emancipation of the Jews during the French Revolution stoked millennial expectations, and the Jews of many lands enjoyed the missionaries’ ministrations. The London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews (or LJS, London Jews Society) was founded in 1809.17 Americans

13 On the BMS, see Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830–1867 (Chicago, 2002). 14 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, 1995), 261. 15 There is, however, no evidence that Martyn was active in the Arabian peninsula. Cf. Samuel Marinus Zwemer, Arabia: the Cradle of Islam: Studies in the Geography, People and Politics of the Peninsula, with an account of Islam and Mission-Work (Edinburgh, 1900), 316–19. 16 Chantal Verdeil, Missions chrétiennes en terre d’islam: XVIIe–XXe siècles (Turnhout, 2013), 6–7; Bernard Heyberger and Rémy Madinier, “L’Introduction,” L’Islam des marges: Mission chrétienne et espaces péripheriques du monde musulman, XVIe-XXe siècles, ed. Bernard Heyberger and Rémy Madinier (Paris, 2011), 7–10. 17 Henry Handley Norris, The Origin, Progress and Existing Circumstances of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews: An Historical Inquiry (London, 1825);

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felt that they had a special role to play in converting the Jews, because only in the New World were the Jews never persecuted, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was established in 1810, followed by the 1816 founding of the Female Society of Boston and Its Vicinity for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews. The Jews’ return to the Holy Land, which is linked in Protestant theology to their inevitable final conversion, seemed a real possibility in 1799, following Napoleon’s military successes in the region.18 Shortly thereafter, the London Jews Society dispatched Melchior Tschoudy, a Swiss pastor, to Palestine in 1821. He was preceded by Levi Parsons and Pliny Fisk, who were deputized in 1819 by the ABCFM, with the following instructions: The Jews have been for ages an awful sigh to the world. But the period of their tremendous dereliction, and of the severity of God, is drawing to a close. You are to lift up an ensign to them, that they may return and seek the Lord their god and David their king. They will return. The word of promise is sure; – and the accomplishment of it will be as life from the dead to the Gentile world. The day is at hand. The signal movements of the age indicate its dawn. – It may be your privilege to prepare the way of the Lord. It may be your felicity to see some of the long lost Children of Abraham, returning with dissolved hearts; and confessing with unutterable emotions, that the same Jesus whom on that awful spot their fathers crucified, is indeed the Messiah, the Hope of their nation and of all the nations of the earth. It may be your distinguished honor to be leadingly instrumental in building again the Tabernacle of David which is fallen down, and the ruins thereof, and in setting it up; that the residue of men may seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom his Name is called. It will our unceasing prayer, and the unceasing prayer of many, that your Mission may be crowned with all this joy and all this glory.19

These millennial hopes, which rested upon the biblical eschatology to which the text makes plain allusion, intensified as a result of political developments in the region. Much of Palestine came under Egyptian rule in 1832, following the successful military campaign of Mohammed Ali, which also resulted in a more liberal policy vis-à-vis non-Muslims of the Holy Land. By 1840, Ottoman forces pushed back the Egyptians, with British military support, stimulating the Ottoman leadership to legislate an agreement favorable to western interests, covering not only trade

William Thomas Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews From 1809 to 1908 (London, 1908); Yaron Perry, British Mission to the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Palestine (London, 2003). 18 Mel Scult, Millenial Expectations and Jewish Liberties (Leiden, 1978), 71–115. See also Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion: ‘The Jewish Question’ & English National Identity (Durham, 1995), 15–56. 19 Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Missionnaires Américains en terre Ottomane (Anatolie),” Missions chrétiennes en terre d’islam, 101.

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but also missionary activity. The context for this change in the missionaries’ fortunes was the Tanzimat, the Ottoman Empire’s 1839 abrogation of the discriminatory policies of Islamic law against non-Muslims. In short order, Michael Solomon Alexander, who emigrated from Prussia to Britain and served the Jewish community of Plymouth before his conversion to Christianity, was ordained the first Protestant bishop of Jerusalem in 1841.20 Few Europeans visited Arabia, as we have already seen, and none of the Protestant missionary initiatives played out in the Arabian peninsula. Muslims were tagged as “fanatics,” and non-Muslims were banned from the Hejaz, including the various Christian denominations towards whom the missionaries now directed their efforts.21 Hence, less than a handful of missionaries appear in Yemen, apart from Joseph Wolff and Henry Aaron Stern, to whom we now turn.22

Joseph Wolff Yemen’s first missionary traveler, Joseph Wolff, is the primary source of information about his life, a subject to which he devoted prolific literary activity.23 The narrative of his itinerary and encounters is embedded in pages upon pages 20 Tejirian and Spector Simon, Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion, 78–79, 89–90; Johannes F.A. Le Roi, Michael Salomon Alexander, der erste evangelische Bischof in Jerusalem, ein Beitrag zur orientalisehen Frage (Gütersloh, 1879). See also Michael R. Darby, The Emergence of the Hebrew Christian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Leiden, 2010), 140–42. 21 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Expansion of Christianity (New York, 1944), 6:59–61. See also: Lyle L. Vander Werff, Christian Mission to Muslims – The Record: Anglican and Reformed Approaches in India and the Near East, 1800–1938 (South Pasadena, 1977); Lewis R. Scudder, The Arabian Mission’s Story: In Search of Abraham’s Other Son (Grand Rapids MI, 1998); Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon, ed., Altruism and Imperialism: Western Cultural and Religious Missions in the Middle East (New York, 2002); Norbert Friedrich, Uwe Kaminsky and Roland Löffler, The Social Dimension of Christian Missions in the Middle East: Historical Studies of the 19th and 20th Centuries (Stuttgart, 2010). 22 Anthony Graves, whom I have not been able to identify, and the colporteurs (book peddlers) sent by John Wilson of Bombay and the Bible Societies, are the only other missionary figures known before the close of the nineteenth century: see Vander Werff, Christian Mission to Muslims, 171. Jedda, which was then an Egyptian possession, had a Servite missionary in 1840, but when Egypt surrendered sovereignty, the mission transferred to Aden: see Latourette, A History of Expansion of Christianity, 60. 23 See the following autobiographical writings: Missionary Journal and Memoir of the Rev. Joseph Wolff, Missionary to the Jews, rev. and ed. John Bayford (London, 1824) 1–3; Sketch of the Life and Journal of the Rev. J. Wolff (Norwich, 1827); Journals of the Rev. Joseph Wolff, Missionary to the Jews, Containing his Travels from Meshed to Sarakhs and Mowr, in the Kingdom of Khiva . . . (Calcutta, 1832); Researches and Missionary Labours among the Jews, Mohammedans, and other

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of theological reasoning, in the form of transcripts of verbal exchanges. In these, Wolff bests, or at least silences, his skeptical interlocutors, notwithstanding the acid comment of Alexander Burnes, who met Wolff during his travels, that “as is usual on such subjects, the one party failed to convince the other.”24 This sort of writing is typical of missionary travel writing, which is directed towards believers at home, who are expected to be moved by such Pauline sagas of Christian outreach to lend financial support for the missionary enterprise. Born in 1796 at Weilersbach in Bavaria, Wolff ben David was the son of a rabbi, who was himself something of a wanderer, serving a number of Jewish communities in the course of Wolff’s childhood. At age six, Wolff is enrolled in a Christian school, and at eleven he is sent to study at the Protestant Lyceum at Stuttgart, with the intention of his becoming a physician, but returns home within the year.25 At twelve and a half, as Wolff approached Bar Mitzvah, he becomes enamored of the Christian faith, and leaves his outraged coreligionists to begin a peripatetic existence. Moving frequently from town to town and school to school, he accepts baptism in Prague at age seventeen, and takes Joseph as his given name. Wolff then spends a year and a half in Vienna, for further education, and in August 1816, at age twenty, he arrives in Rome to join the Collegio di Propaganda Fide and become a missionary. Eventually, the Collegio banishes Wolff for doctrinal differences, and in June 1819, after various travails, he reaches London and converts to Anglicanism. Henry Drummond, a wealthy

sects during his travels between the years 1831 and 1834 from Malta to Egypt (London, 1835), 2nd ed., 1–2; Journal, in a series of letters to Sir Thomas Baring: containing an account of his missionary labours from 1827 to 1831, and from 1835 to 1838 (London, 1839); Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara in the years 1843–1845 to ascertain the fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly (New York, 1845); Travels and Adventures of the Rev. Joseph Wolff (London, 1861); Journal of the Reverend Joseph Wolff, Missionary to the Jews, for Henry Drummond and John Bayford Esquire, London, from the 11 August 1825 to the 27 November 1825, Ms. Jerusalem – Christ Church, archive of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish People, shelf N6D. For his more succinct accounts, see: “The Twenty Seventh Anniversary,” Jewish Intelligence 1 (June, 1835), 126–31; “Proceedings of the Thirtieth Anniversary,” Jewish Intelligence 4 (June, 1838), 131–34. Biographies of Wolff include: Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews From 1809 to 1908, 101–11; Hugh Evan Hopkins, Sublime Vagabond: The Life of Joseph Wolff Missionary Extraordinary (Worthing, 1984); Hurly Pring Palmer, Joseph Wolff: his Romantic Life and Travels (London, 1935); Heinrich Sengelmann, Dr Joseph Wolff: ein Wanderleben (Hamburg, 1863). 24 Travels into Bokhara (London, 1835), 139. Small wonder that Dickens characterized missionaries as “perfect nuisances who leave every place worse than they found it:” Letter to William de Cerjat, November 1865 – The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Jenny Hartley (Oxford, 2015), 398. 25 It was not unheard of for observant Jews, including rabbis, to patronize Christian schools: the same was true for Isaac Reggio of Gorizia, whose father was an illustrious kabbalist.

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British financier whom Wolff met in Rome, recommends Wolff to the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews (LSPCJ), which arranges for him to study at Cambridge, where Charles Simeon mentors him in theology and Samuel Lee in Oriental languages.26 Wolff has little to say about his family life. In February 1827, he marries Lady Georgiana Mary Walpole.27 They have a daughter, who dies in Malta as a child, and later rear a boy, whom they name Henry Drummond Wolff, after Wolff’s patron. He grows up to become a diplomat and politician and says practically nothing about his father. Georgiana dies in January 1859, and two years later Wolff marries again, just a year before his death. After two years in Cambridge, in April 1821, Wolff departs on his first missionary voyage, to the Holy Land, under Drummond’s sponsorship.28 For the next seventeen years, Wolff circles the globe in pursuit of his missionary calling, in the following geographical and chronological order: 1821: Palestine and environs 1827: British isles and Holland 1828: Greek islands 1829: Palestine and Cyprus 1831: Asia (incl. Bukhara)

Fig. 1: Joseph Wolff.29

26 The Thirteenth Report of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (London, 1821), 105. Wolff was to benefit from these experiences throughout his travels, when he encountered fellow “Simeonites” in many lands. 27 The Annual Register (London, 1828), 69:210. 28 Jewish Expositor 9 (1824), 50; “Review of Missionary Journal,” Ibid., 441–44. 29 Source: Joseph Wolff, Researches and Missionary Labours, frontispiece.

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1833: India, Abyssinia, Yemen 1836: Abyssinia, Yemen, U.S.A. In 1838 Wolff accepts a parish in Isle Brewers, Somerset, where he remains until his death in 1862, except for a voyage to Bukhara in 1843 in search of imprisoned English officers. Wolff was a trailblazer, making the first British missionary appearance in Palestine, but our interest is primarily in his voyages to Yemen, which we shall examine in detail, introducing elements of his other journeys as they illuminate his Yemen experience. Yemen, too, hosted no missionaries before Wolff, for the reasons stated, and thus he inaugurates the period of Yemen travel which is the focus of this study. What sort of impression did Wolff make on those he encountered? Physically, he was hardly prepossessing. Wolff recounts that he consistently frustrated the efforts of Charles Simeon, his Cambridge mentor, to teach him to shave.30 Fanny Parkes, who met Wolff in India, describes him as follows: He is a strange and most curious-looking man; in stature short and thin; and his weak frame appears very unfit to bear the trials and hardships to which he has been, and will be, exposed in his travels. His face is very flat, deeply marked with small-pox31; his complexion that of dough, and his hair flaxen. His grey eyes roll and start, and fix themselves, at times, most fearfully; they have a cast in them, which renders their expression still wilder. Being a German, and by birth a Jew, his pronunciation of English is very remarkable; at times it is difficult to understand him: however, his foreign accent only gives originality to his lectures, aided occasionally by vehement gesticulation. His voice is deep and impressive; at times, having given way to great and deep enthusiasm, and having arrested the attention of his hearers, he sinks at once down into some common-place remark, his voice becoming a most curious treble, the effect of which is so startling, one can scarcely refrain from laughter. He understands English very well; his language is excellent, but evidently borrowed more from reading than from conversation. He makes use of words never used in common parlance, but always well and forcibly applied. He carries you along with him in his travels, presenting before you the different scenes he has witnessed, and pointing out those customs and manners still in use, which prove the truth of Scripture. His descriptions at times are very forcible, and his account of the lives of St. Augustine and other holy men very interesting.32

30 Travels and Adventures, 85, 88–89, 127. 31 Similarly, an anonymous letter, dated September 1821, describes its author’s impression of Wolff’s appearance at Malta a month previous: “His countenance is quite classical, and by no means injured by the marks which the small-pox has left upon it:” see The Jewish Expositor 7 (1822), 47. 32 Fanny Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque (London, 1850), 268–69. The paragraphing is mine.

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This vivid characterization expresses the peculiar combination of reactions often found in references to Wolff by Europeans, who found him impressive but also amusing, if not ludicrous.33 Lewis Way, a missionary supporter, is dazzled by Wolff’s charisma and finds his quirks charming: Wolff is so extraordinary a creature, there is no calculating à priori concerning his motions. He appears to me to be a comet without any perihelion, and capable of setting a whole system on fire. When I should have addressed him in Syria, I heard of him at Malta; and when I supposed he was gone to England, he was riding like a ruling angel in the whirlwinds of Antioch, or standing unappalled among the crumbling towers of Aleppo. A man, who at Rome calls the Pope “the dust of the earth,” and at Jerusalem tells the Jews that “the Gemara is a lie”; who passes his days in disputation, and his nights in digging the Talmud; to whom a floor of brick is a feather-bed, and a box is a bolster; who makes or finds a friend alike in the persecutor of his former, or of his present faith; who can conciliate a pasha, or confute a patriarch, who travels without a guide, speaks without an interpreter, can live without food, and pay without money; forgiving all the insults he meets with, and forgetting all the flattery he receives; who knows little of worldly conduct, and yet accommodates himself to all men without giving offence to any. Such a man, and such and more is Wolff, must excite no ordinary degree of attention in a country and among a people, whose monotony of manners and habits has remained undisturbed for centuries. As a pioneer I deem him matchless – “aut inveniet viam, aut faciet” – but, if order is to be established or arrangements made, trouble not Wolff. He knows of no church but his heart, no calling but that of zeal, no dispensation but that of preaching. He is devoid of enmity towards man, and full of the love of God. By such an instrument, whom no school hath taught – whom no college could hold, is the way of the Judaean wilderness preparing . . . Thus are his brethren provoked to emulation, and stirred up to inquiry. They all perceive, as every one must, that whatever he is, he is in earnest; they acknowledge him to be a sincere believer in Jesus of Nazareth, and that is a great point gained with them; for the mass of the ignorant and unconverted Jews deny the possibility of real conversion from Judaism.34

Way’s characterization is exceedingly complimentary, but not vague. The fundamental impression is one of remarkable force of personality. The phrase “a comet without any perihelion” refers to the trajectory of a comet, which has a tail that blazes as it draws nearer to the sun and then fades as it moves away, and ultimately disappears; in contrast, Way observes, Wolff blazes continually, ceaselessly moving about, and projecting the power of his thinking and expression in all directions. The slogan “aut inveniet viam, aut faciet” (“either I shall

33 Wolff’s extravagant behavior was bound to amuse, such that there is no need to attribute such gentile reactions to a subtle, English, form of antisemitism, though such a nuance cannot be completely ruled out. 34 Wolff, Travels and Adventures, 179–80.

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find a way, or I shall make one”), originally by Seneca, eloquently expresses Way’s admiration for Wolff’s fierce determination and ingenuity. Way marvels at Wolff’s disdain for comforts, even the basic needs of food, money, and lodging, but the second focus of his portrayal is Wolff’s interpersonal skills. Passion and honesty dominate his interactions, and he is oblivious to the religious convictions or political power of his interlocutor, and heedless of the likely consequences of his actions. This behavior pattern was typical of Wolff’s practice of publicly exhorting non-Christians to accept Christ, a strategy both dangerous and futile, which struck fellow Europeans as absurd and frequently alarming. For Way, Wolff’s activities are driven by spontaneity and inspiration, rather than plan or system. This is not very different from the criticism of Wolff by a student riding with him in Holland in 1827, for having “made a row in a place, and then ran away.”35 Yet Way views Wolff’s instability as a virtue, appropriate to the “Judaean wilderness” which Wolff has set himself to cultivate. Finally, while we may doubt Way’s favorable assessment of Wolff’s talent for inspiring the Jews to convert, his observation that Jews tend to doubt the possibility of genuine religious conversion to Christianity rings true, for it is rooted in the literature of medieval Jewry.36 Wolff visits Yemen twice, initially in December 1833, on his return from India. Landing in the Hadhramawt region, he preaches Christianity publicly at Muqalla, whose bedouin inhabitants he describes as “perfect savages,” presumably because, as he concedes, they listened to him “with barbarian indifference.”37 He travels by boat to Mocha, and then to Luhayyah, where again he confesses that his preaching was received “with indifference.”38 Throughout his writings, Wolff is remarkably forthright about his endless string of fruitless exchanges, apparently because even such tales illustrate his earnestness and determination, along with the humility that comes with self-sacrifice. Wolff’s open acknowledgement of the anemic response to his enthusiastic sallies was his way of confronting his almost complete failure to win souls for Christ. Admittedly, Wolff’s record was the norm, rather than the exception, among missionaries to infidels, as opposed to pagan nations.

35 Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews From 1809 to 1908, 87. 36 See David Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz: the Human Face of Franco-German Jewry (Stanford, 2009), 123–25. 37 Researches and Missionary Labours, 323. 38 Ibid., 325.

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The travel account goes on to list the Hadhramawt tribes, for the information of future missionaries to the region, and, echoing Anne Elwood, Wolff declares that “Hatramawt is a country to which a Missionary should undertake a pilgrimage.” Here Wolff shares his vision of the preferred missionary strategy: “So long as a Missionary does not adopt entirely the life of a Dervish, trusting in God, sometimes starving, and sometimes being clothed by a King; sometimes going about in ragged clothes, sometimes in a robe of honor; he will not be able to serve effectively as a Missionary in these countries.”39 Wolff frequently describes himself as a dervish, a Muslim mendicant ascetic, and the term unites the rootlessness and ascetic flair that are the hallmark of his globe-trotting missionary adventures. After a fortnight in Yemen, from December 23rd to January 5th, Wolff voyages on to Massawa, on the Abyssinian coast, before reversing course and docking at Jeddah, en route to Egypt and Malta, where he rejoins his wife and son.40 In typical fashion, Wolff launches into a public presentation of Christian doctrine to Muslim listeners at Jeddah’s Mecca gate, until a listener threatens to break his neck if he does not desist.41 He concludes the narrative of this journey by listing the results of his expedition. Wolff has supplied information about the current state of the Jews and Christians in the lands he has visited, as well as enlightening his readers about the beliefs and practices of foreign unbelievers. He adds, in the spirit of his dervish manifesto: “I have proved by experience that a Missionary, under the protection of the Highest [God], may have grace to persevere in preaching the Gospel of Christ, through good report and evil report, under afflictions, illness, poverty, and persecution.”42 This catalogue of achievements is representative of the efforts of all missionary writers to convince their readership that their odysseys were successful, regardless of the dearth of converts. Never one to let the grass grow under his feet, Wolff traverses Britain in the summer of 1835, recounting his escapades to audiences of missionary supporters, before rejoining his family in Malta. In the following year, he sails for Abyssinia, by way of Egypt (with a visit to Mt. Sinai), and after coming to the aid of the ailing missionary, Samuel Gobat, and his wife, Wolff retraces his steps, bringing him once again to the shores of Yemen in October 1836. This second sojourn was of three months’ duration, providing an in-depth encounter with Yemen’s Arab tribes and Jewish minority. Crossing the Red Sea from Abyssinia, Wolff lands at Jeddah and advances south through the Tihama, 39 Ibid., 324. 40 It was at this point, in Malta, that he printed Researches and Missionary Labours. 41 Ibid., 332. 42 Ibid., 337.

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visiting Luhayyah, Hudaydah, Zabid and Mocha. He then heads upland towards Sana’a, his ultimate Yemen destination, after reversing course to Bayt al-Faqih and ascending by way of Jebel Bura’a.43 Ultimately, he returns to the coast, stopping at Mocha and Hudaydah at the end of December, before leaving for Jeddah, where he embarks for Bombay. In Yemen, as elsewhere, Wolff devotes little attention to interpersonal exchanges concerning anything other than matters of faith. He is something of an Orientalist, and ancient Israel is the other abstract subject which seems to matter more to him than his immediate surroundings. For instance, he identifies the Banu Arhab of the Sana’a region with the biblical Rechabites, and Sana’a with Uzal, of Gen. 10:27.44 Fanny Parkes writes that Wolff “roams about the world in search of the lost tribes of Israel,”45 and the title of the account of his travels from Meshed to Sarakhs and Mowr states that he made the trip “for the Purpose of Discovering the Lost Tribes of Israel.” Indeed, during his travels Wolff frequently associates this nation or that tribe with the Ten Lost Tribes. This focus on religion and the Bible is typical of pilgrims, whose travel narratives take little note of the social and natural environment in the lands they visit.46 In Wolff’s case, this attitude was particularly marked during his excursion to Sinai, en route to Yemen. He makes the journey in the company of John Carne, a popular British traveler, who recalls: “Sinai had infinitely more power over his imagination and his feelings than Calvary; to a man descended from Jewish ancestors, and bred in their faith, the whole region of this mountain is enchanted land.”47 Carne’s observation touches upon Wolff’s obsession with his Jewish identity and origins, a fundamental characteristic, which however does nothing to compromise his faith. Like other English Protestant missionaries of his time, the root of Wolff ’s preaching Christianity to the Jews is his own Jewish identity. At Hudaydah, he meets the commanding officer of Turkish troops in Yemen, Ibrahim Pasha, nephew to Mohammed Ali, who asks Wolff why he addresses chiefly the Jews. Wolff replies that he was once a Jew himself; that the Jews already believe in the Bible; and that “salvation is of the Jews,” a vague allusion to Christian eschatology.48 It would make sense for Wolff to tell the authorities

43 This is peculiar, for the standard route to Sana’a would have had him continue from Mocha to Ta’izz and Yerim. No explanation is given for this unusual itinerary. 44 Travels and Adventures, 196. 45 Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, 268. 46 Campbell, The Witness and the Other World, 17–20. 47 John Carne, Recollections of Travels in the East (London, 1830), 342. 48 Journal, 374. See also Travels and Adventures, 503, where, however, Wolff only supplies the first answer to the question.

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that his interest is in the Jews, since proselytizing Muslims was a capital crime, but Wolff habitually presents himself as a Jew, to Jew and non-Jew alike. In November 1831, Wolff is captured by Turcomans in northeastern Iran. He has his captors deliver two Hebrew Bibles to the Jews of nearby Torbat Heydariyeh, after inscribing a message in one of them, in which he introduces himself as “Joseph Wolff, the son of David, of the tribe of Levi,” and asks them to ransom him.49 In Yemen, during Wolff’s interview with Ibrahim Pasha, a Greek from Thessaloniki asks if he is the “Yosef Wolff Ebraios” [the Jew], who was captured by pirates near Thessaloniki and later helped many Greeks at Cyprus in 1822.50 Wolff’s Jewish identity is his calling card, and his approach works: initially, the Jews almost always receive him politely, and often cordially. Operating in his favor is the fact that he is the first figure of his kind to reach these far-flung locales, such that the locals are unfamiliar with his purpose. This helps us understand why the Jews of Torbat Heydariyeh agree to ransom Wolff, even though he has not lied about his missionary message. He is, thus, only spurned or menaced when he pays a second visit, such as at Jerusalem, by which time the rabbinical leadership has grasped the nature of his mission and perceives him as a threat. Gift exchange enters the story of Wolff’s second Yemen sojourn the moment his feet touch the ground, and the subject is alcohol, a familiar one from the early modern experiences.51 On October 19th, Wolff’s ship lands at Jazan, near Yemen’s northwestern frontier, where the local Turkish captain comes aboard hoping for what he calls “a glass of white thing,” which Wolff explains means brandy. Wolff does not oblige, and in fact throughout his expeditions Wolff mentions on various occasions that alcoholic beverages are not among his wares.52 Wolff does not explain this strategic decision, which was bound to disappoint some of his hosts. He may have thought it prudent to avoid situations which could jeopardize his mission by causing him to be seen as an adversary, since alcohol is prohibited to Muslims. But Wolff himself may have equated alcohol with depravity, for nowhere in his writings does he indulge in drinking. In Amritsar, northwestern India, which Wolff visits in 1832, he agrees to toast his royal host with some local wine but finds it so distasteful that he is forced to spit it out. This happens just after he declines his host’s offer of entertainment by

49 Travels and Adventures, 304. For this journey of Wolff’s, see also his Journals. 50 Ibid., 504. 51 The Yemen narrative, beginning with the landing at Jazan, also appears in Narrative, 51 f. 52 Journal, 369. In 1831, in Afghanistan, Wolff is asked for brandy and cannot oblige, for, as he notes: “I never had spirits with me” – Researches and Missionary Labours, 151.

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dancing girls, explaining that “as an English Brahmin, I could not find pleasure in such amusement.”53 The juxtaposition of the offers of alcohol and erotic pleasure supports the notion that the two were linked in Wolff’s mind, and likely also in that of his host, although the latter regarded them favorably. Wolff may have shunned women simply because he was married, but on several occasions he declines overtures in melodramatic fashion. The young wife of the bedouin chief who has taken their party captive in the Sinai reaches into the tent and takes the neckerchief from his throat – a fine example of an involuntary gift! – whereupon Wolff “ran out of the tent as if from a wild beast.”54 This is a good example of Wolff’s narration of incidents that depict him as eccentric, foolish, or at least colorful. Readers might be tempted to dismiss such writing as embellishment, for greater literary appeal, but, as Wolff notes, this tale is corroborated by Carne, who attributes Wolff’s behavior to his having “a singular apprehension of women.”55 As with alcohol, Wolff may have had political motives, fearing either the immediate consequences from the bedouin chief, or the long-term damage to his reputation and mission from even a hint of debauchery. Support for the latter interpretation can be found in Wolff’s account of his conversation with a prostitute in Kashmir. Dutifully, he scolds her, and tells her she will go to hell, but he refuses her request to accompany him on the continuation of his journey, saying that he would lose his reputation.56 Still, Carne’s characterization rings true, for Wolff’s nature, as presented both in his own writing and in the accounts of fellow European travelers, was impulsive and enthusiastic, rather than calculating and political. In a second alcohol incident, a Turkish officer at Jazan, after declining Wolff’s offer of a Bible on the grounds that it is against his religion, asks Wolff for a glass of brandy, and is told that he should not ask for something forbidden him by his religion.57 This is a classic gift-exchange imbroglio, with the host rejecting the stranger’s gift offer, and then having the stranger reciprocate with the refusal of his own gift request. But Wolff not only refuses, he responds by mocking the officer for his moral failing and hypocrisy. His snide retort is entirely in the spirit of early modern anecdotes about Muslims and alcohol, for whether the alcohol incidents related by European travelers are true or fictitious, they are Orientalist slurs, in which the Christian visitors seize the moral high ground over the indigenous infidels, whom they consider depraved.

53 54 55 56 57

Journals, 88. Travels and Adventures, 126–27. Carne, Letters from the East (London, 1826), 216–17. Researches and Missionary Labours, 237. Journal, 371; Travels and Adventures, 501–02.

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A more flagrant portrayal of Muslim degeneracy follows in Bayt al-Faqih. Wolff asks a dervish what his native land is. He replies that it is dust, whence he came and whither he shall return, and then cries: “Po, po, po!” Wolff asks him to explain this utterance and is told that the dervish was “overpowered by the overflowing of the spirit.” Then the dervish quietly asks Wolff for “some spirits.” Again Wolff refuses the request, but this time he lashes out: “Oh, you rogue! I know now what spirit makes you cry ‘Po!’”58 The “spirit” pun is clearly intended to amuse his English audience, while the surreptitious nature of the dervish’s request taints the latter as devious, apart from the elements of decadence and hypocrisy. Wolff’s offer of a Bible introduces our general theme of gift exchange. Faith, leading to salvation and eternal life, is obviously the missionary’s essential gift to his infidel hosts, a gift regularly spurned by Jews and Muslims alike. Apart from shifting their focus to eastern Christian denominations, the missionary organizations responded to this lack of receptivity by adopting an indirect approach, and offered a variety of goods and services, in an effort to ingratiate themselves. Nile Green lists books, talismans, clothes, and ritual items among the missionaries’ religious products, alongside their religious services, which included blessing, healing, salvation, protection, belonging, networking, or other means for the recipient to realize his or her goals.59 Green emphasizes the reciprocal and negotiated nature of the religious economy, in the spirit of the scholarly approach to gift exchange. For instance, he explains that religious institutions offer social networks that have practical uses in the social and economic arenas, and in return ask their local “consumers” for loyalty and submission to authority. As a rule, the subaltern consumers are unappreciative of the more nebulous gifts on offer and respond positively only when they perceive immediate and concrete advantage. But Green stresses that religious exchange initiates a dynamic in which the communication of religious ideas stimulates consumers to critically examine their own beliefs and mores.60 With faith as the missionaries’ quintessential gift, books are their main concrete gift. Wherever they set foot, missionaries offer their host populations education, primarily the word of God, to which end they produce Bible translations in local vernaculars, and print and distribute these to the ends of the earth.61 The first missionary printing press is established in 1822 at Malta by the American

58 Journal, 384. See also Travels and Adventures, 507, but here Wolff omits the alcohol component of the anecdote. Incidentally, in the latter version the crucial word is “Ho!,” rather than “Po!” 59 Green, Terrains of Exchange, 7–10. 60 Ibid., 26–27. 61 See Adam Mendelsohn, “Trading in Torah: Bootleg Bibles and Secondhand Scripture in the Age of European Imperialism,” The Economy in Jewish History: New Perspectives on the

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Board, and the London Society’s first Hebrew Bible appears a year later. There are Catholic presses too. Both start by printing religious texts, the Protestants the Bible, and the Jesuits the Imitation of Christ, the catechisms of St. Ignatius Loyola, and the Psalms. The results of this cultural gift were, however, beyond the missionaries’ control. Printing exemplifies the dynamic of religious exchange, as Muslims acquire the technology of printing from the missionaries, and soon turn the tables, such as when they print the polemic against Christianity by the lapsed convert, “Nathaniel” Jawad ibn Sabat, in Calcutta in 1814.62 For this literature to have impact, it must be read. The missionaries are thus stimulated to establish educational institutions, and soon the missionary presence involves schools and colleges, including the prestigious American University in Beirut, and even networks of such establishments. The education they offer is practical as well as general, with schools for crafts and industry. Many of these facilities still exist, and, while designed with a missionary purpose in mind, for better and for worse they have brought literacy and western technology and thinking to the non-European multitudes.63 How does Wolff’s experience fit into the general pattern of missionary gifts? His offer of a Bible at Jazan is consistent with his usual behavior, for he always traveled with a large quantity of Bibles, Old Testaments as well as New. Like Anne Elwood, Wolff’s offer of a Bible is refused at Jazan, but undaunted, he offers a Persian translation of Psalms and Proverbs to the Turkish governor at Luhayyah, who knew Persian.64 It was far less common for the missionaries’ hosts to give them books, but Ibrahim Pasha gives Wolff a manuscript history of Yemen.65 Similarly, the Mufti of Zabid, after learning Wolff’s name, hands him a local history, which Wolff recognizes as the book he had sent back to England from Bombay, containing a reference to Ulrich Seetzen, a botanist who visited Yemen in 1810.66 The Mufti also gives Wolff a Bible and a New Testament in Arabic which have Wolff’s name inscribed. He recognizes these books as those he had given someone in Baghdad and is amazed at how far they have wandered.67

Interrelationship between Ethnicity and Economic Life, ed. Gideon Reuveni (New York, 2011), 187–201, esp. 190–91. 62 Green, Terrains of Exchange, 27. 63 Porter, Religion versus Empire?, 317; Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions (Reading, 1964), 216–17; Verdeil, Missions chrétiens en terre d’islam, 33–34. 64 Journal, 371–72. 65 Ibid., 380. 66 Ibid., 382. On Seetzen, see below. 67 Travels and Adventures, 506.

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Turning to Wolff’s encounter with Yemen’s Jewish population, he writes that at Mocha there are approximately fifteen families of Jews, whom he describes as “exceedingly ignorant.”68 This terse and disparaging reference suggests that Mocha’s Jews were less than receptive to him, perhaps even inhospitable. He could not say the same for the Jews of Sana’a, Yemen’s metropolis, and the country’s main Jewish community. Here we read that Joseph Qara,69 the city’s leading rabbi, gives Wolff an Arabic copy of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, as well as a history of the Jews of Yemen. Qara tells Wolff that his community normally receives books from Calcutta, and that they are also in touch with their brethren in Bombay, Baghdad, and Basra. Another Jew shows Wolff manuscripts of the writings of the great Saadia Gaon, of tenth-century Baghdad, including Pentateuch commentaries, and Wolff astutely notes that these differ from printed editions.70 This type of encounter becomes characteristic later in the century, when Jewish visitors to Yemen habitually strive to see, copy, and even acquire ancient manuscripts, in a classic instance of the European appropriation of oriental treasures, the very activity of which the locals suspected them.71 Apart from the vast quantity of Bibles in his luggage, we also find Wolff distributing other sorts of educational materials. He presents Ibrahim Pasha with a copy of the map published at Malta by Christof Friedrich Schlienz, and offers a second copy to the governor of Bayt al-Faqih.72 There are also books not directly related to his mission. At Zaydiyah, on his way to Hudaydah, Wolff gives the local governor a copy of Kitāb siyāha ̣ t ʼal-masīhị ̄, the Arabic translation of Pilgrims Progress published at Malta in 1834, along with some other books. An onlooker quips that the English dervish is better than “our” dervishes, for he goes about “doing good,” while they go about begging.73 Pilgrims Progress is transparently a Christian didactic work, and thus giving it as a gift is only a step away from the straightforward missionizing of Bible distribution. A bit further removed is Robinson Crusoe, which is arguably about conversion, for Crusoe repents his wicked life and begins to read the Bible daily, and is truly redeemed after he converts his man Friday.74 Wolff packs for his second trip 68 Journal, 383. 69 “Mose Joseph” in Narrative, 53. 70 Journal, 391–93; Travels and Adventures, 509. This is the same Saadia mentioned by Forsskål in his account of his encounter with the Jews. 71 Noah S. Gerber, Ourselves or our Holy Books: the Cultural Discovery of Yemenite Jewry [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 2013). 72 Journal, 373; for Bayt al-Faqih, see Ibid, 381. Wolff also gave the Schlienz map to Osman Bey, General of Muhammad Ali, at Jeddah: Ibid., 364. 73 Travels and Adventures, 502. 74 Ragussis, Figures of Conversion, 2. See especially Ch. 15 of Robinson Crusoe.

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to Bukhara with three dozen copies of Robinson Crusoe.75 Al-Lith, about two hundred miles south of Jeddah towards Yemen, he hands out Arabic Bibles, and relates that gloomy Muslims see this as portending the triumph of Christian power, although they appreciate Wolff’s gift of an Arabic translation of Robinson Crusoe, for they consider the book’s hero a great prophet.76 Wolff’s book gifts sometimes arouse a negative reaction. His Bible gift is rejected at Jeddah, and some of those he gives out at Zabid are returned. At Lith, the locals articulate why this gift makes them feel threatened, and clearly those Bible recipients who respond with hostility experienced similar feelings. Wolff reports that the chief rabbi of Jerusalem instructed his flock to tear to pieces the Bibles Wolff had distributed.77 Violence to Wolff’s books is second only to violence to his person. After departing Sana’a and passing Matna, Wahabis confront Wolff with the fact that the books he had given them do not contain the name of Mohammed. He admits this and urges them “to come to some decision.” They announce that they have, and proceed to horsewhip him “tremendously,” telling him, with a mix of irony and fury, that this is their decision!78 This incident is one of the most intense of the encounters in which Wolff’s stranger-host encounter ends in violence. On the outskirts of Mardin, in Kurdistan, Wolff converses with one of the local Yazeedis on religion, causing one of the chiefs to accuse him of having come “to upset our religion.” Wolff replies, with a characteristic lack of tact, that he has come “to show you the way of truth.” Promptly, the Kurds tie him down and beat him with two hundred lashes on the soles of his feet.79 Wolff would have seen adverse reactions such as these as a badge of honor, marks of what he endures for the sake of his mission, which fortunately for him, never climaxes in saintly martyrdom. Health care is the second leading missionary service, with the strangers bringing the boon of European medicine to their exotic hosts. In this realm, as in education, the missionaries’ gift results in the creation of new facilities, such as India’s teaching hospitals at Vellore and Ludhiana. Unlike education, we have seen that in early modern tales of European travel, locals habitually ask visitors for medical care, which, like the perennial demand for alcohol, underscores the

75 Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, 69–70. Robinson Crusoe was translated into Arabic by John Lewis Burckhardt during his sojourn in Damascus: Eickelman, The Middle East, 29. 76 Travels and Adventures, 500. 77 Journal, 245. 78 Journal, 394–95; Narrative, 54; Travels and Adventures, 511, without the postscript: “This is our decision!” 79 Travels and Adventures, 190.

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continuity between the early modern and modern periods. Schools for the blind, deaf, and handicapped founded by the missionaries and their supporters blended education and health care, aiming more broadly to care for the less fortunate. Other examples of such ventures include the schools for poor children founded in India by William Carey, and Medical Mission, Home for Aged Christian Israelites, and Temporal Relief Fund operated by the Society for Propagation of the Gospels Among the Jews. Wolff does not provide healing in Yemen, but he relates that in Turkistan he denied a request to provide a medicine that would cause a miscarriage for a young woman who had been seduced. He also refuses a request by a notable to win him a bride through witchcraft, a body of occult knowledge commonly viewed – even by Wolff – as a kind of science.80 These incidents exemplify the western reputation for effective medicine, and illustrate that locals would impute this body of knowledge to any European traveler. In fact, while Wolff turns down the witchcraft request by claiming ignorance, in rejecting the pharmacological request, he rebukes his petitioner for having seduced the girl, but does not simply explain that he is not a physician.81 In Yemen, Wolff sometimes crosses paths with European physicians. Ibrahim Pasha introduces him to Devaux, his French physician. Wolff expresses respect for him, as opposed to the French scoundrels (“canailles”) who usually serve Mohammed Ali.82 He later stays with Devaux when, stricken by typhus, he is forced to remain at Hudaydah for six weeks.83 Ibrahim Pasha also mentions Chedufau, an earlier French physician of his, who allegedly told him that there is no god.84 Whether or not this tale was true, the image of a European atheist physician (or scientist) is strictly a modern phenomenon, not found in earlier periods and presumably attributable to Enlightenment thought. These references are rare evidence of a French presence in Yemen, whose colonial activities were concentrated in other lands and continents.85 Ibrahim Pasha’s French physicians served him in his capacity as an Ottoman political official, and the Pasha is as little an Arab and as much an outsider as the Turks we have already come across. Wolff’s acquaintance with Devaux is an instance of what I

80 Journals, 16, 18. 81 Journals, 16. 82 Journal, 372; Travels and Adventures, 502. 83 Journal, 395; Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, 54; Travels and Adventures, 512. 84 Chedufau served as chief surgeon to a Turkish military expedition: see Macro, Yemen and the Western World, 32. 85 A rare exception is Henri Lambert: see Roger Joint Daguenet, Aux origines de l’implantation française en Mer Rouge: vie et mort d’Henri Lambert, consul de France à Aden – 1859 (Paris, 1992).

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have called intersections, when one European traveler encounters another, directly or indirectly. Wolff’s mention of Ulrich Seetzen, who visited Yemen before him, is an example of an indirect encounter, while a second direct encounter is Wolff’s relationship with the French naturalist Pierre Emile Botta, with whom Wolff stays in Mocha when Botta falls ill.86 Wolff also meets the Mocha agent of the East India Company, another European.87 Clearly, Wolff is not the only European in Yemen, though his is the earliest book-length Yemen travel account since Niebuhr. Wolff had a number of significant intersections in other lands. We have already mentioned John Carne, and in Kabul Wolff meets Alexander Burnes, who, according to Wolff, portrayed him badly. Regarding a religious disputation Wolff held with a Mullah, Wolff felt that he had held the upper hand, but Burnes allegedly wrote that “Wolff was beaten.”88 Wolff also recounts having told Burnes that when the millennium arrives “we shall eat all manner of fruits,” citing biblical prooftexts, and complains that Burnes later related that according to Wolff: “people would all live on vegetables, and go about naked; just as Wolff had done in his journey from Dooab to Kabul, a distance of 600 miles! Truly, it would not be worth much to have such a millennium as that!” Once again, Wolff relishes expressions of disdain or ridicule regarding his behavior, and here Burnes also ridicules Wolff’s religious convictions, exemplifying one of many other types of travelers with whom missionaries typically rubbed shoulders. Wolff meets Fanny Parkes in India, as we have noted, and asks to see her collection of Hindu idols. She pleases him by giving him two such idols, in the less common case of a stranger giving a gift to a fellow stranger rather than to a host.89 The Cadi of Gaza gives Wolff a letter of recommendation to his brother, the Cadi of Jerusalem, and Wolff reciprocates by presenting the Cadi and the city’s governor with two loaves of European sugar, which, we are told, “is very acceptable here.”90 This anecdote is followed by an extremely rare comment on gift exchange: Everyone expects a present in this country, as a matter of course, not a bribe, and a loaf of sugar is a more suitable present from a missionary than pistols or pictures of saints, which have been given in Mount Lebanon; and not so expensive as the distribution of ham, salmon, and sweetmeats, which actually took place among the Maronites, by a certain Protestant Missionary, which made such a good impression that they exclaimed, “Wa Allah!” i.e. “By G-, the English are excellent people.”91

86 Travels and Adventures, 511. 87 Journal, 382. 88 Travels and Adventures, 361–62. 89 Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, 272. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid.

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Evidently, Wolff appreciates not only the value of gift-giving but also the importance of giving appropriate gifts. These should not be excessively valuable, like the ham and salmon, and should strike a balance between being practical and in keeping with one’s purpose: apparently the pictures are unsuitable because they offer no practical advantage to the recipients, while pistols – always a popular gift of European technology in the precursor era – are not sufficiently Christian in spirit. There are a number of incidents involving the exchange of material gifts during Wolff’s travels to lands other than Yemen. At Bukhara, an influential political official suggests to Wolff that Britain send an ambassador, who should bring “some presents of watches for the King,”92 another technology gift familiar from earlier generations. Wolff dutifully prepares for his later Bukhara excursion by packing dozens of silver watches.93 In Alexandria, his appreciation of the importance of gifts is his undoing, as an Italian working for the British consul tricks Wolff into purchasing a hundred bottles of castor oil by telling him that a bottle of castor oil is the best present one can give a bedouin chief.94 Wolff relates two exchanges of cultural gifts during his sojourn in Hudaydah, both of which depict his uncritical reception of local lore. The former governor tells Wolff that in Abyssinia there are people with tails, like dogs, and Wolff replies that he knows it to be true, because he has heard as much from Abyssinians. Furthermore, he knows of an Englishman “of dark complexion and great talents” who “walks exactly as if he had a tail,” and “people of high rank” told him that he and his family have tails, and that his coach has a hole under his seat for his comfort. Wolff then relates that when the former governor fell ill, a dervish visited him to bless him, whereupon the governor ordered that a piece of paper on which the dervish had written be washed, after which he drank the water and was cured.95 Wolff appears in these anecdotes as admitting credulity, and thus as a European “becoming Oriental.” Wolff also exemplifies Georg Simmel’s rule that habitually strangers are asked to mediate local disputes, by virtue of their neutrality. In Mardin, Kurdistan, Wolff is asked to mediate a dispute among the local Jacobites about when the fast of Lent ought to commence.96 This was obviously less of an ecumenical act than if Muslims or Jews had asked Wolff to intervene in their dispute.

92 Researches and Missionary Labours, 141; Journals, 40. 93 Narrative of a Mission, 69–70. 94 Travels and Adventures, 116. 95 Ibid., 505–06. 96 Ibid., 191. See Georg Simmel, “The Stranger,” On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago, 1971), 145–46.

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Ultimately, a missionary’s goal is to proselytize, and by this yardstick, those intrepid souls who, like St. Francis, ventured into the Islamic realm, enjoyed meager success. Wolff reports having baptized “several of the nation of the Rechabites,” who were Muslims, notwithstanding Wolff’s insistence that they descended from the ancient Israelites.97 His main catch pool was, of course, Yemen’s Jews, and he relates that at Sana’a he baptized two or three men and their family members, totaling nineteen souls.98 We know nothing about the conversion experience of these people, but Wolff implies that their motivation was venal, rather than ideological, when he adds: “They were very anxious to know the state of the Jews in England; I gave them an account of the riches of Rothschild and Goldsmid.”99 Similarly, Wolff relates that in 1832 a Bukharan scholar named Rabbi Pinehas Ben Simkha claimed to have become a believer, and spoke of his wish to travel to Europe, lending support to the venal motive expressed by the Sana’a converts. Wolff also mentions a certain Joseph ben Al-Nataf, which pushes the number of Yemen converts up to twenty.100 Wolff puts the total Sana’a Jewish population at 15,000, such that his harvest seems paltry, although perhaps in line with expectations appropriate to a mission in a Muslim land. Wolff later related the nature of his appeal to the Jews of Sana’a: Several Jews at Sanaa, in Arabia Felix, were converted to the religion of Christ in the following manner: – I sang first of all with them their heart-elevating and sublime hymns, then taught them some Hebrew hymns I had heard at Jerusalem, and then read with

97 “Proceedings of the Thirtieth Anniversary,” Jewish Intelligence 4 (June, 1838), 134. 98 Journal, 394. There are slight discrepancies between the accounts: Narrative, 54, puts the number at sixteen, which presumably includes only the family members. Menahem, More David, and Yehya-Zaleh are the men’s names in both Journal, 394, and Travels and Adventures, 510, but while in the former, More David Yehya-Zaleh is one person, in the latter, More David and Yehya-Zaleh are two individuals. 99 Ibid. 100 Journal, 395. In Travels and Adventures, 510, he is called Nagash, not Nataf, but on the next page Wolff mentions al-Nataf as someone else he had also baptized. Decades later, Joseph Halévy meets Nataf, who denies having converted, but this denial cannot be taken at face value, as it has been. See Yosef Tobi, “Ha-Din ve-ḥeshbon shel Yosef Halevi `al massa`o le-Teman,” A Hymn for Jonah: Studies in the Culture of the Jews of Yemen and Their Society and Education [Hebrew], ed. Yosef Fahuah-Halevi (Tel Aviv, 2004), 230. Elsewhere, Tobi flatly dismisses Wolff’s claim to having baptized Jews in Yemen, although Tobi brings no support for his position. Tobi concedes that Wolff told the truth about having distributed copies of the New Testament, but insists that his hosts tore them to pieces as soon as they realized that they were Christian texts. Significantly, Tobi’s footnote (n. 23) cites the statement by Hayyim Hibshush, Halevy’s companion, that he found a copy of the New Testament in a Najran village, contradicting Tobi’s insistence that Wolff lied. See Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1976), 46.

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them the Gospel of Christ, and pointed out to them the eleventh chapter of the Romans, and other passages of the New Testament containing prophecies respecting the future redemption of the Jewish nation.101

It strains credulity to imagine that Jews would elect to abandon their faith as a result of this encounter. What does ring true, however, is that Wolff initially appealed to the Jews as a Jew, with Hebrew hymns, which they may well have appreciated. Certainly, the subject of the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people was always dear to their hearts, and on this score, too, Wolff could have easily gotten their attention, at least until the direction of his message became clear. Carne considers Wolff “an excellent young man, and full of zeal in the prosecution of his object,”102 and indeed, throughout his travels Wolff strives valiantly to promote his mission. He consistently downplays his reliance on the might of the British empire, although he invokes this in moments of crisis, either directly or by brandishing his firman from the Ottoman sultan, obtained through the British ambassador at Constantinople. Wolff also soft-pedals the advantage that he gained from his marriage to the very public figure, Lady Georgiana Walpole, a relationship that offered him financial independence and staved off the impatience of those in Britain with authority over his activities. Instead, Wolff places his faith front and center, an approach clearly aimed at pleasing his audience, the supporters at home whom he had in mind as he put pen to paper. He highlights the hardships he endured and takes prides in the outspoken posture that was often responsible for his travails. This profile does not make for the kind of sensitive traveler likely to engage his hosts with empathy and tact, so as to arrive at a profound understanding of their society and culture. Wolff is no Matteo Ricci: he lacks the sincere and profound interest in the indigenous population that has led missionaries to be categorized among the first ethnographers. That he survived, and not infrequently was even cordially received, we can attribute in large measure to chronology. Although we know from his intersections that Wolff was neither the first nor the only European in Yemen, even in his own day, still he was often the first missionary the locals had ever seen, and as such initially enjoyed a measure of tolerance that is truly extraordinary in light of his rude and inconsiderate modus operandi. The proverbial bull in a china shop, Wolff exuded enthusiasm for his calling, but was completely unsuited in manner or personality to the task of shepherding infidels to the baptismal font.

101 “Joseph Wolff on Religious Controversies,” The Hebrew Christian Witness and Prophetic Investigator, n.s. 1/4 (1877), 408. 102 Carne, Letters from the East, 1:204.

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Henry Aaron Stern The second missionary to Yemen, Henry Aaron Stern, like Wolff, was born and raised as a German Jew. Stern was born in April 1820, in the village of Unterreichenbach, to Aaron, a Jewish tradesman, and his wife Hannah.103 At approximately age twelve, he moved with his parents to Frankfurt, where he was enrolled in the Jewish “Philanthropin” school, which was affiliated with the reformist Neolog movement. At seventeen, he traveled to Hamburg to pursue a career in trade, and two years later accepted an offer of employment in London. The offer did not materialize, and while Stern sought work, he began visiting the Palestine Place Chapel, an organ of the LSPCJ. He soon enrolled in the Operative Jewish Converts’ Institution, which was established in 1831 at Palestine Place, near Bethnal Green, to support prospective converts. The Institution taught inmates printing and bookbinding, affording indigent proselytes like Stern a means of support, although there are no grounds for positing that Stern entered the institution purely for pragmatic reasons. On March 15th, 1840, Stern accepted baptism, which is duly recorded in the Society’s baptismal register. He makes his second appearance in the organization’s records in August of that year, at the time of the Damascus blood libel, as one of fifty eight converted Jews in England who sign a public letter of protest against the accusation of ritual murder.104 Two years later he is admitted to the Society’s Hebrew College, which opened in that same year.105

103 Oxford, Bodleian Library, archive of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish People: Dep. C.M.J., c. 63: “Hebrew Converts Baptised at the Episcopal Jews Chapel, A, 1810–1863,” citing Baptismal Register 294; Dep. C.M.J., c 171: Register of Baptisms 1810. Apart from the particulars entered into the baptismal register, our information about Stern’s life prior to his missionary excursions is based on his biography: Albert Augustus Isaacs, Biography of the Rev. Henry Aaron Stern, D.D . . . (London, 1886). Isaacs quotes from Stern’s reminiscences of his early years (e.g. p. 17), but I have not identified the text to which he refers. Moreover, Isaacs’ information is sometimes questionable, beginning with the question of Stern’s birthplace. Unterreichenbach, in Hesse, appears in the record of Stern’s baptism, but the village known today by this name is not in Hesse, but rather in southwestern Germany, south of Pforzheim and west of Stuttgart. Isaacs, however, describes it (p. 14) as near Gelnhausen, which is in Hesse, northeast of Frankfurt, not far from where Stern was placed in school. See also the following note. 104 Jewish Intelligence 6 (1840), 241. Incidentally, here Reichenbach is given as his birthplace. On the Damascus affair, see Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge, 1997). 105 On the various arms of the London Society, see Historical Notices of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews (London, 1850).

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1820–1844: Early years 1844–1853: Baghdad, Persia 1853–1856: Constantinople 1854: Dawnings of Light 1856: Yemen 1857–1859: England 1857: Journal of a Missionary Journey 1859–1861: Abyssinia 1 1862: Wanderings Among the Falashas 1862–1868: Abyssinia 2 1868: The Captive Missionary 1867–1885: England

Fig. 2: Henry Aaron Stern.106

In 1844, the London Society appoints Stern a missionary to Basra and Baghdad.107 Stern sails for the Holy Land in the company of his fellow missionaries, P.H. Sternschuss, also a German-Jewish convert, and Murray Vicars, who

106 Isaacs, Biography, frontispiece. 107 Jewish Intelligence lists Stern among the Society’s missionaries and agents to Baghdad, and asterisks his name, to indicate that he was among the “believing Jews” serving in that capacity, although he had already accepted baptism: Jewish Intelligence 10 (1844), 197. Perhaps the reservation regarding Stern’s status refers, rather, to his not having yet been ordained.

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is accompanied by his wife, Fanny Phillips, another convert from Judaism. Arriving in July, Stern and Vicars are ordained deacon by Bishop Michael Solomon Alexander of Jerusalem, after which the group proceeds to Baghdad.108 In 1849, Stern is ordained a priest in London, and in the following year he marries Charlotte Purday, daughter of the London musician, Charles Henry Purday. She accompanies Stern to Persia in 1852, and draws the sketches that illustrate his account, Dawnings of Light in the East.109 In 1853, Stern succeeds Rev. J.O. Lord at Constantinople.110 In July 1856, he sets out for Yemen, the journey we will carefully examine. Returning to England, he addresses the Society and publishes an account of his Yemen journey.111 Better known than Stern’s Yemen voyage are his Abyssinia adventures. Initially, in 1859, the Society sends him along with Stephen H. Bronkhorst, and they work with the German, Johann Martin Flad.112 Stern returns to England in March 1861.113 He is dispatched to Ethiopia again in 1862, and this time he and others of his party are held in captivity until they are rescued by the British invasion of 1868.

108 Ibid., 210, 343–44. See also Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews From 1809 to 1908, 258–60. On Aug. 6, 1844, Stern appeared before the Jerusalem Committee to take his leave before departing for Beirut en route to Baghdad: see Ms. Jerusalem – Christ Church, archive of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish People, Minutes of the Jerusalem Committee, 1842–1867, 67. 109 Dawnings of Light in the East (London, 1854), v. 110 Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews From 1809 to 1908, 294; Idem, At Home and Abroad: A Description of the English and Continental Missions of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (London, 1900), 211. 111 For his address, see A Jubilee Memorial . . . 1858 (London, [1867]), 14; Jewish Intelligence 23 (1857), 179–87; Isaacs, Biography of the Rev. Henry Aaron Stern, D.D . . ., 139–40; Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews From 1809 to 1908, 271–72. For his account, see “Journal of the Rev. H.A. Stern,” Jewish Intelligence 23 (1857), 101–13, 138–52, 258–61. In the same issue, Stern also publishes a letter about some new converts: “Letter from the Rev. H.A. Stern,” Ibid., 229–30. 112 Wanderings, 141. For Flad’s journal, see The Jewish Records n.s. 13 (August, 1862), 31–32; n.s. 28–29 (April-May, 1863), 13–20; Idem, The Falashas (Jews) of Abyssinia, trans. [from the German] S.P. Goodhart (London, 1869); Idem, 60 Jahre in der Mission unter den Falaschas in Abessinien: Selbstbiographie des Missionars (Giessen, 1922), 107–15. 113 A brief notice of Stern’s safe arrival in Alexandria, en route from Jerusalem to Abyssinia, appears in Jewish Records, n.s. 20 (December 1859), 4. Letters by Stern from Abyssinia, dated August 23rd and December 19th, appeared in The Jewish Intelligence and were abstracted in The Jewish Records n.s. 4 (April, 1861), 13. A more expansive report of the expedition appears in a later issue, including an engraving of Bronkhorst in native garb: The Jewish Records n.s. 7 (July, 1861), 26–28. See also Jewish Intelligence n.s. 1 (1861), 93; 171–203. A map of Stern’s missionary voyages to Yemen and Abyssinia appears between the June and July issues of that year. For Bronkhorst’s journal, see The Jewish Records 13 (January, 1862), 2–4.

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England is the site of the final decades of Stern’s life. He goes on a lecture tour, relating his adventures to enthusiastic supporters, as Wolff and others had done. Unlike Wolff, however, Stern devotes this last phase of his career to the London branch of the Society, in which he plays a leadership role. In 1867 he is appointed director of the “Wanderers’ Home,” and in 1871 is named head of the Home Mission.114 In 1877, Stern is appointed head of the Society’s Southern Division,115 and in 1882 he is appointed first president of the Hebrew Christian Prayer Union, founded in that year.116 In 1874, Stern loses his wife, Charlotte, with whom he had two sons and five daughters.117 Nine years later he marries Rebecca Goff. Stern dies on May 13, 1885 and is buried with Charlotte in London’s Ilford Cemetery.118

Yemen Stern’s Persia voyage brings him to the Persian Gulf, and it is here that he begins to harbor missionary ambitions for the Jews of Yemen. Having crossed over to Ras-al-Khaimah (in today’s UAE), he learns that thousands of Jews live in Yemen and the Hejaz, and gathers, like Anne Elwood before him, that “Arabia must be a vast and promising field for missionary enterprise.”119 Stern’s five-month Yemen odyssey begins in August 1856.120 Landing at Hudaydah from Jeddah, Stern is received by Signor Theophani, an Italian owner of what Stern alleges is “the only Christian firm on the coast of the Red Sea,” to whom he presents a letter of introduction. Stern sheds his European identity, 114 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Dep. C.M.J., e16: The Report of the Wanderers’ Home or Temporary Asylum for Poor Inquiring and Believing Jews and Jewesses (London, 1872–1885). In 1872, Stern conducted an event at Palestine Place on the occasion of the induction of D.C. Joseph as the new superintendant of the Wanderers’ Home: The Hebrew Christian Witness 1/12 (1872), 152–53. 115 Gidney, At Home and Abroad, 49, 62. 116 Ibid., 76. 117 The Hebrew Christian Witness and Prophetic Investigator (London, 1874), 80–81, 98–101. Note that the obituary mentions (p. 81) that a large number of Jews attended the interment ceremony at Ilford Ceremony, implying that the deceased maintained ties of some sort with her former coreligionists. In 1873, The Hebrew Christian Witness announced the forthcoming appearance of Made Perfect through Suffering, by Stern’s daughter, Charlotte Elizabeth Stern: p. 137. 118 The Society awards 75 £ per year for five years for the medical education of his second son, Frederick Augustus: Jewish Intelligence (1885), 177. A short memoir appears in this issue: Ibid., 107. For a biographical essay, see the Society’s “Seventy-Eighth Report,” (1886), 31. 119 Dawnings of Light, 94, 98. 120 Stern is the source of our knowledge of his Yemen journey, based on the journal he published in Jewish Intelligence, and later as a slender volume: “Journal of the Rev. H.A. Stern;”

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shaving, donning Arab apparel, and assuming the name Abdallah. A letter of introduction from Hudaydah refers to him, more grandly, as Dervish Abdallah, and indeed armed bedouin in the mountains subsequently hail him with this honorific. He is pleased with his metamorphosis, but after a night’s travel, he stops to rest at a coffee shop in Bajil and is immediately recognized for a stranger.

Fig. 3: Stern in Yemen.121

The coffee shop is packed with Arab wayfarers, with whom Stern is forced to rest cheek by jowl, and he praises himself for having “patiently endured all the torments which a thermometer at 98°, and twenty unwashed and unclothed Ishmaelites, could inflict.”122 We have already seen accounts by earlier travelers of

Journal of a Missionary Journey into Arabia Felix (London, 1858). See also: Isaacs, Biography of the Rev. Henry Aaron Stern, D.D . . ., 100–39; Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews From 1809 to 1908, 302–04; Idem, Sites and Scenes: a Description of the Oriental Missions of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews (London, 1898–1899, 2nd ed.), 1:171–77. 121 Isaacs, Biography, opposite p. 102. I am uncertain that this image is actually of Stern: the subject looks younger than thirty six, and bares little resemblance to Stern. Nonetheless, I am reluctant to reject it, as it was published by Stern’s biographer and personal acquaintance. 122 Later, after Stern and his companion reach higher country and find lodging in a hillside village, he makes a similar complaint about having to share his quarters with his guide, their donkeys and the family that hosts them.

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the oppressive climate in the Tihama, and Stern admits that this, combined with the company of the barbarians, made him exceedingly uncomfortable. He describes his companion, a donkey driver named Ali, as an “uncouth, black Arab.”123 But Stern’s narrative of this experience is a stark reminder that, although at this point Stern is only thirty six years old, he is no longer the callow and penniless nineteen-year old who first visited Palestine Place. Still, we would do well to recall that painful and unpleasant experiences routinely appear in missionary accounts, as they do in Wolff’s writings, for they depict the writer as sacrificing his comfort, health or even life to save souls. Moreover, Stern could have expected that English readers would empathize with the insult to his refined sensibilities. Continuing towards Sana’a, Stern and Ali join another traveling party, whose breakfast they share: a paste consisting of partially-baked bread soaked in liquid butter. Stern expresses gentle disdain for the meal, calling it “a primitive affair,” without, however, expressing disgust at the food or the manners of his Arab companions, who eat with their hands from a communal pot. Later in the journey, as he makes his way back to the Red Sea coast, Stern is again hosted with a meal of bread and melted butter, and he confesses: “It was not exactly a dinner that would have suited every palate.”124 These asides are rare nuggets of ethnographic observation (and of course ethnocentric prejudice), which missionaries often omit, presumably because they do not promote their literary, religious, agenda. At Safan, a mountain town along the route to Sana’a, Stern arouses curiosity among the Jews because he is an anomaly: he is not a Jew, but, though dressed as a Muslim, he rejects the Quran. Stern greets Yehia Ameira, the “Chacham,” or “chief of the Jews,” with a letter of introduction. He is warmly welcomed, but attributes this more to the Hebrew he spoke than to the letter. His decision to address the Jews in Hebrew adheres to Wolff’s pattern of presenting himself to the Jews as one of their own, although Stern’s modus operandi was quite different from Wolff’s, as will become clear. Stern responds to questions by locals about his identity and purpose with the sort of bland sentiments he could expect would be well received. The Jews dismiss as disingenuous his expressions of good will, but warm to him after he shows them “our books,” an ambiguous phrase which in this context probably refers to a Hebrew Bible. Stern explains that he has traveled far “to seek their good,” concealing that in his lexicon this phrase refers to his mission to convert them.

123 Journal, 7. 124 Journal, 48.

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Continuing to dissimulate, Stern joins the Jews at their evening prayers. He then launches into a Christian sermon, but of a kind designed to avoid ruffling feathers. Stern asserts “the unity and harmony between the Old and New Testament,” a safe argument given the Yemenites’ ignorance of the latter. For Jews, “the perfection of God – his holiness, purity, and unbounded love” is an even less problematic motif. “The excellencies of the Christian religion” is more blatantly conversionary, but Stern focuses on the notion that the Jews’ exile and suffering is the result of the sins of their ancestors. This is a traditional Jewish theme, and thus not likely to arouse antagonism, even though to Stern the sin in question is the rejection of Christ. His strategy is thus to gain the Jews’ confidence by blurring the distinction between the two religions and obscuring doctrines which would alienate them. Stern refers to the Safan Jews as “poor, secluded victims of Mahomedan intolerance,” which speaks to the rationale behind his mission. The Jews of Yemen seemed ripe for conversion because they were held to be poorer and more downtrodden than their brethren in other lands. Furthermore, the Yemenites differed from other Jews in that they lived in a Muslim land with no Christian population, rendering them uniquely innocent of Christianity, and hence theoretically more susceptible to missionizing. Stern is excited “at the prospect of introducing the Gospel where the shinings of its light have never yet been seen” (p. 16), and it is thus the Yemenites’ innocence as much as their suffering that induces the London Society to extend its reach to this remote outpost of Jewish civilization. For the next stretch of his travels, Stern engages the services of Eliyahu, a guide he describes as “a shrewd and courageous Jew,” and while courage is certainly an attribute to be admired, “shrewd” carries a whiff of the ancient Christian prejudice against the Jews for the devious character they supposedly inherit from Jacob, their biblical progenitor. This connotation would not have been lost on Stern’s English readership, and it allows him to subtly distance himself from the Jews he has come to convert.125 The steep ascent to Sana’a continues, and Stern indulges in further expressions of self-pity. He bemoans “the fierce and burning sun” and “fervid rays of the cloud-defying sun,” and writes that he “endured the acutest sufferings.”126 He is in agony because he walks barefoot, since shoes would identify him as a Turk and invite attack, illustrating the power of attire to project important social and cultural information about the wearer. Likewise, Stern spurns sandals,

125 For Stern’s use of the same adjective regarding Kurdish Jews, see Dawnings of Light, 220. 126 Journal, 12.

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because tenderfoot that he is, his feet bleed in the crude footgear. Unlike his nimble native companions, his eyes are “dimmed by toil and fatigue,” such that “every object had lost its attractions.”127 At their next resting place, Eliyahu introduces Stern as a “great Chacham,” or rabbi, and while Stern admits to being a Christian, he describes his religion as “mature Judaism,” though, when pressed, he is forced to confess that the Jews suffer and worship in vain if they fail to acknowledge “God’s mercy,” a vague allusion to Jesus’ mission. He thus continues to equivocate, and also preserves a certain ambiguity regarding his own identity, never actually pretending to be Jewish but also refraining from broadcasting his Christian identity. Stern cannot play this game indefinitely, and on the evening of his arrival in Manakhah, a town still in the Haraz region, a wealthy Muslim merchant advises him to press on to Sana’a, because he will never reach the city once word circulates that “a Nazarene had arrived laden with books and money to upset the religion of the country.”128 The Manakhah urbanite arranges a bedouin party of escorts, whom Stern describes in romantic terms as “genuine sons of the desert,” but then in language one might use to describe beasts of burden: “men of hardy, nervous and sinewy frame, who could bear any privations, and submit to every hardship.” “For clothing,” he writes, “they had evidently a supreme contempt,” a quality Stern always finds disconcerting, and each carries a dagger and knife in his leather girdle, characterizing them in Stern’s eyes as “wild and formidable beings,”129 in contrast to Forsskål’s more tolerant perspective. Stern assures his readers that as he proceeded through the countryside, his faith preserved him from being engulfed by terror, despite finding himself “among a savage fanatic people.”130 His assessment of the Yemenites is unchanged by his adventures, for during the journey back from Sana’a to the lowlands he contrasts the scenery with the inhabitants: “Sublime as are the sceneries in this part of Arabia, prodigal as are here the gifts of nature, man still is wild, and savage, and unthankful.”131 The question of Stern’s identity surfaces again at Uhr, the next mountain town, where the local sheikh mistakes him for a “Hajee,” or Muslim pilgrim. Stern corrects him, and in an act of chivalry, the sheikh announces that he will not rescind his hospitality regardless of whether Stern is actually a “dog of a 127 Journal, 13. 128 Journal, 15. 129 Ibid. 130 Journal, 16. 131 Journal, 49.

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Jew or an infidel Nazarene.”132 Nonetheless, Eliyahu, Stern’s Jewish escort, is imprisoned, and only released after Stern prods the sheikh to honor his promise of hospitality and Eliyahu begs him to show mercy. The town’s Jews are impressed by Stern’s show of solidarity with their kinsman, indicating that they understand that actually he is not a Jew. At Sana’a, Stern’s destination, Stern is met by More [i.e. Master] Saida Mansoora, whom he terms one of the city’s principal rabbis. The Jews who receive Stern quickly discern that “he has come to make us Noyrim” (Christians),133 and thus had some notion of his identity as not only a Christian but also a missionary, a concept of which they obviously had prior knowledge. Stern lectures them about “that faith of which scarcely one knew more than its mere name,” a motif we have already encountered, but one which needs to be balanced by the Jews’ awareness of his purpose. Stern is moved by the scene of himself discoursing before “a multitude of men, many of whom had already reached the verge of life.” They listen in silence, which leads him to describe them as “amazed and confounded” by the Christian truth, of which hitherto they had been deprived due to “prejudice and ignorance.” Even now, at the zenith of his voyage, Stern cannot help mentioning “all the toils I had undergone.” He writes: “The heat of the room had induced numbers to throw off their upper garment, as they sat thus almost naked, save a cloth round their waist . . . I felt that no sacrifice was too great – no hardship too painful, if it could only smooth the rugged present, and lighten the gloomy future, of these men.”134 Once again Stern juxtaposes the unbearable heat with the nakedness of the local barbarians, a combination which portrays Yemen as a harsh and primitive environment, particularly from the perspective of a visitor from England, with its sodden climate and civilized gentlemen. Three Muslim grandees, including Ali Zarkhee, one of the city’s wealthiest merchants, arrive at Stern’s domicile, and have his possessions transferred to a hostel owned by Zarkhee in the Muslim section of the city, assuring Stern that there he will be safe but still accessible to the Jewish community. Essentially, his removal is a tacit but clear statement that his habitual dissimulation regarding his religious identity will not be tolerated in Sana’a, Yemen’s metropolis, whose inhabitants are not rustics but men of the world. Stern barely has time to “humanize” the room in which he is housed – another gentle denigration of the Yemenite lifestyle – before he is visited by

132 Journal, 16. 133 Journal, 20. 134 Journal, 21.

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important Muslims. Mullahs engage him on matters of theology, asking him questions he deems “foolish and puerile,”135 about which he expatiates at length, in the type of discourse favored by missionary writers. He then discusses Christianity with a group of Jews, and reports triumphantly that “in that gloomy room, which had so often rung with the boisterous voices of wild Bedouins, could now be heard the sighs and groans of two despised Israelites.”136 This formulation reflects Stern’s failure to establish a personal connection with his interlocutors, whom he continues to depict in flat, stereotypical, language. This quality matches the dearth of ethnographic detail in his account, for both qualities indicate a sort of blindness, as Stern talks at Yemenite Muslims and Jews, rather than with them. Accompanied by Ali Zarkhee, Stern pays the requisite diplomatic call upon the city’s governor, and his description of his approach to the castle depicts the city as gloomy and sinister. The dark of night is absolute blackness; the guard obstructs the entrance to the castle in a menacing way; Stern refers to a group of buildings he believes are prisons; “grim and sullen smokers” of “their favorite weed” ask him if he is “the Christian Dervish;” he proceeds along “narrow and loathsome passages – which, even in the daytime, owing to the formidable obstructions from crumbling walls and heaps of rotten rubbish, it must be dangerous to traverse,” until he finally reaches the entrance to the governor’s house, where he encounters “the black and ungainly forms of several armed men,” before being conducted into the governor’s presence, in a room with “a shabby and ragged appearance.”137 To Stern, the forbidding nature of the city and its inhabitants mirrors the darkness of their unredeemed souls. Theological conversations continue to dominate Stern’s narrative, and it is worth paying attention to the Jews’ perspective, because it is strategic. At a Sana’a gathering, Stern’s Jewish listeners are pleased to hear him defend “the revelation made to Moses and the Prophets,”138 and in another such encounter the Jews similarly declare that “both our creeds rest their truth on Moses and the Prophets.” They add: “our only difficulty is the person and work of the Messiah, and if this enigma is satisfactorily solved, the Yehudee is a Nazarene, and the Nazarene a Yehudee.”139 Plainly, the political benefit to the Jews of aligning themselves with the religion of Europe offers a powerful motivation for this benevolent posture. However, their attitude also offers a psychological boost, by

135 136 137 138 139

Journal, 22. Journal, 23. Journal, 24–25. Journal, 22. Journal, 28.

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turning the bipolar opposition of Islam and Judaism into a Judaism-ChristianityIslam triangle, which reverses their status as a dominated minority and places them in the majority. Thus, the idea that Christians are actually Jews, a basic and crucial weapon in the missionary’s arsenal, resonates with the Yemenite Jews for their own reasons, even though there is no basis for the assumption that the Jews held this to be true. The Jews downplay the “enigma” of Jesus’ identity and mission, but of course these issues presented an obstacle to their conversion that was insuperable for Stern, his predecessors and followers. The political authorities of Sana’a become suspicious of Stern’s overtures to the Jews, perhaps at their instigation, and following a Sabbath which he spends in the Jewish quarter, the governor restricts his movements to the Muslim quarter, because the mullahs suspect that “you have come to make Nazaranee of the Jews, and when you have effected this, to do the same with the Moslemin.”140 That Sunday, Stern’s shipment of religious tracts arrives, whereupon the Muslim leadership proclaims a penalty of two hundred “dollars” upon the Jewish community if they take Christian writings from him, a move which the governor’s secretary immediately condemns as mercenary, rather than ideological.141 Stern quits Sana’a at the end of a twelve-day sojourn and takes stock of his achievements.142 He claims to have won two converts, and overzealous English readers would misconstrue this carefully chosen term as a reference to baptisms. The basis for Stern’s formulation is an incident in which two of his Jewish listeners apparently swallow his argument “that the Messiah whom we [the Christians] worship was the same Divine Being who revealed Himself to the prophets and saints,” and consequently cry out: “Jesus, thou gracious Redeemer of souls, pity our ignorance, and forgive our sins!”143 But however impressed these Jews were by Stern’s version of his faith, neither they nor any other Yemenite Jews are moved to accept baptism. Stern maintains that other Jews expressed a desire to be baptized, but that he did not dare act upon their request, on account of “their peculiar position,”144 a vague reference to the danger of such an act to the converts and presumably also to himself. Regarding his spiritual impact upon the city’s Muslim population, Stern avers that he has shaken the faith of many. He reports that a respectable merchant suspected of being swayed by him was beaten in the marketplace, and

140 Journal, 33. 141 See below, “Emissary,” for Jacob Sapir’s version of Stern’s visit in Safan and Sana’a. 142 His arrival in Cairo following the Yemen sojourn is recorded in the missionary press: Jewish Intelligence 23 (1857), 61. 143 Journal, 23. 144 Journal, 42.

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that a number of others were nearly similarly abused. He concludes with the admission that he left Sana’a because of the sense that he and others faced real danger due to “the public clamour against me.”145 Stern attaches great importance to his success at having the authorities revoke the stiff penalty for religious tracts, which enables him to distribute a large number of texts. Here gift exchange, which is nearly absent from Stern’s travel account up to this point, comes into play, for Albert Augustus Isaacs, Stern’s biographer, clarifies that the Scriptures Stern distributes are not gifts: he sells them for £12 in total, or 144,000 rupees, the small copper coins circulating in Sana’a at the time. But Isaacs also reports having heard from Stern that at the end of his stay in Sana’a, his host charged him the exorbitant sum of twelve hundred rupees, or two shillings, which reportedly outrages Ali Zarkhee. On both sides, then, gift-giving behaviors that are often extended gratis, in Stern’s case assume the form of commercial exchanges, with at least some resentment on the part of recipients.146 Stern’s Yemen journal contains some of the gift-giving motifs we have already encountered, apart from alcohol. For example, Yemenites express a fascination with European technology, and Stern offers the gift of information. The governor of Sana’a asks Stern to describe “the fire-carriages and wire words with which I had bewildered the intellect of the secretary.” Accordingly, Stern strives “to give them some idea of the power of steam and electricity; but had Watt and Franklin themselves occupied my place, and explained their immortal discoveries, the telegraph and railway would still have been ascribed to the skill of magic and the genius of the gente a basso.”147 Stern’s consternation at his listeners’ framing of these advances in local cultural terms is consistent with his generally disparaging view of the Yemenite worldview. Medical expertise is another familiar European gift. Stern tells of having won the friendship of mountain chiefs after giving them medicines, and adds: “I carried with me some medicines, and with these I cured several cases of fever and ophthalmia, the most prevalent diseases in Arabia.”148 Now, preparing to depart Sana’a and descend to the coast, Stern fears the fierce Beni Jebar tribe who control the mountain passes south of the city. Providentially, he is summoned to their sheikh’s sickbed, and cures his fever with “a strong dose of physic,” winning the sheikh’s promise of an escort of armed tribesmen.149

145 146 147 148 149

Journal, 43. Isaacs, Biography, 128. Journal, 38. Journal, 36. Journal, 43.

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The Beni Jebar companions are soon challenged by a larger rival band, who rifle Stern’s belongings, but discover nothing of value. The bandits are puzzled to find an aneroid barometer, a device unfamiliar to them, and no doubt Stern’s readers are equally puzzled by Stern’s decision to carry one. At any rate, Stern relates that one of the party, and fortunately only one, is so frustrated by the slim pickings that he repeatedly punches him in the face. After the steady diet of Stern’s gripes about the hardships of his Yemen journey, this is his first real misadventure, and the only violent one. A melee ensues, but when it dies down, Stern and his escorts are invited to sup in the bandits’ village. This too goes awry, however, for Stern’s assailant threatens to kill him when he refuses to recite a prayer for the Prophet. Then the village sheikh holds Stern for ransom, in an obvious attempt to satisfy his men, but he rescinds his demand in the morning, and even supplies a team of escorts. This anecdote offers a complex texture of religious and economic elements. Stern is targeted because he is a stranger, and therefore presumably worth robbing, and also because he is an infidel. The search of his belongings and the decision to hold him for ransom suggest that the marauders mainly sought financial gain, but the threat to murder him for clinging to his beliefs precludes a purely fiscal interpretation. Religious zeal must find a place in the matrix of motivating forces, as when Turcomans hold Wolff for ransom near Torbat Heydariyeh. Stern’s Arab guide is forced to turn back when he reaches the realm of another sheikh, and Stern understands that he expects to be paid, and admits that “he well deserved a present.” This poses a difficulty, for Stern has only the clothes on his back. The guide is pleased simply to trade clothes, but Stern is loathe to dress as a Beni Jebar tribesman, and compromises by trading turbans, noting with satisfaction that he had paid a mere half dollar, or two shillings, for his turban in Hudaydah. This incident is another rare case of gift exchange in Stern’s travel narrative, and significantly, while Stern describes his debt to the guide as a present, he gets as well as gives. Moreover, while in the sociological literature gift exchange is a common form of gift giving, in such situations the two parties generally strain to display as much largesse as possible – actually destroying their goods in the classic “potlatch” – whereas in Stern’s case the opposite is true, as he boasts at the low cost of the transaction to himself. Ultimately, what he initially describes as a gift situation devolves into a commercial transaction, with Stern straining to give as little as possible. Reaching Mocha in mid-October, Stern falls ill, like so many before him, and is moved and grateful for the ministrations of a fellow stranger, a German Jew

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named Landan, who was traveling on business from India to Suez.150 He recovers after two weeks’ convalescence and takes ship for Aden in the company of “Mons. P – ”, a French commercial agent. Frustrated at the capricious handling of the ship by its Arab captain, Stern rails against the uncivilized Arabs: An Arab, even at sea, is unfettered by the rules of science and civilization . . . Modern improvements and discoveries have not yet, on the Red Sea, superseded the prejudices of ignorance, and the Arab of the present day . . . will, on a voyage from Egypt to India, dispense with compass, quadrant, chart, and every other requisite by which life and property are ensured on the ocean . . . Is not Alla Kerim able to steer his ship aright in the tempest as well as in the calm?151

Bad weather forces the ship to turn back, and while Stern’s French companion fulminates against Arab incompetence, Stern is grateful to have escaped with his life, though apprehensive about the danger to his still precarious health from the Tihama climate. Eventually, he and Mons. P – attach themselves to a party traveling by land to a point beyond Bab-el-Mandeb where they board a boat to Aden. Arriving on December 6th, Stern is relieved to be back in civilization, and basks in the warm welcome he receives from the city’s British – Christian – residents. He returns to Constantinople by way of Suez on January 1st to resume his duties.

Persia and Abyssinia Stern’s voyages to Persia and Abyssinia flank his Yemen journey, taking place before and after it, respectively. His narratives of these travels are replete with information about the lands and peoples he encountered, but our discussion is restricted to his stranger-host encounter.152 Stern’s journey took place in the shadow of Wolff’s and must be compared with it. Stern’s experience does not intersect Wolff’s in Yemen, but Wolff makes two modest appearances in Stern’s Persia journal. Stern visits the Jews of Borazgoon [Borazjan], in the Bushehr region, and comments that the only book in their synagogue is “a few parts of the Old Testament Scriptures, with which Dr. Wolff, many years ago, presented them.”153 Here it is Wolff’s material legacy

150 This should read “Lamdan,” which is Hebrew for “learned man” and a not unlikely surname. 151 Journal, 51. 152 On Stern’s visit to Persia, see David Yeroushalmi, The Jews of Iran in the Nineteenth Century: Aspects of History, Community, and Culture (Leiden, 2009), 90–92 and passim. 153 Dawnings, 109.

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that remains decades after his visit, but in Shiraz, the local rabbi and a friend tell Stern that they remember Wolff.154 Clearly, while Stern encounters a less innocent population, simply by virtue of the fact that Wolff preceded him. Stern also intersects with travelers from another category, the Palestinian emissary. In Mosul, an itinerant rabbi from Jerusalem makes an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Stern from addressing the congregation at the conclusion of the Sabbath prayer service.155 The Jerusalemite’s vigorous opposition to Stern is another reflection of Wolff’s impact on the lands he visited, including the Holy Land, for once the local Jews became familiar with the missionary’s identity and purpose, they moved to thwart them. Another Palestinian emissary, this one from Hebron, is obstructive in Balfroosh, not far from the Caspian sea. Here, as in Mosul, the locals are inclined to allow Stern to preach in the synagogue, but Chacham Rachmim will not allow it.156 Small wonder that Stern goes on to denigrate the Hebronite in the most disparaging terms, claiming that Chacham Rachmim “was here to extort charity from the poor and afflicted Jews, for their lazy brethren in the Holy Land.” Stern portrays himself as the genuine ally of the poor and afflicted Jews, which we recognize as a powerful tool for missionary activity. In the same breath, Stern disparages the Jews of Palestine as lazy, for their dependence on the financial support of the Diaspora. Chacham Rachmim, Stern goes on to report, is “like all these itinerant rabbies,” in being “puffed up with pride, vanity, and arrogance.” Additionally, Stern accuses the Palestinian of neither respecting nor caring for those whose “last penny” he has come to extract. In a peculiar form of collegial gossip among fellow – competing – scholars, Chacham Rachmim tells Stern that he is wasting his time preaching to these Jews, whom he terms “amharatzin,” namely ignoramuses, adding that their only purpose is to be “saved by the merits of the righteous.”157 Dawnings and Wanderings offer abundant expressions of disdain for the peoples Stern observes during his travels, a prime characteristic of his travel experience. Gluttony is only one of the vices he notes, in a comment upon a

154 Dawnings, 256. 155 Dawnings, 213. The only Jerusalemite emissary known to have passed through Mosul in the mid-nineteenth century is Shneur Zalman ben Menahem Mendel, who was actually raising funds for Hebron: see Ya’ari, Sheluḥei Eretz Yisrae’l, 695–96. 156 This emissary may be tentatively identified as Rahamim Israel ha-Kohen, a Hebron emissary with a documented presence in Baghdad in 1855: Ya’ari, Sheluḥei Eretz Yisrae’l, 856. 157 Dawnings, 257–59. “Amharatzin” is Yiddish, not Hebrew, and hence an unexpected choice for an Oriental Jew like Chacham Rachmim, though one Stern would have known since childhood.

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wedding he attends: “People in the East have no idea of moderation in eating and drinking, and they would rather suffer the greatest physical inconvenience, than impose any restraint on their detestable propensities.”158 Stern also makes repeated reference to the locals’ rapacity. At Borazgoon, the governor visits him and invites him to be his guest, adding “mal-i-man, mal-i-shamoh,” which is Persian for “what is mine is yours.” However, Stern mistranslates the saying to mean “my property is yours, and yours is mine,” distorting his host’s sentiment from one of generosity to avarice, either to manipulate his readership or simply out of an incomplete grasp of the language.159 The Jews Stern has come to convert do not fare much better. His description of Baghdad’s Jews is replete with insult and scorn, although his sour attitude is attributable to their having excommunicated any community member to interact with him.160 Elsewhere, Stern blandly maintains that the Jews’ suffering has had “a sad and deplorable influence . . . upon their general character,” and he hews to the Christian stereotype in describing them as deceitful and avaricious. At the same time, he expresses sympathy for their suffering, and avers: “I have frequently at great personal risk lifted up my unwilling hand to avert the blow intended for an innocent Jew.”161 This blend of disdain and sympathy is the hallmark of Stern’s approach to the subjects of his religious blandishments. Disdain for the locals surfaces in Stern’s contempt for alcohol. Like Wolff, Stern carries no wine or brandy, and he turns down the request for some by the governor of Shiraz, who visits him with the local British agent, whom Stern dubs “a base, contemptible drunkard.”162 Elsewhere in Persia, porters charge Stern and his companions for their luggage, and when they refuse to pay, their leader asks only for a bottle of arak, “to make some keif (pleasure) on your account.” The strangers explain that they have none but add that they would not be accessories to a violation of Islamic law, to which the chief responds that alcohol is only prohibited to those who pray.163 Like his predecessors, Stern notes that the Jews in Koom (Qom) sell alcohol to the Muslims, while those in Shiraz operate secret taverns. Stern refers to the

158 Dawnings, 54–55. In Abyssinia, the shoe is on the other foot, as Stern’s hosts scorn him for eating silently and not smacking his lips; he assures them that his behavior is attributable to “the difference of the customs of my country” – Wanderings, 83–84. 159 Dawnings, 110. 160 Dawnings, 47–55. 161 Dawnings, 164–65. 162 Dawnings, 124–25. 163 Dawnings, 148. Note Burton’s statement that eroticism “is the Arab’s kayf:” see Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 54.

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patrons of these taverns as “debauchees” and describes the locals as “all notorious for their laxity of morals, and fondness of wine and arrack.” He also smears the Jews, for selling intoxicating beverages that are “not unfrequently poisonous draughts.”164 Like Wolff, then, Stern sees alcohol consumption as immoral, and in this case the moral failing is compounded by religious hypocrisy. Like all missionaries, books are Stern’s most common gift, but as we have seen in his Yemen account, he often sells his wares, rather than giving them freely. For example, he sells four Bibles and five New Testaments to the Karaite Jews of Hit, near the Euphrates.165 In Shiraz, women who want his books must pay, and for want of hard currency, they offer old coins, trinkets, and even cooking utensils.166 In Congoon (Bandar Kangan), Stern uses gift giving as a missionary enticement, selling the Jews eight Bibles but giving them four New Testaments, the books he truly wants to distribute.167 At Koshan, near Shiraz, those whom the rabbi declares to be “sincere inquirers” get books for free, while others must pay a small sum, “to enhance their value.”168 This sort of manipulation may reflect the painful experience, in which the Jews of Jerusalem tore to shreds books given them freely by European missionaries. Stern also gives books as gifts for political reasons. At Isfahan, Stern presents the governor with Arabic Bibles.169 At Zera Workee, in Abyssinia, he gives the High Priest a gilt-edged Bible and a white dress, “in conformity with Abyssinian etiquette that a stranger should honour a chief with a present.” Reciprocating the gift in a classic gift-exchange pattern, his host offers Stern a basket of teff (bread) and jug of dallah (barley beer) when he takes his leave.170 Material gifts sometimes serve to smooth relations. In Beski, in Kurdistan, Stern orders coffee for everyone, to “soften down the ferocity” of the locals, who do not welcome him with open arms.171 In Abyssinia, Stern distributes cash, to rid himself of students who entertain him with a vocal performance he finds decidedly untuneful.172 In Adeida Miriam, also in Abyssinia, the locals express disappointment at his departure, and he consoles them by distributing tiny mirrors to

164 For Shiraz, see Dawnings, 129, 132; for Koom, Ibid., 184; on the Jews’ poisons, Ibid., 156. 165 Dawnings, 32. 166 Dawnings, 127. 167 Dawnings, 105. However, later, at Borazgoon, he gives the Jews Bibles as well as New Testaments: Ibid., 110. 168 Dawnings, 251. 169 Dawnings, 159. 170 Wanderings, 251–52. See the chapter on food in: J.M. Flad, The Falashas (Jews) of Abyssinia (London, 1869), 15–16. 171 Dawnings, 220. 172 Wanderings, 278.

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women and new mattebs to men.173 In Gondar, the children promise to honor him with a circle of fire at an upcoming feast, and in return Stern gives them his “small money” in the local currency, ten pounds of dirty black salt.174 Hospitality, always a central gift in the travel experience, sheds further light on Stern’s stranger-host encounter. In Abyssinia, Stern offers to pay locals who refuse to host him and his party any longer. They refuse payment, and Stern explains that “the worst Abyssinian would consider himself branded with a lasting stigma, did he sell bread and milk to a traveller.”175 Similarly, in the Persian town of Hillah, Stern’s host is indignant when Stern offers him “backsheesh,” namely payment, for his hospitality as the travelers prepare to depart. However, this incident then takes a different direction: We now thought that instead of silver, a few expressions of acknowledgment would satisfy our entertainer, but we were greatly mistaken; our sentient host did not wish to be paid a dozen of piastres for a few nights’ lodging in a stable, he anticipated a backsheesh equivalent to half-a-year’s rent of his whole premises; but here his calculations failed, and, to the utter astonishment of himself and domicile, we tendered him our thanks for his kindnes, and left. This was, probably the first time that this worthy . . . had Europeans in his house; and, as he expected the every Franghee must be a rich man, his surprise was not a little heightened when he found that our generosity did not equal his expectations.

Ultimately Stern pays a sum “sufficient to have provided us with comfortable lodgings in a respectable English inn, or German hotel.” He concludes: “This specimen of Eastern hospitality did not impress me very favourably, and future experience convinced me that Asiatics are the most degraded, uncivil, and selfish people under heaven.”176 Nearly the same thing happens at Futenbad, also in Persia. Stern’s host is not happy with what the travelers are willing to pay him and tells them that he gives them the whole amount “as a baksheesh.” They are prepared to take him at his word, which shocks and distresses him, and he then gladly accepts the sum they initially offered. Stern generalizes: “Most of the Persians think that every European possesses the secret of alchemy, and can command gold at will: they have seen some ambassadors, and Indian officers, who lavish money

173 Wanderings, 289. Stern explains that the matteb is a silken cord worn by Christians around the neck as the mark of their creed, and he refers to it as “the hated badge of Abyssinian Christianity” – Wanderings, 257. Since only Christians wore the matteb, we may infer that Stern limited their distribution to Christians. 174 Wanderings, 221. 175 Wanderings, 247. 176 Dawnings, 70.

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with great prodigality, and consequently every European is an Englishman, and every Englishman an Elchee [ambassador].”177 These two anecdotes document Stern’s perception of incidents in which his host grandly refuses payment for his hospitality when the amount offered is modest, if not piddling. Stern belittles as disingenuous such gestures of largesse, because they seem to him to stem from cupidity rather than generosity. He is incapable of entering the game surrounding the giving and receiving of hospitality, in which payment is indeed expected, but the “correct” amount is not specified. Stern repeatedly blunders by offering a trifling sum, and then mocks his hosts as money-grubbing when he feels that they expected too much. Ironically, these anecdotes highlight Stern’s parsimony, rather than that of his hosts.178 We have noted that Stern had various motives for sometimes choosing to demand payment for books, and we may now feel justified in adding tightfistedness to the list. Stern also avoids giving the gift of assistance with local conflicts, in the pattern identified by Simmel, presumably for fear that it might jeopardize his assignment. In Kashan, in Isfahan, Stern refuses to participate in a scheme to retrieve the daughter of the Jews’ religious leader, who has been seized by the governor.179 In Armenia, he refuses a request from local priests to intervene on behalf of certain women who were abandoned after being raped and impregnated. He is sorry to refuse, partly because it gives the impression that he condones such behavior.180 During his Abyssinia trip too, Stern refuses a request from locals in Gedarif (Sudan) to protect them from a government edict forcing them to marry off their children at an extremely tender age.181 However, Stern deviates from his policy of non-intervention when the offender is in his employ, because then he feels responsible. Thus, Stern threatens to dismiss a servant whose wife complains that her husband beats her, and he responds to the complaint of the deserted wife of a servant by ordering him to pay her compensation.182 Stern’s gift-giving pattern seems related to his disdain for locals in Yemen. Both stinginess and contempt indicate an autistic, self-centered, attitude, with an attendant inability to empathize with one’s interlocutor. This personality

177 Dawnings, 140–41. 178 Flad records that Falasha villagers asked them for material gifts, including clothing and a mule, and notes that such requests were rejected: 60 Jahre, 111–12. 179 Dawnings, 172. 180 Dawnings, 192–93. 181 Wanderings, 30–31. 182 Wanderings, 290, 292.

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trait is completely absent from Wolff’s travel narratives and represents a fundamental difference in temperament between our two Yemen missionaries. The missionary’s strategy is a central theme in Stern’s travel narratives from Persia and Abyssinia, and a range of motifs coalesce to provide a coherent picture of his modus operandi. In his voyages to Persia and Abyssinia, as in Yemen, Stern adheres to the pattern of the European traveler who attempts to mislead locals about his identity by modifying his external appearance. In Jezireh, Kurdistan, he feels unwelcome in the synagogue, because the locals “could not tell from my dress whether I was a Frank or a Turk.”183 Likewise in Khartoum, en route to Abyssinia, he exchanges “Oriental travelling garb” for “the hybrid garb of the Soudan Turk.”184 Stern sews confusion about his identity mainly, not by his attire, but by intentionally granting the impression that he is Jewish, a basic strategy practiced earlier by Wolff. In Abyssinia, Stern simply tells the Falashas “that we were also Felashas,” to which they react with delight.185 In Persia, Stern repeatedly perpetrates this subterfuge simply by speaking in Hebrew. Thus, Stern relates that in Basra the rabbi was initially hostile, but “our knowledge of Hebrew . . . allayed his rising passion.”186 Later, when Stern addresses the Jews of Kanzeroon (Kazerun) in Hebrew, “they appeared almost in doubt whether their ears did not deceive them.”187 In Teheran, Stern asks a “Polish Mahomedan Jew” in Hebrew whether he genuinely prefers Islam to Judaism, and the latter admits, in a whisper, that he is steadfast in his belief in Judaism and desires to leave for Palestine, repent, and die a pious Jew.188 At Shoosh, the local rabbi takes him for a “Stamboul chacham” until he produces the New Testament.189 At Kermanshah, Stern attends morning prayers, and is offered tefillin and a prayer shawl; he rejects these by saying that he has no need of them, but does not broadcast his true religious identity.190 Doubtless, the Jews’ friendly reception of Stern stems in part from their initial, naïve, impression that he is a Jew. But like Wolff, even after Stern reveals that he is a Christian, he attempts to sustain a sense of kinship with the Jews, by insisting that the two religions are identical. At Isfahan, Stern discusses

183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190

Dawnings, 223. Wanderings, 11. The Jewish Records n.s. 7 (July, 1861), 26. See also Wanderings, 200. Dawnings, 82. Dawnings, 114. Dawnings, 188. Dawnings, 230. Dawnings, 236–37.

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religion with them in the presence of the governor and sums up his message: “Christianity was the religion of Moses and the Prophets.”191 Generally, the Jews continue to engage with Stern because he shares their interest in the messianic advent, although of course he refers to the messiah’s “first advent.” At Kermanshah and Demawund, the Jews ask him when he thinks the messiah will come.192 This is a familiar dynamic: this is what Jews habitually asked a stranger from a faraway land, hoping that he would have the answer to the question upon which they pinned their hopes for a better life. The Jews are particularly anxious to know the date of the messiah’s arrival when their political fortunes deteriorate. At Congoon, the rabbi tells Stern that he is the first Christian who sympathized with their misfortunes “and laboured for their present and eternal welfare.”193 Similarly, the old mullah of Kanzeroon terms Stern and his party “messengers of joy to the captives of Zion, whose hearts are throbbing with fear in a strange land, and among a cruel people.”194 Indeed, Stern, like other missionaries, habitually expresses sympathy for the Jews’ plight, and invariably they are touched, and fail to recognize that their suffering stokes the missionary’s hopes for their conversion, and that in this respect his expressions of sympathy are disingenuous, manipulative and not disinterested. The downtrodden Jews of Persia may have also misinterpreted Stern’s sympathy as signifying an intention, or at least a desire, to intervene politically on their behalf. Indeed, in Stern’s day, the enormous might of European nations in foreign lands, especially the British, invites just such a response to the friendly behavior of a European traveler. This dynamic captures the problematic relationship between mission and empire, about which much has been written.195 Stern’s travel accounts offer a variety of illustrations of the ways in which stranger and host understood the link between the foreigner’s religion and political power. The governor of Meshed tells Stern: “Your creed must have some intrinsic virtue, or else England, Germany, and France would not be so 191 Dawnings, 159. 192 Dawnings, 236, 267. 193 Dawnings, 105. 194 Dawnings, 114. 195 Hilary Carey, God’s Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World, c.1801–1908 (Cambridge, 2011); Penelope Carson, The East India Company and Religion, 1698–1858 (Woodbridge, 2012); Philippe Delisle, ed. Missions chrétiennes et pouvoir colonial (Paris, 2013); Etherington, ed. Missions and Empire; Anna Johnston, Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860 (Cambridge, 2003); Porter, Religion versus Empire?; Claude Prudhomme, Missions chrétiennes et colonisation: XVIe-XXe siècle (Paris, 2004); Tejirian and Spector Simon, Altruism and Imperialism.

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powerful.”196 At Kermanshah, a Muslim intellectual tells Stern that there are two great world religions, but whereas Islam has made “the East” weak and stupid, Christianity has made the West wise and powerful.197 These selfabasing remarks need not be taken at face value, for they reflect attempts to curry favor with the mighty foreign power, rather than an internalization of the Orientalist stereotype. Stern links the superiority of the West to the missionary enterprise, writing, along the Persian Gulf, that “it is gratifying for the missionary to behold British influence extended over these wild regions, as it may alternately tend to introduce the Gospel of peace amongst the savage tribes, and lead them to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.”198 Stern also observes that Abyssinia “seems marked out by its geographical position to become the focus from whence light and knowledge, commerce and civilisation, are yet to radiate over enthralled and benighted Equatorial Africa.”199 In both voyages, Stern situates his mission in the broader context of the colonial project, which involves spreading the light of religion as well as modern civilization. The progress of European civilization is partly responsible for Stern’s optimism regarding the success of the missionary enterprise. He declares: “In all places, and in all countries, the Jews are emerging out of the dreary shades of spiritual death, and bursting the prison-doors of their mental bondage. The system of tradition which, like a fatal incubus, crushed their faculties and fettered their intellect, has, in numberless communities, been entirely thrown off.”200 Actually, it is European modernity, which combines skepticism and secularization with the destruction of traditional Jewish society, that engenders this hope for missionary success. Indeed, European Jews experience this linkage between modernization and the breakdown of their communal structures and way of life, and thus Stern’s sentiment was likely to appeal to his English readership. On the other hand, the Jews of Persia and Yemen were experiencing nothing of the kind, not to mention Abyssinia, and thus Stern’s expression of optimism is either empty rhetoric or simply misguided, possibly influenced by Stern’s personal experience. The ultimate mark of a missionary’s success is his record of baptisms. Stern maintains that two years after his visit to Bushehr, in Persia, the rabbi, Mullah Eliyahu, asked him to baptize him. The two-year gap between Stern’s visit and

196 Dawnings, 66. 197 Dawnings, 237–38. 198 Dawnings, 96. 199 Wanderings, iii. 200 Dawnings, 277.

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this reported incident is puzzling and undermines the tale’s credibility. Be that as it may, Stern goes on to relate that the Jews connive to thwart his ambition through political interference. Stern and his proselyte set out for Baghdad but are quickly arrested and returned to Bushehr. Stern arranges for the mullah’s release, and the two embark for Baghdad again, successfully, and allegedly Eliyahu is baptized before returning home.201 Stern succeeds in releasing his charge through British diplomatic power, in a stark example of the interplay of mission and empire. This tale, whether truth or fiction, is Stern’s only anecdote about baptisms he performed in journeys outside Yemen. In a rare admission of failure, Stern concedes that “it is true we cannot . . . point to numerous baptized converts and flourishing communities.”202 He maintains that many Persian Jews would have converted did they not fear the terrible punishments this would bring down upon them from the Muslim authorities.203 Whatever the reasons for the dearth of converts, this reality forced a shift in the missionaries’ goal, from winning converts to spreading the gospel, which to them meant bringing light to the benighted natives.204

Epilogue Looking back at our Yemen missionaries, the difference between their temperaments is obvious, as are the consequences of this difference. Wolff’s writings and the characterizations of him by others portray him as a charismatic crackpot. He appears passionate, honest, and completely lacking in guile. In his interactions with Jews, he consistently foregrounds his Jewish identity, laboring to convince his Jewish interlocutors of his empathy for and identification with them. Stern, on the other hand, appears as he has been characterized by Richard Pankhurst in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as “an arrogant bigot.”205 He spreads the gospel from an enormous cultural distance, disdaining those he visits, and his expressions of compassion for the Jews he has come

201 Dawnings, 86–87. 202 Dawnings, 181. 203 Dawnings, 164–65. 204 On baptisms in Abyssinia, and the local opposition thereto, see J.M. Fladd, “Abyssinia: Journal of Mr. J.M. Fladd,” The Jewish Records n.s. 28–29 (1863), 13–20. 205 Richard K. P. Pankhurst, “Stern, Henry Aaron (1820–1885),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101026409/Henry-Stern.

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to convert ring insincere. His stranger-host encounter is hardly an encounter at all and is stereotypically colonial. This difference is not purely one of temperament, for it reflects a fundamental paradox at the heart of the challenge facing the missionary to the Jews. On the one hand, his strategy is to convince the Jews that Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism, not its foe. His only hope of winning souls is to create a sense of identity between himself and his audience, between Christianity and Judaism. Wolff exemplifies this approach. At the same time, however, the missionary believes that Judaism is an error, damning its believers to hell. Thus, he must strive to redeem them, which impels him to correct their false beliefs, setting up an adversarial relationship, that necessarily creates tension and often antagonism. Stern gravitates towards the latter pole, and often loses patience with his infidel interlocutors. Perhaps this heavy-handed position reflects the growth of British political power in the course of the nineteenth century, reinforcing the European sense of superiority vis-à-vis the peoples they come to dominate.206 What Wolff and Stern share, along with many of their fellow missionaries to the Jews, is the wandering spirit. Stern talks about this in his presentation to the annual meeting of the London Society in May 1862, regarding his forthcoming return to Abyssinia. “Many in this hall,” he writes, “who are acquainted with my missionary career, will be inclined to think that I am a regular wandering Jew, and quite unable to concentrate my energies and efforts on a limited and confined sphere of labour.”207 Of course, Stern, like Wolff, began wandering long before his missionary adventures, when he left Germany for England, but Russell Berman applies the phrase “wandering Jew” literally. In his view, Stern moved from internalizing the Christian image of the wandering Jew to subverting it, by wandering as a Christian missionary.208 In this respect, Stern resembles not only Wolff, but dozens of Jewish converts, who took upon themselves the role of missionary to their former coreligionists. The Wolff and Stern expeditions basically exhaust the efforts of nineteenthcentury missionaries in Yemen. A generation after Stern, in June 1887, Major General F.T. Haig, who had spent a great deal of time in India, travels to Yemen “with a view to ascertaining whether it might be possible to do anything for their [presumably the Muslims’] Christianisation.”209 Haig comments on the

206 See Russell A. Berman, Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln NE, 1998), 119–21. 207 Jewish Intelligence n.s. 2 (June, 1862), 142. 208 Berman, Enlightenment or Empire, 116–17. 209 F.T. Haig, “A Journey Through Yemen,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London 9 (1887), 479–90.

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powerful influence at Aden of the British empire, and observes wistfully that it would have been put to better use if “there had been men capable of presenting to its thousands of visitors in their own tongue that Gospel which is the true basis of Christian civilization!”210 Haig reports to the Royal Geographical Society upon his return, and then publishes his account, which describes the geography of Yemen and its living conditions, but says nothing about “Christianisation” and provides no insight into his stranger-host encounters.211 Ion Keith-Falconer, a Scotsman born in 1836, the year of Stern’s Yemen voyage, read Haig’s report and decided to meet with him. It is from a letter by Keith-Falconer to his eldest sister that we learn that during Haig’s journey from Hudaydah to Sana’a “he [Haig] found quantities of Jews, all marvellously ignorant,” presumably of the Gospel and the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. This is valuable testimony that Yemen’s Jews were still largely ignorant of Christianity, a quality that consistently underpinned the country’s missionary initiatives. Keith-Falconer also relates that “at one place he [Haig] had a semi-public discussion with them, or rather with the chief rabbi in the presence of the rest.”212 This is our only evidence of interaction between Haig and the Jews of Yemen, indeed of any missionary activity in Yemen on his part. After meeting Haig, Keith-Falconer determined to undertake his own mission to Yemen. During an initial sojourn in Aden, from late October 1885 to early March 1886, Keith-Falconer purchased land for a future mission station in Sheikh Othman, a hamlet connecting Aden and the interior. He reasoned that physical separation from the British diplomatic establishment at Aden would be advantageous to missionary work, in a clear example of the tension that often complicated the relationship between mission and empire. Sheikh Othman also promised to afford greater opportunities for forging ties with locals from the countryside, as well as from Aden. Keith-Falconer’s other decision was to focus on medical care and education, two gifts European strangers habitually offered the locals. Both of KeithFalconer’s strategic decisions illustrate his commitment to understanding the needs of the people of Yemen and their way of life. In November 1886, KeithFalconer returned to Yemen with his wife and a British physician and began

210 Haig, “On both Sides of the Red Sea,” Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record (May, 1887), 282. 211 Haig, “A Journey Through Yemen.” 212 Robert Sinker, Memorials of the Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer, M.A . . . (Cambridge, 1888), 243. The letter is dated Feb. 7, 1887, which must mean either that Haig made a previous journey to Yemen, or that his one and only journey was earlier than is usually supposed.

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implementing his project. Three months later he contracted malaria, and in May he succumbed, at age thirty-one.213 The experiences of Haig and Keith-Falconer make it apparent that as the nineteenth century progressed, the might of the British empire was more heavily felt in Yemen, a process already evident in Stern’s day. These late missionary endeavors differ in other ways as well from the ones we have examined. Unlike Wolff and Stern, Keith-Falconer targets Yemen’s Muslims, rather than its Jews. He hardly mentions Yemen’s Jews in his letters home, except for the bigoted comment that in supervising the construction of his house, he and his comrades are proceeding carefully “and bargaining like Jews.”214 What makes Keith-Falconer’s lack of interest in the Jews striking is that Aden had a sizeable Jewish community. It would appear that this difference between Keith-Falconer and both Wolff and Stern is a consequence of Wolff and Stern’s Jewish roots, another feature distinguishing the Scotsman from his predecessors. He also differs in focusing on Aden, Britain’s outpost, rather than on the Tihama and the highlands, and particularly Sana’a. Tragically, Keith-Falconer’s odyssey harks back to that of the Danish expedition, whose mission, like his, was cut short by disease and death.

213 Sinker, Memorials, 243–44. See also David D. Grafton, “The Legacy of Ion Keith-Falconer,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 31 (2007), 148–52. 214 Sinker, Memorials, 248. Keith-Falconer also hired two Jews to dig a well in his Sheikh Othman compound, and in January 1887, they were killed when the earth they had dug fell in on them: James Robson, Ion Keith-Falconer of Arabia (New York, 1923), 124.

Artist The key to the stranger-host encounters of the travelers studied thus far is their travel writing, but this chapter is primarily based on the corpus of visual art created by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, a young French artist, during his travels in Yemen in 1856.1 The context for his voyage is the powerful wave of European travel to Islamic lands in the nineteenth century, an experience the artist Paul Lenoir called “a great enchantment.”2 Artistic interest in the Orient dates back to the early modern era, but an intensified fascination with the Orient swept Europe following Napoleon’s 1798 expedition to Egypt. Thus, the nineteenth century was the era of “Egyptomania,” when affluent and politically connected Europeans swarmed to Egypt to study and experience the historical remains and contemporary lifestyle of the ancient civilization. They returned home with vast collections of artifacts, the bedrock of the collections of Europe’s great museums, and artist travelers contributed a substantial corpus of their own work, giving expression to their perspectives.3 The European fascination with the Orient is also reflected in the period’s literary output. Among the most influential Orientalist poets was Lord Byron, who traveled to Constantinople and produced a prolific body of Orientalist poetry, such as his The Giaour (1813).4 Disraeli’s historical novels followed an 1830 voyage to the Levant, and Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubayat of Omar Khayam (1859), based on a medieval Persian text, is among the most celebrated Orientalist literary works. Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales (1829) and Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbô (1862) illustrate the vigorous participation of the French in the Orientalist literary vogue. Indeed, Britain and France were in the forefront of Orientalist travel and art, for these European countries had the strongest political presence in these lands. The French conquest of Algeria in 1830 was an important catalyst of

1 The Musée Bartholdi in Colmar has 211 drawings and watercolors, 28 oil paintings and 103 photographs from Bartholdi’s voyage to Egypt and Yemen: see Régis Hueber, “Les Salons d’Amilcar: Notes sur les dessins et tableaux orientalistes d’Auguste Bartholdi,” Annuaire de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Colmar 39 (1993), 78. 2 Paul Lenoir, Le Fayum, le Sinaï et Pétra (Paris, 1872), 3. 3 Michael Jacobs, The Painted Voyage: Art, Travel, and Exploration 1564–1875 (London, 1995), 18–55. 4 Peter Cochran, ed., Byron and Orientalism (Newcastle, 2006). See also Diego Saglia, “Borderline Engagements: British Romantic Poetry and the Frontiers of Orientalism,” L’Oriente: Storia di una figura nelle arti occidentali (1700–2000), ed. Paolo Amalfitano and Lauretta Innocenti (Rome, 2007), 1:321–46, especially 336–42. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-003

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French travel to North Africa and works of art depicting life in these countries excited the European imagination. Among the best known of these artists is Eugène Delacroix, whose travels in Morocco in 1832 were among the earliest to receive artistic expression, and whose paintings on these subjects gained widespread renown. For example, Théophile Gautier, the leading Parisian art critic of the day, has high praise for his painting of a Jewish wedding (Noce Juive), for the scene’s blinding sunlight and for the subjects’ attire and poses, which he finds totally non-European.5 The heyday of Orientalist art is roughly 1840–1880, after which Impressionism finds greater favor among European connoisseurs.6 The opening of the Suez Canal in May 1869 portended the decline of Orientalist art, as gradually the Orient lost its exotic allure. The artists’ geographical range is broad, spanning the Mediterranean Near East. Egypt receives the highest volume of European travel, then Turkey and its dependencies (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine), while North Africa, India, Persia, and Arabia (including Yemen) are less commonly visited and painted, and the Far East is as yet inaccessible. Théodore Chassériau studied painting with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a pioneering Orientalist artist. Chassériau visits Constantinople in 1846, and, blending history and fantasy, declares “I am basking in the land of The Thousand and One Nights!”7 Gautier’s description of Chassériau’s Orientalist work expresses with singular clarity the qualities that he and his contemporaries find characteristic of Oriental lands: M. Chassériau captures in the highest degree the emotions of the barbaric or exotic races. He understands them through a sort of passionate intuition. He loves these savage and pure types, of so penetrating a strangeness, of a character so strangely picturesque. To render them, though civilizations have made them disappear, he finds singular physiognomies like those one perceives in a dream and which seem to you to have been known in an earlier life. When they continue to exist, nothing represents them with an intimacy more profound and an exactitude more original than the testimony of his “The Sabbath of the Jews of Constantinople” and the different scenes of Arab life . . . The painters who have visited Africa thus far appear to have been struck more by the new sparkle of the light, by the strange blue of the sky, by the sparkling whiteness of the marabouts, by the metallic green of the fig trees and the cacti, by the unexpected variety of clothing, by the ferocious strangeness of the weapons, even than by the beauty – of a type so noble, so pure, so elegant – of the Arabs. They sought to render the scenes of the

5 Théophile Gautier, Les Beaux-Arts en Europe (Paris, 1855), 1:180–81. 6 Philippe Jullian, The Orientalists: European Painters of Eastern Scenes (Oxford, 1977), 28. 7 Lynne Thornton, The Orientalists: Painter-Travellers 1828–1908 (Paris, 1983), 76.

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life of the douar and the city, but without striving to bring out the ideal of this admirable race. M. Chassériau has, for the first time, drawn these beautiful heads, with elongated ovals, with thin and straight noses, with eyes passionately sad beneath their eyelids blackened with k’hol, with the mouth melancholically bloomed like a flower with the warm wind of the desert, and which the brown complexion frames so well in the dull whiteness of the bournous. He knew how to make this serene gravity, this natural nobility, this mysterious impassiveness which characterizes the peoples of Islam. These eyes concentrate the sun’s rays in the form of a black diamond, and of which one can only have an idea in the cold regions of Europe; these leonine and gazelle-like gazes which frighten and delight – he invented the shades with which to paint them, whether in their somber sparkle or their nostalgic languor. He also treated with a sculptural seriousness these loose-pleated clothes, like the togas and tunics, and which the poorest bedouin wears so nobly, without suspecting that he is a Greek or Roman statue detached from its base and strolling through civilization in the streets of Algiers or Constantinople.8

“Barbaric” and “exotic,” “savage” and “pure,” are the adjectives with which Gautier labels the Arab subjects of Chassériau’s work, the first term in each pair seemingly condescending and pejorative and the second romantic and idealistic – two polar aspects of the Orientalist view. “Seemingly,” because uncivilized behavior can also be interpreted as natural, a positive attribute in the eyes of Europeans of the day, Delacroix, for example, declaring that the Arabs are far closer to nature.9 Fundamentally, the people of the Orient seemed strange – “other,” in the dichotomy stressed by Edward Said – which is implicit in the air of mystery evoked in Orientalist visual art. The Arabs, Jews as well as Muslims, have “singular physiognomies,” which Gautier associates with the lost civilizations of Antiquity. This notion expresses the fascination with history that inspires a range of themes in Orientalist art, and Gautier returns to it when he refers to the bedouin as latter-day versions of the Greeks and Romans of long ago. Gautier is entranced by the blinding light and the rich colors of the Mediterranean environment and hypnotized by the naked violence implicit in the weapons that he sees as a natural part of the attire and activity of the Arab male. He mentions attire, but focuses on faces, especially on facial expressions, in which he sees nobility, gravity, melancholy and mystery.10

8 Gautier, Les Beaux-Arts en Europe, 1:250–52. The translation is mine. 9 The Journal of Eugène Delacroix, trans. Walter Pach (New York, 1948), 122. 10 Jean Gaspar Lavater’s Essai sur la physiognomie . . . (Le Haye, 1781–1803), 1–4, was still influential, impressing Baudelaire, a highly regarded art critic: Charles Baudelaire, Salon de 1859: Texte de la Revue française, ed. Wolfgang Drost and Ulrike Riechers (Paris, 2006), 113. See also John Gage, “Photographic Likeness,” Portraiture: Facing the Subject, ed. Joanna Woodall (Manchester, 1997), 121–23.

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Gautier’s summary of Chassériau’s Orientalist expression furnishes a toolbox of concepts with which to approach the work of other Orientalist artists, including Bartholdi. In Gautier’s observations, the bright light of the Orient, as well as the startling colors, particularly in clothing, grant it an exotic quality, and they make a profound impression on Europeans, whose home environment, in the age of the industrial revolution, is grey and grimy. More exotic in European eyes is the Orientals’ sensuality, and women are typically depicted in an erotic context. Bartholdi’s contemporaries were fascinated with women bearing water, a quotidian act that European travelers could witness, and perhaps also the slave market, another familiar motif, but they were particularly obsessed with the odalisque, whom they depict either in the harem or the bath, settings a foreign artist could not possibly have glimpsed.11 This is the only facet of Orientalist art not to find expression in Gautier’s characterization. Violence and cruelty, evoked in Gautier’s reference to the Arabs’ weapons, are perceived as romantic and exotic. This is a common motif, appearing endlessly in scenes of armed men and warfare, scenes in which horses abound. The desert is another popular Orientalist motif, and one of particular relevance to artistic depictions of Yemen. For nineteenth-century Europeans, the desert evokes desolation and ancient ruins, and thus the decay of civilizations, a Romantic theme. Images of these subjects have a melancholy air, as in Gustave-Achille Guillaumet’s “The Desert” (1867)12:

Fig. 1: “The Desert” (1867). (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)

Fig. 2: “Laghouat, Sahara algérien” (1879). (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)

11 Richard Ettinghausen, “Jean-Léon Gérôme as a Painter of Near Eastern Life,” Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), ed. Gerald M. Ackerman (Dayton, 1972), 21–22. See, e.g., Imer’s drawing, captioned “Femmes porteuses d’eau enfant et mehariste.” 12 Lisa Small, A Distant Muse: Orientalist Works from the Dahesh Museum of Art (New York, 2000), 25; Donald A. Rosenthal, Orientalism: The Near East in French Painting 1800–1880

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Life in the desert is depicted as monotonous and miserable, as in Guillaumet’s painting of Laghouat.13 The oppressive light and heat are linked to the motif of the people’s indolence, the counterpoint of the motif of their savage warfare.14 The desert bore other connotations as well. Flaubert appreciated the desert as “something immense and implacable in the midst of which you are lost.” Dennis Porter explains that it was precisely this ability to be lost that appealed to western travelers; they were attracted to “the tranquil submission of self to a force more powerful than that which animates the selfassertive ego.”15 With regard to artists, specifically, John Mackenzie maintains that “the central point about the desert was that it was perceived as morally and physically clean. Quite apart from the biblical resonances of retreat for spiritual renewal, the restoration of courage and purpose, the desert represented a great purifying force . . . It lacked the putrefying stench of industrial civilisation.”16 This interpretation, too, has the stranger process his novel experience abroad against the backdrop of his life experience at home. These motifs, and their cultural significance for artist and audience, provide a context for study of the experiences of our artist traveler. Not all genres are equally useful for our purposes: scenes and portraits are about people and clearly say something about the artist’s stranger-host encounter, but landscapes and architecture are mostly irrelevant.

(Rochester NY, 1982), 89; Christine Peltre, Orientalism in Art, trans. John Goodman (New York, 1998), 152–53; Donald J. Heffernan, “The Desert in French Orientalist Painting during the Nineteenth Century,” Landscape Research 16 (1991), 37–42. 13 Thornton, The Orientalists, 146. 14 This contradiction is eloquently expressed in the term “lazy warrior” – Small, A Distant Muse, 19; Rosenthal, Orientalism, 28. The Camel cigarette packet, depicting a dromedary in profile, with pyramids and date palms in the background, has been labeled “the most popular desert image ever conceived.” See James Thompson, The East: Imagined, Experienced, Remembered: Orientalist Nineteenth-Century Painting (Dublin, 1988), 31–32. 15 Porter, Haunted Journeys, 181. See also Roslynn Haynes, “Travel Writing and the Desert,” The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, 315–29. 16 Mackenzie, Orientalism, 59. This view is in keeping with the view of Said’s critics that nineteenth-century travelers and their audience idealized the Orient against the background of their disappointment with contemporary life at home.

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Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi

Fig. 3: Bartholdi, 1854.17

Born in August 1834 in Colmar (Alsace), Bartholdi moves to Paris with his mother and brother in 1843, seven years after the death of his father. In 1852, his mother returns to Colmar, but Auguste remains in Paris, where he studies painting with Ary Scheffer, a Dutchman.18 Eventually, Bartholdi became famous for designing the Statue of Liberty, but our concern is with his output of photographs, drawings and watercolors from his 1856 voyage to Yemen.19 Bartholdi planned to travel to Egypt with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a fellow Parisian artist who became a leading Orientalist. In October 1855, in response to a request from Gérôme and Bartholdi, Hippolyte Fortoul, France’s Ministre de l’Instruction Publique et des Cultes, issues an “ordre de mission” for their trip.20 Promptly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs writes to Ferdinand De Lesseps,

17 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf. 18 Bartholdi’s drawings and watercolors bear no noticeable stylistic resemblance to those of his teacher: see Ary Scheffer: Dessins, aquarelles, esquisses à l’huile (Paris, 1980). 19 Hueber, “Les Salons d’Amilcar,” 75–137. 20 Nicolas Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse: Bartholdi en Égypte et au Yémen, 1855–1856. [Ghent, 2012], 9.

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who had been in Egypt since receiving authorization to build the Suez Canal, asking him to supply Bartholdi with a letter of introduction.21 Gérôme is forced to delay his departure, so, in November 1855, at age twenty-one, Bartholdi embarks from Marseille, accompanied by Édouard Imer, a fellow artist. In Egypt, Bartholdi’s other artist companions are Léon Belly and Narcisse Berchère, and the latter two travel in the Sinai in AprilMay, 1856.22 Gérôme catches up to Bartholdi in Cairo, and from December to March the two sail up the Nile on a river boat, together with Belly and Berchère. Bartholdi’s companions had already traveled to Oriental lands, and produced art based on their observations. Imer had visited Algeria, Belly and Berchère had traveled to Egypt and elsewhere in the Near East, and Berchère had also been to Asia Minor and Greece. The Nile expedition also includes the artist Eugène Deshayes, and an unknown lawyer named Péronnère.23 Bartholdi’s letter from Fortoul charges him and Gérôme with studying the antiquities of Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, and photographing the principal monuments and “the most remarkable types of people” in these countries. This mission statement harks back to the Danish expedition, which likewise combined exploration of the natural and human environment, including architecture and people. Accordingly, Bartholdi, who already saw himself as a sculptor, engages in photography as well as drawing and watercolor throughout his journey.24 Bartholdi has this self-portrait with Gérôme taken in Egypt, and, in keeping with the fashion that had already become a cliché, the two westerners adopt Oriental dress, a device intended both to attract less attention in public (which inevitably would be hostile), and to help them gain insight into the alien lifestyle and culture. The photograph is carefully choreographed, with Bartholdi and Gérôme exhibiting similar facial expressions and poses. Both

21 Francesca Lidia Viano, Sentinel: the Unlikely Origins of the Statue of Liberty (Cambridge MA, 2018),181, n. 39. 22 See Narcisse Berchère, Le désert de Suez: cinq mois dans l’isthme (Paris, [1863]). 23 Gérôme describes his companions on the Nile voyage as “fairly light of money but full of enthusiasm” (assez légers d’argent, mais pleins d’entrain): Jean-Léon Gérôme, Notes autobiographiques, ed. Gerald M. Ackerman (Vesoul, 1981), 11. 24 Bartholdi eschews daguerrotype, which requires the use of silver-plated copper sheets, in favor of the calotype, which uses dry wax-paper; these are more convenient for travelers, because they can be prepared in advance, and developed after the photograph is taken.

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Fig. 4: Self-Portrait with Gérôme.25

Bartholdi and Gérôme look pensive, but while Bartholdi looks at his companion, the latter peers beyond him and to his right. Similarly, Bartholdi extends his hand, ostensibly to keep his cloak closed, but Gérôme’s gesture is more expressive, as he holds his chin in a contemplative pose. In both respects, then, the photograph depicts the subjects in a hierarchical relationship, with Gérôme as the weightier of the two, as indeed he was at the time of the voyage, having already achieved significant recognition. The artists proceed up the Nile as far as Aswan before returning to Cairo, where they remain for four more months. At this point, Bartholdi’s companions

25 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/2. See D’Un Album de Voyage: Auguste Bartholdi en Egypte (1855–1856): Exposition – Musée Bartholdi – Colmar (15 juin – 15 septembre 1990), (Colmar, 1990), 14.

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proceed to the Holy Land, a popular Orientalist destination, but Bartholdi elects to head for Yemen instead. He writes to a friend that initially he had thought to travel to Sudan, via the Hejaz, to continue to Abyssinia and then return to Cairo. This itinerary, he felt, would give him a better opportunity to fulfill the Minister’s instructions, because he would have a more varied encounter, with more distinct types of people. This is understandable in view of the fact that by mid-century European travelers generally followed a standard itinerary, and apparently Bartholdi sought a more novel experience. Bartholdi explains that he gave up this plan because it would keep him incommunicado from his family for six months, causing his mother undue worry.26 In deciding to forego the Holy Land, Bartholdi may have been influenced by Jean Alexandre Vayssières, who had traveled to Arabia and Abyssinia with Thomas-Joseph Arnaud in 1848–1849, and whom Bartholdi met on the ship from Marseille. In March 1856, Bartholdi writes to Vayssières that he might go to the Hejaz and Yemen, which exert a “magnetic attraction” on him, and he attributes to Vayssières his having acquired a passable fluency in Arabic, which would have made the prospect of such a voyage more appealing.27 Léon Belly offers enlightening testimony: “The only member of this group to have worked and understood the purpose of his voyage . . . is Bartholdi, a young sculptor who plans not to remain in the mission group, and, upon arriving in Cairo, to depart for the Hejaz, so as to see the desert Arabs.”28 Belly’s statement leaves us wondering what Belly understood to be the purpose of the group’s voyage, or how, from Belly’s perspective, Bartholdi differed in this respect from his companions. In any case, Belly’s remark can only convey his own understanding of Bartholdi’s frame of mind. With this caveat in mind, we

26 Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856: photographies et dessins d’Auguste Bartholdi: 18 juin – 30 septembre 1994, Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf Colmar (Colmar, 1994), 26. Bartholdi was preceded by Alberto Pasini, who crossed the Arabian peninsula, although not necessarily Yemen, en route to Persia in 1854. 27 Ibid., 27. Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, who traveled on the same ship to Alexandria, is also credited with having tutored Bartholdi in Arabic: Hueber, “Auguste Bartholdi: le voyage en Egypte et en Arabie Heureuse,” Le Point Colmarien 85 (November-December, 1988), n.p. 28 Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 85. “Mission” has nothing to do with religion, but rather refers to travelers on assignment, alluding to the Minister’s instructions.

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may speculate, based on Belly’s reference to “desert Arabs,” that Bartholdi was attracted to the popular desert motif. Additionally, Belly grasped that Bartholdi was interested in people, rather than sites, implying that his objective was not to see the relics of Yemen’s ancient Himyarite civilization, as the Orientalist fascination with ruins would lead one to expect. Bartholdi explains his intentions in a letter to Sabatier, the French consul in Cairo, in which he requests a firman from the Egyptian government for his Arabian expedition: “Having been charged, together with M. Gérôme, by the Ministre de l’Instruction Publique et des Cultes with conducting a study of the diverse populations of Egypt and Syria, I would like to try to explore the coastline of the Red Sea and travel certain less frequented countries.”29 Finally, Belly writes that Bartholdi wanted “to see.” This is the antithesis of the stranger-host encounter, for it involves action without interaction. Seeing is one-sided, with the object of the artist’s gaze restricted to a passive role. The observer controls the experience, and implicitly enjoys a status superior to those he observes, whom he objectifies from his vantage point.

Yemen The Yemen segment of the Bartholdi voyage extends from early April to late May 1856. On April 10th, Bartholdi writes to Gérôme from Aden, to inform them that he has been in Aden for a few days, and expects to commence his Yemen sojourn a few days hence.30 On March 23rd, at Suez en route to Aden via a steamer bound for India, Bartholdi had written the Sakakini brothers of Cairo, the firm that handled the funds for his journey, instructing them to forward any letters for him to the English post office at Aden. On April 4th, the conscientious bankers notify him that they received his letter, and nevertheless they dispatch two couriers to Aden, who arrive on April 13th with instructions to locate Bartholdi, and ascertain his plans for the continuation of his journey, and, particularly, for how he is to be contacted.31

29 Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 64, n. 20. 30 Christian Kempf, “Bartholdi Photographe,” Annuaire de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Colmar 34 (1986), 100; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 32–33; Idem, ed., Bartholdi, le Colmarien qui éclaira le monde (Colmar, 2003), 59. Aden is distinguished from “Yemen” by virtue of its status as a British protectorate. 31 Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 65, n. 34.

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The Sakakinis were concerned, not only because Bartholdi had left them in the dark regarding his itinerary but also because Bartholdi’s mother, Charlotte, became frantic after hearing nothing from him. In fact, no letters from Bartholdi to his mother survive from the Yemen portion of his odyssey.32 Perhaps such letters were lost or destroyed, but he may have seen no point in writing her any further, since, as we know from a letter he wrote her from Egypt, he had not received any of her letters up to that point.33 Although Bartholdi decided against traveling to the Sudan because he did not want to worry his mother, he may have found that the solitude of being incommunicado afforded a desert experience of a kind. This would jibe with his failure to supply either his mother or his bankers with an itinerary for his Arabian sojourn. The artistic legacy of Bartholdi’s Yemen voyage reflects the Orientalist tendencies of the day. By the 1850s, as a natural consequence of the flood of artist travelers to the Near East, myths and fantasies no longer dominate Orientalist art. Genre painting, i.e. scenes of everyday life, becomes the leading genre, along with portraits and landscapes. Gérôme was a leader in Orientalist genre painting, and he paid such careful attention to detail that in his paintings of Islamic architecture one can read the inscriptions on the walls.34 The daguerreotype was invented in 1837 and the calotype in 1840, and the new technology reinforced the rise of realism, because the photograph of a scene includes quotidian or seamy elements that painters tended to ignore or work around.35 Bartholdi produces calotypes in Yemen, as well as drawings and watercolors, and in fact one scholar refers to him as a photographer!36 The last two media were particularly suitable to conditions in Islamic lands, whereas oil painting was difficult, partly because of the hostility of the locals and the threat of attack by brigands, and partly because

32 Ibid., 42. 33 Ibid., 47, 48. 34 Small, A Distant Muse, 101–02. 35 Rosenthal, Orientalism, 8–10; Mary Anne Stevens, “Western Art and its Encounter with the Islamic World 1798–1914,” The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse – European Painters in North Africa and the Near East, ed. Mary Anne Stevens, (London, 1984), 19; Peltre, Orientalism in Art, 168; Joanna Woodall, “Introduction: Facing the Subject,” Portraiture: Facing the Subject, 6–7. See also Elizabeth Edwards, ed., Anthropology and Photography, 1860–1920 (New Haven, 1992). 36 Peltre, Orientalism in Art, 167.

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the swarms of flies and the heat were not only debilitating but also caused the oil colors to run.37 In Aden, Bartholdi loses no time embarking on his artistic mission.

Fig. 5: “Ma maison à Aden”.38

This is one of Bartholdi’s relatively few photographs from Yemen. He relates in a letter to a friend that the water in Aden was too salty to allow for developing photographs, but he was able to overcome this obstacle following the fortuitous arrival of a steamer from Bombay bearing fresh water.39 Clearly, then, Bartholdi did not wait to develop his photographs until he returned to Egypt or France, but developed them in the course of his journey. Only some of Bartholdi’s work has captions, but these are important expressions of what he intended and of what he thought merited attention. There are other calotypes of Aden’s rugged landscape, but the caption to this photograph explains that its subject is the home in which he resided, and his use of the possessive pronoun indicates a sense of attachment. Thus, this photograph

37 Thornton, The Orientalists, 18. 38 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/67; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 78, N. 5. Captions in quotation marks are the artist’s formulations. 39 Arch. Mun. Colmar, fonds Bartholdi VI 4 I; see Kempf, “Bartholdi Photographe,” 100.

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does not belong in the category of architectural art, for its rationale is personal, as a document of his travel experience.40 Bartholdi’s corpus of Yemen includes a number of drawings of scenes from Aden.

Fig. 6: “Horloge publique à Aden”.41

This is a genre drawing, a scene from everyday life. The sundial is the ostensible subject, but the viewer’s attention is drawn to the dramatis personae. A sentry stands in the shelter, his pose casual: he leans against a post, negligently holding his matchlock rifle with one arm, and apparently smoking a cigarette with the other. Hence, this is a scene of leisure, conveying stillness, quiet and heat, and the officials’ unofficial poses implies the lethargy imputed

40 Stephanie Leitch observes that architectural photographs were popular because they are stationary, such that the image would not blur, and she adds that this preference promoted the illusion that the landscape was empty, which encouraged imperialist tendencies. See Stephanie Leitch, “Visual Images in Travel Writing,” The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, 472. 41 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 62/94; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 37.

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to the local population in Orientalist art. The sentry looks in the direction of the sundial, taking no notice of the artist, and the fact that he tolerated Bartholdi’s presence is all we can infer from this drawing about the traveler’s interaction with him.

Fig. 7: “Voiture à Aden”.42

This, too, is a genre drawing, whose subject is urban transportation, of the kind available to respectable members of society. It is quite detailed, including the shadows of the animals and wagon. We can make out the wagon driver’s face and the passengers, particularly the man facing backwards, who appears to look at the artist. The lashing of the oxen grants the scene a lively character, rendering the experience more vivid for viewers. This drawing is on an altogether higher level of fine detail and complexity. It is carefully composed, with a judicious spacing of natural and human subjects in the foreground, center, and background. It is equally attentive to landscape and scene. The sea is in the center but in the background, just beyond the stretcher, and this is more of a desert scene, as bleak as others of the genre. The people, all men, fall into three groups. Leading the party is a guide, who begins an arduous climb, and leads a heavily laden camel;

42 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 65/97.

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Fig. 8: Funeral of a Banyan in Aden.43

he is followed by a man in formal attire walking alone, presumably the officiating clergyman; neither man has other remarkable features. The four stretcher bearers in the center are scantily clad and the emphasis is on their brawn. There are slight differences between them, emphasizing that this is not a stock scene: one wears an upper garment, and they have different poses – the two in front are looking at one another and presumably exchanging words, while the two in back differ slightly from one another in their stance, the one closer to the artist resting his left arm on the stretcher pole, perhaps conveying fatigue. The three men following the stretcher are a third distinct group, that of the mourners: they are dressed in white and appear downcast, with the first one – apparently the sole or primary heir –

43 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 210; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 197. There is also a rough sketch of an Indian funeral in Aden, presumably preliminary to this, more complete, one: Dahabieh, almées et palmiers: 52 dessins du premier voyage en Orient, 1855–56, d’Auguste Bartholdi: 1er juillet-30 septembre 1998, Musée Bartholdi (Colmar, 1998), 80.

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crossing his arms across his chest. It is, thus, a very careful drawing, paying close attention to detail and subtly conveying various emotions, and one can readily imagine it serving as the basis for a large oil painting in the Orientalist tradition.

Fig. 9: “Anes, porteures d’[. . .] (Aden)”.44

This drawing, though much rougher than the funeral scene, is also carefully composed, with most of the space evenly distributed between the hills in the background and the activity in the foreground. Clearly this drawing is about animals rather than people, although a man runs frantically behind the donkeys, a stick in his upraised right arm to urge them on. Bartholdi pays attention to detail, including a few houses on the hill on the left, and he takes care to draw the donkeys’ shadows. It is a fine example of a genre drawing, and likewise one which the artist may have intended to serve as the basis for a full-size oil painting.

44 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 64/96.

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Bartholdi leaves Aden after a few days, and proceeds along the Tihama to Luhayyah, passing Mocha, Hays, Zabid and Bayt al-Faqih. He executes genre drawings along the way, including the following scene:

Fig. 10: “harem en voyage (Arabie)”.45

The caption indicates plainly that this scene fascinated the artist because of the Orientalist obsession with the harem. Like the drawing of the Aden donkeys, this scene is carefully laid out, with scenery in the background and subjects in the foreground. The scene is extremely dynamic, as a man leads three camels, bearing three or four women each, while a group of six or seven men walks alongside. One man leads the train, a second – a dark-skinned individual – hurries forward as he pulls the second camel by its halter, and a third, also dark, stands opposite the second camel, extends his arms upward and bends his knees in a dramatic gesture. The only calm person in the scene is the man in the center, between the first and second camel; presumably, he owns the entourage.46 Small wonder that, of everyone in the scene, only his facial features are visible.47

45 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 134/180. 46 In his left hand, he seems to be holding up a large round object, one I am unable to identify. 47 Actually, the face of the woman in the middle of the group on the second camel is discernible, but it lacks features, a characteristic found in a number of Bartholdi’s drawings.

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Fig. 11: “La halte au café”.48

Fig. 12: “Campement de Bédouins”.48

Bartholdi draws these scenes while traveling between cities, but in neither case does the caption identify the precise location. The scene at the café is bleak, in the spirit of the Orientalist perception of the desert: the landscape is bare, the heat merciless and the sunlight blinding. Men are vaguely visible in the background, seated in the café huts, but they lack distinct features (or any facial features). The foreground is reserved for beasts of burden, and one mark that they matter more than the people is the fact that, of the camel and man seated facing each other on the left in the foreground, the eyes of the camel are discernible but not those of the man. Bartholdi draws the bedouin camp from a distance, perhaps for security reasons.50 Trees are visible, and thus presumably a water source, explaining the camp’s location. The men in the foreground, one standing, and the other seated and leaning against his donkey, may have been the stranger’s companions, but they lack facial features, and serve to grant the drawing depth of field. Reaching Mocha, Bartholdi stays with a businessman named G.B. Périer, and in Hudaydah he meets Girgis Sawa, a Greek businessman who enjoyed French protection, and thus was well known to members of the French diplomatic corps in Cairo. Sawa hosts Bartholdi in his home, offering him hospitality in the form of lodging or at least meals.51 The façade of this building in Mocha must have been of architectural interest to Bartholdi, perhaps on account of the Star of David over the entrance,

48 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 81/113. 49 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 48/75. 50 The caption appears just below the camp, which is in the background. 51 Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 28–29. At Aden, Bartholdi also makes the acquaintance of Ludovic de Castellenau, who must be the naturalist, François Louis de Laporte de Castelnau, who was en route to the Cape of Good Hope: Ibid., 34.

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Fig. 13: “Mocka”.52

apparently signifying Jewish ownership.53 This is one of four photographs Bartholdi took in Mocha, and the only one to include a human subject, though he appears oblivious to the artist’s presence, and apparently serves to provide the scale of the building.54 The caption to this drawing focuses on the building’s social function, which the artist probably associated with the Arab harem. Bartholdi includes an actual woman, seated next to the right-hand column in the front of the apartment, slumped in slumber, in the Orientalist tradition of Arab lethargy. As 52 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P4/88. 53 Gérôme used this photograph for his oil painting, “Horse Merchant in Cairo,” painted in 1867. See: Kempf, “Bartholdi Photographe,” 101; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 84–85. 54 See also Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 82–83, #9–10.

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Fig. 14: “Appartement des Femmes – Moka”.55

elsewhere, she serves merely to grant a sense of the building’s dimensions, like the ladder leaning against the wall. Thus, her facial features are indistinct or perhaps non-existent. There are also five photographs of Zabid, of which two include people:

Fig. 15: “Café à Zebid”.56

Fig. 16: “Zébid fontaine”.57

55 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 57/89; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 45, N. 10. 56 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/82; Ibid., 91, #17. 57 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/81; Ibid., 92, #18.

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The captions to both photographs indicate that their focus is the site. In the photograph of the coffee house, the people are a necessary and significant component, and yet the ramshackle structure dominates the scene. Two men are seated outside. One smokes a narghile, his pose relaxed, in a classic Orientalist image of Arab indolence. His companion sits bolt upright, hands on his thighs, suggesting that he is more cognizant than the smoker of Bartholdi’s presence, though both men stare at the camera.58 Both coffee house clients have very dark complexions, as do the two men (or boys) at the Zabid water fountain.59 The latter are shirtless, but not particularly muscular, indicating that Bartholdi’s purpose was to depict the scene, rather than to study the male form. The figure standing closest to the fountain and holding his jar looks at Bartholdi, although we cannot make out a facial expression or posit a relationship between him and the photographer. The fountain is Bartholdi’s subject, as the caption indicates, and it occupies nearly all of the space, with the men literally marginalized at the fringe of the drawing.60

Fig. 17: “Beit el Fakié – ma maison”.61

58 There may be a third figure lurking in the doorway. Bartholdi also drew a sketch of a café in Aden: Dahabieh, almées et palmiers, 83. The artist drew the café from outside; two seated figures are vaguely discernible inside, but they do not contribute to our discussion. 59 A third male may be crouching between the other two. 60 Bartholdi may have been aware that Niebuhr describes the well and its use by the inhabitants. 61 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P4/79; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 95, #21.

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Bartholdi’s calotype of “his house” in Bayt al-Faqih resembles his photograph of the flimsy Zabid coffee house. At the entrance stands a man whose attire and pose are casual: he looks at the camera, and it seems likely that he is the proprietor and Bartholdi’s host.

Fig. 18: “Route de Beit el Fakié”.62

Bartholdi has given this photograph a misleading caption, for its subject is clearly the people in the center of the frame: three or more seated men pay attention to a man dressed in white, who addresses them. The scene is not staged, but it is carefully composed, with the road in the foreground, the men in the center, flanked by trees, with a distant mountain range in the background. Bartholdi observes the scene from a discreet distance, with none of the subjects taking note of his presence. It is an aesthetic image, conveying Bartholdi’s appreciation of everyday life in Yemen, but demonstrably not testifying to his interactions.

62 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/68; Ibid., 93, #19.

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Bartholdi’s stay in Hudaydah, at the northern end of the Tihama, is at least as productive as his stay in Aden.

Fig. 19: “Hodeidah – Maison de girgis sawa”.63

Fig. 20: “Hodeidah, Magasin de [. . .]”.64

The captions to these photographs reveal that their importance to Bartholdi was more personal than artistic. The house belonged to Girgis Sawa, Bartholdi’s host and local contact, and the other photograph is of the storage area inside, on the ground floor. The house is unprepossessing, with rickety ladder, untended porch and rooftop, and bundles strewn in the foreground; the storage area is equally messy. This impression reinforces the sense that the photograph testifies to the hospitality he enjoyed there, presumably as lodger. The images impress upon us that Sawa’s house was a busy establishment, with noise, activity, and life.

63 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P4/99; Ibid., 101, #27. See Hueber, “Les Salons d’Amilcar,” 137. 64 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P4/83; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 102, #28. The identification of the house in this photograph as Sawa’s is speculative.

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Fig. 21: “Intérieur Arabie”.65

This drawing may not be of the interior of Sawa’s house, but it is another attempt to bring viewers behind the scenes of Yemen domestic life. Careful attention is paid to architecture, the railings in the gallery and the niches on the ground floor drawn in detail. The squiggly lines rising from the couch appear to be smoke emerging from the narghile on the right, whose occupant may be the person (lacking facial features) holding a dish as he enters from the left. The architecture is recognizably Arab, and the combination of couch and narghile signal to European viewers the Orientalist image of Arab sloth and decadence.

65 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 137/124.

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Fig. 22: “Fait pour le pacha – Hodeidah”.66

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Fig. 23: Military parade.67

The field exercise is carefully composed, but Bartholdi confesses that he created it for the Pasha, with whom he clearly had, or wished to forge, a cordial relationship. The photograph is, thus, the stranger’s gift to his host, and one made possible by western technology, in a pattern dating back to the beginnings of European travel to Yemen. The drawing of the soldiers on parade is one of two Bartholdi created, possibly on the same occasion and probably also for the Pasha’s benefit. Ever the ethnographic observer, Bartholdi created two drawings of public social scenes from Hudaydah. These two drawings are similar, both representing public processions, with some participants riding and the others on foot. The published version of the drawing which Bartholdi captioned “circoncision” refers to it as a marriage ceremony, and presumably the couple riding a camel at the front of the procession is responsible for this impression.68 The woman sits in a saddle and brandishes a wand in her left hand. A couple follows on foot, with the man bending under the weight of the massive folded canopy on his shoulders. He is followed by a man on a prancing horse, imparting a sense of the festive atmosphere. Behind him a horse stands still, waiting to proceed. An enormous tree dominates the scene from above, and the procession is

66 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I P3/71; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 99, #25. 67 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 146/197. 68 Bartholdi did sketch an Aden circumcision procession, with trumpets and drums, but it is very rough, and the faces are blank: Dahabieh, almées et palmiers, 82.

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Fig. 24: “Hodeidah (circoncision) Arabie”.69

Fig. 25: “Hodeidah (mariage) Arabie”.70 69 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 53/82; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 194. 70 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 52/85; Ibid.

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flanked by numerous onlookers, one of whom, in the foreground on the left, observes the dancing horse. The procession in the second drawing differs significantly from the first, primarily in its urban setting, devoid of natural elements.71 And Bartholdi pays close attention to the cityscape, rendering the street in fine detail, with the minaret in the background and the buildings along the route of the procession, including the intricate lattice work of the porch, demonstrating the realism made famous in Gérôme’s paintings of Egypt’s hieroglyphic monuments.72 Two men dance at the front of the procession, waving rifles. A couple rides the camel behind them, and they are followed by a couple on foot, in festive attire. Then come four men bearing the poles of a canopy, which in this scene is fully extended. Onlookers of both sexes trail the procession, including two musicians and a dancer. Both images are genre drawings, offering the European audience a glimpse of ceremonial occasions from everyday life. In the Orientalist style, the scenes are suitably exotic, with camels, horses and rifles, foreign architecture and clothing, and a ritual ceremony that is at once formal and merry. One can easily imagine large-scale oil paintings of these scenes, which may have been Bartholdi’s original intention. The caption to this drawing from Luhayyah, the northernmost point of the artist’s Tihama excursion, indicates that, once again, the structures rather than the people are his focus. The drawing supplies the huts’ broader context: a high fence extends from the hut in the foreground to the right, largely concealing a second hut, while to the left, in the background, stands a tree and perhaps the perimeter of the same fence. Two pots lie on the ground adjacent to the doorway, near a large bedframe. The overall effect is one of neatness and simplicity, rather than Oriental sloth. The two people in the main hut include a man standing at the doorway, leaning casually against the doorframe, and holding something to his mouth, possibly tobacco. Another person, apparently a woman, sits just behind him and to his right, engaged in some form of domestic activity. Neither looks at the artist and they seem to take no notice of him. Bartholdi’s letter to Sabatier, the French consul, states his intention to explore the Red Sea littoral, with no mention of the hinterland. Nevertheless,

71 Cf. his calotypes of Mocha’s streets: Musée Bartholdi I P 4/85; 83, #10; Musée Bartholdi I P 4/86; Hueber, Au Yemen en 1856, 82, #9. 72 Ettinghausen, “Jean-Léon Gérôme as a Painter of Near Eastern Life,” 16–26. See also Peltre, Orientalism in Art, 145.

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Fig. 26: “Huttes Arabes (Lahaouia)”.73

Périer, the Mocha businessman, warns Bartholdi not to risk a journey to Sana’a, and Léon Belly, too, attempts to dissuade him from such a venture.74 Clearly, he did contemplate such an expedition, and he attempts one, only to turn back after an encounter with bedouin tribesmen, who apparently took him for a spy when they saw his photographic equipment, an experience shared with various western travelers.75 Returning to Hudaydah, Bartholdi joins Girgis Sawa on a brief trip to Ethiopia. This sojourn later inspires the creation of a bronze sculpture entitled La Lyre chez les Berbères, of Ethiopian kissar musicians, which he submits to the Paris Salon in 1857. He returns to Aden, and on May 23rd boards a British steamer to Suez and then proceeds to Cairo and Alexandria, where, in June he takes ship for Marseille.

73 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 133/179; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 45, N. 9. 74 Ibid., 28, 33–34. 75 Ibid., 34.

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Fig. 27: “Ile de Périm détroit de Bab el Mandeb côte”.76

This drawing, as the upper caption indicates, is from the island of Perim, a Yemen possession in the Bab-el-Mandeb straits. It is a tranquil scene, with relaxed figures engaged in nothing in particular. The scene is carefully composed, with the space distributed evenly among the various subjects. The drawing’s first caption, given above, is simply geographical, but two other captions indicate the foci of Bartholdi’s interest. In the center, underneath the seated figure with his back to Bartholdi, a caption reads “le mousse” (the foam), and to the right of the other man (or boy) we read “El-kanif (water-closet à bord des barques arabes).” These, then, Bartholdi deemed worthy of comment, as opposed to the two human subjects sitting front and center, who are neither described nor named. The pose of the nearer and therefore larger of the two males seems natural rather than assumed, and he looks at Bartholdi and clearly was somehow acquainted with him; perhaps he piloted his barque. This figure wears a turban, and a garment covers his genitals and backside, while the other figure is nude, as we see from the cleft in his buttocks. This is the only nude in the art Bartholdi produced in Yemen, underscoring the absence in this corpus of the erotic, which was at least one element in the tradition of Orientalist art.

76 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 113/154; Ibid., 112, #40.

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Fig. 28: “Escorte (Yemen)”.77

The horsemen in this scene ride vigorously away from the artist, such that the drawing freezes a dynamic moment, as a modern photograph would. They wear their rifles across their back, corresponding with the context supplied by the caption. The drawing of armed escorts connotes the eternal threat of violence; it is the only Yemen scene to focus on the Orientalist motif of violence. Bartholdi seems to have altered his behavior after leaving Egypt, for in the earlier stage of his voyage he does devote attention to scenes connoting violence. Similarly, in Egypt, Bartholdi draws women bearing water, which in Orientalist art connotes eroticism, but he eschews such scenes in Yemen, leaving no studies of the female form.78 Perhaps while in Egypt, at the beginning of his odyssey, he tried his hand at such standard themes, but after leaving not only the land but especially his older and more esteemed colleagues – particularly Gérôme – Bartholdi abandoned the more romantic genres and hewed closely to the documentary realist approach.

77 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 88/121; Ibid., 54, #13. 78 Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 41 (recruits), 75, 78–79 (Arnauts), 90 (prisoners); 46–49 (women bearing water).

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The work examined thus far does not include calotypes or drawings that are purely scenic and thus do not communicate a sense of Bartholdi’s experience. The buildings in some of his photographs held meaning for him, either because he stayed there or because he knew their inhabitants. The rest of the images include people, but only in a few cases can we be confident that Bartholdi and his subjects were acquainted. Often the people do not make eye contact with him, and only serve as a device to provide the scale of their physical surroundings. The tendency towards documentary realism is marked, which fits his mission to immortalize the most remarkable types of people. Some of the images have typically Orientalist elements, be it their exotic aspects, the desert motif, or the indolence imputed to locals. However, the dearth of erotic, violent, and religious scenes is rare and remarkable for a European artist in an Arab land and underscores the ethnographic tendency in his work. This is the defining characteristic of his portraits, to which we now turn.

Portraits The two portrait photographs of Bartholdi presented above, one taken shortly before his voyage, the other a self-portrait in Egypt with his companion, JeanLéon Gérôme, must reflect his perception of the genre. The portrait of the young Parisian Bartholdi is of the official, public, type, in which the subject appears without facial expression or context, and projects the image of an upstanding individual, dignified and worthy of respect. The self-portrait with Gérôme is much more specific and expresses the artist’s grasp of the portrait’s potential to express atmosphere, relationships, and emotion. Bartholdi left numerous portraits from his Yemen journey, many of them serving as the vehicle for the pursuit of his charge to depict “the most remarkable types of people” in the lands he visits. The crucial word here is “types,” for this is a classic marker of Orientalist thinking, since it implies that people can be classified into categories, an idea that is part and parcel of the ethnographic thinking of the time, in its scientific mode – Darwin’s The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) is a famous example. Such ethnographic portraiture effaces the subjects’ individuality and denies the dynamic nature of their life. In this sense, it fails to achieve the portrait’s aim of capturing the subject’s personality, and hence is not a true portrait at all.79

79 Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (New York, 1971), 194; John Klein, Matisse Portraits (New Haven, 2001), 2–3.

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A letter by Bartholdi from shortly after his arrival in Aden grants a glimpse of his experience at portraiture in Yemen. He writes that he is working as hard as possible, but admits that in Aden, as in Egypt, it is difficult to make models pose. Women are unable to hold a pose for even a moment, because they start to laugh. On the other hand, he has found “superb” men from the African coast, some of whom are able to remain still.80 Other than this letter, Bartholdi’s work is our only source for examining his portraiture experience in Yemen. Some basic characteristics of the portraits shed light on the degree to which stranger and host were acquainted, and accordingly we sort the portraits into categories that reflect these relationships. Since our purpose is to study the portraits as mirrors of his interactions with locals, only an illustrative sampling will be offered of portraits from the category that suggests that artist and sitter had no relationship. Captions naming the sitter suggest a high level of familiarity. Subjects depicted twice can also be presumed to have been acquainted with the artist, because two portraits would take longer to execute than one, even if one or both were created after the encounter. Put differently, the decision to create two portraits indicates that Bartholdi deemed the subject worthy of an additional measure of his attention. When the subject of the two portraits is named in the caption, his or her importance to Bartholdi is doubly apparent. The young woman in this set of portraits, frontal and profile, is not named, but obviously merited an extra measure of attention. The caption notes that she is of the Sana’a region, and thus apparently not a resident of the capital. Additionally, the formulation points to her origins, but not her current whereabouts, for Bartholdi turned back towards the littoral before reaching the capital. The profile drawing provides a better view of the shape of her nose, a standard element of physiognomy (then of general interest), as well as a clear image of her earring. In neither portrait does the subject make eye contact with the artist: she looks straight ahead in the profile drawing, while in the frontal portrait her eyes are blank, and plainly not focused on Bartholdi. Bartholdi complained that women were hard to paint because they could not contain their laughter, but generally painting women in Islamic lands was complicated because of the protective attitude of Arab men towards their womenfolk, who were often sequestered. In his Yemen portraits, as in the scenes discussed above, Bartholdi opts for documentary realism over imagination and

80 Kempf, “Bartholdi Photographe,” 100; Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 32–33; Bartholdi, le Colmarien qui éclaira le monde, 59.

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Figs. 29 and 30: “fille du royaume de Sana’a (Arabia)”.81

fantasy, eschewing the erotic element by drawing the young woman in this set of portraits in modest apparel and headgear. Actually, these grant insight into her social context, her choker and earrings conveying that she comes from a family of means. She bears a passing resemblance to Sawa, both in her formal and austere mien as well as in her attire, and the frontal portrait reveals that she is, in fact, Christian. The next two sets of portraits, each offering one en face and one in profile, are of Somalis, whom Bartholdi probably met in Aden. Fatma and the thirteen-year-old Ali Mohammed are probably among the “superb Africans” Bartholdi reports having drawn in Aden. Both are named in their respective captions, and Bartholdi also notes Ali Mohammed’s age, which indicates that, although the portraits are of the ethnographic variety, artist and subjects forged a bond to some degree, certainly one strong enough to enable him to draw them both en face and in profile. Bartholdi pays attention to Fatma’s attire: her headdress, choker, and the garment she wears off her left shoulder, though without exposing her breast. Ali Mohammed wears an upper garment in the profile portrait, possibly also off the

81 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 136/182; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 198; Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 136/183; Surlapierre, Ibid.

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Fig. 31: “Femme Somali, Fatma”.82

Fig. 33: “Ali Mohammed (Soumali) – 13 ans env.”84.

Fig. 32: “Fatma, Femme Somali”.83

Fig. 34: “Ali Mohammed – Soumali”.85

82 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 131/176. 83 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 131/177. 84 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 130/174. See Hueber, Dahabieh, almées et palmiers, 78. 85 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 130/175. See Hueber, Dahabieh, almées et palmiers, 79.

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shoulder, but none in the other drawing, indicating that these images, like Sawa’s, were executed on separate occasions. Like the girl from Sana’a, the youth’s mouth is downturned in the frontal portrait, granting him a serious or even somber expression, and only his left eye is trained on the artist. In the profile drawing, the viewer’s attention is drawn towards the elongated shape of the boy’s skull, a physiognomic element found in other portraits as well.

87 Fig. 35: “Jeune nègre, côte Fig. 36: “(Ibrahim)”. 86 d’Afrique”.

These two profiles are identical, and the caption with Ibrahim’s name leaves no doubt that he and Bartholdi were acquainted; the name only appears in one of the two captions, which may signify that the relationship developed over time. We can guess at the context of their relationship: Ibrahim looks ahead at a fisherman’s raft, presumably his. The subject of this last set of multiple portraits is, once again, a Somali, but the captions clarify his particular identity and relationship with Bartholdi, incidentally, revealing that the drawings are from the artist’s Ethiopian foray. The captions are vaguely contradictory, since naming the subject implies that Bartholdi’s relationship with the individual was the raison d’être for the drawing, while referring to him as a Somali implies that the portrait is an ethnographic

86 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 115/156; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 110. 87 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 114/155; Hueber, Au Yemen en 1856, 55, #14.

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Fig. 37: “Somali – mon guide responsable sur la côte d’Afrique”.88

Fig. 38: “Somali – Jusuff Sueilla”.89

Fig. 39: “Jusuff Sueilla – Somali – Draperie blanche”.90

88 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 107/147; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 109. 89 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 107/148; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, Ibid. 90 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 126/169.

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type, which is anonymous by definition. The seated portrait is unique to Bartholdi’s Yemen corpus; the others are either busts (frontal or profile) or fulllength portraits, and Jusuff’s walking stick may imply that standing for any length of him constituted a hardship. The caption’s reference to the subject’s attire is also unique, and we may speculate that the artist wanted to remind himself of its color in case at some later time he should decide to use the drawing as the basis for an oil painting. Jusuff’s pose is exceptional: he appears relaxed and he looks directly at the artist with a benign expression or even a vague smile. Apart from double portraits, Bartholdi’s Yemen corpus includes several single portraits of individuals who are named, indicating that he had at least a passing acquaintance with them.

Fig. 40: “Moka – Mabrout eunuque d’Abder Rassan”.91

Fig. 41: “Constanti – grec– hodeidah”.92

These captions are unusually generous with information about the subjects. The sex of both of these figures is a bit vague, which may be why Bartholdi notes not only Mabrout’s name and place but also that he is a eunuch. Abder

91 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 58/90; Hueber, Au Yemen en 1856, 39, N. 5. 92 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 51/80; Hueber, Au Yemen en 1856, 39, N. 12.

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Rassan, Mabrout’s master, was apparently Bartholdi’s acquaintance in Mocha, though not his host. The caption to Constanti’s portrait also supplies his ethnicity, which may imply a relationship of sorts with Girgis Sawa. The portraits are unusual for depicting the subjects full-length, a format which enabled Bartholdi to study Yemenite attire, including headgear and shoes as well as clothing. The two portraits also have similar poses: both Mabrout and Constantin slouch, with one or two hands on hips, a combination that gives the impression of fatigue or ennui. Constanti has the familiar bland expression, which is no expression except perhaps a slight frown, but Mabrout’s expression is dramatic: he looks directly at Bartholdi, and his slightly open mouth makes him seem to scowl, reinforcing the impression granted by his pose.

Fig. 42: Girgis Sawa.93

Bartholdi was probably interested in Sawa’s flowing headgear, which is neither European nor Arab. Sawa and Bartholdi had a relationship of sorts, and thus the sitter directs his glance at the artist rather than straight ahead. The

93 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 55/86; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 195.

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discrepancy between the direction of the sitter’s body and his gaze also makes the portrait seem more animated.94

Fig. 43: “Salaha, Yémen”.95

Bartholdi’s relationship with Salaha is implied by the appearance of her name in the caption, but the portrait gives no clue as to its nature or intensity, since she looks off to the side rather than at him, and her body language is no more communicative. That artist and subject had some sort of relationship is also evident from the mere fact that he portrayed her in watercolor. Watercolors are more complex than drawings, and take longer to create, since the artist must pay careful attention to color. Hence, it is safe to assume that the subject of a watercolor probably had more of a relationship with the artist than that of a

94 On the difference between the frontal and oblique portrait, see Max J. Friedländer, Landscape, Portrait, Still-Life – Their Origin and Development, trans. R.F.C. Hull (New York, 1949), 235–36. 95 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 84/116; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 201.

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drawing. This would explain why there are far fewer watercolors than drawings in Bartholdi’s Yemen portfolio. Salaha’s colorful garment explains Bartholdi’s decision to paint rather than draw her. An interest in colorful attire is typical of Orientalist art, as we saw in Gautier’s characterization of Chassériau’s art, but in Bartholdi’s case this was also a personal preference: Léon Belly, Bartholdi’s travel companion, wrote in a letter that Bartholdi did not lack for an interest in color.96 In this portrait, the viewer is treated to a three-quarter view, which approximates a three-dimensional representation and thus offers more information, including her jewelry and bare feet. Salaha is fully clothed, such that the painting is anything but erotic, and we note again Bartholdi’s lack of interest in the female form in his Yemen artistic creations.

Fig. 44: “Ali Bou Bakr, mon propriétaire (Côte Yemen)”.97

Fig. 45: “Fadal, fils d’Ali Bou Bakr”.98

Ali Bou Bakr, Bartholdi’s host somewhere along the Tihama, and his son Fadal, stand with arm on hip, in a pose demonstrating their dignity and respectability.

96 Hueber, “Auguste Bartholdi: le voyage en Egypte et en Arabie Heureuse,” n.p. 97 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 90/123. 98 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 91/124; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 30.

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Once again, the choice of watercolor indicates that the artist was particularly drawn to their colorful attire. Neither subject looks at the artist, though Ali faces him, head bent slightly, perhaps connoting his advanced age. These gentlemen’s headgear also attracts attention, for their dramatic shape and color. Bartholdi demonstrates his interest in headgear in the following drawing:

Fig. 46: “Coiffeurs (Aden)”.99

All of the nineteen subjects are men, except for the person second from the right in the bottom row, who resembles the young Ibrahim pictured above, who is also exceptional for appearing sans headdress. The others are all adults, with no discernible age range, but the men on the extreme left in the Rows 2 and 3 seem to be the same person, with slight differences in their turbans. Facial hair is not Bartholdi’s declared subject, but clearly it interested him as well: there is an assortment of goatees and beards, on the top right we see a mustache, and the fellow interpolated between Rows 2 and 3 is definitely cleanshaven. The sidelocks on the man on the right in Row 2 mark him as a Jew, the only one to stand out as belonging to 99 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 59/91.

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a subgroup.100 The poses of these busts provide all the possible variations, from those directly facing the artist, to those in partial or full profile, to those with their back to him. The men hold their heads straight, except for the second from the right in the top row, whose head is slightly tilted, which accords with his facial expression, for in contrast to the bland or grim expressions of the others, he wears a faint smile. He is also one of just a few subjects to look directly at Bartholdi, while the others look off to one side. The decision to design a portrait with subjects holding a particular pose or prop conveys the artist’s desire to make a statement of some sort about the sitter, and this implies a degree of acquaintance between the two, even when they are not named in the caption.

102 Fig. 47: “Homme de l’Yemen – Bet el Fakie”.101 Fig. 48: “Parsi”.

100 The sidelocks became a standard feature in portraits of Yemenite Jewish males, in Yemen and later in Israel. See: The Jews of San’a as Seen by the Researchers Hermann Burchardt and Carl Rathjens (Tel Aviv, 1982); Guy Raz, A Yemenite Portrait: Jewish Orientalism in Local Photography, 1881–1948 [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 2012); Menashe Anzi, “David Arusi, Photographer and Sorcerer in Sanaa, Jerusalem and Cairo” [Hebrew], Pe’amim 150–152 (2017), 53–84. 101 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 86/118; Hueber, Au Yemen en 1856, 49, N. 11. 102 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 151/202; Hueber, Au Yemen en 1856, 35, N. 3. Some other words appear below the portrait that have not been deciphered.

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These full-length portraits, like the drawings of Mabrout and Constanti, present the subjects in particular poses, and devote careful attention to their attire. The Bayt al-Faqih man looks directly at the artist, a pose which overtly acknowledges their relationship. He is cleanshaven, which is atypical of the Arab society of the time, and in this respect, he is perhaps not the ideal choice for an ethnographic portrait of a “Yemen man.” The caption “Parsi” indicates that this portrait is an ethnographic type, and the subject’s attire differentiates him dramatically from the “Yemen man.” His left hand is concealed in a Napoleonic pose, connoting authority. A caption on the lower left of the portrait makes it clear why Bartholdi found him interesting: “Coiffure et bouche[?] analogue avec Egypte ancienne.” The analogy to ancient Egypt reflects the Orientalist notion that the Orient is important on account of its ancient civilization.

Fig. 49: “Bagnan”.103

Fig. 50: “Indoustani”.104

103 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 71/103; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 203. 104 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 73/105; Ibid.

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These two full-length portraits stand out because the subjects are “caught” performing actions, rather than merely posing. The muscular, half-clad, Banyan leans casually against a wall as he concentrates on his bowl, while the Hindustani glares at Bartholdi as he pulls a heavy weight behind him. The Banyan drawing is exceptional for presenting shadows.

Fig. 51: “Somali”.105

Fig. 52: “Femme d’ouvrier Indoustanie”.106

These two portraits had to be watercolors, in view of their striking colors, in the Somali’s case of his bright yellow headdress as well as his dark coloring, both of which sharply contrast with his off-white garment. Their poses are similar, and give the portraits a dynamic feeling, especially the Somali, who is walking. Neither subject looks at Bartholdi, the Somali gazing to his left even as his head directly faces the artist.

105 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 94/127; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 208. There are also two drawings of Somali men with walking sticks: Hueber, Au Yémen en 1856, 39; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 206. 106 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 92/125; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 143.

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These drawings may as of well be genre drawings as portraits, for they depict women in action: both are walking. Neither drawing is particularly erotic: both women are lightly but fully clad, and it is unclear what the laborer’s wife bears on her head, such that the drawing should not be identified automatically as an Orientalist image of a female water-bearer. The drawing of the Indian woman is more careful and precise, for it is drawn in greater detail, including her shadow, and Bartholdi notes once again the elongated skull of the child, as in other drawings.

Fig. 53: “Femme d’ouvrier”.107

Fig. 54: “Femme Indienne”.108

This watercolor is unique in Bartholdi’s Yemen corpus for having a camel – actually, part of one – as a prop. It resembles a photograph, in that Bartholdi captures camel and driver as they walk, while still depicting them in fine detail, in the realism of the day. The colors are carefully rendered, with

107 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 132/178. 108 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 74/106.

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due attention to light and shade, and we can even make out the weave of the lead in the driver’s hand.

Fig. 55: “Chamelier de l’Arabie”.109

Fig. 56: “Chamelier de l’Yemen”.110

The camel driver in the drawing represents the largest category of Bartholdi’s Yemen drawings: anonymous subjects with no individuating pose or prop. These drawings are simple busts, without context, and the captions identify the subjects’ geographical origins, the only characteristic of interest to Bartholdi: “Femme de Mascat,”111 “Arabe de Heis – Yémen,”112 “Dankali” [Denkalia], côte 109 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 97/130; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 145. 110 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 87/119; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 108. 111 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 98/132; Hueber, Au Yemen en 1856, 31, N. 2. 112 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 54/84; Hueber, Au Yemen en 1856, 41, N. 8.

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d’Abyssinie,”113 etc. Often Bartholdi drew these people in the locations named in the caption, but not always; he never visited Muscat, and probably created this and similar drawings in Aden. Finally, in some portraits the subject faces away from artist, demonstrating a lack of connection with the artist.

Fig. 57: “Sibahi – Sergent de Ville Indien” [Yemen].114

Fig. 58: “Arabe porteur d’eau”.115

As Sergeant Sibahi is named, clearly, he did have a relationship with Bartholdi, who nevertheless elected to draw him from behind, perhaps for his commanding pose, with hands clasped behind the back. The emphasis in the drawing of

113 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 115/157; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 110. 114 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 77/109; Hueber, Dahabieh, almées et palmiers, 84. “Yemen,” in square brackets is not in the caption. 115 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 150/201; Hueber, Dahabieh, almées et palmiers, 85.

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the water porter is on the subject’s barely-clothed body, which is striking, given the Orientalist genre of the erotic female water porter.

Figs. 59 and 60: Figure d’un homme, en pied, vi de dos.116

Apart from the subjects’ pose, the watercolors are similar in displaying brightly-colored garments that contrast with the subjects’ dark coloring. Other than that, their attire is far from identical, but the portraits differ mainly in that the turbaned figure appears within a topographical context – facing the sky and mountains – an extremely rare feature in the watercolors from Bartholdi’s Yemen sojourn. The portrait from the back offers a rare opportunity to note a resemblance between Bartholdi’s painting and that of Gérôme:

116 Fig. 59: Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 95/128; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 44; Fig. 60: Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 96/ 129; Ibid., 45.

Portraits

Fig. 61: “Turc de Syrie, Égypte”.117

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Fig. 62: “Prière dans la Mosquée”.118

Bartholdi painted the Syrian Turk in Egypt, during his journey with Gérôme, whose oil painting of prayer in the mosque – also from Egypt – resembles Bartholdi’s in the bright colors of the clothing as well as in the pose. These are among the very few portraits from Bartholdi’s Yemen voyage that depict multiple individuals. In both, the viewer’s attention is directed primarily to two figures who stand in the foreground while a third lurks in the background. Both groups represent minority populations, namely Indians and Jews, and each is dressed in their respective ethnic garb, including headgear and garments, and in the Jews’ case, the distinctive sidelocks. The two portraits differ in that in the Indian portrait, but not in the Jewish one, it is clear that the two primary figures are interacting with one another. An unusual feature in the Jewish portrait is the intimacy of artist and subjects, who are positioned directly in front of him instead of at the customary distance of three to eight feet.119 117 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 49/77; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 25. 118 https://www.gallery19c.com/artworks/9370/ 119 Maurice Grosser, The Painter’s Eye (New York, 1951), 17–18.

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Fig. 63: “Marchands Indiens”.120

Fig. 64: “Juifs”.121

The inclusion of a boy in the Jewish group is unique in Bartholdi’s Yemen corpus, and seems intended to demonstrate that Jewish boys are dressed like miniature versions of their elders, including the telltale sidelocks. The boy holds something in his arms, or perhaps someone, if he is cradling a baby. Of the three, only the boy looks at Bartholdi, while the central figure looks in front of him (to Bartholdi’s left) and the other adult regards his fellow. Bartholdi exhibits paintings of Egyptian scenes in the Paris Salons of 1857, 1861, and 1864, under the pseudonym Amilcar Hasenfratz. In the spring of 1869, shortly before the opening of the Suez canal, he returns to Egypt in a vain effort to persuade the Egyptian authorities and Ferdinand de Lesseps to commission him to execute the enormous lighthouse he designed for the entrance to the Suez canal, entitled Egypte éclairant l’Orient. Clearly, the colossal monuments of ancient Egypt inspired him to devote himself primarily to this type of sculpture, culminating in Liberté éclairant le monde, namely the Statue of Liberty, for which he earned enduring fame.

120 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 68/100. 121 Musée Bartholdi-Colmar. Photo Chr. Kempf I ADC 60/92; Surlapierre, De la Vallée des Rois à l’Arabie heureuse, 204.

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The Yemen segment of his voyage was decidedly out of step with the habits of his fellow Orientalist artist travelers, including those of his companions who went on from Egypt to the Holy Land. It was nearly fifty years before Hermann Burchardt, a German Jew, traveled to Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries in 1901 and took thousands of photographs of Jews and Arabs.122 Although the camera represents the Western travelers’ modern technology, which always intrigued their Yemenite hosts, drawings and watercolors are also forms of western technology, albeit not new ones. Islam, like Judaism, takes a dim view of visual art in a religious context, but we know nothing about the Yemenites’ reaction to their encounter with Bartholdi, their first European artist. Europeans may view their introduction of western technology as a stranger’s gift to his Oriental host, but to assume that the locals shared their view would be to succumb to the Orientalist fallacy.

122 Ingrid Pfluger-Schindlbeck and Hendrik Sellem, ed., Hermann Burchardt im Jemen: photographische Reisen 1900–1909: eine Ausstellung des Ethnologischen Museums Berlin und der Botschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Sanaa (Sanaa, 2005).

Emissary Jacob Sapir

Fig. 1: Jacob Sapir1.

Palestine had a small and struggling Jewish community under the Ottoman regime, numbering a few thousand souls, many of limited means. For the Jews of the Middle Ages, the Land of Israel had been a spiritual homeland, and there were always some who decided to settle there and devote their lives to spiritual pursuits, studying the ancient texts and practicing the rituals of Jewish law and mysticism. To alleviate the economic hardship that was the inevitable cost of this way of life, the country’s rabbinic leadership began sending learned men abroad to raise funds. During the early modern era,

1 Source: Jewish Encyclopedia, 11:51. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-004

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these sages were a familiar presence, as they traveled from town to town enlisting support.2 Two emissaries left book-length accounts of their peregrinations: Hayyim Yoseph David Azulay’s Ma’agal Tov (Good Path) in the eighteenth century, and Jacob Sapir’s Even Sapir (Sapphire Stone) in the nineteenth. Azulay visited Mediterranean lands and western Europe, but Sapir traveled to Yemen and points east, and he is therefore the subject of this chapter. Sapir was born in 1822 in Lithuania, and his parents brought him to Palestine in early childhood.3 In 1858, Jacob, a family man, is dispatched as a fundraiser to the East, and returns in 1864. Sapphire Stone is a detailed, twovolume, account of his travels: the first volume is devoted to his sojourn in Yemen, while the second covers his odyssey in India, Burma, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand.4 This chapter compares his Yemen stranger-host encounter to subsequent interactions and to the experiences of other travelers. The Yemen volume of Sapphire Stone has attracted scholarly attention because Sapir writes voluminously about the religious texts and rituals of the Yemenite Jews, a subject that fascinated contemporary Jewish intellectuals. He declares at the outset his intention to survey – for the benefit of historians! – the history of the communities he visits, and share what he has learned of their observance of Jewish law, their interpretation of sacred texts, and their knowledge of other nations. He is, thus, a highly self-conscious ethnographer, and one attuned to the interests of his audience.

2 On the rabbinic emissaries of Palestine, see: Ya’ari, Sheluḥei Eretz Yisra’el; Matthias B. Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: the Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of PanJudaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford, 2014); Joshua Teplitzky, A “Prince of the Land of Israel in Prague: Jewish Philanthropy, Patronage and Power in Early Modern Europe and Beyond,” Jewish History 29 (2015), 245–71. 3 Yoseph Yo’el Rivlin writes that one of Sapir’s grandchildren told him that according to a family tradition, the Arabs named him “Saphir,” meaning traveler. Rivlin debunks this notion by noting that Sapir used the surname in 1859, just a year after his first trip. This argument does not seem compelling, but Rivlin adds that the surname already appears in his wife’s marriage contract. See Rivlin, “R. Ya’akov Sapir (5582–5645)” [Hebrew], Moznayim 11 (1940), 394, N. 1. 4 Sapphire Stone 1–2 (Lyck, 1866; Mainz, 1874). For an English translation of the Yemen volume, see Yaakov Lavon, ed. and trans., My Footsteps Echo: The Yemen Journal of Rabbi Yaakov Sapir (Jerusalem, 1997). Vol. 2 of Sapphire Stone was published piecemeal in Ha-Levanon, the journal published by Sapir’s son-in-law, Yehiel Brill, in the same year. See Roni Beer-Marx, Fortresses of Paper: The Newspaper HaLevanon and Jewish Orthodoxy [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 2017), 254–62.

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Sapir expresses his sense of his role as ethnographer when he declares, in the introduction, that unlike Europeans, who spell Arabic proper nouns incorrectly, he will spell them as they are pronounced. This intention communicates his desire to “get it right” for armchair travelers, who must rely on those with first-hand knowledge of the exotic Orient to accurately portray its land and people. Sapir’s self-awareness also comes across in his introductory remarks about his style of writing. Admitting that during his voyage he was sometimes honored and sometimes belittled, he promises to faithfully depict his interactions, rather than succumb to the well-known practice of travel writers to honor those who honored them and belittle those who belittled them. He is thus keenly aware of the writer’s power to award praise and assign blame. He also deplores the fashion of loading introductions with flowery rhetoric, which to his mind makes such writers look vain or foolish. He asserts that he is neither, and states, simply, that he knows his worth, and sees no need to embellish, since in any case his book will not make him rich, for few will buy it. Clearly, Sapir is not only highly self-conscious but also familiar with the travel-writing genre, its norms and even its market value. Sapir’s sense of what would interest his readers explains his choice of subject matter, including not only the topics he treated but also those he ignored. Conspicuously absent from Sapphire Stone is his fundraising activity, the mission with which he was charged. This is unfortunate for this study, which focuses on interactions between stranger and host, including gift exchange, and it is only part of Sapir’s general tendency to give his personal experiences short shrift. Hence, his narrative must be read against the grain, his saga recovered from curt remarks and brief anecdotes dropped en passant. This approach, despite its obvious difficulty, has the advantage of enhancing the credibility of what the narrator chooses to relate, for he is, in Talmudic parlance, “an innocent speaker,” a witness whose testimony is accepted because it is presented blithely, since his focus and purpose lie elsewhere. Hospitality is a leitmotif of Sapir’s Yemen odyssey. It is, of course, a fundamental component of gift exchange between stranger and host but is of particular importance for the emissary by virtue of his diplomatic function, as the representative not only of the Holy Land but also of the Torah. The emissary’s hosts perceive him as such, and accordingly lavish attention and expense on his lodging, food, and transportation, and sometimes also on apparel and spending money. A flowery, somewhat exaggerated, description of the hospitality granted rabbinical emissaries in the East appears in the travel account of Israel Joseph Benjamin, a Romanian Jew who visited various

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exotic lands at around the same time as Sapir. Benjamin was not an emissary, but he masqueraded as one, for reasons which the following quotation makes apparent: The learned men, and particularly those who come from the Holy Land or from Europe, are treated with the greatest veneration, with even more than is shewn to their own scholars . . . He, who is not acquainted with Oriental customs, can hardly form an idea of the consideration with which a traveller is there received and treated. As soon as he has been introduced to the Nassi, all hasten to show him every possible honour which his rank may demand. All his wants are anticipated; lodging, food, raiment, in short all that he may need is given to him, without the smallest compensation being required in return. Feasts and entertainments are arranged in his honour, as long as he remains in any place. And not only during his stay among them is this attention paid to him, but on leaving, it is extended to him in a still greater degree. As soon as the guest prepares for departure, the master of the house considers it as his first duty to furnish him everything necessary for the journey. The days are counted as to how long he will be on the way untill he arrives at another place, and his provisions are arranged accordingly, so that he may want for nothing. Care is taken that he may be able to join a caravan, the expenses are paid, and not one of his brethren in the faith would fail to present him with some useful gift, the nature of which is always regulated by his rank.5

Sapphire Stone testifies to the truth of this description in Sapir’s case, even if Benjamin exaggerates.6 The second leitmotif in Sapir’s Yemen travelogue is Orientalism, relating mainly to the western traveler’s condescending attitude towards the unsophisticated peoples of the East. Sapir can just barely be counted as a westerner, given his Lithuanian origins or perhaps by virtue of the cosmopolitan character of Jerusalem, but his account testifies to the more important truth, that British and French travelers were not the only ones to disparage the people of the Middle East, which complicates the Orientalism concept by presenting it as not exactly binary. The following exploration of his experience chronicles not only variations to the general pattern but also change, for Sapir’s attitude towards the civilization of Yemen Jewry evolves, inevitably impacting also upon his self-image and on his perception of the Jewish civilization he represents.

5 J.J. Benjamin II[!], Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855 (Hanover, 1859), 223. On the phenomenon of Benjamin and other travelers masquerading as rabbinic emissaries so as to enhance their safety and prestige, see: Benjamin, Mas’ei Yisra’el (Lyck, 1859), 31; Nahum Slouscz, Mes Voyages en Lybie [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1937/1938), 147. 6 Sapir critiques Benjamin’s remarks on various topics concerning the Indian Jews, and generally considers him ignorant and a liar: Sapphire Stone, 2:48–50, 61.

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To Sana’a Sapir’s journey begins in Alexandria, which maintains shipping ties with Jaffa. He prefaces with the statement that leaving his family, leaders, and friends was as wrenching as the soul leaving the body. We read that his wife and children wept freely, and were struck dumb with sorrow, while the narrator, shunning the way of women, controlled himself, although he admits that he could not control his feelings, for “even the heart of a lion melts.” Rabbinical emissaries like Sapir habitually left their families for months, and even years, but this is one of the few expressions left by an emissary of the pain of leaving home and everything familiar. As a rule, the travelogues of voyagers to Yemen are equally stingy with admissions of this sort, and yet the motif of travel as ordeal is as old as Gilgamesh, Homer and the Bible.7 What is more, Sapir’s plight is typical of tales of travel, both mythical and historical, which gender travel carefully, depicting men as mobile and women as sessile.8 Sapir’s unfamiliarity with his new surroundings immediately lands him in difficult straits, for at a stop along the journey from Alexandria to Cairo, a local trickster relieves him of his money, by selling him a hoard of ancient silver coins which turn out to be ordinary copper ones.9 Sapir is fooled because, like other visitors to the Near East, he is alert to the existence of antiquities, making him and countless others susceptible to the extensive market in fakes. This incident is true to the pattern in western travelogues of characterizing the easterner as crafty and unscrupulous. On the other hand, while narratives of this sort mostly depict the stranger as worldly and knowledgeable, here the stranger is innocent and the Oriental savvy, and thus it has an element of role reversal, overturning the balance of power between stranger and host. Sapir’s plan is thus abruptly derailed, for he no longer has the funds to travel to India, his original fundraising destination.10 Instead, he travels on to Cairo, and later Suez, where he boards a light craft for Jedda, before proceeding down the Red Sea to Hudaydah. Sapir never offers a clear rationale for his decision to travel into Yemen, which could not have been an attractive destination for fundraising purposes, given the poverty of the general population.

7 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 6–12. 8 Ibid., 113. 9 Sapphire Stone, 1:4v-6r. 10 Ibid., 6r. India was known to have wealthy Jews, such as the Sassoons, and was thus a popular fundraising destination throughout the modern period. See Ya’ari, Sheluḥei Eretz Yisra’el, passim.

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His Hudaydah sojourn is uneventful, but only just. Strolling through town on a Friday morning, he watches as believers stream from the mosque after prayers, and many smell the garment of an elder with a dignified bearing, who, Sapir learns, is descended from the Prophet.11 This nobleman, noticing that Sapir makes no attempt to do him homage, summons him to question him about his identity and behavior. Thinking fast, Sapir identifies himself as a Jew, and excuses himself by claiming to be deprived of the sense of smell. The elder accepts his explanation and moves on without molesting Sapir. Here as elsewhere, although Sapir focuses on the local customs, his anecdote sheds light on his nature and self-image. There is little doubt that the scene could have ended badly for Sapir if the elder and the throng of admirers had turned against him, and nonetheless Sapir does not move quickly to demonstrate respect. We would be wrong, however, to assume that his behavior was rooted in religious conviction, for he admits that he was simply distracted, sulking over a previous incident. Sapphire Stone is full of such narrow escapes, which Sapir usually caps by thanking God for his salvation; here he simply moves on to continue with his description of the town, but what stands out are his sang-froid and his creative response. He comes across as the cool-headed and resourceful stranger, in the tradition of the western traveler, who ably copes with the perils that confront him as a consequence of his outsider status. Yet again, we are forced to recognize behavior patterns that are typical of western travelers in the behavior of a non-European, though, as mentioned, Sapir is difficult to pigeonhole.12 From Hudaydah, Sapir heads inland, towards Sana’a. At Jirwah, in the mountains about halfway to the capital, he reaches a Jewish community and meets Joseph ben Sa’adia, the local rabbi. Sapir extols the rabbi’s erudition and is impressed that the latter makes his living through artisanry, as a blacksmith, with his father and brother. Sapir visits him early in the morning and finds him hard at work on a plow. Sapir gapes at the sight, and Joseph asks him: “Why not give up your mission and work for me here?” Sapir replies: You are lucky to be a blacksmith, and woe to one who chooses the rabbinate! Had I done like you, I would not have been exiled from my place, suffered tribulations and abandoned my wife and children; they worry about me, not knowing where I am, and my heart longs for them, not knowing whether they are still alive!”13

11 The Prophet’s descendants, known as sadah (or by Sapir as Saʻidi), form a discrete element in the social fabric of Yemen, as in other Muslim societies: see vom Bruck, Islam, Memory and Morality in Yemen. 12 Sapphire Stone, 1:49v. 13 Ibid., 50v-51r.

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This response sounds heartfelt but is actually textured. Sapir may have felt a stab of homesickness, but his reply seems more courteous than sincere, for it is doubtful that he truly envied Joseph and would have liked to change places with him. Likewise, Joseph’s offer is to be understood as a gesture, for he surely did not expect the Jerusalemite to accept his invitation. This interpretation of the exchange is partly rooted in the fact that Sapir’s sentiment alludes to a well-known rabbinic dictum advising scholars to prefer labor to the rabbinate.14 Nevertheless, it seems to have been a moment of true contact between the two scholars, with more than a touch of intimacy, as well as simple camaraderie. Jirwah’s Jews learn that Sapir is from Jerusalem and invite him to lead the prayer services on the Sabbath, as a gesture of hospitality and a mark of respect. His liturgy differs slightly from theirs, but they excuse his ignorance because he comes from the Holy Land.15 This encounter is eye-opening for Sapir, who realizes that although he considers himself learned, the Yemenites regard themselves as heirs to the authentic Jewish tradition, other ethnic groups having strayed during centuries of wandering in exile. Thus, he is similarly surprised when they laugh at his Hebrew pronunciation, and realizing that their linguistic tradition is superior to his, labors to correct his own, admitting ruefully that his efforts enjoyed only partial success, since language is best acquired in one’s youth.16 This is another example of Sapir changing his selfperception from that of someone more worldly and knowledgeable than people from oriental lands to one who discovers that he has much to learn. It is the opposite of the Saidian Orientalist caricature, in which the gift of knowledge passes exclusively from stranger to host. On the other hand, the notion that the Orient retains traces of the lost civilization prized by westerners is fundamental to Orientalist thinking, and it is ironic that it is the Jews of Jirwah, rather than Sapir, who expresses it. Jewish mysticism is another realm in which Sapir discovers that the Yemenites have the better of him. He reports that they devote a great deal of time to kabbalah, and particularly to the Zohar, whereas he had perused the Talmud and attained knowledge of Jewish law but remained ignorant of kabbalah, or at least so he presents himself. Sapir’s hosts test his knowledge of kabbalistic literature, and refuse to believe that he, a Jerusalemite, is ignorant; rather, they are convinced that he considers them unworthy of sharing his knowledge. They may be right, for although Sapir may not have been a devotee of kabbalah, someone of his milieu

14 Avot 1:10, 4:5; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, H. Talmud Torah 3:10. 15 Sapphire Stone, 1:51r. 16 Ibid., 1:54v.

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would have been familiar with the basic doctrines and texts of Jewish mysticism. Nevertheless, Sapir lectures the locals that study of mysticism must wait until one attains mastery of Bible and Talmud, realms in which he considers the Yemenites weak, and in which – he relates with satisfaction – they acknowledge his strength.17 The Yemenites’ assumption that their guest views them as unworthy of receiving his knowledge is a powerful statement of their assessment of the balance of power between them. Ironically, the body of knowledge in question is occult science, which the modern westerner would disdain as backward, the view evoked obliquely here when Sapir emphasizes the primary importance of Bible and Talmud, texts he would categorize as more rational than mystical. Finally, this anecdote also instances the universal pattern of the stranger being subjected to a test or ordeal, in which he must prove his worth to the local inhabitants.18 The ironic twist here is that Sapir’s hosts are convinced that his ignorance is feigned, and cannot accept the possibility that he has simply failed the test. The question of who – Sapir or his Yemenite interlocutor – is naive and who is sophisticated surfaces again and again. The locals criticize him for pronouncing the Hebrew adjective “Ḥay,” rather than “Ḥi,” in a prayer referring to the Divinity, claiming that “Ḥay” is plural, and thus implies a belief in polytheism. Sapir attempts to justify his position, but they launch a volley of arguments from kabbalah which he is unable to refute. Sapir is unconvinced, but opts to adopt their pronunciation, seeing that they shrug off his reasoning and would merely regard him as an ignoramus. Significantly, Sapir, who up to this point appears confident in his knowledge and practice, adds that he looked into the matter after returning home and concluded that the Yemenites were right.19 Similarly, Sapir observes that in Yemen girls as well as married women cover their hair. Locals express disapproval when he informs them that in other lands Jewish maidens publicly display their hair. Sapir cites chapter and verse 17 Ibid., 1:55v. See also Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 36. A century earlier, Azulay encounters the same skeptical reaction in Tunis, when he professes ignorance of kabbalah, and there we know that his ignorance was affected: Malkiel, “The Shadar-Host Economy in Early Modern Italy: New Perspectives on the Travels of Emissaries from the Holy Land,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 15 (2016), 410–11. Sapir’s curricular exhortation is rooted in rabbinic tradition: see Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader (New York, 1972), 48, #13. 18 Julian Pitt-Rivers, “The Law of Hospitality,” The Fate of Schechem, or the Politics of Sex (Cambridge 1977), 94–112. This notion of ordeal bears no relation to the general perception of travel as an ordeal. 19 Sapphire Stone, 1:56r.

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of the relevant Talmudic discussion in defense of his tradition. They, however, offer their own interpretation of the texts in question, and their rejoinder concludes Sapir’s narrative of this exchange, with no attempt on his part to refute the Yemenite position.20 In Hajara, still in the mountains en route to Sana’a, Sapir learns that his Yemenite brethren delay circumcision ceremonies until noon, to allow people to gather from other villages. He protests that the ceremony should be done at the earliest possible hour, based on the example of Abraham, who repeatedly rose early to perform the will of God, but the locals retort that Ishmael was circumcized “in the middle of the day” (Gen. 17.26). In sum, after Sapir freely corrects his misguided hosts, offering a gift of knowledge of sorts, he is stunned by the realization that the local custom was not the product of ignorance after all, and that his hosts, too, have knowledge to impart. These anecdotes destabilize Sapir’s perception of whether he or his hosts possess true knowledge. Sapir’s readers are left with an appreciation of his humility and intellectual honesty, as well as his flexibility. Sapir profits from these exchanges, and his – and his readers’ – image of the western traveler’s power relative to his oriental hosts is repeatedly confounded.21 Sapir exhibits a similar tendency when he confesses that he strove to acquire books and manuscripts in the field of practical kabbalah after appreciating the Yemenites’ strength in this area. However, he is somewhat disillusioned during a visit to a well-known healer, who, he notices, makes use of a book with a formula that mentions Jesus. Sapir questions him about this, and the healer confesses that, like all of Yemen’s Jews, he is simply ignorant of the Christian faith, because Yemen has no Christian community. Sapir urges him to abjure this material and rid himself of his own newly-acquired writings.22 This tale touches upon the theme of the Yemenites’ naivety, which for Sapir derives from their failure to evaluate texts critically. He attributes this failure to the rarity of printed books in Yemen, which he believes explains their reverence for all printed books, including the works of Nehemiah Hayyun, a seventeenthcentury Sabbatian heretic.23 The healer’s tolerant use of a text mentioning Jesus is reminiscent of the polite and sometimes cordial reception Yemen’s Jews accorded the missionaries Wolff and Stern, including their tolerance of the missionaries’ distribution of

20 Ibid., 1:60r. 21 Ibid., 1:67v. 22 Ibid., 1:59r-v. 23 Ibid., 1:55v-56a, 1:61r.

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Bibles and missionary tracts.24 Contrary to Stern’s account, however, Sapir, who arrived in Yemen just two years after Stern, reports that the missionary met with a less than friendly reception. He maintains that, although the Jews of Safan initially mistook Stern for a Jewish scholar, they shunned him when they understood his purpose, and thus, by the time Stern arrived in Sana’a, the Jews were forewarned, and refused to provide him with accommodation or accept his books. Stern complained to the governor, who demanded that they explain their shabby treatment of someone bearing letters of recommendation from powerful authorities, and moreover, letters stating that he had come to help them. The Jews replied that Stern was not one of them, but nonetheless were fined one hundred sheqel. Sapir notes that the sting of this experience made them initially wary of him, as well.25 Of course, Sapir’s version of the Yemenites’ reception of Stern is as suspect of tendentious distortion as is Stern’s, both because he regarded himself as a defender of his people and because he had not been on the scene. In any case, it seems plausible that the Yemenites received Wolff more warmly, if only because he was Yemen’s first missionary to the Jews and, more generally, because, as Sapir learns, they had had no previous contact with Christians of any sort. The Yemenites’ receptivity to new cultural phenomena, whether delivered in person or in writing, bespeaks the security of their cultural identity, such that they feel no need to ward off new notions. Their self-confidence also reflects the eclectic and syncretistic nature of their worldview, which has a plasticity that can accommodate a range of religious concepts and ideas.26 We return to the question of whether Sapir or his interlocutors represent the more vibrant culture. The stereotype of the aborigines’ propensity to accept whatever Europeans tell them intersects Sapir’s anecdote about the Yemenites’ ability to

24 We are not told whether the healer rid himself of these unreliable texts, as Sapir suggested, and I would speculate that he did not, since we have already noted that missionary literature continued to circulate. 25 Ibid., 77r-v. Klein-Franke writes that the fine was of two hundred riyals, apparently conflating this fine with the two hundred dollar penalty which, according to Stern, the Jewish community was ordered to pay if they accepted Stern’s books: Klein-Franke, “J. Wolff and H. Stern: Missionaries in Yemen,” 91–92. Cf. Stern, Journal of a Missionary Journey into Arabia Felix, 34. See also Sapir’s other remarks in opposition to the missionaries: 1:29a-b, 2:47–48. Gerber notes that Sapir, at age fourteen, was supported by the Anglican missionaries, and thus was quite familiar with them: Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 28, 31. 26 Analogously, Gerber notes that Sapir describes the Yemenites as ready to embrace every lunatic that prophesies good tidings for them, a tendency Sapir locates as the explanation for the popularity of the country’s latest messianic pretender: see Sapphire Stone, 2:149. See also Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 45–46.

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assimilate ideas and doctrines from other cultures, but the latter portrays them as acting from strength and broadmindedness, rather than child-like gullibility or subaltern subservience. At Mudmar, in the Manakhah region, Sapir meets Yahya Qara, the illustrious rabbi of Sana’a, who gives him a letter of recommendation to the Sana’a rabbinical court.27 Letters of recommendation are a standard gift from host to traveler, and in the emissary’s case they generally extol the emissary’s profound learning and affirm his honesty. In so doing, they narrow the gap between the stranger and the locals he will encounter. Azulay systematically procures letters of recommendation, which not only confirm his identity and credentials, but also urge the readers of these letters to contribute to his cause.28 From Mudmar, Sapir passes Manakhah in the direction of Sana’a, climbing through the mountains. The trek is treacherous and exhausting, with its precipices and barren landscape, just as Stern described. Sapir relates that the sound of a human or a bird was not to be heard, and the only living creatures were monkeys of all sizes, gaily gamboling on the ridges and enjoying the fruit and shade of the occasional tamarisk trees. He explains: “We did not touch them and they did not touch us,” having been warned not to provoke them and risk attack.29 His healthy respect for the local wildlife is as lacking in the swagger of the typical European traveler as is the respect he acquires for the knowledge and cultural practices of his Yemenite coreligonists. Night falls outside Ḥima, several hours short of Yafid, and the only resting place is a very simple inn, located adjacent to the site of an abandoned regional market. Locals gawk at Sapir, the first stranger to have crossed their path. He suspects them of coveting his belongings, but they leave him in peace after he hosts them with coffee and dates. The innkeeper, possibly sensing the traveler’s insecurity, offers to safeguard Sapir’s property. For the second time he is taken in, for in the morning the proprietor cries out that he has been robbed, though it transpires that only Sapir’s possessions are missing! Local Jews vainly attempt to 27 Sapphire Stone, 1:70r. Later, when Sapir leaves Sana’a for Shibam, he is given new letters of recommendation, to replace the ones from Jerusalem stolen from him with all his things outside Ḥima: Ibid., 1:102r. 28 Sepher Maʻagal Tov ha-Shalem [Hebrew, i.e. Good Path], ed. Aaron Freimann (Jerusalem, 1934), passim. Inevitably, the utility of such letters led to trickery: Athanasius Paulus, a Greek Orthodox clergyman who, like Azulay, traveled in eighteenth-century Europe to raise funds for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, was hanged for producing forged letters of recommendation. See Ian Coller, “Rousseau’s Turban: Entangled Encounters of Europe and Islam in the Age of Enlightenment,” Historical Reflections 40 (2014), 74. 29 Sapphire Stone, 1:70v.

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ransom the missing property, and Sapir is left with no alternative but to forge on, destitute once more. In this tale of misadventure, Sapir senses his vulnerability, but does not always confront threats successfully, for after skirting the potentially harmful monkeys and wrongly suspecting the curious onlookers, he falls victim to the devious innkeeper.30 At Yafid, thirty-five kilometers west of Sana’a, no one greets him with an invitation to sup or stay. Only after his servant, Sa’id, stands in the street and calls out – “People of Sodom! A scholar arrives from Jerusalem and he is dying in the streets!” – does someone advise them to go to the synagogue and wait for the men to return from the market.31 Hospitality is the most fundamental gift from host to stranger, and what stands out in this story is Sa’id’s assumption that Sapir deserves to be treated with extraordinary largesse because he is a Jerusalemite scholar. This perspective is far from unique, and quite understandable. In 1753, when Azulay reaches Monte San Savino, in Tuscany, no one greets him, and finally he is brought to a house with poor living conditions. He reacts sharply to such shabby treatment, upbraiding the community leader for disrespecting a Palestinian emissary. Someone in his position could be expected to show particular sensitivity to the degree of honor demonstrated by his hosts, and not only with regard to hospitality, because it would likely affect his fundraising success, one way or another.32 The difference between Sapir’s and Azulay’s anecdotes is that, although Sapir interprets his reception initially as a dearth of hospitality, he later realizes that his resentment was misguided, and stemmed from a lack of familiarity with local conditions.33 The leaders of the Yafid Jewish community advise Sapir to complain to the qadi and sheikh about the theft of his belongings. The innkeeper is summoned, and his son appears, but feigns ignorance, and the qadi is satisfied with having him swear to his innocence. The sheikh, however, insists on the son’s liability, and issues a written judgment to that effect, but Sapir protests that he has no need of such a document, for which he must pay a court fee, but simply for the 30 Ibid., 71v-72r. 31 Ibid., 1:72v. 32 Good Path, 5. See also my “The Shadar-Host Economy,” 408. 33 At Shibam, again no one invites him home, but by then he understands that he must wait in the synagogue for someone attending afternoon prayers to offer him hospitality: Sapphire Stone, 1:77v. At ʻAmran, too, “no one was happy at my arrival, nor did they cast lots to see who would be merit having me first.” He waits in the synagogue while the locals are at work, and eventually a boy reports to the rabbi, in his store: “A scholar is in the city!” Sapir is then invited to the rabbi’s house, and given coffee, a pipe, and wheat bread with butter – Ibid., 1:102v.

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return of his effects. The sheikh holds the Jewish community liable for Sapir’s fee, and Sapir regrets having sought justice. Sapir announces to the two judges that the thief will undoubtedly die within the year. He explains to his readers that his aim had been to exert pressure upon them, knowing that their like set stock in the sagacity of the Jews, perhaps especially given his status as a “qudsi,” a Jerusalemite. Sapir notes with satisfaction that his prediction came true, for the thief and his wife and son soon died in an epidemic, but he admits, ruefully, that this did not lead to the retrieval of his belongings, most of which had been sold piecemeal in the market. This is an ordinary tale of local corruption, familiar from tales of European travel to the Orient. One twist is that while we might expect Sapir, the stranger, to seek justice where none is to be had, the initiative springs from the local community leaders, who should have known better. Sapir exposes a glaring naivety by the very fact of his second victimization by tricksters, but in Yafid he exhibits a remarkable ability to adapt to his surroundings, when he changes his strategy to prognostication, a tack better suited to the immediate cultural context. And while Sapir’s comment about the power attributed to the Jews suggests a cynical attitude towards such beliefs, his admission that things came to pass as he predicted is voiced in a nonchalant tone, suggesting that he did not consider this outcome extraordinary. A condescending attitude towards Oriental superstition does color Sapir’s narrative of his role in a fraught situation facing Yafid’s Jews. He relates that because of the current drought, the Jews of Yafid exercise their right to draw water from the spring of a neighboring Muslim village. Sapir relates that the Muslims are reluctant to share their precious resource, so they rain stones upon the Jewish women and girls of Yafid as they make their way to the wells. No one is hurt, but the women’s water jugs are smashed, although – for some reason – the womenfolk of Sapir’s host are unscathed. The Jews attempt to identify their assailants, but the nearby villagers deny responsibility, painting themselves as good neighbors, in keeping with the Prophet’s injunction to be kind to neighbors living at a distance of up to twenty houses.34 Instead, they blame spirits, pointing out that consistently only the jars are damaged while the women escape unscathed, as is the way of spirits. Sapir dismisses this argument, but the Yafid Jews believe it, and explain to Sapir that if indeed the villagers were responsible, they would not have spared particular individuals.

34 Muhammad ash-Shirbini defines the radius as forty houses: Mughni al-Muhtaaj 4/95. Other hadiths leave the definition to local custom.

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It is impressive that the Yafid townspeople are not predisposed to prefer the view of their coreligionist to that of their Muslim neighbors. What matters, apparently, is that Sapir is a stranger, and the villagers their fellow countrymen. More significant still is the divide separating rationalist and mystic. This becomes evident when Sapir enlists the support of Suleiman, a local rabbi whom Sapir deems wise and educated. Suleiman agrees with Sapir that the villagers must be culpable, but notwithstanding his local status, the villagers dismiss him as “a philosopher and unbeliever,” for having studied Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, a tract identified paradigmatically with the rationalist outlook.35 The Jews call upon Sapir to perform a ritual of exorcism, but he fends off their demand by insisting that the spirits can only be controlled when the moon is full, two weeks hence. Instead, he urges his people to mend fences with their Muslim neighbors, implying that he hoped the crisis would be resolved and his services rendered unnecessary. Meanwhile, Suleiman complains to the governor. The Muslim villagers defend themselves by pointing out that the Jews agree that spirits must be responsible, which the latter cannot deny. Consequently, the governor fines the Jews for falsely accusing their neighbors, and Sapir’s hopes of rapprochement are dashed. That Friday, the townspeople urge Sapir to lead the women to the spring, on the assumption that the spirits would not attack him, although one wonders whether they considered him invulnerable on account of his status as a stranger or as a holy man. He cannot refuse, but chooses noon, when the Muslims are busy praying, as the time for the expedition, and as he anticipated, not a single stone flies. Tongue in cheek, Sapir concludes: “All the spirits and evil angels hid, or their hands were tied,” because the Muslims were secluded in their mosque. There are no further incidents, and allegedly the tale of his miraculous intervention spreads far and wide.36 As earlier, in Jirwah, the Yemenites take for granted Sapir’s knowledge of sorcery, apparently based on his status as a Jerusalem scholar. The incident points towards the conflict that would erupt decades later among the Jews of Yemen between the rationalist and mystic camps, but for now the latter hold sway, and Suleiman is distinctly an outlier. Sapir’s narrative of this episode has Orientalist elements. His attitude towards the locals is condescending, depicting them as childlike, not strictly for

35 This is a remarkable volte-face for Yemenite Jewry, who embraced Maimonides with great enthusiasm. 36 Sapphire Stone, 1:74v-75r.

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their belief in spirits, a belief he shared in principle, but for the ease with which they are fooled by their malevolent neighbors, and manipulated by himself as well. On the other hand, the story does not depict the authorities as corrupt, as one might expect, for Sapir concedes that the villagers’ argument holds water.37 Sapir has yet to despair of obtaining justice for the theft of his belongings. Sa’id, his servant and companion, proceeds ahead of him to Thila, north of Shibam, to seek justice from the Imam. There Sapir has a visit from an apostate, whom he takes for a Muslim, based on his attire, and is therefore surprised when the visitor engages him in Hebrew conversation. The guest questions Sapir about Jerusalem and its Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers, and then broaches the ageless question of which of the monotheistic faiths is the true one. Sapir answers forthrightly, “The one to which all admit!,” in the spirit of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari (as he explains to his readers), but the Jewish onlookers gesture to him to be silent, for they fear that the apostate will use his responses to inform against him before the government. Sapir’s behavior is typical of the western traveler, boasting of his courage in such verbal exchanges, regardless of the identity and power of his interlocutor. Sapir appears to have impressed the apostate with his wisdom, for the latter proceeds to seek his counsel on – of all things! – a matter of Muslim law. It is Ramadan, and he relates that although normally he fasts until the stars appear, today he feels weak, and asks Sapir whether he would be allowed to eat at sunset, as believers generally do. Sapir answers in the affirmative, pointing out that Muslims are not required to fast uninterrupted for an entire month, and that the Quran exempts people from fasting under exceptional circumstances. The apostate chuckles in appreciation of Sapir’s clever reply, and obviously Sapir expects the same reaction from his readers, as in the tale of his Hudaydah encounter with the holy Muslim. Convinced of Sapir’s sagacity, the apostate comes to the point of his visit; he asks Sapir to feel his pulse and diagnose his ailment. Sapir responds that, while the body is not sick, the soul is very sick, and assures the “patient” that he can heal him if he will heed his advice. Abruptly, however, Sapir changes the subject to the matter of his theft, perhaps sensing that the apostate might not appreciate the suggestion that he ought to revert to Judaism. The apostate promises to intervene with the Imam on his behalf in the matter of his stolen property.

37 Yosef Tobi, The Jews of Yemen: Studies in their History and Culture (Leiden, 1999), 183–91.

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Now the apostate asks Sapir to take a walk with him, ostensibly so that he can speak without being overheard. He relates in detail and with great pathos the circumstances of his apostasy: as leader of the Jews of Sana’a, he was imprisoned and tortured following a false allegation, and ultimately forced to choose between forfeiting his life or his faith. He converted, with his wife and son, and the authorities showered him with honor and property, but he continues to suffer the sting of shame. Sapir advises him to flee to Aden, where the British rule, and there return to Judaism without fear of retribution. Clearly, at this point in their conversation Sapir feels comfortable making such a suggestion. Nonetheless, the apostate gently evades his suggestion, claiming that the time is not yet ripe for such a dramatic step. Sapir’s encounter with the apostate has several universal features. The initial two exchanges, about religion and fasting, resemble a test to determine whether Sapir is as wise as he is presumed to be, in another instance of the phenomenon of the stranger’s ordeal. The locals’ assumption that strangers are adept at medicine is amply documented in Yemen from the sixteenth century, and Sapir is aware of this reputation, for he notes that everyone thinks that all Jerusalemites are doctors and magicians. Of course, Jerusalemites are not exactly westerners, and, more precisely, the assumption that they have spiritual powers probably rests on the image of Jerusalem as the home of kabbalah, the occult science to which Yemenite Jews attributed healing powers as great or greater than western medicine. Finally, Sapir’s political advice to the apostate fits into the broad context of looking to the outsider for direction, although the apostate’s problem does not involve a judicial struggle, of the type invoked by Georg Simmel.38 Sapir’s meeting with the apostate also resonates with the visits to Yemen of the apostates Wolff and Stern. Sapir’s experience is an inversion of theirs, not so much because the apostate is a convert to Islam, rather than Christianity, but especially because in his case the stranger is the Jew and the host the apostate. In another inversion, while strangers visiting the Arabian peninsula frequently disguise themselves by donning Arab identities, here it is the local who is in disguise, insofar as his garb and headgear fool Sapir into taking him for a Muslim. Finally, although, like Wolff and Stern, Sapir’s apostate enjoys the backing of the authorities, he expresses no interest in winning more converts to Islam – though Sapir mentions that he has acted against local Jews on various occasions – and expresses remorse at having abandoned his true faith.

38 Simmel, “The Stranger,” 145–46.

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The theme of Sapir’s medical and magical expertise returns in the continuation of this story. The next day, the apostate arranges an interview for Sapir with the Imam’s viceroy, who promises to have his property returned. This official then asks Sapir to check his pulse, and Sapir determines that he is indeed ill. Lacking pharmaceuticals, Sapir can only make dietary suggestions. The patient is embarrassed to ask for an amulet, which, Sapir explains, “they” (presumably the Muslims, though perhaps Yemenites, generally) value more than medicine, and even so the apostate later recommends that Sapir give him one. Sapir demurs, explaining that he is without his tools, for even his prayer book was stolen, but promises to prepare one when he reaches Sana’a.39 Throughout Sapir’s narrative of these Ramadan encounters, he expatiates upon the deleterious effect on the body of fasting all day and feasting all night. Sapir generalizes that the Ramadan regimen makes everyone look ill, and he describes the viceroy in particular as old, weak, and sick from fasting, with a greenish complexion which he attributes to a gastrointestinal ailment caused by fasting.40 Sapir’s sweeping assessment of the ill health caused by Ramadan carries an implicit message of the superiority of Judaism to Islam. In the same vein, given Sapir’s worldview, it seems clear that he answered the apostate manipulatively and dishonestly when he insisted that his illness was spiritual rather than physical, taking advantage of his reputation for medical expertise to score points in the theological skirmish. Finally, Sapir may have refused to supply the prized amulet because he diagnosed the patient’s condition as purely medical, and hence requiring no more than a secular remedy. If so, it remains unclear whether his strategy bespeaks a skeptical posture vis-à-vis the palliative potential of treatments based on kabbalistic techniques. Sapir’s final encounter in Thila is also his last attempt at recovering his stolen possessions. The local Jews urge him to bring his case before the Imam, implying their faith in his sense of justice. They instruct Sapir to attract the Imam’s attention as he exits the mosque on Friday. Ostensibly, the plan succeeds, for as the Imam passes, Sapir calls out “Save [me], our lord, the pious Imam!” The Imam sends a lackey to question Sapir, and Sapir hands him the favorable written judgment. Unaccountably, however, Sapir takes fright and heads for Shibam, which is under a different sovereignty, undercutting his boast of fearlessly confronting even the powerful.

39 Sapphire Stone, 1:79r-80r. 40 Ibid., 1:78v.

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Sana’a and Beyond Sapir reaches Sana’a in time for Passover, and by then he is blackened by the sun and utterly worn out. He meets the city’s leading rabbinical authority, Yahya Qara, who expresses dismay at his appearance, and Sapir responds, jokingly: “If I look like you (pl.) [i.e. dark-skinned], I am lucky to still be alive!” This riposte bears more than an air of racial prejudice, and yet Sapir undoubtedly expects it to be well received, and in fact it does not meet with any sort of adverse reaction. Sapir asks his colleague about the community’s practices regarding the conduct of the Passover Seder and the preparation of matzo. Qara answers that in Sana’a, women bake matzo every day during the holiday. Anticipating that Sapir will suspect the propriety of this practice, he assures him, somewhat acerbically, that the fresh matzo is kosher even though it is not dried out and old from having been baked thirty days before the holiday. Qara adds that Jerusalem scholars preceded Sapir and saw that the matzo is kosher, because the women of Sana’a are nimble and quick, and do not allow the dough time to leaven. Nevertheless, Sapir asks whether the women can be trusted, and Qara replies in the affirmative. He quotes Ecc. 7.16, “Do not be too righteous,” adding to his two previous expressions of impatience with criticism by outsiders.41 The reference to Jerusalem scholars suggests that it was Sapir’s Palestinian colleagues that questioned the Sana’a tradition, and it seems entirely plausible that scholars from the Holy Land would pride themselves on their knowledge and tradition, and assume a condescending attitude towards diaspora communities, suspecting the validity of their traditions, as Sapir did on a number of occasions. In this case, the culprit may have been David Nahmias, an emissary to Yemen in 1839, who would not eat matzo at the Seder of his host, Joseph Qara, head of the Sana’a rabbinical court.42 The incident exemplifies the pitfalls facing a traveler as a result of experiences locals may have had with previous strangers. What is exceptional is Qara’s insistence on the soundness of his community’s tradition, for typically Palestinian emissaries are regarded with veneration and awe, of the kind implicit in the Yemenites’ assumption that Sapir is a master kabbalist. In Yemen, this reaction is tempered by pride in the antiquity of their settlement, and, by extension, in the authenticity of their liturgical and ritual traditions.

41 Ibid., 1:88v. 42 See Aharon Gaimani, “The Emissary R. David Nahmias and the Matzo of Yemen” [Hebrew], Peamim 64 (1995), 40.

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The tense conversation between Sapir and Qara does not sour relations between the two, for Sapir relates how much he enjoyed the Seder, including both the matzo and the liturgical poems. And yet, the evening has a poignant element, for Sapir weeps at being away from home on this particular holiday, away from his table, surrounded by the children he adores. Those present intuit the source of his anguish and shed tears of empathy. Sapir weeps copiously as he performs the customary recitation of Canticles, pouring out his heart “for her,” namely for his wife. This is yet another admission by Sapir of the pain of separation from his family, one rarely found in the travel accounts of rabbinical emissaries.43 Unexpectedly, after Passover, Sapir receives a visit from the apostate he had met in Thila. Once again the purpose of the visit is medical: the apostate asks Sapir to heal his wife of her eye disease, or more precisely, to treat her if he so chooses, his hesitation apparently rooted in his wife’s identity as a nonJew. Sapir responds that this would require him to go to the shops of the apothecaries in the market, which would put him at risk of being molested by local fanatics. The apostate offers to go on his behalf, but Sapir explains that he must see the medicines in order to know what to order and in what quantities. The apostate settles for having his son accompany Sapir, and instructs him to take a circuitous route, one also patronized by Sana’a’s Jews. At one of the shops, Sapir is about to request his supplies, including sugar and blue paper, when people surround him shouting “qudsi, qudsi!” He is in real danger of being assaulted by the young men, who strain to reach him to do him bodily harm, ignoring their elders’ cries to desist. The apothecary saves Sapir by ushering him to a nearby shop, one owned by a Jewish merchant, while the air fills with stones flung by the frustrated hotheads.44 Sapir’s explanation for why he must visit the apothecary reads like a stratagem to satisfy his host, for Sapir is always more curious than cautious, and would not be denied a visit to the market. Indeed, Sapir describes himself here as brave and hot-tempered, and adds: “unlike my brothers, the sons of Yemen.” This is a topos of Orientalist travel literature, which contrasts the courageous westerner with the timorous Oriental. The Muslims’ behavior in this incident is complicated. Sapir’s would-be assailants are Muslim, but so are their elders, who cry out “Shame, shame!” in a vain effort to defuse the situation. The shopkeeper who rescues Sapir is also a 43 Sapphire Stone, 1:89v. 44 Ibid., 1:92r. The purpose of the blue paper is unclear. It is also possible that the order was a sham, for a generation later, Manzoni prepares sugar water for villagers who ask him for medication.

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Muslim, and the scene is thus not a binary one of Muslim hostility towards Jews. Moreover, the youths’ cry, “qudsi, qudsi,” reveals that, while Muslims generally regard Jews as lowly infidels, Sapir’s status as a stranger particularly antagonizes these locals, against the background of the Yemenites’ perennial suspicion of foreign unbelievers as spies and enemies. Indeed, Sapir’s savior, the Jewish merchant, tells him that his narrow escape is not unprecedented. He relates that ten years earlier two fair-haired young Christians visited Sana’a, but soon locals pressured the Imam to execute them as spies, claiming that Christians ought not to be allowed into their domain. The Imam urged the foreigners to escape, and they did so by feigning illness. Seeking to hire donkeys to carry them to safety in Hudaydah, then under Turkish rule, they learned that Muslim law prohibits unbelievers from riding, and so hired stretcher-bearers instead, and, as they paid liberally, volunteers for the position abounded, among them Saʻidi, descendants of the Prophet. The strangers are therefore quoted as taunting the locals with the observation that, barred from hiring donkeys, they ended by hiring Muslims and even Saʻidi! Sapir must have enjoyed this joke at the expense of Muslim belief and expected it would amuse his readers as well.45 In Sana’a, Sapir receives an unusual sort of material gift. For the hosts of emissaries to offer such gifts was anything but unusual, and in Shibam the Jewish community’s leaders bring bottles of brandy and an assortment of fruit and toasted seeds, “as is their custom,” when they pay him a visit on the Sabbath.46 In contrast to the simple food gifts, a Sana’a Jew presents Sapir with a red bonnet of Turkish wool, which, he explains, the bonnet’s owner took when he participated in the burial party of Turkish soldiers killed in an uprising. Sapir implies that he was given the bonnet because no one local would dare to wear it, since it would identify him as a supporter of the Ottomans, which would arouse hostility.47 Thus, this gift accentuates the gulf separating stranger from host, with the bonnet’s donor assuming that the gift object dangerous to himself and his people would not place Sapir in jeopardy. He may

45 Ibid., 1:92v. 46 Ibid., 1:87v. Similarly, in Qiryat al Jebel, north of Sana’a, local Jews honor Sapir with food gifts, offering brandy, fruit, nuts and seeds – Ibid., 1:76r. Ultimately, Sapir brings home what a contemporary claims is a very valuable handwritten Bible, in the western tradition of acquiring the ancient treasures of the Orient. See Shneur Sachs, “Approbation,” Ibid., 1:n.p. On the interest of western Jewry in the books and manuscripts of the Yemenite Jews, see Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books? 47 Sapphire Stone, 1:90r-91r.

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even have regarded Sapir as doing him a favor by relieving him of the dangerous bonnet. On a side trip from Sana’a, Sapir visits Hajjah, northwest of the city and west of ʻAmran, and here is he asked to heal the sick, and proves fairly adept. The patient is Salem, an elderly man who suffers from fits, and the townspeople assume that adjurations and amulets are the appropriate remedy, because they suspect his business partner of having cast a spell upon him following a quarrel. Sapir, however, attributes Salem’s condition to environmental factors. He explains that Hajjah’s dirty air and intense heat are generally harmful to those who migrated there from Sana’a, and particularly to a healthy, fat, man like Salem. Also prejudicial to one’s health is the custom of eating food hot directly off the fire and heavily spiced, particularly with cardamom, a local favorite. Consequently, Sapir denies knowing how to perform adjurations, and claims that his amulets have no effect upon demons. These declarations are transparently designed to convince the locals to try medical remedies. Specifically, Sapir advises them to shun hot and spicy food, and to drink every morning an unspecified medical potion. He approves of the accepted practice of sucking blood from the neck using horns, noting that the Yemenites are unfamiliar with bloodletting from the arm, as with the therapeutic value of leeches or the Spanish fly. Sapir concludes by reporting, with satisfaction and more than a hint of tongue-in-cheek irony, that shortly thereafter the witchcraft dispelled, and Salem regained his health.48 Apart from the hosts’ expectation that the stranger has valuable knowledge to offer, Sapphire Stone offers an example of Simmel’s observation that locals tend to ask the stranger to resolve a controversy or dispute. In Kukhlan, which Sapir visits after Hajjah, he finds the Jewish community divided into two synagogues, on account of two ritual slaughterers, both of whom were disqualified by the Sana’a rabbinical court. A group of locals complain to Sapir about the disqualification of one of these officials, whom they claim is an expert, and they invite Sapir to examine and ordain him. They also complain about the other ritual slaughterer, for continuing to practice despite the disqualification, apparently serving the rival local group. Sapir declines to examine the alleged expert, explaining that it would be unethical for him to countermand the actions of the Sana’a rabbinical court. His refusal is a classic instance of a gift withheld, another common dynamic in gift exchange, and a behavior as likely as gift refusal to offend and even to provoke violence. Sapir adds that “here,” namely in Yemen, he only eats what he

48 Ibid., 1:105v.

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personally inspects, and even then, only poultry. Sapir may have reserved this information for his readers, but if it was made during his exchange with the locals, it may have been an elegant device to avoid having to take sides in the controversy. Ultimately, he advises the community leaders to make peace between the two camps, and concludes by announcing that his efforts were successful, “for now,” for which the leaders bless him.49 In Rada’a, east of Dhamar, Sapir encounters another Jewish community riven into two camps. Here the division is between the “natives” and the contingent of Sana’a refugees. Sapir esteems the latter group and is upset that they are subservient to the locals, whom he describes as “hard” and “sons of [the biblical] Zeruiah.” Sapir explains that the governor prefers the locals, because they feed him information. Indeed, we learn that they inform the qadi that Sapir is staying with Salim al Qafih, a Sana’a refugee. Sapir is summoned for an interview, but Qafih replies that this is out of the question on the Sabbath, and conceals this exchange from Sapir, to spare him anxiety. This is not a conflict Sapir can resolve, nor is his intervention invited. On the contrary, after the weekend, Sapir’s host hustles him off to Sana’a, to avoid embroiling him in the struggle. The depth of the antagonism between locals and refugees was such that the qadi slaps Qafih with a fine when he discovers that he was responsible for Sapir’s escape.50 Apart from the universal themes in the stranger-host encounter, there are also some themes that, if not exclusive to Yemen, are at least commonly found in travelogues to this country. Specifically, Sapir is repeatedly faced with having to decide whether or not Yemenite traditions are authentic. These situations have an Orientalist air when Sapir portrays himself as the shrewd, sophisticated, westerner, in contrast to the gullible Orientals. Most of the Jews of Kawkaban, just south of Shibam, are Sana’a refugees, including the rabbi, Yahya al Badihi. Sapir learns that Badihi escaped from an impregnable prison, and the locals claim that he could only have done so by magic. Sapir respects Badihi, but doubts this explanation, writing “I have another supposition;” bribery would seem to be a likely alternative.51 This anecdote sits well with instances in which Sapir avoids requests to perform acts of practical kabbalah when a naturalistic explanation explains a seemingly supernatural phenomenon, like the stoning of the water jugs. Another type of incident involving skepticism and gullibility relates to the antiquity of Yemen’s civilization. In ʻAmran, Sapir determines that an allegedly

49 Ibid., 1:104v. 50 Ibid., 1:106r-v. 51 Ibid., 1:87v.

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ancient Torah scroll is not particularly old.52 In the same region, he hears about the discovery, a year earlier, of ancient copper tablets, with inscriptions in an unknown language. Locals attribute the tablets to Yemen’s pre-Islamic pagan civilization, which is why Muslims do not scruple to melt them down for the copper. Sapir inquires whether any whole tablets remain, and his question suggests that, while he was not convinced the story was true, neither was he entirely dismissive.53 We can empathize with his dilemma, because the history of Yemen as the seat of the ancient Himyarite civilization was already known, although the discovery and wholesale deciphering of its artifacts lay in the future. Sapir evinces a similar ambivalence regarding the tradition among the Jews of Shibam that there are two “cities of refuge” in the area, referring to the biblical concept of cities affording unintentional killers safety from revenge at the hands of their victim’s relatives. Sapir flatly rejects this tradition, since the Bible only prescribes the creation of such cities within the boundaries of the Holy Land. And yet, Sapir goes on to admit that he went in search of evidence of these cities, and, although he found none, his decision to search indicates that he left room for the possibility that the tradition was true.54 These dilemmas hark back to incidents we have seen, in which Sapir must abandon his skeptical posture vis-à-vis Yemenite lore, and acknowledge that his stock of knowledge is not always superior to that of his oriental hosts. Another facet of the issue of antiquity and gullibility is the Yemenites’ selfimage as a diaspora that antedates the emergence of the global Jewish diaspora, whose traditions they suspect of distortion. Thus, when Sapir encounters exotic traditions that are held to be ancient, he hesitates to doubt their authenticity. For example, he identifies the Yemenites’ everyday eating habits with the authentic Passover Seder described in the Babylonian Talmud.55 He is also convinced of the authenticity of their tradition of biblical cantillation.56 In such cases, Sapir must balance his image of Oriental gullibility with his belief in the antiquity of their civilization, which, while partly true, also represents a romanticism characteristic of the Orientalist perspective.57 Having reached Sana’a and made a side trip to the east, visiting Sa’wan and Tan’em, as well as a northerly excursion to the ʻAmran region, Sapir returns to

52 53 54 55 56 57

Ibid., 1:104r. Ibid., 1:103v. Ibid., 1:88r-v. Ibid., 1:58r-59v. Ibid., 1:53v-56v. Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 41–42.

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Hudaydah at the end of a six-month sojourn in the country. He proceeds to Aden, where he spends a month before moving on to India, his original destination. In Aden, the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak, as Sapir falls ill and requires medical treatment. There is no doctor, but a local Jew supplies an incantation and amulet for fever and writes names and adjurations on the soles of Sapir’s feet. Sapir recovers quickly, after preparing some medicines and administering them to himself, which reinforces our impression that he put less stock in occult remedies.58 In Aden, Sapir confronts again the question of the reliability of Yemenite claims to antiquity. He shares the information provided by an earlier Palestinian emissary, that on a high mountain located two hours from Aden there is a large rock upon which is inscribed in Ashurite characters: “I, Solomon b. David, king of Israel, came to this point.” Sapir comments that, if true, this inscription would prove that Aden is the biblical Ezion-Geber but admits that he is dubious. Remarkably, however, Sapir states in a footnote that he has learned to take care not to dismiss something simply because it seems unlikely, since it often happens that things of this sort turn out to be true.59 This note of caution would seem to be the fruit of experience, which modulated Sapir’s skepticism and, symmetrically, enriched him with a refreshing capacity for wonder, although of course it also rendered him more gullible. Sapir is in Aden for the Jewish festival of Tabernacles, when citrons play an important role in the religious rituals. Sapir observes that the local citrons, which he finds beautiful, are damaged because they are not wrapped in flax, as is customary in his home country. He shares this tradition with the locals, but they assure him that the abused citrons remain suitable, because they retain their natural appearance. This response echoes the Yemenite confidence in their heritage. Moreover, Sapir’s interlocutors admonish him not to add obligations unknown to their ancestors. This silences him, partly perhaps because there is indeed such a principle in Jewish law.60 Aden is the site of the most Orientalist of Sapir’s stranger-host Yemen encounters. Some locals complain to him about their poverty and maintain that the freedom brought by the European powers is not worth the accompanying

58 Sapphire Stone, 2:37. The chronicle of Sapir’s Aden sojourn first appeared in print in 1866, the year the first volume of Sapphire Stone appeared in print, and long before the publication of the second. See: Sapir, “Bet Eden,” Kevod ha-Levanon 3, no. 1–4 (5.1–16.2.1866); no. 7–12 (29.3.1866–14.6.1866); Beer-Marx, Fortresses of Paper, 256. 59 Ibid., 2:2, n. 2. 60 Ibid., 2:29. On the aforementioned principle, see Isaac Lampronti, Pahad Yitzhaq (Lyck, 1866), 5:58v, s.v. Sephinah qetanah.

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expense and luxury. Formerly, they explain, the Arab rulers did not burden them as heavily as they did their brethren in Sana’a and elsewhere in Yemen, since they, the Adenite Jews, learned to always seem poor and lowly, a way of life they found perfectly satisfactory. They describe themselves as having lived in dark huts, untroubled and without expense, eating millet bread for free and other food for very cheap. Half of a silver sheqel could buy enough food for a week, as well as old clothes, for they had no need of luxurious clothing; the other half sheqel would go to savings, and to silver jewelry for their wives and daughters, although these would be worn in private and only sparingly. The Adenite Jews find this state of affairs preferable to the new conditions. True, the British knocked down the dilapidated old shacks, straightened the roads, and granted them a generous residential area, but they also forced them to build stone houses of comely appearance and to clean the courtyards and streets. Additionally, the British introduced a tax on wine and beer, and the Jews are now confronted with a property tax, albeit a low one. Under the British, the Jews feel obliged to wear clean clothes, lest they incur the disdain of those in authority, who would then refuse to patronize their services. The development the Adenites resent the most is the recent wave of newcomers from Yemen and Sana’a, refugees of violence and oppression, who require charitable assistance. Since Aden is an important international port, there is also immigration from overseas, which, Sapir is told, drives up three- or fourfold the price of food and other necessities. The Adenites concede that the new conditions have enriched some of their number but find that generally the hardship outweighs the advantages. Sapir answers in the voice of colonialism. He assures the disgruntled that in a few years they will no longer claim that life used to be better, because the improvement in their quality of life will be palpable and undeniable, such that their children will not yearn for bygone days, but rather celebrate their newfound equality. In fact, Sapir concludes, most of the local Jews already appreciate the improvement in their situation, and bless God and the British for it.61 This is a classic debate over the impact of European colonialism on the Orientals, with Sapir serving as mouthpiece for western civilization. The British had been the ruling power in Aden for twenty years, since 1839, a period of time sufficient for the local Jews to conclude that, for all its benefits, British rule and western civilization were not to their advantage.62 61 Sapphire Stone, 2:30. 62 For other Palestinian emissaries to Yemen, see Ya’ari, “Sheliḥim me-Eretz Yisrael leTeman,” Sinai 4 (1938/39), 392–430. Mention must be made of Hayyim Ya’aqov Feinstein, an emissary to Yemen and India in 1873: Ibid., 416–21; Idem, Sheluhei Eretz Yisrael, 134, 831–32.

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India, Asia, and Australia The second volume of Sapphire Stone chronicles the continuation of Sapir’s voyage, beginning with India. He reaches Bombay in November 1859, spends half a year there, two months in Kochi and ten in Calcutta. From the subcontinent, it is on to Burma and Java, and finally Australia and New Zealand. Sapir’s stranger-host experiences in these lands are quite different from his Yemen saga, which expands our perspective on his personality, particularly on his traveler persona. Discussion of Sapir’s encounters in Asia must acknowledge the continued dearth of remarks concerning his fundraising activity. Sapir’s first references appear in his account of his travels in Burma. We read that the wealthy and generous Jewish merchants of Yangon give him their donation for Jerusalem, while the Jews of Mawlamyine had already sent him their donation via Calcutta.63 There are brief comments about fundraising in Jakarta and later in Sydney. In Jakarta, he comments: “Of all the emissaries from the Holy Land, I was the first to come to this country.”64 Here, atypically, he foregrounds his identity as a fundraiser, expressing pride in having reached territory uncharted by his predecessors. Also in Jakarta, a local Jew tells Sapir that formerly he had sent his contributions for Palestine to Amsterdam, a clearinghouse for such activity.65 In Sydney, Sapir reports that he suffers from the heat of summer – a surprising comment from a native of Palestine – and thus writes: “I, therefore, hastened to perform my work for Jerusalem, with what they generously contributed and dispatched to the holy city.”66 We later read that Sapir leaves Melbourne abruptly, in order not to compete with a fellow fundraiser from Hebron, who preceded him in the city.67 Sapir also informs us that in Bendigo,

From Aden, Feinstein wrote a public letter, which provides a detailed account of Yemenite Jewry at the time: Hamagid January 20, 1874 (24 Tevet, 5634). Feinstein explains that he failed to raise money in Yemen, because the Jews are so badly off, and suggests that the Alliance Israélite Universelle arrange to appoint a Hakham Bashi for Yemen. In India, Feinstein publishes halakhic works on the tension concerning the Jewish identity of the Jews of Kochi. See also: Ya’ari, “Sheliḥim me-Eretz Yisrael le-Teman,” 416–21; Yehuda Nini, The Jews of the Yemen 1800–1914, trans. H. Galai (Chur, 1991), 160–62; Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 104. I gloss over Feinstein’s odyssey because his report leaves no record of his stranger-host encounters. 63 Sapphire Stone, 2:114. 64 Ibid., 2:122. 65 Ibid., 2:122–23. 66 Ibid., 2:133. 67 Ibid., 2:138–39.

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he set up a collection box, and adds: “as I did in all the cities I visited,” which is his first mention of having done so.68 During his journey home, Sapir notes that he would have wanted to “check the baskets and harvest the fruit” that he left on his outward voyage, and this reference to collection boxes in Yemen is the first mention of his having engaged in fundraising in that phase of his expedition.69 The most impressive case of Sapir’s reticence concerning his fundraising is the story of his departure from Australia. Apparently, the emissary from Hebron who preceded him to Melbourne is Hayyim Zvi Sneersohn, and Sapir leaves Melbourne after the Melbourne Synagogue Committee refuses to help him, because it is already supporting Sneersohn.70 Contradicting Sapir’s portrait of fair play among emissaries, London’s Jewish Chronicle relates that “these two gentlemen . . . are entirely opposed to one another . . . so that he who comes first leaves the other to fare badly.”71 Sapir accuses Sneersohn in the local press of raising money for himself rather than for Palestine, indeed, a not uncommon emissary practice. The Jewish leadership of Melbourne writes to Palestine to verify Sneersohn’s credentials, and when these prove genuine, Sapir’s name is mud, and he quits Australia post-haste.72 The Melbourne leadership publishes a letter in the Hebrew periodical Hamagid praising Sneersohn and condemning “the informer” Sapir. The letter expresses surprise that Jerusalem would deputize “such an evil person” as their emissary.73 Of his struggle with Sneersohn and his ignominious departure, Sapir says not a word, though here it is clearly his ignominy

68 Ibid., 2:140. 69 Ibid., 2:146. 70 Lazarus Morris Goldman, The Jews in Victoria in the Nineteenth Century (Melbourne, 1954), 157. 71 Jewish Chronicle, 25.4.1862. 72 Israel Klausner, Rabbi Hayyim Zvi Shneurson [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1973), 23–27; Ya’ari, Sheluḥei Eretz Yisra’el, 817. The Committee publishes a statement in The Argus (3.1.1863), declaring: “We are therefore satisfied that the wicked and malevolent aspersions upon his [Sneersohn’s] character, which have recently appeared in the Press, are utterly without foundation, and totally false.” – see Morris Z. Forbes, “Palestine Appeals in the Fifties and Sixties,” Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal 3 (1952), 329. See also: Raymond Apple, “Rabbi Jacob Levi Saphir and his Voyage to Australia,” Journal and Proceedings (Australian Jewish Historical Society) 6 (1968), 195–215; Alan D. Crown, “The Initiatives and Influences in the Development of Australian Zionism, 1850–1948,” Jewish Social Studies 39 (1977), 302–03; Ron Bartur, “Rhetoric of Vision and Leadership: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Appearances of Rabbi Hayyim Zvi Sneersohn and his Writings to Advance the Redemption of Israel” [Hebrew], Mayyim Mi-Dolyo 19–20 (2007/08–2008/09), 217–19. 73 Klausner, Rabbi Hayyim Zvi Shneurson, 26.

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that dictates his silence, rather than the assumption that the subject would not interest his readers. In India, as in Yemen, Sapir evinces intense interest in local beliefs and customs, and his hosts are generous with this type of intellectual gift. Sapir is assisted in Bombay by Joseph Ezekiel Rajpurkar, an English teacher in the city’s Jewish school. Fundamentally, Rajpurkar gives Sapir the gift of language, serving as interpreter to locals who speak only Hindi and Marathi. But Rajpurkar also supports Sapir’s efforts to learn about Jewish culture in India, an area in which he himself was active.74 Sapir describes the ethnographic project he undertook with Rajpurkar: “Together we tried to find out what we could by talking to people, since there were no old writings, neither in Hebrew nor in any other language.”75 Specifically, Sapir inquires after beliefs regarding life after death, eschatology, angels and demons, and other topics. He also mentions the issue of the messiah’s advent, a question habitually broached in encounters with Jews from exotic lands. Rajpurkar mentions that some of the same topics were investigated a year earlier by the bishop of the local missionaries. This reflects a fascinating cultural intersection between westerners of different faiths. Rajpurkar’s comment probably refers to John Wilson, a well-known Protestant missionary to Bombay, who published a Hebrew grammar in Marathi, the local dialect.76 Wilson also created a school, which Jewish children could attend, and at which they were taught Hebrew as well as English. Sapir reassures his readers that no one converted, and his reference to Wilson is relatively benign.77 Sapir pursues his project in Kochi as well, and his hosts are equally generous. He is invited to the home of David Rehavi, the community Nassi or President, to participate in the community’s festival of Lag baʻOmer.78 Uncharacteristically, Sapir does not expand upon the beliefs and rituals surrounding the festival, but reports that he and the others spent the night feasting and reading from the Zohar and other mystical writings. What stands out is the intimacy of guest and host, the absence of distance separating him – as outsider and observer – from his hosts.79

74 Joseph Ezekiel Rajpurkar, The Jewish Propitiatory Prayer, or, A Prayer for the Forgiveness of Sins, translated from Hebrew into Marathi (Bombay, 1859). 75 Sapphire Stone, 2:42. 76 Ibid., 2:43. See Wilson’s The Rudiments of Hebrew Grammar in Maráthí, with the Points (Bombay, 1832), with some biblical stories for children in Marathi. 77 Sapphire Stone, 2:48. 78 Sapir mentions that two other scholars from Jerusalem were also invited, without naming them or stating their institutional affiliation and the purpose of their voyage. 79 Ibid., 2:56.

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Buddhism engages Sapir’s interest to some degree.80 Naturally, given his background, he regards it as idolatry and, as such, as an abomination. However, as Richard Marks has noted, Sapir does not go beyond superficial observation from a discreet distance. This attitude contrasts with that of David D’Beth Hillel, like Sapir a Lithuanian-born rabbi from the Holy Land, though not an emissary. D’Beth Hillel shares Sapir’s contempt for Buddhism as idolatry but is anything but diplomatic about it: he bulls his way into temples, engages the priests in religious disputation, and ridicules their beliefs. On the other hand, D’Beth Hillel and Sapir share the Orientalist tendency to draw connections between the idolatrous practices of India and those of the ancient Near East, as mentioned in the Bible.81 Sapir’s hosts in India habitually honor his station with a suitable level of hospitality. Upon arrival in Bombay, the wagon drivers at the quay recognize that he is Jewish and bring him to the synagogue, where the sexton offers him a small room next to the women’s section, a room reserved for honored guests, and then brings him a meal. We read that the sexton extends these gestures of hospitality after Sapir identifies himself as an emissary from Jerusalem; implicitly, less esteemed guests meet with more tepid welcome.82 In Kochi, too, Sapir is immediately given a room, “as is their custom for all guests from the Land of Israel, and especially the emissary of the kolel [rabbinical seminary].”83 Not so in Calcutta, where he is forced to rent a room, and is only invited home by a local Jew after more than a month in the city. Sapir explains that at one time the community’s affluent men would cast lots to distribute an emissary – or any visiting rabbinic scholar – among themselves; at some point this arrangement was abandoned, and even such distinguished visitors were left to their own devices.84 Whatever the reasons for this inhospitable behavior, the Calcutta anecdote starkly illustrates the opposite of gift exchange, namely the withholding of a gift. On the other hand, the Jews of Calcutta offer Sapir a remarkable material gift. He writes that “the greatest honor they can do for an esteemed guest is to 80 On Sapir’s investigations into the beliefs of India’s other religions, see: Richard G. Marks, “Hinduism, Torah, and Travel: Jacob Sapir in India,” Shofar 30 (2012), 26–51; Idem, “Jacob Sapir’s Journey through Southern India in 1860: Four Chapters on Indian Life from Even Sapir: Translated, Annotated, and Introduced,” The Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies 13 (2013), 73–95. 81 See: David D’Beth Hillel, The Travels of Rabbi David D’Beth Hillel (Madras, 1832), 146–47, 157–58, 182–85; Marks, “David d’Beth Hillel and Jacob Sapir: Their Encounters with Temple Hinduism in 19th Century India,” PaRDeS 23 (2017), 19–39. 82 Sapphire Stone, 2:35. 83 Ibid., 2:56. 84 Ibid., 2:97–98.

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offer him ice chips in his glass of water.” The ice, he explains, is brought from America, a distance of 110 days’ travel, and it comes wrapped in straw and mortar, and is sold by weight, like sugar.85 This is valuable testimony to the global enterprise of the man known as “the ice king,” Frederic Tudor, who harvested ice from the coastal ponds of Massachusetts and exported it globally. Tudor shipped ice to India from 1835 to 1880, and his global sales peaked at 146,000 tons in 1857, virtually on the eve of Sapir’s arrival in Calcutta, Tudor’s primary Indian market.86 In Jakarta, Sapir takes advantage of his knowledge of Arabic to establish a relationship with the locals, since he does not know Chinese, Japanese or Dutch. He has a piece of paper with the name of a street of Muslims, some of whom know Arabic, and when they emerge from the mosque, they duly find him a night’s lodging. The next day, he goes to the Prussian consul, who directs him to the home of a Jew. There is no question of Sapir disguising himself as a Muslim, but here, in contrast to Yemen, the common language was a bond strong enough for the local Arabs to extend him hospitality, despite the religious divide.87 Sapir is hosted in style by Jakarta’s Vice Governor, who gives orders for his office to bear all of Sapir’s expenses. In fact, Sapir falls ill in Jakarta, and the Vice Governor sends a physician. This incident represents another inversion of the familiar pattern of stranger-host encounters in the East, as Sapir’s host – himself a westerner – assumes responsibility for the medical treatment of the stranger from Jerusalem. The Vice Governor also offers Sapir a lovely gift of knowledge, escorting him around his garden, and pointing out exotic animals and birds not found in Europe. Ultimately, the Vice Governor pays Sapir’s fare to Australia, and instructs the captain to take good care of him.88 Why the Vice Governor is so fond of Sapir is unclear, but Sapir relates that the two conducted many discussions on various topics, which, however, always came around to the subject of religion. Sapir explains that this sort of polite religious discourse is typical of Protestants like the Vice Governor, a generalization presumably based on Sapir’s experiences with missionaries, either at home in Jerusalem or during his travels. Sapir adds that this behavior is especially

85 Ibid., 2:108. 86 David G. Dickason, “The Nineteenth-Century Indo-American Ice Trade: An Hyperborean Epic,” Modern Asian Studies 25 (1991), 53–89. 87 Sapphire Stone, 2:118–19. This experience also reflects Sapir’s double identity, as belonging to the cultures of both East and West, a quality discussed more fully below. 88 Ibid., 2:128.

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common in the East, where religion is mixed up with political matters, a generalization which in Islamic lands truly does date back to the Prophet himself. The Vice Governor makes no secret of his missionary agenda, for on the day of Sapir’s departure, he urges him to undertake the daily recitation of Psalm 22, in the belief that this would lead him to accept Christianity. Rather than protest, Sapir agrees that this is a wonderful idea, explaining to readers, and possibly also to his host, that the psalm in question truly inspires faith in divine providence, and is thus appropriate for recitation during a sea voyage.89 Once again, Sapir demonstrates his talent for defusing potentially tense encounters, which must have been important to him in light of the Vice Governor’s largesse. The Vice Governor’s offer to pay for Sapir’s transportation to Australia is consistent with Israel Benjamin’s description of the way emissaries were treated. This was true whether the stranger was outward bound or headed home. Thus, the Jews of Melbourne help Sapir with the cost of his return trip, as they did a Rabbi Alfrondi a few years later. In 1858, however, shortly before Sapir, the Board of Melbourne’s Bourke Street Synagogue refuse such support to Yehiel Bekhor Cohen, on the grounds that its congregants had made generous individual donations. Here, then, is another instance of a gift withheld.90 Letters of recommendation fall under the rubric of hospitality, as we have seen, and in India Sapir requires one of an unconventional sort. He leaves Kochi for Calcutta in the company of two fellow Jerusalemite scholars, and their itinerary takes the three through Alleppey. The Jewish merchants of Kochi, who regularly do business with the shippers of Alleppey, give Sapir and his companions letters of introduction, asking the shippers to help the strangers find passage to Calcutta.91 Material gifts are another familiar component of the emissary’s experience, as we have noted, but whereas in Yemen Sapir receives simple food gifts, Palestinian emissaries are sometimes offered precious gifts. For example, in 1832, in Chennai, a William Roberts gives D’Beth Hillel seven gold-painted palm leaves with Burmese writing that struck the recipient as ancient.92 Similarly, the Dean

89 Ibid. 90 Goldman, The Jews in Victoria in the Nineteenth Century, 154; Forbes, “Palestine Appeals in the Fifties and Sixties,” 323. 91 Sapphire Stone, 2:91. Again, Sapir fails to identify his fellow Jerusalemite rabbinical voyagers or to provide other information about them. 92 See D’Beth Hillel, The Travels of Rabbi David D’Beth Hillel, 127; Walter J. Fischel, Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands: The Travels of Rabbi David D’Beth Hillel (1824–1832) (New York, 1973), 117.

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of Melbourne gives Sneersohn, Sapir’s rival, a golden snuff box with a precious stone on its lid, which is powerful testimony to his charisma and to the outstanding success of his mission.93 Sapphire Stone does not report gifts of valuable trinkets, and while Sapir may have elected to omit mention of them, it seems more likely that his Australian hosts did not proffer any, given the Sneersohn imbroglio. In the case of the emissaries, there is a twist to the dynamic of gift-giving between stranger and host. Although the emissaries travel in order to receive gifts, namely donations for Palestine, historically they regard themselves as engaged more in dispensing than in receiving. Their gifts to their hosts are of various kinds, both material and cultural.94 Sapir’s account of his voyage to the East includes just one incident involving a material gift from him to his hosts. He arrives in Dunedin, in New Zealand, on the Wednesday before the festival of Purim, and learns that the local Jewish community does not have a handwritten Scroll of Esther, as the holiday’s ritual requires. He promptly writes one for them and completes it in time to recite it for them, thereby supplementing his material gift with the gift of ritual performance.95 The rest of Sapir’s gifts are gifts of knowledge. Emissaries were expected to be masters of rabbinic lore, and therefore were habitually honored with the invitation to preach. Sapir delivers eulogies in the homes of mourners in Calcutta and preaches there at length on the anniversary of the passing of Ezekiel Judah Jacob, a successful Baghdadi merchant who financed construction of the Naveh Shalome and Beth El synagogues. In this case, Sapir’s sermon reciprocates a gift by the sons of the deceased, who reportedly honored their father by paying poor people and scholars from Palestine and elsewhere to study Torah in his house for a year.96 Apart from preaching, emissaries share their knowledge of Jewish law when their hosts confront a halakhic dilemma or betray ignorance of the law. In Calcutta, Sapir points out an error in a Torah scroll.97 In Bombay, we read, disputes among local Jews are adjudicated by David Sassoon, the legendary leader of the Baghdadi community. Sapir explains that in difficult cases Sassoon consults scholars, “either an excellent scholar from the Holy Land or from the great

93 94 95 96 97

Klausner, “Haym Zvee Sneersohn’s Australian Mission,” Herzl Year Book 6 (1964–1965), 40. Malkiel, “The Shadar-Host Economy in Early Modern Italy.” Sapphire Stone, 2:141. Ibid., 2:100–01. Ibid., 2:233.

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court of Baghdad.”98 This supports the impression that Palestinian scholars roam the East, readily available for consultation, for a fee of course. Sapir explains that in Bombay there are ritual slaughterers, cantors, teachers and sextons, but no rabbi, not only because hiring one would involve a significant expense, but principally because such a rabbi would have to offer an exceedingly rare combination of skills: knowledge of the local languages and lifestyle, the ability to appear before the authorities and command respect, and the skill to direct a school in the modern style. Consequently, “educated Palestinian emissaries – acting for the kolel or for themselves – are never scarce here, and whoever wishes may have his fill of marrying and divorcing [the locals], issuing rulings, and distinguishing sacred from profane, pure from impure.”99 Sapir goes on to clarify that “there are knowledgeable locals, indeed perhaps more than Palestinians, but they do not bear the title Hakham, nor do they have the authority of the Land of Israel, for whoever departs therefrom is called hakham and rabi, and his attire testifies to that.” Here we get a sharp image of the role of attire in establishing the emissary’s authority and prestige, and Sapir ruefully admits that “not everyone who bears the crown [of the rabbinate] is actually a scholar.”100 Indeed, the sources on emissaries abound with complaints about charlatans and ignoramuses. Sapir has an opportunity to display his erudition during his own encounter with Sassoon. He is hosted a few miles out of town, and on the second day of Passover, which fell on the Sabbath, Sapir and his hosts ride into town on palanquins to visit Sassoon. Sassoon asks Sapir how he got to town, and when Sapir tells him, he responds that a certain scholar had announced that one may not use a palanquin on Sabbaths or festivals, citing the standard code of law, the Shulhan Arukh (1.522.2). Sapir is ready with his answer, and quips: “Whoever told you that is fit to serve as a palanquin bearer, for this only applies when the bearers are Jews.” Sapir notes with satisfaction that Sassoon and others present appreciate his response, not only for its content but also for his wit. This is yet another in the series of incidents in which Sapir portrays himself as quick-witted. Similarly, in Jakarta, he observes a Chinese religious ritual in which people worship fire by burning pieces of paper. People offer him pieces of paper to sacrifice and are

98 Ibid., 2:39. 99 Ibid., 2:36. 100 Ibid. On the importance attached to the emissary’s attire, see Malkiel, “The Shadar-Host Economy,” 408–09. Eric Leed, too, notes that locals size up the stranger based in part on “the appearance and manner of transport used by the guest” – Leed, The Mind of the traveler, 102.

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upset when he demurs. He proceeds to dip the paper into the adjacent canal and explains that he worships the water that rules the fire. Those present appreciate his response as humorous, and Sapir’s talent at finessing a delicate moment, which we have already noted, would seem to be the stock in trade of a diplomat, including a rabbinic emissary.101 For Sapir, the palanquin incident demonstrates that these Jews are “bewildered by the rulings of foreign scholars, one prohibiting and the other permitting, until they know not where to turn.”102 Yet, while Sapir may regard his colleagues as ignoramuses, diverse rulings do not reflect a lack of professionalism; on the contrary, legal experts habitually arrive at different conclusions after interpreting the law in different ways. Either way, the incident portrays the strangers’ gifts of halakhic expertise as a mixed blessing, on account of the chaos they sow. Charlatans and ignorant emissaries are a problem in Calcutta as well, where, as in Bombay, there are no local rabbis. Sapir tells of an itinerant scholar who ingratiated himself with the communal leaders and assumed rabbinical functions. The locals become aware of his shortcomings, and ask Sapir to critically examine his professional conduct, particularly regarding marriage and divorce. Sapir tries not to get involved, in an instance of tactical gift withholding, but finally agrees when a local incident makes it apparent that the self-styled scholar is woefully incompetent. At this point, community members produce writs of divorce drafted by the scholar, and Sapir is forced to publicly disqualify them en bloc. Many community members ignore Sapir’s decision, whereupon he garners support from authorities at home in Jerusalem. Now the locals ask Sapir to write new writs in place of those annulled, and he dutifully convenes an ad hoc rabbinical court, noting that he performs the service gratis even though it is usually quite remunerative, lest people suspect him of feathering his own nest.103 Sapir convokes another such ad hoc rabbinical court in Bendigo. His purpose is to convert a Christian woman who had been the servant of a Jew and born him two sons, whose circumcision was arranged by their father. Sapir is aware that there is a rabbi competent to perform the conversion ceremony in Melbourne, at a considerable distance, but he is told that the local Jew cannot afford his fee. The Melbourne rabbi learns of Sapir’s involvement in the case, and both he and the Hebron emissary mentioned earlier, presumably

101 Sapphire Stone, 2:127. 102 Ibid., 2:55–56. 103 Ibid., 2:102–04.

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Sneersohn, are furious at this usurpation of the local rabbi’s authority and livelihood. They write to Nathan Marcus Adler, the chief rabbi of London, who nullifies Sapir’s court action, whereupon Sapir pens a lengthy response, which he appends to Sapphire Stone. Adler also receives a letter of complaint about Sapir’s conduct in this affair from Melbourne congregants, who resent him anyway for his efforts to sabotage Sneersohn’s fundraising activities.104 In Bendigo, Sapir is also confronted with the case of an absconding husband. He explains that, by local law, should such a woman wish to remarry, she must publish a notice in the newspaper, announcing that her husband has absconded, and three months later she is free. Having adhered to this procedure, the woman in question learns that Jewish law requires a writ of divorce. She asks Sapir to provide one, but he is compelled to explain that only her husband can release her, and thus to deny her the gift she seeks.105 Similarly, in Melbourne Sapir stumbles upon a man from Russia who left his wife eight years earlier and vanished by changing his name. Sapir convinces him to give his wife a writ of divorce, but, rather than conduct the proceedings, he merely notifies the abandoned wife and the London rabbinical court, presumably on account of the controversy aroused by his Bendigo conversion.106 This is an instance of Sapir both giving a gift and withholding it: the gift of his discovery of the husband and the refusal to officiate. Sapir’s gift of halakhic expertise embroils him in controversy in Kochi, where he accedes to the request of the local community of emancipated slaves to circumcize a newborn. Sapir is unaware that the so-called “white” Jews of Kochi, those of European descent, had prohibited anyone from circumcizing the sons of the emancipated, and they are duly outraged by his action. He remonstrates that he acted in innocence, and just at that moment someone rushes in to announce that the newborn is hemorrhaging. Sapir’s critics consider this divine justice, but he dashes to the scene, where the child lies bleeding and unconscious. Sapir stems the flow, and summons the English doctor from the hospital, who saves the child, at which point all is forgiven.107 Here Sapir’s gift is his western identity, which is the key to his familiarity with western medicine and to his ability to interact with the English doctor, and his intervention compensates for his diplomatic gaffe. The slaves of Kochi were also a source of friction for D’Beth Hillel, who writes that he protested the existence of slavery in a land under British rule. 104 105 106 107

Ibid., 2:140. Ibid., 2:139. Ibid., 2:144. Ibid., 2:71–72.

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Jewish law, he explains, has a principle that a country’s laws must be respected, which should also apply to Britain’s ban on slavery. His protest angers the local community, who regard it as threatening their property.108 Juxtaposing the episodes of Sapir and D’Beth Hillel highlights one of the most common dilemmas of western strangers in developing countries: whether it were better to accept other civilizations at face value, or to intervene when local mores run counter to what westerners consider universal values. D’Beth Hillel attempts to undermine the local way of life, for humanitarian reasons, whereas Sapir accepts the local culture as is, and intends only to place his expertise in the service of the local community, albeit the emancipated community. In Kochi, Sapir is asked to mediate a dispute, in accordance with the dynamic identified by Simmel. Local custom required a bride’s family to display evidence of her virginity on the morning after the wedding, which was an occasion for celebration, when invited guests would offer gifts. Naturally, when another family made a wedding of its own, it would reciprocate the invitation, and the gift-giving cycle would continue. In the case at hand, a family neglected to invite neighbors to its wedding, triggering a highly emotional dispute, bordering on violence, and Sapir expresses relief that he was able to pacify both parties.109 It is hard to imagine a more vivid example of how fraught gift exchange can be.110 Criticism of the religious behavior of the locals is the gift Sapir dispenses most freely during his travels in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. In India, the Jews are traditionally observant; David Sassoon is the classic example, and not just in the palanquin anecdote. It is only after India that Sapir encounters Jews who knowingly violate Jewish law. And these Jews are not exotic Orientals, but rather of European origins, living under European colonial rule, be it Dutch or English. In one town or city after another, Sapir castigates his hosts for abandoning Jewish life, and labors to help them find their way back. A peculiar feature of the communities of Asia and Australia is that, although they neglect tradition in some respects, they cling to it in others. Sapir notes that while the Sydney synagogue service is much like London’s, Sydney’s Jews do not observe the Sabbath. He attributes this to the fact that the original settlers were unable to observe the precepts, because they had neither a synagogue nor religious functionaries; consequently, many continue

108 Fischel, Unknown Jews in Unknown Lands, 123. 109 Sapphire Stone, 2:85. 110 Algazi, “Introduction: Doing Things with Gifts.”

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to disregard the commandments even after local conditions have improved.111 In Melbourne, too, we read that many eat non-kosher meat, because at one time the city had no one competent to perform ritual slaughter. In a bizarre twist, Sapir relates that there are those who eat non-kosher meat, but nonetheless salt it, as if it were kosher, and separate their meat and dairy utensils and tableware. Sapir attributes this lamentable situation to the lack of a rabbi and assigns responsibility to the religious leadership in London.112 The Jews of Dunedin, too, have no one to perform ritual slaughter, and they, too, salt non-kosher meat and separate meat from dairy. Passover arrives, and Sapir is invited to the Seder at the home of the leader of the local Jewish community. Upon request, he prepares kosher wine, and purifies dishes and utensils, but he must dine at the Seder exclusively on matzo and prepare his own meals for the rest of the holiday. Here and in Adelaide, where things are no different, Sapir urges the Jewish constituents to write to London for a rabbi and ritual slaughterer.113 Family life is another problematic area, and here too Sapir explains that current difficulties have their origins in the settlers’ early days. Initially, we read, when conditions were particularly harsh, only men came to Melbourne. Later, Christian women began arriving, especially from Ireland, and local Jews hired them as servants. Sooner or later, these women bore children to their Jewish masters, but Jewish life was maintained so long as the fathers circumcized their sons. Moreover, the family would conduct a traditional Jewish life, and eventually some of the women would convert.114 In Jakarta, on the other hand, Sapir reports that Jews intermarry without circumcizing their sons. Sapir offers to perform this service, but his gift is refused, with the explanation that at home, in Germany and Holland, circumcision requires a license from the rabbi and the government. It is unclear whether this is an excuse, or whether the fathers are genuinely concerned that the act would not be recognized by the authorities. Either way, Sapir repeatedly scolds his hosts for forsaking their tradition. He is particularly galled because Jakarta is ruled by the exceedingly tolerant Dutch, and he makes the invidious comparison between the city’s Jews and Muslims, who scrupulously maintain their religious observance and avoid assimilation.115

111 112 113 114 115

Sapphire Stone, 2:132–33. Ibid., 2:136. Ibid., 2:141–44. Ibid., 2:136. Ibid., 2:119–23.

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The story of Leon, a Jakarta Jew originally of Amsterdam, is emblematic of the tense combination of a robust religious identity and a neglect of ritual observance. Sapir learns that Leon traveled to Amsterdam to get permission to open a synagogue and cemetery in Jakarta but died soon after his return without achieving his goal. On his deathbed, Leon urged his Christian wife to take the children to Amsterdam and convert to Judaism, and she promised to comply. Sapir meets the widow and sees that the doors of her home have mezuzot. He stays the afternoon, and at supper is offered only coffee with bread and butter, since the meat is not kosher, but all the same, mother and children dutifully recite the blessings over food. The fast of the Ninth of Av approaches, and the family invites Sapir to break his fast with them, but when he discovers that they plan to eat meat, he scolds them for offering him nonkosher food. Sapir relates this bittersweet tale in a letter home, in which he urges his addressees to relay the matter to the rabbis of Amsterdam, who can dispatch religious functionaries to Jakarta. Sapir’s letter is, itself, an indirect gift to his Jakarta hosts. Moreover, Sapir adds that he wrote directly to Amsterdam, and that, indeed, they sent someone to Jakarta and Semarang (a Dutch colony east of Jakarta), although this functionary could not tolerate the climate and died.116

Solomon Reinmann Solomon Reinmann was neither Palestinian nor an emissary, but he was the only Jew to travel to India and Burma at roughly the same time as Sapir. Reinmann recorded his experiences in a slim Hebrew volume, entitled Solomon’s Travels in India, Burma and China (Vienna, 1884). Peretz Smolenskin, a leader of the Haskalah movement and the volume’s publisher, explains in a preface that he was approached by a man who returned from Kochi after his plan to plant coffee and tea there failed for lack of funds. Smolenskin suggested that he write about the lands he had seen and arranged financial support for the period of his writing. Reinmann finished the book, but died soon after, leaving Smolenskin with a manuscript in need of extensive editing. Smolenskin edited approximately half of the text, improving the Hebrew and filling in gaps with information garnered from other travelers. He then handed over the project to Zev Wolf Schur, who had traveled to India and written extensively about it. Schur admits that he

116 Ibid.

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added considerable material from his own travels but insists that he scrupulously differentiated between Reinmann’s writing and his own.117 Smolenskin provides the bare bones of a curriculum vitae for Reinmann. Born in Galicia, Reinmann traveled to Kochi in the 1840s or perhaps earlier, where he married the daughter of David Ezekiel Rehavi, the community leader with whom Sapir celebrated Lag baʻOmer.118 In 1851, Reinmann arrived in Yangon as a supplier to the British military and established stores around the region.119 After initial success, Reinmann lost his money during the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–1853), as well as an eye and half of his left arm. These misfortunes eventually brought him to Smolenskin.120 As this précis indicates, Solomon’s Travels is not about a voyage so much as a sojourn, for its protagonist lived in Asia for an extended period, as the following anecdote illustrates: When I was engaged in the labor of planting coffee in my garden in the Nilgiri region of southern India, as I sat in the garden house where they clean the coffee . . . built near the bridge over the river, at the fourth hour [4 PM], when the workers had gone home, I saw a colony of hundreds of monkeys come and fill their mouths with coffee beans and go. And they did this habitually, and no one could stop them, for if one were touched, they would keep coming, to destroy, out of anger. After all had filled their mouths, they went to the forest and spat them out, and returned to take more . . . Once, after three or four years, when I happened into the forest, I saw many coffee trees growing among the trees of the forest . . . and said to myself: “Doubtless these trees grew from the coffee stolen by the monkeys and spat out here” . . . I sent the workers there, and they collected several bags . . . 121

This is the experience of a settler, not a traveler, and it exemplifies the methodological challenge of determining the point at which the stranger takes his place in his adopted environment. Another aspect of this tale is its representation of an encounter between the stranger and a non-human host. As with

117 Solomon’s Travels in India, Burma and China [Hebrew], ed. Zev Wolf Schur (Vienna, 1884), 3–4. On Schur, see Jacob Kabakoff, Pioneers of American Hebrew Literature [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv and Cleveland OH, 1966), 131–210. See also Idem, “In the Beginning of the Zionist Movement in America: The Letters of Zev Schur to Herzl, Nordau and Gottheil” [Hebrew], Peraqim 4 (1966), 321–33; Idem, “Three Letters by Zev Schur” [Hebrew], Ha-Do’ar 51 (1971/72), 610–11. 118 Smolenskin bases this information on letters Reinmann left with him – Solomon’s Travels, 4. Reinmann mentions Rehavi directly later, relating that Rehavi left him his house: Solomon’s Travels, 155. 119 Jonathan Goldstein, Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia: Singapore, Manila, Taipei, Harbin, Shanghai, Rangoon, and Surabaya (Berlin, [2015]), 178. 120 Solomon’s Travels, 4. 121 Ibid., 39.

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humans, the animals in a particular part of the world have their way of behaving, their culture, and the stranger who comes to grips with unfamiliar ways must elect either to try to subordinate the locals, by bending them to his ways, or seek to adapt himself to his new surroundings.122 Reinmann’s coffee tale is a lovely example of the latter strategy, because, faute de mieux, he finds a way to turn the monkey’s natural behavior to his advantage. The monkey story is only slightly more exotic than Reinmann’s tale of gift exchange. He describes the wildlife in India and relates that there are many tigers, mostly in Karnataka. In 1850 he brought from Mysuru to Kochi, a distance of nearly four hundred kilometers, two little tigers that he had purchased for one franc, and gave them to the prince as a present.123 Reinmann’s readers would doubtless find the story exotic and impressive, but one wonders how his gift was received, for probably the tigers would not have seemed as exotic and impressive a gift to their Indian recipient as did the giraffe presented to the Medici in 1487. Ironically, then, the exotic nature of Reinmann’s gift testifies more to his European tastes and mindset than to his successful acculturation in Asia. Reinmann’s marriage to the daughter of the community Nassi suggests that he was perceived as a person of stature. This kind of elevated standing would normally be attributed to a person either of means or of education, and while Reinmann may or may not have had money, he was educated. He writes that Muscat, like Mocha, Hudaydah and Sana’a, used to have a large Jewish community, but like them, it dwindled, until its last member was the late Ezekiel Barukh, the British Consul, whom Reinmann refers to as his student.124 This suggests that Reinmann spent time in the Arabian peninsula, and turns out to have a greater degree of overlap with Sapir’s experience. It may not have been years, as in India, but a teacher-disciple relationship does not develop in a day, and thus consistently Reinmann was an expatriate rather than a wayfarer. India’s Jews, the Bene Israel, also studied with Reinmann. He relates that once they began adopting the ways of world Jewry, they began appointing ritual slaughterers, some of whom he trained. Reinmann explains that he taught them the laws of ritual slaughter and knife inspection.125 Clearly, whether or not Reinmann was an ordained rabbi, he possessed an advanced education in

122 This tale is reminiscent of the tale of the monkeys in the highlands of Yemen, to which subject we shall return. 123 Ibid., 38. 124 Ibid., 9. On the Jewish agent at Muscat, see James Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj (Oxford, 2007), 232–37. 125 Solomon’s Travels, 107.

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rabbinic matters. This aspect of his personality is implicit in his observation that in India the locals are exceedingly charitable, providing strangers with food and money, and doing them great honor. In this context, he notes that they honor every stranger by referring to them as Hakham Babai, rabbinic scholar, for they, who do not know the Torah, regard every Jew as learned by comparison.126 Based on Reinmann’s account of his role in instructing local religious functionaries, it seems natural that he would be perceived as a Hakham Babai. This is not Reinmann’s only reference to the deficit the Jews of India suffered in their knowledge of Judaism, its law and sources. He characterizes the missionary John Wilson as “an angel from God,” for granting the Bene Israel access to the Bible, and thereby enabling them to shun idolatry.127 Reinmann also describes his own family members as having contributed significantly to Jewish life: his brother-in-law David Judah Ashkenazi officiated at marriages and divorces in Bombay, and his other brother-in-law, Judah Ashkenazi, printed calendrical tables in Marathi.128 Reinmann’s own rabbinic status comes into play in Bombay, when he is called upon to serve in an ad hoc rabbinical court. He insists that no one in India converted to another religion until, in 1871, in Ratnagiri (south of Bombay), a physician with a government position was swayed by his Catholic subordinate. This apostate travels to Bombay and engages in religious disputation with Joseph Ezekiel Rajpurkar and other community wise men. Flummoxed to find himself bested by Rajpurkar, he repents his apostasy and seeks to return to Judaism. Accordingly, the communal leaders convene at the home of Ezekiel Comendan (Commandant, i.e. Nassi), with Reinmann in attendance. They decide to allow the apostate to return, and the Nassi orders the creation of a committee of religious authorities, consisting of “the Hakham Babai – the author – and the pantachi and Sr. Joseph Ezekiel,” who are to prescribe an appropriate regimen of penances.129 After the penances are performed, the Nassi hosts a banquet in honor of the penitent, at which Reinmann delivers a sermon, exhorting his listeners to strengthen their religious resolve in the future.130

126 Ibid., 110. 127 Ibid., 104. 128 Ibid., 98, 109. 129 Reinmann explains elsewhere that pantachi means five, alluding to one’s intimate familiarity with the Pentateuch, and that this name was attached to Rajpurkar – Ibid., 104. Here it is unclear whether the term refers to Rajpurkar or to a third individual. 130 Ibid., 111–12.

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The term Hakham Babai is explicitly applied here to Reinmann, who justifies the title not only through his service on the judicial committee but also by preaching a motivational sermon. This experience is nothing like Simmel’s model regarding local disputes, for there is no deadlock for Reinmann to break. His status as a stranger is relevant, but for substantive reasons, namely his rabbinical expertise, rather than as a neutral third party. His contribution may be regarded as a gift to the community, but we remain uncertain as to whether at this juncture the locals continue to regard him as an outsider. Reinmann’s travelogue portrays the Jews of India in a slightly different light than their depiction in Sapphire Stone. In Reinmann’s text, they appear as profoundly committed to religious tradition but ignorant of Jewish law, or rather of the law as it had developed in other parts of the world. Like Reinmann, Sapir notes the dearth of local rabbis in India, and we find him instructing Sassoon in Jewish law in the palanquin incident. What stands out in Sapphire Stone, however, is the contrast between the characterization of Indian Jewry as pious and traditional and that of the Jews of Jakarta and Australia as lapsed and largely indifferent. This aspect of Sapir’s travel experience is emblematic of the enormous difference between his sojourn in Yemen and Asia. During the first phase of his journey, especially in Yemen but largely also in India, Sapir behaves like a westerner, fascinated by the culture of the ancient and exotic Jewish civilizations of the Orient, with traditions he respects or comes to respect. In Asia and Australia this pattern is reversed, for here Sapir encounters western Jews who have abandoned Jewish tradition to one degree or another. He is forced to represent the Old World, its lore and way of life, and his mission, apart from philanthropy, is to steer these far-flung communities back to the path of traditional religious observance.

Scientist Awareness that the Near East was the cradle of civilization is a leitmotif of Orientalist thinking and travel writing. The Danish expedition of the 1760s is but the earliest of many Yemen endeavors to investigate pre-Christian civilization, and the Egyptomania of nineteenth-century Europe is a manifestation on a grand scale. This attitude is also evident in Sapir’s explorations into the ancient traditions of Yemen’s Jews. The Danish expedition sought to explore both the natural and cultural environment of Yemen, with Forsskål charged with investigating plant life and Von Haven responsible for studying the region’s linguistic and cultural relics. These two tracks continue in nineteenth-century scientific voyages. There were also travelers purely interested in attaining a firm grasp of the country’s geography. Following Forsskål, a series of scholars pursued the study of Yemen’s botanical life. In 1810, Ulrich Jaspar Seetzen, a German botanist, learned Arabic and traveled to the Arabian peninsula. To reach Mecca, he masqueraded as a Muslim, and then headed east towards Sana’a and later Aden. On his way back up the mountains, he was murdered before reaching Ta’izz. Although he traveled in Yemen, his travel account only covers his journey as far as Egypt and can make no contribution here.1 A generation later, in 1836, Pierre Emile Botta of France embarked on a botanical expedition to Yemen. His account records five hundred species, and he is thus a true disciple of Forsskål’s. His travelogue shares very few tales of strangerhost encounters. He mentions that at Hudaydah, Ibrahim Pasha gave him a letter of recommendation to Sheikh Hassan, the governor of Hays (between Zabid and Ta’izz), and notes that Ibrahim Pasha offered the letter in the hope that Botta would bring him information about the state of the country, since he only governed the part of Yemen ruled by Egypt.2 Botta also explains that among the Arabs, hospitality is the right of the sovereign, and therefore Sheikh Hassan insisted on paying for all the goods or services Botta obtained from his people.3 This comment illuminates the political potential of hospitality.4

1 Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, Ulrich Jasper Seetzen’s Reisen durch Syrien, Palästina, Phönicien, die Transjordan-Länder, Arabia Petraea und Unter-Aegypten, ed. Friedrich Kruse and Heinrich L. Fleischer, 1–4 (Berlin, 1854–1859). 2 Pierre Emile Botta, Relation d’un voyage dans l’Yemen entrepris en 1837 pour le museum d’histoire naturelle de Paris (Paris, 1841), 14. 3 Ibid., 20–21. 4 J. Passama, a Frenchman, reports on Yemen’s geography in 1842: J. Passama, “Observations géographique sur quelques parties de l’Yemen,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie 19 (1843), https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-005

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The more strictly Orientalist branch of scientific inquiry is the search for ancient inscriptions, specifically those of the ancient Himyarite civilization. In 1835, James Wellsted traveled some fifty miles inland from the Persian gulf coast. Wellsted describes Aden in detail, and dwells in particular upon the city’s Jews, whom he calls “the most interesting portion of the population” – an attitude common among western travelers to Yemen – even visiting their schoolroom.5 More important, Wellsted discovers Himyarite inscriptions, the first discoveries of this kind. Charles Cruttenden published additional inscriptions following his 1836 voyage from Mocha to Sana’a.6 Personal encounters are scarce in these accounts, but Cruttenden relates that the bedouin enjoyed listening to the travelers’ accounts of England, and more so to their music box, although a few considered it devilish.7 The search for Himyarite inscriptions advances significantly with the 1843 voyage of Thomas-Joseph Arnaud, who copies fifty six of them at Mareb, some 120 kilometers east of Sana’a.8 Arnaud’s travelogue meticulously records his itinerary, carefully noting direction, distances, and landmarks, such as mountains and streams, so that readers will be able to track his progress. Occasionally, he relates incidents concerning his local interactions. A familiar type of encounter

162–77, 219–36. On foreign travel to Yemen in this period, see: David George Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia: a Record of the Development of Western Knowledge concerning the Arabian Peninsula (London, 1904); Macro, Yemen and the Western World, 21–35; Michael Jenner, Yemen Rediscovered (London, 1983); Bidwell, “Western Accounts of Șanʻā 1510–1962,” 110–13. 5 James R. Wellsted, Travels in Arabia (London, 1838; Graz, 1978), 393–95. 6 Ibid.; Charles J. Cruttenden, “Narrative of a Journey from Mokha to Sanaa by the Tarik-eshSham or Northern Routes, in July and August 1836,” Journal of the Royal Geographic Society 8 (1838), 267–89; Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia, 135–41, 144–45; Jenner, Yemen Rediscovered, 136. See also Hilal al-Hajri, British Travel-Writing on Oman: Orientalism Reppraised (Bern, 2006), 143–61. 7 Cruttenden, “Narrative of a Journey,” 274. 8 Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia, 200; Jenner, Yemen Rediscovered, 137. See Fulgence Fresnel, Recherches sur les inscriptions Himyariques de San’a, Khariba, Mareb; inscriptions données par M. Arnaud (Paris, 1845). Mention must also be made of Adolph von Wrede, who was more of an adventurer than a scientist. Von Wrede traveled in the Hadhramawt region in 1843, and when he moved inland from the Persian Gulf coast, he discovered a Himyarite inscription. See: Stafford Bettesworth Haines, “Account of an Excursion in Hadramaut by Adolphe Baron Wrede,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 14 (1844), 107–12; Fresnel, “Notice sur le voyage de M. de Wrède dans la vallée de Doàn et autres lieux de l’Arabie méridionale,” Journal Asiatique 6 (1845), 386–98; Gustav Adolph von Wrede, Adolph von Wrede’s Reise in Hadhramaut, Beled Beny ʻYssa und Beled El Hadschar, ed. Heinrich Freiherr von Maltzan (Braunschweig, 1870). See also Mona Trautz, “Adolph von Wrede,” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 20 (1933), 550–67.

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Fig. 1: Himyarite Inscription9.

is the Yemenite’s request for medical assistance, and at Haribah, Arnaud complies with the request of a bedouin woman to treat her sick mother. However, when she demands that he check her son’s horoscope, Arnaud, like Sapir, insists that he is not skilled in this art. The woman does not believe him, but desists when Arnaud’s local companion dissimulates, claiming to have left his book in Sana’a.10 9 Source: Wellsted, Travels in Arabia, facing p. 424. 10 Thomas-Joseph Arnaud, Voyage au Pays de la Reine de Saba, ed. Claude Schopp (Paris, 2011), 61–62. Later, at Mareb, he is shown an old woman who suffers intermittently from fever, which causes her to lose consciousness. Her family are convinced that she is possessed, and

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The focus of Arnaud’s other interactions is his alien appearance. We learn that, from the outset of his journey, Arnaud shaves his mustache so as to conform to local custom, because, while the Yemenites hate someone with a beard and mustache, they positively abominate one with a mustache and a shaved chin, as though he subverted the laws of nature and god.11 We have seen that the theme of European visitors to Arabia adopting local dress is a commonplace, but unlike other travelers, Arnaud’s purpose is to avoid alienating the locals, rather than to pass himself off as one. Facial hair is, however, a minor issue. His Yemenite traveling companions fear that his white skin will alarm those they meet along the way. Accordingly, they make him sit on his camel with his legs crossed and completely covered with a blanket, so that a bit of beard is all that is visible.12 Arnaud’s appearance gives rise to a remarkable discussion at a bedouin camp near the Dana river, en route to Mareb. The party sit with the local bedouin for coffee, and the latter agree among themselves that only God could know what this creature is and what his intentions might be. Arnaud records some of their conversation: According to one: “Look at how everything about him is delicate, even his shoes!”13 Another adds, admiringly: “This is a person too delicate to be exposed to the weariness of the desert; he must have been created solely to be carried on a divan to the mosque, dressed in a beautiful white shirt. Is he not the Mahdi?” “Indeed,” another says, “this is obviously a bird of God, a bird of paradise.”

Arnaud continues: The older men tried by every means to learn whether I possessed the gift of discovering treasures buried in the ground. I did my best to answer, while avoiding questions that might cause me trouble. When they sought to know my country and nation, I replied, simply, that I am from the west, of the people known among them by the name Maghrebi. The bedouin became excited when I answered their oft-repeated question – whether I had children, at home or elsewhere – that I had never married. They then took me for an extraordinary creature, a perfect being, since they, in the desert, are oblivious to the vices afflicting not only townspeople but also those of smaller villages.14

they want to know whether Arnaud can command the evil spirits. Arnaud does not share his reply with his readers – Ibid., 91. 11 Ibid., 50. 12 Ibid., 56. 13 This observation is striking because Arnaud reports (p. 53) that he wore used sandals, and nonetheless the bedouin found them impressive. 14 Ibid., 66–67. I have adhered closely to Arnaud’s language without quoting it verbatim.

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Later, upon arrival in Mareb, a bedouin tribesman accompanying the party announces to the townspeople, all of whom congregate out of doors to witness the extraordinary event: “We have brought the Mahdi!” Arnaud relates that he was careful to deny the identification and speculates that the failure to do so by the first European voyager to this region, ten or twelve years earlier – possibly Seetzen, led to his death.15 The image of the savior as white and delicate – in effect, the opposite of the bedouin self-image – presents the contrast between the association of white with spirituality and beauty and dark with earth and dirt. This perspective is not exclusively European – witness Isa. 1.18 – and yet Islamic tradition does not portray the Mahdi as white and delicate of appearance.16 In contrast to these bedouin, Arnaud relates that the Abidah tribeswomen at Mareb ridiculed the whiteness of his skin. He adds that he, too, perceived, through the veils that covered them, their beauty and whiteness, obscured by a layer of indigo, “which, however, gave a sufficient idea of what they would have looked like au naturel, after a bath.”17 Arnaud’s observation represents the traveler’s tendency to titillate readers with erotic descriptions of the Oriental women, while at the same time expressing a certain disgust, which preserves the westerner’s superiority. Arnaud expresses disdain for his Mareb hosts when a villager greets him with an outstretched hand and pronounces the Muslim proclamation of faith. To avoid repeating the declaration, Arnaud substitutes a French swear word which sounds almost the same as the two last Arabic words in the formula (“[Mohammad] rasoul Allah”), and Arnaud reports that his interlocutor was satisfied. 18 This is a classic Geertzian wink, with Arnaud subtly communicating to his European reader that he is clever, like his adroit selfidentification as a Maghrebi. Its more profound message, however, is contempt for the local population and their religion, an ugly moment indeed.

15 After his Mareb voyage, Arnaud repeatedly met Von Wrede in Aden, and the latter told him that at Wadi Doan he, too, had heard of a white man like the one described at Mareb, who was murdered for the money he was thought to be carrying.Von Wrede, himself, excited locals with the whiteness of his skin: Von Wrede, Adolph von Wrede’s Reise in Hadhramaut . . ., 46. 16 See Nu’aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi, The Book of Tribulations: the Syrian Muslim Apocalyptic Tradition, trans. David Cook (Edinburgh, 2017), 209–10. I am indebted to Professor Yohanan Friedmann for this reference. The term Mahdi was also applied to several of Yemen’s Imams, but in context the reference seems to be to the Muslim Redeemer. 17 Arnaud, Voyage au Pays de la Reine de Saba, 91. 18 Ibid., 82. I have been unable to fathom his profane turn of phrase.

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More important in Arnaud’s encounter is the motif of buried treasure. The suspicion that strangers come to Yemen either to spy for foreign powers plotting to conquer the country or to discover buried treasure is familiar from the early modern period, appearing inter alia in the King’s directives to the Danish expedition. This motif is especially characteristic of travelers like Arnaud, scientists in search of ancient inscriptions, which to Europeans actually are a form of buried treasure.

Halévy and Hibshush

Fig. 2: Joseph Halévy19.

Fig. 3: Hayyim Hibshush20.

Our study of the scientist in Yemen focuses on the voyage of Joseph Halévy and Hayyim Hibshush. Halévy was born in 1827, allegedly in Adrianople,

19 Source: Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia, opposite p. 202. 20 Source: Hayyim Hibshush, Travels in Yemen: An Account of Joseph Halévy’s Journey to Najran in the Year 1870 Written in San’ani Arabic by his Guide Hayyim Habshush, ed. . . . Shlomo Dov Goitein. Jerusalem 1941. n.p.

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and eventually settled in Paris.21 The Jewish philanthropy, Alliance Israélite Universelle, sent him to Ethiopia in 1868 to study the Jewish population, and his report so impressed the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres that it dispatched him to Yemen in 1869 to search for Himyarite inscriptions. Hibshush was a Yemenite Jew, who joined Halévy in Sana’a for the continuation of his journey. Both travelers left accounts of their journey, a unique case among the Yemen travel literature. As with other travelers, these texts have been studied for the light they shed on Yemen and its Jews, highlighting Halévy’s retrieval of 685 Himyarite inscriptions. Our concern, as always, is with the traveler’s interactions with the Yemenite population, with particular interest in the relationship between Halévy and Hibshush. Europeans contemplating a journey to Yemen invariably prepared by reading Niebuhr’s account of the Danish expedition, and Halévy also familiarized himself with Arnaud’s travelogue, referring to Arnaud as his source for the identification of places and peoples.22 His use of Arnaud is not uncritical, for he informs us that he chose a route to Mareb different from the one taken by Arnaud.23 Halévy’s relationship with Sapir was more than purely literary. In the second volume of his travelogue, Sapir relates that, after the publication of his first volume, the French Académie decided to send someone to Yemen to search for inscriptions. Reportedly, Ernst Renan asked him to go, and when he refused, they asked Halévy. Yehiel Brill, Sapir’s son-in-law, gave Halévy a copy of Sapphire Stone as a guide, along with letters of recommendation from Sapir to Yemen acquaintances. Halévy later informs Brill that there are no ancient tombstones in Aden, and Sapir adds that had Halévy visited the old cemetery, he would have seen ancient tombstones like those whose inscriptions Sapir had published. Sapir complains that Halévy’s travel account does not acknowledge his debt to Sapir for the information gleaned from Sapphire Stone, a behavior pattern to

21 Halévy refers to Adrianople as his birthplace, but other sources maintain that he was born in Hungary (no city or town is specified), and moved to Adrianople at a later time. See: Yehoshua Kantorovitz, “Rabbi Joseph Halevy: Biographical Material” [Hebrew], Ha-Mevasser 49 (1911), 707; Yair Adiel, “Shaping the Memory of Yosef Halévy” [Hebrew], Peamim 100 (2004), 74–75; Hibshush, A Vision of Yemen: The Travels of a European Orientalist and His Native Guide, a Translation of Hayyim Habshush’s Travelogue, trans. Alan Verskin (Stanford, 2018), 13–14. 22 Joseph Halévy, “Rapport sur une mission archéologique dans la Yemen,” Journal Asiatique, 6th ser. 19 (1872), 12, 47, 52–53, 55–56. 23 Halévy, “Voyage au Nedjrân,” Bulletin de la société de géographie 6th series, (1873), 250.

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which we shall return.24 This is a unique case of an earlier traveler to Yemen commenting on his contribution to a subsequent one.

Sana’a Halévy’s odyssey begins at Aden, where influential Jews equip him with letters of recommendation. Hibshush informs us that the letters urge two brothers named Qara, both Sana’a residents, to offer Halévy hospitality and pay his expenses, because the traveler was forced to leave his supplies and money in Safan, in the Haraz mountain region, since Muslim authorities would likely have confiscated his property during the onward journey.25 This is an early indication of Halévy’s strategy of taking advantage of his Jewish affiliation. Similarly, at Manakhah, en route to Sana’a, he is hosted by Hayyim Elkohen, a skilled lace maker and the leading local rabbinical authority.26 Halévy also states that the Jews were the main source of information about areas he did not visit; he freely admits that most of his account revolves around them, and that he considers them intellectually superior to the Muslims.27 He feels no need to distance himself from his brethren in order to safeguard his scholarly identity. The journey to Sana’a involves some minor difficulties, with valuable stranger-host encounters. Soldiers requisition Halévy’s guide’s donkey to transport their sick comrade. They ask Halévy for an amulet to chase away the fever; he provides one, the patient recovers, and they duly express their gratitude.28 Presumably, the request for an amulet is predicated upon their identification of Halévy as a Jew, and an educated one at that, and thus the incident testifies to the existence of an ecumenical attitude towards knowledge, in keeping with the syncretistic character of magic found in many cultures. We are also impressed that Halévy, unlike Sapir, did not balk at the request for occult knowledge, notwithstanding his modern worldview. Soldiers from a nearby citadel harass Halévy’s guide further by taking his new kis, a woolen overgarment that Yemenites wear day and night. Halévy promises him another one, but the guide is determined to complain to the local qadi, which delays their advance. This incident has a better outcome than might be expected. At Yafid, the local rabbi composes a letter in Arabic for

24 25 26 27 28

Sapir, Sapphire Stone, 2:162–64. “Rapport,” 9; Hibshush, A Vision of Yemen, 66. “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 12. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 13.

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Halévy’s guide, petitioning the qadi for the return of the kis and naming the thief. The culprit is arrested, he confesses, and restores the kis; we are told that he would have been beaten had not the plaintiff pleaded for clemency on his behalf. Halévy is impressed by the swift justice, particularly since the case involves a Jewish plaintiff and Muslim defendant. Normally, he comments, a Jew would not file such a complaint, because it would be hopeless; only in this particular region of Yemen is such a thing possible. As with the amulet, the Muslims with whom Halévy interacts express respect for Jews, with no sense of hostility or prejudice.29 Halévy describes Sana’a as a hotbed of religious fanaticism and intolerance. Banyan merchants are either expelled or forcibly converted, and Jews are only tolerated because of the products they supply. Halévy portrays their lives as unbearable, expressing pathos and sympathy, with no attempt to distance himself from them. This gloomy image introduces the tale of his own experience. Upon arrival in Sana’a, Halévy finds lodging in the Muslim part of the city, but word spreads of his arrival, and a large crowd bursts into his dwelling and assails him with questions about his identity and purpose, making him feel threatened and his host insecure. Some locals decide that he is secretly a Turk, others an English spy, still others a Protestant missionary. All of these suggestions are the fruit of experience, and all involve strangers masquerading to conceal their identity. It is worse in the street: Halévy is followed everywhere, and people hurl insults and rocks at him, calling him “infidel dog!” Halévy feels compelled to move to the Jewish quarter, where he is cared for by Rabbi Yahya Qara, whom Sapir had also met, and whom Halévy describes as esteemed for his genial character and knowledge of rabbinics, but also as someone as poor and unfortunate as Job.30 Qara is obviously one of the Qara brothers to whom, Hibshush reports, Halévy bore a letter of recommendation from Aden. Qara duly offers hospitality, and even appoints his son as Halévy’s servant in lieu of one who had absconded.31 Halévy thus both suffers from his Jewish identity and takes advantage of it for his own practical purposes. The subject of Qara brings up Joseph Wolff, and Halévy delivers a blistering critique of the colorful missionary. He credits Qara with giving Wolff information about the whereabouts of Yemen’s Jewish communities and maintains that

29 Ibid., 14. 30 Ibid., 18. 31 A Vision of Yemen, 66–67.

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this material is all that is valuable in Wolff’s account; and even here, Wolff’s list of locations is incomplete and full of errors. Halévy criticizes Carl Ritter, the Berlin geographer, for accepting Wolff’s “bragging,” particularly regarding Wolff’s remarks about the power of the Jewish tribes, whom the Muslims supposedly continue to fear. Halévy is also dismissive of Wolff’s identification of the residents of Arhab (ar-Rahib) as the descendants of Jonadab ben Rechab of Jeremiah 35, a line of thought in keeping with the image of Yemen as the repository of ancient lore.32 Halévy is critical, not only of Wolff, but of the London Missionary Society in general. His basic claim is that the pride the society takes in its work is unwarranted. He explains that the missionaries distribute Bibles at bargain prices and New Testaments for free, all of which the Jews accept, but destroy when they reach their homes. Thus, they fool the missionaries into believing themselves to have achieved remarkable success, which is what the latter write in their reports.33 The missionaries, and Wolff in particular, are also criticized for exaggerating their success at baptizing Jews. Halévy ridicules Wolff’s claim to have baptized sixteen Sana’a Jews. He singles out Joseph an-Nataf, Wolff’s domestic servant, whom he claims to have baptized. Halévy debunks this assertion, reporting that Nataf, a corpulent man with a pock-marked face, currently works in trade, and is most definitely still Jewish. Halévy relates that Nataf remembers Wolff, whom he calls “Walouf,” and was astonished to find that Wolff identified him as an Idumean, a Hebrew term often used in Oriental lands in reference to Christians.34 The diatribe against Wolff and the London Missionary Society represents an encounter, not between the stranger and his hosts, but rather with the traces of his European predecesors, what I have termed an intersection. There is no doubt that Halévy read Wolff’s account before travelling to Yemen and thought about his exploits during his own voyage. Halévy’s critique complements Sapir’s earlier critique of Stern’s Yemen activities.

32 Carl Ritter, Vergleichende Erdkunde von Arabien [Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen oder allgemeine vergleichende Geographie . . . (Berlin, 1846), 12: 751–58. 33 This claim is undercut by Hibshush, who reports that in Wadi Najran he discovers among the books of a local Jew a copy of the New Testament – A Vision of Yemen, 180. 34 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 25–27. See “Missionary” for my critical remarks about Halévy’s critique of Wolff and Yosef Toby’s attitude to both. Halévy’s remark about Jews referring to Christians as Idumeans, or rather Edomites, is correct, and originates in the association of Christianity with ancient Rome and subsequently Byzantium.

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In Sana’a, Halévy falls gravely ill and spends a month in convalescence.35 Upon recovering, he embarks on the quest for Himyarite inscriptions in the vicinity, first smearing his hands, legs, and torso with soot and black material to disguise his whiteness, namely his European identity. He relates that his companion, a blacksmith, warns him that if they encounter Arabs in the mountains, they should claim to be searching for bits of iron and slag.36 These precautions reflect the Yemenite suspicions of strangers, which the sight of a European traversing the countryside and taking notes, i.e. copying inscriptions, would be bound to excite. Returning to Sana’a unsuccessful, Halévy searches for inscriptions within the city. The search comes to him, for Hibshush has learned of his interest, and brought him his own transcriptions, as an expression of esteem and friendship. Hibshush explains to his readers that he transcribed the texts because he shared the widely-held Yemenite belief that they contain the names of angels and spirits, and he was familiar with such formulae from Jewish tradition. Halévy is impressed with the transcriptions and tells Hibshush of his desire to copy all the Himyarite inscriptions in Sana’a. He offers to pay Hibshush for his assistance in showing them to him and helping to copy them. Halévy has turned Hibshush’s gift act into a commercial transaction, offering money in return for knowledge and service.37 During Halévy’s illness, Hibshush searches for inscriptions in Ghayman, a few hours’ walk. He finds some local Jews, one of whom offers to help him, because, like Hibshush, he shares the prevalent assumption that the ancient formulae are adjurations of impure forces, to which Yemen’s Jews attribute their suffering. To be safe, Hibshush masquerades as a local Jew, demonstrating to readers that he, too, is a stranger in Yemen as soon as he leaves home. There is, then, a relative quality to the status of stranger. As a further safety measure, Hibshush’s host instructs his wife to use a certain signal to surreptitiously indicate to Hibshush – who is to walk behind her – the location of Himyarite relics along their path. For three days Hibshush wanders through Ghayman, whose houses are constructed partly of ancient stones, many containing inscriptions. Predictably, he arouses the attention of the local Muslim scholar (faqih), who accuses him of sorcery. Hibshush is brought before the mayor, who questions him about his identity and activities. He replies that the city is the site of the pre-Islamic kingdom, whose palace 35 Ibid., 18. 36 Ibid., 22. This companion may be Hibshush, of whom Halévy’s reports make no explicit mention. 37 A Vision of Yemen, 68.

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contains buried treasure, which can be found through study of the inscriptions by those who, like himself, are knowledgeable in occult matters. This mixture of truth and myth appeals to the ruler’s cupidity, and he makes a dramatic shift from inquisitor to patron, treating Hibshush to lunch, and then ordering his staff to escort Hibshush to all the ancient sites in the area. In this case, the Yemenite stranger exhibits the quick-wittedness of which foreign travelers tend to boast, as we have seen. The next morning, Hibshush is treated to breakfast, and he offers a lengthy description of this thoroughly unpleasant experience. The room, he reports, is dark and smoky, and the food prepared and consumed in a manner so unhygienic and unaesthetic as to nauseate him. His neighbors at table use their fingers to bring butter and milk from the pot to their mouths, clicking their tongues loudly as they lick. Opposite Hibshush sits their sister Muhsinah, whom he describes as enormous, filthy, and altogether disgusting. Hibshush gives his muse free reign, his description a burlesque: Muhsinah’s stomach is “as wide as a large barrel,” and “Were Samson in Yemen, he would have discarded the jawbone of the ass and taken hers, and beat his enemies doubly with it!”38 This is a caricature of the Orientalist text, with the sophisticated stranger lampooning the natives. Similar narratives, disparaging local culinary and dining habits, appear in many travelogues.39 Sapir, for instance, has a similar description of a Yemenite meal, and there is even a usage so similar that one wonders whether Hibshush cribbed it from him. Sapir writes that the locals eat bread and meat with their fingers, “the fork with which the Creator blessed them,” while Hibshush refers to fingers as “the spoons with which Nature blessed them.”40 Neither Sapir nor Hibshush is European, but both write to entertain foreign readers, whom they assume have sensibilities no less refined than theirs. Of the two, Hibshush’s satire is the more remarkable, given that he is a Yemenite, driving home the lesson that the “stranger” concept is relative. The mayor had ordered his staff to supply laborers to assist Hibshush with his archaeological excavations, and they set out after the dreadful breakfast. The team quickly unearths ancient structures, and excitement builds with the laborers’ expectation of finding buried treasure. Hibshush describes the sudden appearance of a demon, the spiritual guardian of the treasure, or so he describes

38 Ibid., 74–75. Here and elsewhere, I have occasionally deviated somewhat from the Verskin translation. 39 Cf. Hayyim Yoseph David Azulai, The Diaries of Rabbi Ha’im Yosef David Azulai (Ma’agal Tov – The Good Journey), ed. and trans. Benjamin Cymerman (Jerusalem, 1997), 2:20. 40 Sapphire Stone, 1:58.

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the team’s perception of the apparition, which is actually a snake. Hibshush chases it, adjuring the demon with a series of fearful holy names for the benefit of the local laborers and onlookers. The snake escapes into the countryside, and Hibshush takes the opportunity to make his own getaway, returning to Sana’a by dark.41 This tale, too, ridicules the simplicity of the commoners in a tone of humorous condescension, enabling Hibshush to establish his own elevated status in the eyes of his readers. The story resembles Halévy’s account of his departure from Sana’a later, on the Mareb expedition. Halévy relates that upon leaving Sana’a, his companion kills a snake, which to Halévy seems like a good omen.42 As always, Halévy does not mention Hibshush by name, and Hibshush makes no mention of this incident. That two snake incidents involving our protagonists should occur in such close spatio-temporal proximity is certainly possible, but we must also consider the possibility that Halévy, to whom Hibshush narrated his Ghayman adventure promptly upon his return to Sana’a, appropriated the denouement of the story for his own travelogue. Hibshush’s narrative of his Ghayman saga is completely contradicted by Halévy, who claims to have gone there himself.43 This statement stands alone, with not a jot of detail to flesh out his experience, other than the claim to have copied a few inscriptions. There is little doubt that Halévy’s version is fictitious, and that it is part of his general pattern of omitting from his account Hibshush’s role in facilitating his explorations. Halévy also conducts his own search for inscriptions in Sana’a. We read that, on account of the locals’ suspicions, instead of copying inscriptions in situ, he takes to making several passes in front of an inscription, memorizing a few characters each time.44 This anecdote is suspiciously similar to Hibshush’s report that Muslims noticed that he walked back and forth along a certain narrow alley and asked him why. He offered an excuse, instead of admitting that with each pass he would jot on his hand a few more characters of the ancient inscription found on a wall at that location.45 Of course, the two tales could both be true, but given Halévy’s consistent pattern of excluding Hibshush from his narrative, it seems likely that he arrogated Hibshush’s stratagem to himself.

41 42 43 44 45

A Vision of Yemen, 77–78. Hibshush, Travels in Yemen: An Account, 25, n. 2. “Rapport,” 12. “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 24. A Vision of Yemen, 68–69.

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Hibshush explains that Sana’a’s Jews, concerned for Halévy’s safety, dress him in native garb. Halévy is hardly grateful for this gift, complaining that the clothes are heavy and uncomfortable. Hibshush replies by quoting an ancient Aramaic equivalent of the proverb, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do!”46 Here Hibshush deviates from his usually obsequious behavior towards Halévy, and hints, for the reader as well as for Halévy, that he, too, is an educated and sophisticated man. Halévy’s precautions are not entirely successful, for we learn from Hibshush that Halévy has a misadventure in Sana’a of the sort reported by Sapir. Sana’anites spot Halévy and identify him as a “qudsi,” a Jerusalemite, and indeed Halévy states that he had assumed the garb of a qudsi, perhaps inspired by Sapir.47 Hordes of children surround and curse him, but he escapes being assaulted or thrown into prison when the quick-witted Hibshush enlists the assistance of a local apothecary who is his acquaintance.48 Hibshush’s tale of this encounter is textured, for the crowd is described as expressing a blend of curiosity and hostility. He writes that that the crowd wanted to see the strange Jew, and quotes the supportive apothecary as haranguing them: “Muslims! Why are you not ashamed? It is shameful for you to follow a Jew, and what do you see in an ill Jewish foreigner. Remember God and pray for the Prophet, and do yourselves honor, and let everyone go on his way.” Hibshush gently ridicules the apothecary – but only to the reader – for pretending nobility when his motive was mercenary, but his rebuke is further testimony to the existence of a tolerant attitude towards Jews and even Jewish foreigners. Having found Hibshush proficient at copying Himyarite inscriptions, Halévy offers to hire him as a companion during a journey to Mareb, in northeastern Yemen, the known site of Himyarite ruins. Hibshush is delighted. He notes that, by accompanying Halévy, he also hoped to meet the remote Jews known as Danites, who Yemen’s Jews believe to be fierce warriors that dominate their Arab neighbors, a belief of which he is skeptical. Moreover, Hibshush informs us that Sana’a’s Jewish leaders were convinced that Halévy’s true purpose was to find

46 Ibid., 84–85. For the traditional apothegm, see Gen. R. 48:14. Later, Hibshush and Halévy encounter a Jew dressed like a tribesman, and Hibshush explains that some Jews in that area dress like bedouin when traveling or going to the market, to avoid being molested: Ibid., 184. Clearly, disguise is not solely the device of foreign travelers. 47 “Rapport,” 18. The reference to Halévy’s qudsi attire does not contradict Hibshush’s statement about his native garb, which the latter probably contrasted to European clothing. 48 Ibid., 31–32.

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the lost Ten Tribes, who were believed to be sequestered in eastern Yemen.49 This notion competed in their minds with the belief that Halévy had come at the behest of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, to ameliorate their political status, an idea presumably rooted in his earlier Ethiopia experience. Both rationales highlight the low regard in which the Yemenites held the archaeological significance of the Himyarite texts, the texts that were the true raison d’être of Halévy’s voyage.

Arhab and Nihm Halévy prepares for the voyage to Najran and Mareb. His Sana’a acquaintances advise against the expedition, warning him that he faces mortal danger both from bedouin and from evil spirits. He is resolute, and they assume that he must possess the occult knowledge to render him invisible to enemies, and this despite Halévy’s confession to the rabbi, presumably Qara, that he has little regard for kabbalah and the Zohar. Qara volunteers strategies for using the Arabs’ superstitions to further the archaeological mission, which suggests that Qara shared Halévy’s disdain for the popular belief in magic and sorcery, although he may have merely been skeptical of Muslim lore. Halévy changes into the outfit of a simple local Jew, with neither trousers nor shoes, which, given his Jewish identity, is thus only a partial disguise, but preferable to being identified as European. Halévy also procures letters of recommendation to the Jewish communities along his route, although these are unlikely to be of much use, since Halévy elects to cross the Jawf, where Jews are few and far between. He prefers the Jawf, he explains, because there, in the desert, Himyarite artifacts are less likely to have suffered vandalism and more likely to be found.50 Hibshush tells a slightly different story. In his version, the expedition to Mareb could not commence immediately, because Halévy’s possessions had yet to catch up with him from Safan. Hibshush suggests that they travel first to al-Madid, in the Nihm region, having heard in childhood of the miraculous discovery there of a Himyarite relic, containing a golden box with gold objects. Hibshush assures his readers that he gives no credence to the fabulous tale, but simply deduced from it that the area promised to yield inscriptions. The two travel partners would then return to Sana’a and set

49 A Vision of Yemen, 70, 137. 50 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 249–50; “Rapport,” 14.

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out for Mareb.51 Both travelers’ recollections of the planning of this voyage may be accepted, Halévy explaining in some detail his decision to reach Mareb by way of Nihm, in the Jawf, and Hibshush focusing on the choice of al-Madid. The two head north on February 2, 1870, and after a day’s exertion, Halévy arrives sunburned at Rawda. There, as in Arnaud’s encounter, women are unsure what sort of creature Halévy is: finding him too pale be a man, they speculate on whether he is actually a woman. The gender confusion reflects the same association of whiteness with delicacy that is evident in Arnaud’s experience, and in both cases, it is the dark skin of the male that is associated with virility and strength. Halévy is also exhausted, because he is forced to walk rather than ride his donkey, a dignity forbidden to Jews by Shariʻa; this is the disadvantage of his decision to dress as a Jew. However, the choice pays off at Rawda, where a fellow Jew, who has been informed of his impending arrival, receives him with a restorative meal.52 Hibshush identifies their host as Joseph Aroussi, a scholar with an interest in the healing powers of precious stones. Hibshush explains that Aroussi expected the sage Halévy to add to his store of knowledge on this subject but was disappointed. On the other hand, Hibshush reports that Halévy shared the universal penchant of travelers to curry favor with their host by relating “what they saw and heard in the world.” Halévy tells his listeners about his voyage to Ethiopia. In particular, he relates that the black Jews of Ethiopia were amazed that he was Jewish, because they assumed all Jews must be black, quoting “I am black and comely” (Canticles 1.5); Halévy reports responding with the quote “I am Joseph, your brother” (Gen. 45.4).53 The anecdote seems related to the Rawda women’s amazement at his whiteness, as if Halévy chose to present his listeners with a tale in which such a reaction to his coloring would seem plausible. As they resume their journey, Hibshush spots in the gully beneath them fragments of limestone that had washed down from the nearby mountains and recognizes the stone as the type used by the ancient Himyarites. He reminds Halévy of his rejection of Sapir’s claim that the Yemenites have acute vision,

51 A Vision of Yemen, 87–88. In fact, Halévy and Hibshush do not return to Sana’a from Nihm, but move straight on to the Jawf, as we shall see. 52 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 253. 53 A Vision of Yemen, 92–93. Hibshush relates that Aroussi warned him not to publicize Halévy’s presence, since the locals had already suffered on account of the Yemenites’ suspicion of strangers; Hibshush himself was one of those imprisoned when Sapir escaped from his pursuers. See Travels in Yemen: An Account, 26.

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thanks to their cosmetic use of antimony to adorn their eyes.54 Pointing to the distant mountains, he asks Halévy what he sees. Naturally, he sees nothing, whereupon Hibshush declares that he sees Himyarite buildings, supposedly confirming Sapir’s theory. This is an attempt to trick Halévy, by pretending to see great distances, when his prediction was based on the shards in the gully. The story showcases Hibshush’s literary talents, for not only does he lie, he confides in the reader, using dramatic irony to heighten the element of entertainment in his narrative. Hibshush may have hoped to impress Halévy, perhaps hoping that the added measure of respect would transform their hierarchical relationship into a more collegial one. His trick also offers insight into Hibshush’s belief system. It has a cynical aspect, since it suggests that Hibshush, too, doubted the antimony theory. He admits that originally, he believed the fable, and seems to have discarded it as a consequence of meeting the sophisticated westerner, a pattern we shall encounter again. At Shira’, Halévy is frustrated when no Muslim will take him to the ruins of Na’ith, because of the common belief that the place is haunted by spirits that glow at night. Halévy identifies these lights as will-o-the-wisps, but, luckily, he explains, “the Jews are less credulous,” and he is able to hire a Jewish guide.55 This is an Orientalism moment, both because the western stranger deploys modern science to debunk metaphysical beliefs, and because he contrasts his courage to the pusillanimity of the superstitious natives. It is uncharacteristic of Halévy that he depicts the Jews as exceptions, for he usually depicts them, too, as ignorant and superstitious. By the time Halévy returns from his excursion to Na’ith, the townspeople have learned of the arrival of a Jerusalem rabbi, and congregate to determine whether he has come to spy for the Turks or search for buried treasure. Their greatest fear is that he is a new incarnation of Shukr Khayl II, a messianic pretender who appeared in Yemen in 1868, shortly before Halévy. The local sheikh and a dozen armed men invade the synagogue and accuse those present of harboring someone dangerous to Islam, who, in the guise of a pilgrim from Jerusalem, seeks to restore the kingdom of Israel and destroy the Kaaba. Halévy explains to his readers that its destruction is a fundamental of Islamic eschatology, which makes him “le grand coupable,” the Muslim Antichrist. Ever the intrepid European, Halévy writes: “I had to smile at the Sheikh’s error, notwithstanding the danger of my position.”

54 Sapir mentions the use of antimony (Sapphire Stone, 1:58), but not its benefit to vision. 55 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 256.

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Halévy lets the cotton garment fall from his shoulders and asks the sheikh whether his complexion does not indicate someone who is a stranger to Yemen. This proof gives the sheikh pause, offering yet another instance of a Yemenite being struck by the whiteness of the stranger’s complexion. In the meantime, the sheikh’s servants rifle Halévy’s belongings, and, maintaining his lighthearted tone, Halévy notes that the underlings are mystified by his socks, and offer the most ridiculous suggestions about their possible use. Halévy is held prisoner, the Jewish community is frantic, and even the Muslims are discomfited by their violation of the norms of hospitality. After eight days, Halévy asks the sheikh to issue his ruling, realizing that the purpose of the delay is to extort more money from the Jews, which they are ready to pay but which Halévy forbids. Finally, the sheikh releases Halévy, provided he leaves the area. The community regards his liberation as divine intervention, leading Halévy to observe that it is only natural that a society living at the caprice of oppressive rule would regard the most modest triumph as a miracle.56 The travelers set out for Nihm, equipped with supplies donated by the poor but hospitable Jews of Shira’. Halévy sends Hibshush back to Shira’ in search of inscriptions in addition to those he had found and copied during Halévy’s incarceration. Once there, Hibshush learns that the local authorities had sought them out, after rumors circulated that demons conducted a nocturnal fire celebration on the mountain following the visit there of the two strangers.57 Hibshush tells this to Halévy when the two are reunited, and informs readers that Halévy was unmoved. He notes, of Halévy: “On account of his courage, he was not one of those people who sense the distress of others and believe them, but rather of those who deny and do not believe.”58 In his mind, credulity can follow empathy, and conversely, one will not empathize with someone to whose narrative or claim one cannot grant credence. Hibshush attributes Halévy’s lack of empathy, as well as his skepticism, to his courage. His implied contrast between the courageous westerner and the timid Oriental, including himself, illustrates the pattern of the latter internalizing the stranger’s values and self-image. Hibshush also contrasts the natives’ naivety and gullibility with the sophistication and skepticism of the foreigner. He admires Halévy’s courage and his clear-cut rejection of the Yemenites’ folk beliefs and wishes that he were as hard-headed and hard-hearted as Halévy. He

56 Ibid., 257–59; “Rapport,” 15; A Vision of Yemen, 95. 57 We may surmise that these rumors stemmed from Halévy’s dismissal of the locals’ concern about the will-o-the-wisps at Na’ith. 58 A Vision of Yemen, 97–98. Similarly, Hibshush says of Halévy: “Being himself a man without fear, he belittled the dangers incurred by others” – Travels in Yemen: An Account, 30.

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regards himself as weaker, both for clinging to traditional ways of thinking, and apparently also for continuing to empathize with his people. The story of Halévy’s confrontation with the sheikh of Shir’a reverberates through the region, and locals from their bedouin guide’s village besiege Halévy with questions.59 They ask whether he, the qudsi, had seen the great rock that is suspended in mid-air above the Mosque of Omar. Halévy explains to his readers that popular belief has it that every year the rock slowly and inexorably descends toward the earth, and that the world will come to an end, and resurrection occur, the moment the rock touches the minarets of the great mosque. Telling the faithful that the rock does not exist would endanger him, because the locals would consider him contemptuous of their religion. He scores a coup, however, with the reply that only the faithful can see the rock, making it impossible for him to predict when the world will cease to exist. This response was interpreted as an act of modesty, which wins him admiration.60 Halévy humors the childish natives while winking at his European readers, who share his condescending attitude and admire his savoir fare. We get the same image of Halévy in his description of another menacing confrontation. As they proceed, Halévy’s Arab guide takes fright at the sight of a band of armed bedouin, whom he identifies as belonging to a tribe hostile to his own. Fearing abandonment, Halévy gives the guide some notes he had scrawled, and convinces him that he will be safe if he hides while holding his piece of paper. The guide assumes that he has been given an amulet, and when the danger passes, he is convinced that his client has power over the spirits. The true source of their salvation, admits Halévy, was a hideout they hid in as the bedouin passed by, but Halévy’s prestige soars in the guide’s village.61 This story, like the preceding one, counterpoises Halévy’s rationality to the superstitions of the locals, and highlights his sang-froid, portraying him as the unflappable foreigner. Hibshush returns to the theme of courage when he characterizes the Jews of al-Madid, in the Nihm region, as more honorable and courageous than those of Shira’. He explains that the former are less subject to persecution at the hands of the local tribes, and thus feel free to speak louder and build higher houses.62 Here he seems to regard courage, generally, as a function of freedom, rather than as the personality trait of some peoples but not others. Implicitly,

59 Halévy writes that he hired a bedouin guide after he was unable to hire a Jewish one, since the Jews were busy preparing for Passover: “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 265. 60 “Rapport,” 26; “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 270–71. 61 “Rapport,” 20–21; “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 269–70. 62 A Vision of Yemen, 98.

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Europeans are more courageous than Yemenites, not by nature but because they enjoy political freedom. This theory does not contradict the Orientalist dichotomy of east and west with regard to courage, but it attributes the difference to environment, which represents contingency rather than nature. Still on the subject of honor, Hibshush explains that the Jews of Nihm live in peace under the patronage of local tribes, such that an offense against a Jew is regarded as an offense against his tribal patron. In fact, he adds, the Jews enjoy a modicum of political power, for they have the option of seeking protection from other tribes, which would embroil the area’s Muslims in a round of warfare, as often happens. He cites the tribal adage, “the overlord is judged according to his protégés,”63 which he interprets to mean that the honor of the patron is a function of the honor of the client: if the client acquires a reputation among the commoners of being honorable, i.e. worthy of respect, then his patron gains respect as well. This principle exemplifies the stranger’s ability to grant social capital to the host.64 A tale follows that concretizes this idea. Writing long after Halévy’s visit, Hibshush relates that, in 1893, a tribal leader demands that the Jews under his protection pay a head tax, as they had done before the Ottoman conquest of 1872. The tribal leader backs down when it is pointed out to him that the wealth of his Jewish clients redounds to his own credit in the eyes of others, and so it would be foolish for him to jeopardize his patron-client relationship with them.65 This is the sort of relationship in which, willy nilly, the powerful agent depends to some degree on his powerless dependent. Hibshush returns to the combined themes of courage and honor later in his narrative. In the Jawf, he relates, four young Jews were found dead. It was understood that one had fallen into a body of water, and the others drowned trying to save him. Hibshush sees this story as a tribute to the courage of the Jews in this region, who, like their Muslim neighbors, are courageous and self-sacrificing on one another’s behalf. Clearly, Hibshush does not associate courage exclusively with Europeans, although he differentiates between the courage of the Jawf and the timidity of the city dweller, including himself. The tale links the courage of the Jawf to its code of honor, for Hibshush observes that when the news of the drowning spread, the Arabs cried out: “What shame [upon us]!,” because the

63 Travels in Yeman: An Account, 30. 64 A Vision of Yemen, 98–99. If applied to the stranger-host relationship, the attitude would spur locals to host honorable guests, like Halévy, although Hibshush does not draw this analogy. 65 Ibid., 102–04.

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Jews were clients of the local overlord, such that crime or violence against them reflects upon their patron.66 Halévy, too, expounds upon the Jews’ place in bedouin society. He depicts a social structure consisting of sherifs (i.e. nobility), qerawi (vassals) and Jews. Halévy emphasizes the sherif’s power, including the right to despoil the qerawi and the Jews, but acknowledges that the sherif is also obligated to protect them. Although tribes constantly wage war with one another, it is a point of honor never to attack a defenseless person, a category that includes Jews, women, and children. An attack against such a person must be avenged by his patron.67 Halévy’s portrayal of the power structure closely resembles Hibshush’s presentation, lacking only the element of reciprocity, or power sharing, between patron and client. It is unclear whether Halévy’s observations were the fruit of his own observation, or whether he acquired them from Hibshush, and, typically, neglected to acknowledge them as such. Either way, he shows an impressive ability to grasp a social and political structure very different from his own, and one in which power resides not only or necessarily in the hands of those who bear arms. The foregoing remarks on tribal patronage are a rare instance of a Yemen traveler deviating from the narrative of his experiences to expatiate on the nature of Yemenite society, along the lines of ethnographic inquiry. Indeed, patronage is treated in detail in Paul Dresch’s fieldwork monograph on tribal society. Dresch explains that whereas tribesmen are armed, non-tribal people are unarmed and require tribal patronage. This category also includes a tribesman’s guest or traveling companion, and thus an attack on such a person would be considered an affront to the tribal patron’s honor. The same attitude applies to neighbors, and to Jews living in the tribe’s domain. Jews also merit protection because Islamic law enjoins them from bearing arms. As a corollary to this patron-protégé relationship, a tribesman would be dishonored if he abused a defenseless person, or even tolerated such an offense by a third party.68 The Jews of Nihm, Halévy learns, have another means of redressing the imbalance in the balance of power between themselves and their Muslim

66 Ibid., 149–50. 67 “Rapport,” 21–22. 68 R. B. Serjeant, “South Arabia,” Commoners, Climbers and Notables, ed. C. Van Nieuwenhuijza (Leiden, 1977), 227–28; Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen (Oxford, 1989), 38–39, 47, 59, 61, 118; Gerholm, 115–16. Serjeant and Dresch explain that the ‘muzayyin,’ i.e. Muslim barbers and butchers, enjoy a similar status: Serjeant, 230–31; Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen, 119.

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neighbors. Halévy asks to stay the night at the home of a bedouin shepherd, who shuts the door in his face. Others explain to him that the shepherd was afraid of the evil eye, since Halévy is Jewish. Apparently, the bedouin credit the Jews with occult powers, and suspect the evil eye whenever a Jew casts a glance at them with a hostile intention, usually to avenge an injury to himself or his coreligionists. Halévy explains that this is one of the Jews’ best safeguards against Arab brutality, because one who maltreats a Jew fears his magic powers, and therefore either avoids him or reconciles with him.69 Halévy illustrates the singularly honorable status of the Jews of Nihm in his description of a wedding he and Hibshush attended at al-Madid. The electric atmosphere causes Halévy to observe that in the Orient people do not conceal their emotions as they do in civilized lands, such that even the most ordinary occurrences occasion general excitement. The stereotypical contrast between the emotional and excitable Oriental and the collected and composed westerner is well known and stems from the westerner’s pride in modern science. For Halévy to truck out this prejudice is not surprising, and presumably he expects it to appeal to his literary audience. Nevertheless, since the same contrast was often made vis-à-vis the Jews of Europe, especially eastern Europe, we might have expected Halévy to obey the adage about people who live in glass houses. Halévy is struck by the proud appearance of the groom, a broad-shouldered stalwart in military garb, his shaved head sunk into a brand-new turban, and decked out in a colorful burnoose encircled by a woolen belt with two sharp daggers. The groom’s fierce comportment is reinforced for Halévy when the couple fire pistols at the wedding. He feels compelled to contrast this image of the Jewish warrior with the timid image of the Jews of Yemen and is told that the Jews of Nihm are treated with respect and allowed to wear Arab dress on special occasions. Halévy confirms that they are generally better treated in Nihm than in the Arhab region.70 Hibshush recounts the story of the same wedding but adds another dimension. During the celebration, Hibshush thinks he recognizes the voice of one of the rejoicing women, and is surprised by the possibility that he, a Sana’anite, might have an acquaintance in town. On another occasion, he notices a young woman in the street attired after the fashion of the women of Sana’a, but she hides her face and is therefore unrecognizable. Asking someone about them would be embarrassing for him and is out of the question.

69 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 266. 70 Ibid., 261.

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Only five months later, when Hibshush returns to al-Madid, does he learn the truth. The two women are sisters, Jewish sisters, who did, indeed, hail from Sana’a, but the Jewish community’s elders banished them from the city when it was discovered that they had prostituted themselves with non-Jewish men. At al-Madid, no one knew their story, and in due course they found husbands; one was the bride at the wedding in question. Hibshush later learned that the sisters were eventually discovered to have maintained their relationships with erstwhile lovers. On the day after the wedding, the bride was discovered in a compromising situation – alone and uncovered – with a young man, and, when questioned, explained that he was massaging and rubbing her body to relieve intestinal distress. The town rabbi later married the other sister, but their promiscuity became public knowledge, at which point both Muslims and Jews wanted to kill them. Their lovers saved them by hiding them in sacks like merchandise and absconding by camel in the dead of night.71 Neither Hibshush nor Halévy could have known all the details at the time. Still, this is a clear example of the way the two travel accounts complement one another. Hibshush offers the fuller version, mostly because he was able to return to the region and get the complete story, but partly also because he was able to suspect the Sana’anite identity of the mysterious women. Yet Halévy’s astute observation about the difference between the status accorded the Jews in Nihm and Arhab is also impressive, and once again he is shown to be a keen observer. Al-Madid is also the scene of a judicial intervention, of the kind identified by Simmel as typical of the stranger-host encounter. Halévy’s opinion is invited concerning a dispute within the Jewish community, between the kabbalist camp and their traditionalist adversaries. At issue is the custom of the local women to have curls dangle from their faces, after the fashion of the local Arab notables. The kabbalists, whom Hibshush calls “the stringent,” disapprove, because they deem it inappropriate for women to adorn their hair and uncover it. They base their view on the Zohar, which kabbalists believe to be an ancient text. Their adversaries uphold the custom, simply because it is traditional. The controversy became so heated that both camps brought their case before the Muslim notables for arbitration. As often happened, the notables referred the case to Sana’a, where it was presented to the local rabbinical court, which ruled in favor of local custom. Hibshush informs us that not only did the dispute not die down, it spread throughout eastern Yemen. The two parties solicit Halévy’s opinion, and he

71 A Vision of Yemen, 99–100.

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sides with the traditionalist camp, on judicial grounds. He cites a text from the Mishnah that permits women to wear wigs on the Sabbath, proving to his mind that hair adornment is permitted.72 Halévy’s support for this camp demoralizes the kabbalists, and S.D. Goitein, editor of the Hibshush travelogue, regards it as consistent with Halévy’s modern outlook, going so far as to suggest that Halévy ruled as he did out of “sincere hatred” of Jewish mysticism.73 More striking than Halévy’s ruling is his argument, which testifies to a remarkable degree of erudition in traditional Jewish sources. Moreover, Halévy’s derivation of a general legal principle from an ancient text concerning the laws of the Sabbath is the type of reasoning to be expected of a rabbi, and one could momentarily forget that this pronouncer of halakhic rulings presents himself as a French scientist, in Yemen with the decidedly secular purpose of locating and copying ancient inscriptions. For Halévy to forthrightly stake out a position and publish it, neither hedging nor hesitating, is typical of his overall behavior pattern. He eschews diplomacy, and summarily dismisses the ideas and views he rejects, evincing no broad-mindedness and brooking no equivocation. This high-handed and simplistic approach to problem solving speaks to the scientific orientation of the day, which did not recognize Byzantine complications, and which reduced dilemmas to a binary simplicity. And yet, we note that Halévy’s insensitivity does not go so far as to openly challenge the kabbalists’ belief that the Zohar is an ancient text, despite the iconoclastic conviction of modern European historians. This judicial intervention is an early sign of the struggle that was to rage in Yemen towards the end of Hibshush’s life regarding the holiness and truth of kabbalah, and it seems that Halévy felt that, given the Yemenites’ fervent belief in spirits and magic, they were not yet ready to accept the devastating truth of scientific historiography. Hibshush analogizes the Sana’a ruling to one made in the Muslim community. A certain sheikh with an ascetic bent had banned poetry and singing at celebrations, and after he was murdered, some people posed the question of whether singing was permitted. The ruling was that formally it is prohibited, “but whoever sings, sings.” Goitein maintains that, for Hibshush, the two cases were analogous because in both instances the judicial tribunal issued a wishywashy ruling, but this cannot be said of the controversy over hair adornment, in which the judges’ ruling squarely affirms one view and rejects the other.

72 Shabbat 6.5. 73 Travels in Yemen: An Account, 36.

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Rather, the analogy seems to lie in the liberal nature of the two rulings, both of which resist the ascetic tendency of the “stringent” camp.74 The travelers continue their journey in the Nihm region. At Milh, Halévy quizzes the local Jews about the area’s geography. Hibshush notes that they assume that Halévy’s purpose is to search for treasure, but nonetheless give him the knowledge he seeks. Hibshush adds that they have no inkling of Halevy’s scientific mindset and pursuit, a comment that highlights Hibshush’s liminal position among his Yemenite Jewish brethren, as the only one with some understanding of the western way of thinking.75 Halévy also seeks out the company of other locals, and chats with a local member of the qerawi. The latter is amazed to discover that Halévy is able to write in Arabic, because he took him for a qudsi. As a result of this encounter, many in town surmise that Halévy must be an angel, a conclusion based on his white coloring, just as his whiteness prompted the citizens of Rawda to decide that he must be a woman.76 Like Sapir, Hibshush explores the assortment of old manuscripts belonging to the Jews of Milh, and buys one that contains part of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed as a gift for Halévy.77 This act of giftgiving is a unique moment in their relationship, but, typically, one Halévy does not bother to mention.

Jawf Halévy and Hibshush proceed into the Jawf, a sparsely populated region with a tiny Jewish population. They camp outdoors in an area populated by bedouin bandits and are warned not to make a sound. During the night, Hibshush senses that a snake is crawling over him, and calls to a comrade for help. The latter hushes him, telling him that he is imagining it, and sure enough, soon he ceases to sense the snake’s presence. Later, however, the same comrade cries out that a snake has penetrated his clothing. Angry companions silence him, on account of the danger from bandits, but Hibshush adds that Halévy did not make a sound all night.78 This comment suggests that Hibshush assumed that his comrade’s fright was as imaginary as his own, which means that this tale is

74 75 76 77 78

A Vision of Yemen, 111–12. Ibid., 116. Later in the voyage bedouin women take Halévy for an angel – Ibid., 182. Ibid., 128. Ibid., 129–30.

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another Orientalist account by Hibshush, contrasting the level-headed westerner with the volatile local. The travelers reach al-Ghail, the only sedentary settlement in the lower Jawf. Halévy mentions in his initial report that the Jews of this city, though poor, are extremely hospitable.79 In his more detailed account, he amplifies this statement, relating that the Jews were literally fighting for the privilege of hosting him at table. He resolves the struggle by announcing that he will go with the one who saw him first: a poor laborer, who comes home for the Sabbath at the end of an arduous work week. Halévy’s choice of a proletarian host seems to express a democratic spirit, but in any case, Halévy clearly did not worry about the financial burden the hospitality gesture would place upon his host. The enthusiastic reception by the Jewish community puts Halévy in extraordinarily good spirits. He waxes eloquent about the importance and beauty of the Sabbath for these people, who are so poor and who lead such difficult lives. Their joy energizes him and makes him optimistic, and he derives further satisfaction from knowing that he is the first westerner to penetrate the Jawf. Halévy’s description of his Sabbath in al-Ghail is uncharacteristically warm and empathetic, without his customary alienation from, and superiority to, the local population.80 Hibshush confirms the impression of lavish hospitality. The strangers are offered coffee and durum wheat cakes, and Hibshush is given water to wash in preparation for the Sabbath, as well as make-up for his eyes and butter to spread on his face. While Hibshush does his toilette, Halévy is conducted to pay his respects to a community leader, who then hosts prayer services in his home, which both travelers attend.81 Hibshush shares with his readers a tale he heard over the weekend, of a Jew who violated the Sabbath and was punished by the Muslim authorities. He adds, however, that Halévy only expressed interest in the area’s bedouin tribes and ancient sites.82 This belies Halévy’s impression of the bond he struck with the Jews of al-Ghail, and the portrait of Halévy’s single-minded pursuit of his objective conforms to his typical behavior pattern, and is thus more credible than his own, more romantic, depiction. After the weekend in al-Ghail, Halévy continues north, in the direction of alHazm, the capital city of the middle Jawf, but only after overcoming the locals’

79 “Rapport,” 27. 80 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 272–73. 81 A Vision of Yemen, 131. 82 Ibid., 133–34.

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efforts to detain him, by promising to return for another stay.83 He takes his leave without Hibshush, who remains in al-Ghail for the impending Passover holiday, and catches up with him later.84 Halévy searches for Himyarite inscriptions in this area of the Jawf, and the Jews of al-Hazm cannot understand why he would undertake these outings, which incur the risk of being suspected of hunting for treasure. To demonstrate the danger to his readers, Halévy relates that he was told that a Jew was once killed for being suspected of communicating with the spirits that guard the treasures in the region. On account of the danger, Halévy has difficulty finding a guide. He engages Salim ben-Said, a local Jewish jeweler, and indeed, he ultimately learns that ben-Said died, after being tortured to reveal the location of the treasures he and Halévy had taken. Moreover, Salim’s brother paid a hefty bribe to spare the family further persecution, and Halévy acknowledges his responsibility, by giving the brother the sum he had been forced to spend.85 Eventually, Halévy decides to leave the Jawf, to avoid arousing the Arabs’ suspicions, and aims for the ancient city of Najran, north of al-Hazm. The cultural link between ancient ruins and buried treasure, which promises riches while also triggering suspicion, jealousy, and violence, endangers Hibshush as well. During one of his inscription hunts in the Jawf, he naps at mid-day in the cool cellar of a ruin, and awakens to see a tall man standing over him, arms extended, mouth agape and muttering, his body shaking and his eyes wide. Convinced this apparition is “one of the Satans,” Hibshush jumps to his feet, draws his dagger, grasps his walking stick, and prepares his body for battle and his soul for death – Hibshush’s formulation!86 At the top of his voice, he threatens the enemy and curses him, which terrifies the latter, causing him to fall to the ground. The “Satan” explains softly that he is a mere mortal, and Hibshush, realizing the extent of his fright, seeks to calm and console him, and asks him why he was so scared. His companion explains that when he saw how hairy Hibshush’s body is, he concluded that he must be a demon, for demons are known to be hairy and to reside in ruins. He goes on to say that he braved the demons in search of treasure, and Hibshush promptly replies that he has done the same, and at Hibshush’s suggestion, the two agree to search together.87

83 “Rapport,” 30; “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 581. 84 A Vision of Yemen, 134. 85 “Rapport,” 30; “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 585–87; A Vision of Yemen, 134. 86 Goitein notes that “one of the demons” usually refers to bandits, but can also be meant literally; the literal meaning seems appropriate here – Travels in Yemen: Joseph Halévy’s Journey, 106, n. 44. 87 A Vision of Yemen, 137–38.

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This tale is unique among our store of Yemen stranger-host encounters: an encounter between two Yemenites, each of whom is convinced that the other is a demon! Both are dominated by their imagination, which is nourished by a rich storehouse of folk beliefs. Hibshush shifts in an instant from drawing his dagger to feeling compassion and suggesting partnership, exemplifying a pattern found in many Yemen accounts, in which, in a manner abrupt and extreme, threats appear and are neutralized, or, conversely, relationships sour and create danger. Hibshush tours the Jawf guided by Harun, a very poor Jew from al-Ghail. In the evening, Harun cuts a few stalks of alfalfa for their supper, eats his, and pronounces it delicious. Hibshush cannot eat the stalks, because, as he admits, he is accustomed to view alfalfa as animal feed. Hibshush mentions that he met Harun later, by which time the latter had become quite successful and – in Hibshush’s words – no longer eats alfalfa like a donkey, from which we gather that Hibshush had not come to appreciate the ways of the rustic. This anecdote introduces a nuance into the stranger-host encounter, because while Hibshush is decidedly a Yemenite, he is nevertheless an urbanite, to whom the ways of desert dwellers seem uncivilized. The Jewish sheikh of al-Ghail complicates this incident when he explains to Hibshush that Harun eats alfalfa, not because he finds it delicious, but because he has nothing. Hibshush is therefore all the more impressed to learn that when the Jews of al-Ghail took up a collection for Halévy, Harun donated his wife’s silver rings. The sheikh adds that he would have refused the poor man’s gift, but that had he done so, Harun would have complained to the tribal overlord, who would have punished him for failing to honor the local hospitality code. Hibshush promptly returns the rings, a gesture that apparently engenders gratitude rather than offense.88 This tidbit nicely illustrates the agonistic nature of the gift, a feature long noted by sociologists: the difficulty of knowing what to give and receive so as to foster friendly relations rather than offend.89 It also underscores how little the outsider is able to grasp his host’s feelings and behavior. Hibshush, and certainly Halévy, cannot fathom how profoundly they impact the lives of their Jewish hosts, nor can they appreciate the power of honor and hospitality.90 Highlighting the strangers’ inability to see beneath the surface of their hosts’ behavior ironizes the westerner’s condescending attitude. 88 Ibid., 141. 89 Mauss, Essai sur le don; Algazi, “Introduction: Doing Things with Gifts,” 10–13. 90 This anecdote eloquently expresses the paradox that the poorer the individual or community, the greater the need to demonstrate largesse.

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In the upper Jawf, Hibshush explores an ancient Jewish graveyard. This experience often stimulates visitors to reflect upon the human condition, and Hibshush ponders the equality in death of rich and poor. Then follows a soliloquy that is a peculiar blend of emotional and academic elements: What brought me to this desolate place? And how did these brothers and ancestors of ours live among their patrons? And how did they support themselves, and what was their custom? And were they related to the Jews of Sana’a and environs?

These thoughts trigger a wave of sorrow over the wide dispersion of the Jews in the most remote regions of Yemen, and indeed throughout the world, and Hibshush begins to keen and cry. But then he imagines that Satan appears before him, and scoffs at him for crying over these long-departed Jews, about whose lineage and beliefs he actually knows nothing. This breaks the gloomy reverie: “When the spirits of Satan struck the clouds of my imagination, my eyes stopped gushing, and the clouds above the graveyard dispersed, and I walked away from there in my usual way, with the light of the sun upon me.”91 These are the first ethnographic musings Hibshush has in his journey, perhaps in his life, and it is hard not to attribute the moment to his experience as Halévy’s companion. The soliloquy also has a universal existential bent: as in Shelley’s Ozymandias, Hibshush ponders the power of death to obliterate human experience and achievement. From the universal aspect, Hibshush’s discourse turns theological, as he addresses the specifically Jewish theme of exile. When reason triumphs over imagination, freeing him from his somber meditation, he attributes this to Satan, who embodies reason rather than imagination. It is striking that Hibshush does not attribute to Satan the lugubrious thoughts and cloud of sorrow, but rather the critical voice of reason. Thus, Satan plays a heroic role in this incident, but invoking Satan in this role implies that Hibshush felt ambivalent about the triumph of reason over imagination, which on an abstract level represents the triumph of western culture over Oriental. We are witnessing a moment of transition in Hibshush’s thinking, when he stands poised between east and west. Indeed, this posture is evident in his soliloquy, which shifts from the ethnographic, i.e. scientific, to the theological, and ultimately back, following Satan’s cynical wake-up call. At this point in Halévy’s account, when he is on the brink of leaving the Jawf for Najran, he pauses to offer an assessment of Jawf society. The society is hierarchical, consisting of sherifs (descendants of Mohammed), nobles, and subjects, which third category includes the Jews. The sherifs are religious

91 A Vision of Yemen, 144.

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authorities, but Halévy considers them morally deficient, and is particularly critical of the sherifs’ role in the country’s incessant violence. They encourage tribes to war against each other, because the warring parties always hire sherifs to fight for them, for which they are paid liberally. Halévy explains that the sherifs’ strategic value lies in their religious knowledge, which enables them to issue amulets and anathemas against their client’s enemies. The rest of society has a feudal structure, which Halévy deems endemic among all Semitic peoples apart from the Jews, having found evidence of it in Himyarite inscriptions – a classic Orientalist finding. Halévy likens society’s second class to the nobility of medieval Europe, for these men own land which is worked by serfs in return for part of their crop. These nobles make their name by raiding flocks of sheep, and, indeed, warfare is a part of life, although Halévy notes (echoing his earlier remarks) that honor precludes preying upon the defenseless, including Jews, women, and children. Beneath the nobles on the social hierarchy are the qerawi, whom the nobles protect. The qerawi are technically free, but their property belongs to their masters, and they may not bear arms, wear a turban, or ride a horse. The lowest rung on the social ladder of the Jawf is reserved for the Jews. The Jews are serfs, like the qerawi, but unlike them, they get to choose their master. They offer a nobleman gifts, initially women’s jewelry, and if this is well received, they proceed to build the master a house or garden. The master is now the Jews’ patron, and must defend his clients from assault. The Jews have multiple masters, to maximize protection, but admittedly this does not entirely prevent them from being abused.92 They submit, because of their servile status, but Halévy observes, acidly, that they avenge themselves in the synagogue, where they disturb the sleep of the Arabs with sermons blasted at the top of their voices, lasting several hours into the night, along with their deafening cries, to which he admits he never became accustomed. This last comment exemplifies Halévy’s tendency to preserve a certain distance from the Jews. He remains, in his eyes, a European, notwithstanding the fraternal bonds he acknowledges with his coreligionists, whose logistical support he seeks out and enjoys. Moreover, his criticism of their loud praying is rooted in European sensibilities, for Christian visitors to synagogues often voiced similar criticisms of the noise and lack of decorum.93 Halévy expresses a critical view of the Jews with respect to their attitude towards their noble patrons. While a qerawi accepts his servile status, and

92 This generalization, too, mirrors the condition of medieval European Jewry, though Halévy may not have known as much. 93 See, for example, Thomas Coryate, Coryate’s Crudities (London, 1611), 230–37.

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strives to ingratiate himself with his master, the Jew spares no effort to reduce the weight of his responsibilities. He will loudly cry and whine to gain some degree of reduction, and then laugh with equal vigor at his master for succumbing to his entreaties. This is Halévy addressing his European audience as one of them, scorning his Yemenite brethren for their hypocrisy and lack of honor.94 For Halévy, the Jews’ behavior vis-à-vis their patrons illustrates the cultural gulf that divides them from the Arabs. When the Jews want to mock the Arabs, they speak in a dialect that contains Hebrew words, such that the latter cannot understand. Halévy illustrates the Jews’ antipathy for the Arabs with an anecdote. As jewelers, the Jews are allowed to come and go freely in the rooms of women, unsuspected of misbehavior. When a sherif from Mecca reproached the local Arabs for allowing this arrangement, the Jews were summoned and asked what they thought of Arab women. They replied that they considered them so impure that physical contact would render their prayers inefficacious, a response that satisfied everyone. Halévy’s tale has the erotic element often found in accounts of Oriental travel designed to entertain European readers. But Halévy goes on to portray the Jews more favorably, to the point of idealizing them. Arabs only work when they must, while the Jews are extremely industrious. The Jews practice a wide range of crafts, injecting an aesthetic element into the otherwise savage lifestyle of the desert dwellers. Among the Jews of Yemen, literacy is universal (among males), while among the Arabs it is a rarity. The Jews transmit their traditions precisely and perfectly from generation to generation, including their pronunciation of Hebrew and punctuation of texts, both quite ancient traditions.95 They have a general knowledge of Jewish law, and nearly everyone has a rabbinical license for the ritual slaughter of animals. And they excel in mysticism: Halévy is astonished by the sight of two Jewish blacksmiths discussing divine emanations and the subtleties of Neoplatonic theory as they work.96 Halévy is not writing for a Jewish audience, and the special attention he pays the Jews of Yemen is therefore all the more striking. For all the care he takes to maintain an objective air with regard to his Yemenite brethren, he understands that Europeans interested in Yemen want to know about the Jews, whether their curiosity is rooted in the Orientalist passion for antiquity or simply in the fact that the Jews are the country’s only Abrahamic religious minority.

94 Azulay exhibits the same willingness to abase himself before the non-Jewish authorities for pragmatic gain: see Malkiel, “The Shadar-Host Economy in Early Modern Italy,” 415, n. 23. 95 This view was common, shared inter alia by Sapir. 96 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 587–98.

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The elements of disdain and idealization in his portrayal of Yemen’s Jews are two sides of the Orientalist perspective, both likely to speak to Halévy’s readership. Halfway between al-Hazm and Najran lies Khabb, a two-day journey to the north. Halévy engages a guide to bring him there, and the Jews see him off, reciting the Hebrew prayer to protect voyagers from unforeseen dangers. Halévy explains that the practice of escorting departing guests is a principle of Jewish law. Halévy admits that he was moved by the separation, because of the likelihood that he and his hosts would never see each other again. His expression of emotion is impressive, for he rarely shares such personal sentiments. His reference to Jewish law is also telling, for it contradicts the pattern of him distancing himself and his coreligionists. At this moment, he presents himself to readers as an insider, conversant with the rabbis’ code of hospitality, and explains – presumably for the Christian readership – the meaning of the traveler’s prayer. But his explanation must also be directed at Jewish readers, for he makes a point of including a transliteration of the prayer’s Hebrew name, Tefilat ha-dérek, which would be meaningful only to those literate in Hebrew.97 At Khabb, Halévy hires a bedouin guide for the continuation of the journey to Najran. The guide disappears on the first day, upon reaching the boundary of his tribe’s territory, and the two travelers are forced to join a band of nomads, who offer protection. They are true to their word, but some of the young men amuse themselves by forcing Halévy to recite the Muslim declaration of faith. Halévy also begins to suffer hunger, even though he is offered the standard portion of camel milk. He relates that the nomads infer from his behavior that Jerusalemites must be terrible gluttons. This is a classic case of the western traveler’s ridicule of his Oriental hosts for the erroneous conclusions they draw about their guest, a type of anecdote intended to amuse European readers.98

Najran Halévy hires one of the nomads, a Najran native, to guide the next leg of the voyage. He describes the guide as “of herculean dimensions and possessed of completely European traits.” Unfortunately, he continues, the guide’s true nature turned out to be “harsh, strict and savage,” a characterization he earns after taking Halévy’s clothes and money, and threatening him with

97 Ibid., 602–04. 98 “Rapport,” 34–36.

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death.99 Halévy’s initial formulation is the striking insight here, depicting himself, and Europeans generally, as gentle and genial, in contrast to the savage Orientals. Hibshush echoes Halévy’s characterization of the guide as herculean, terming him stout-hearted. Hibshush tells us of the guide’s resourcefulness in spearing lizards for food in the wilderness, indirectly supporting Halévy’s remarks about the dearth of food.100 Hibshush laments his own weakness during this phase of the journey. He becomes utterly exhausted, and the guide beats him with his staff to keep him going, causing him to forget his exhaustion. Hibshush describes Halévy as not complaining of fatigue, hunger, and thirst. Hibshush does not conclude that Europeans are naturally tougher than Yemenites; rather, he attributes Halévy’s superior stamina to his ability to ride a camel in comfort, a talent Hibshush lacks.101 It is easy to understand why both travelers portray their own ordeal with great pathos and assume that their comrade did not endure similar hardship. Halévy’s account of the voyage to Najran sheds further light on the perils of this stage of travel. The group encounters a caravan of merchants from Hadhramawt, a dangerous region, particularly to Jews. He explains that the Jews have a tradition that Moses had already warned about this area, referring to it in Hebrew by the biblical homophone “Hacar-mawet” (Gen. 10.26), meaning courtyard of death, and adds that rarely has a play on words turned out to be so true. The caravan members live up to their reputation, grabbing Halévy by the beard and putting the knife to his chin. They propel his camel into the mimosas, where he tears his skin on the plants’ spines, after which his camel tosses him to the ground when they force it to turn and leap. His guide laughs at his misfortune, and Halévy is sure that he would have let them kill him had he paid for his services in advance. Halévy reproaches him but falls silent when the latter assumes a menacing air, grotesquely grabs a lizard from the sand and rips it to pieces. This unpleasantness continues for three days. The guide later explains, in an apology of sorts, that Halévy’s foes would have killed Halévy had he, the guide, not pretended to side with them, an excuse Halévy considers louche.102 Rid at last of the nasty caravan, Halévy must make haste, as it is the Friday preceding the two-day Jewish festival of Pentecost. He explains that should they fail to reach a safe haven before nightfall, they would have to remain in the desert for three days without provisions, for the Jews of any community 99 “Rapport,” 37. 100 A Vision of Yemen, 159–61. 101 Ibid., 161–62. 102 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” (1877) 13:474–75, 477. See also “Rapport,” 55.

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would shun a coreligionist who flouts Jewish law by traveling during the festival. This calculation on Halévy’s part indicates that his careful observance of Jewish law during the voyage was at least partly pragmatic, a strategy designed to cultivate good relations with the local Jews so as to benefit from their hospitality.103 Fortunately, they reach Rijla, where the Jews receive them warmly. Halévy enjoys the enforced holiday to seek useful information. His assumed identity as a Jerusalem rabbi affords him entrée with all the educated men in the area, who invite him to their houses, and discuss intellectual matters pertaining to history, geography, and especially metaphysics. The local qadi, who turns out to be well-versed in Arabic literature and a rabid Aristotelian, provides valuable information about the region and its politics. A local official educates him about the country’s resources and the government’s relations with neighboring peoples. Halévy says nothing about how he recompenses his conversation partners for their gifts of information, and we must assume that they are satisfied with having the opportunity to meet an exotic stranger with whom they can share ideas on subtle matters of mutual interest.104 Reaching Miqara, a nearby village, Halévy is directed to the home of a fellow Jew, who duly offers him hospitality. The next day, the community leaders, who believe that his mission is to collect funds for the Holy Land, tell him that they have decided to contribute. Halévy does not ridicule them for their naivety in believing his pretense as a Palestinian fundraiser; rather, he remarks on the importance of Jerusalem and Palestine to these Jews, who are by no means affluent. They are flattered to have in their midst, for the only time in living memory, someone who had actually lived in the Holy Land.105 Halévy also notes that the Jews in this area seem more secure and selfconfident than their timid coreligionists in the Jawf, an attitude he attributes to the relative prosperity of the local ruling tribe. He is also impressed by the level of education among the Jews of Khabb. In this area, he explains, everybody can read the Bible and write in both Hebrew and Arabic. He finds them extraordinarily open-minded, with the caveat that they are as devoted as the rest of Yemen’s Jews to the study of the Zohar, implicitly revealing his modern bias that allegiance to kabbalah is to be equated with closed-mindedness and benightedness.106

103 104 105 106

Ibid. “Rapport,” 38–39. “Voyage au Nedjrân,” (1877) 13:466. Ibid., 468.

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Halévy recounts what he calls “a very curious casuistic controversy” among local rabbis, one which split the community into two camps. The Jews of Yemen readily bought butter from the Arabs, believing the talmudic dictum that butter cannot possibly be produced from the milk of non-kosher animals.107 Recently, however, the talmudic principle was glaringly contradicted when a certain rabbi observed that camel’s milk could produce butter when a certain ingredient was added. The latter therefore enacted a wholesale ban on gentile milk, unless it could be proved that the butter was produced from the milk of a kosher animal. Halévy is impressed by this man’s ability to maintain that the Talmud could be wrong about the laws of chemistry, and to allow experience to outweigh tradition, qualities he describes as clear-sighted and exceedingly rare. The rabbi’s point of view was accepted by some members of the community and rejected or ignored by others. This anecdote is of more than academic interest to Halévy, for he has a Simmel moment, when the leaders of the Khabb community ask him to weigh in on the subject. He agrees, and declares his support for the progressive rabbi, citing talmudic authorities who prefer fact to blind faith, although he does not favor the rejection of well-established practice.108 Once again, as at al-Madid, we find Halévy, the scientist, assuming the role of rabbi. This may have been due to a misunderstanding stemming from his disguise, but it is also possible, as Simmel maintained, that his hosts sought his counsel simply because he is a stranger, regardless of his credentials and mission. As for Halévy’s halakhic stance, this reflects his historical context, a time when European rabbis confronted efforts to reform traditional practices. His position is also context appropriate, for a similar reluctance to overturn age-old customs is often voiced in the period’s literature of reformist controversies.109 Halévy has another Simmel moment in Khabb, one which is only preserved in Hibshush’s narrative, not Halévy’s. Eight Jewish villagers present their dispute to Halévy, with one side claiming that the other has agreed to a marriage and the other denying it. Halévy refuses to adjudicate the dispute, a refusal Hibshush attributes to ignorance of the law. The two parties argue over the law, and the debate becomes increasingly heated and verges on violence. Hibshush urges Halévy to intervene, but he refuses, on the grounds that no matter how he ruled, he would make enemies of one of the two sides. However, he goes on to tell Hibshush that the law is plain, citing the precise section number in the Shulhan

107 BT Avodah Zarah 35v. 108 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 468–69. 109 BT Nedarim 15r.

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Arukh, the canonic legal code. Hibshush is surprised and impressed by Halévy’s expertise, for his pose as a rabbi was clearly less false than his masquerade as a Jerusalemite.110 Admittedly, this incident is not a classic Simmel moment, for Halévy refuses to intervene. However, it exemplifies gift withholding, a risky behavior which diplomacy sometimes requires of stranger or host.111 In Wadi Najran, Hibshush and Halévy are hosted on the Sabbath by a Jewish family, and an incident unfolds which is the seminal stranger-host encounter of their voyage, and indeed of any related in this book. Among the family members are a girl whose hair is covered as one in mourning and an old woman with a sad countenance. Hibshush intuits that his hosts have a sorrowful secret. To coax them to reveal it, he goes to the window, looks at the sky and pretends to perform astrological calculations. They inquire about his action, and he replies that through his knowledge of astrology he has divined that they are troubled, and that although on the Sabbath nothing can be done, afterwards he will help them. Hibshush’s device succeeds, and he learns that the girl, who is unmarried, is pregnant, and is therefore to be put to death for the family honor. Hibshush volunteers to save her by performing an abortion. Halévy is furious, because he views abortion as murder. Hibshush is astounded, for it is plain to him that the threat to the girl’s life overrides any and all other considerations. He admits that “like any Arab,” he does not consider a fetus important, and attributes his attitude to the shortcomings of his education, implicitly valuing Halévy’s view over his own, in the Orientalist fashion. Nonetheless, his compassion is for the girl, “for her condition was good and her beauty great” – in other words, because she is blessed with money and looks. Hibshush explains to Halévy that the family cannot bear to raise an illegitimate child, and again Halévy is enraged, insisting that Jewish law regards such a child as legitimate. Halévy is determined to upbraid the family, and they are downcast once more. The impasse is broken when Hibshush proposes to save the girl by marrying her, offering his hosts the most extravagant gift imaginable. He may have been inspired to make this suggestion because shortly before this incident, a qadi in Wadi Najran took a liking to him and offered him the hand in marriage of a girl from a Jewish family within his domain.112

110 A Vision of Yemen, 155–56; Travels in Yemen: An Account, 54. 111 See a similar example in the travelogue of Azulay: Malkiel, “The Shadar-Host Economy in Early Modern Italy,” 413. 112 A Vision of Yemen, 179. Hibshush explains that although he appreciated the area’s affluence and the bedouins’ generosity, he rejected the proposal because he missed his family, and because the region is unhealthy and its population often sick. Clearly, the danger to the girl in our incident must have outweighed these considerations.

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Halévy offers various objections to this initiative as well. He observes that marriage would force Hibshush to break his agreement to assist Halévy in his quest, although it is clear that this argument is merely a tactic, and not his true concern. Second, he points out that the marriage would shame Hibshush’s family in Sana’a, compelling him to abandon them, including his children. Halévy also warns Hibshush that he, himself, would bear some responsibility, since Hibshush would take the step while in his service. He concludes by vowing to condemn the Jews of Yemen in his book for practicing bigamy. Hibshush capitulates, begs Halévy not to shame him by writing such things in his book, and resolves to extricate himself from his commitment.113 Yet again we find Halévy, the scientist, assuming the mantle of rabbinical authority. Even in this realm, his perspective is decidedly western, for it was European Jewry that stigmatized polygyny, which is permitted in Jewish law and was practiced throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East during the Middle Ages, and in Yemen up to and including the twentieth century.114 Halévy offers no positive solution to the family’s dilemma, and we may assume that he expected them to regard his judgment so highly as to yield to it and break its code of honor. The tale contrasts Hibshush, the emotional Oriental, with Halévy, the rational westerner, pitting Europe’s condemnation of abortion and polygyny against the narrator’s concern for human life, and his sentimental weakness for a young and comely maiden. Ironically, whereas Hibshush invariably portrays himself as submissive to Halévy’s superior knowledge and judgment, the decision to tell the tale suggests that Hibshush expected readers to sympathize with his point of view. The journey through the Najran region is arduous in the extreme. Halévy shares few anecdotes about the hardships he and Hibshush endured, but the latter is more generous. These tales emphasize the cultural gap between the residents of this inhospitable territory and those who come from cities, and a fortiori from faraway lands. The perils they confront also foreground the theme of courage that surfaces repeatedly in Hibshush’s account. The travelers are proceeding at night when suddenly the guide whacks Hibshush in the chest with his staff, causing him to fall backwards. He gets up and shouts at the guide, who calls to him to step back or be killed and drags him away. Only then does Hibshush notice a poisonous snake, which he is told 113 Ibid., 166, 168–77. 114 See, for example: Mordechai Akiva Friedman, “Polygyny in Jewish Tradition and Practice: New Sources from the Cairo Geniza,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 49 (1982), 33–68.

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can only be killed if someone has the courage and presence of mind to stab it with his staff.115 Later, in the Mareb region, Hibshush has occasion to apply what he has learned. The bedouin discover a scorpion, which Hibshush duly kills with a thrust of his staff. The bedouin praise him extravagantly for his valor, exclaiming: “He is not from the mountains, he is from the valley!,” meaning that he has displayed the courage and dexterity of the desert dwellers. Hibshush trumpets his bravery and honor but confesses that he was only unafraid because he had never seen a scorpion.116 Along the way, the guides betray the travelers by demanding more money. Hibshush convinces them to bring them to the home of a Jew in a nearby village. The latter, whose age Hibshush gives as at least a hundred and who walks with a cane, shouts at the tribesmen and threatens them. To Hibshush’s amazement, the tribesmen flee, whereupon Halévy scolds Hibshush for his timidity. He compares Hibshush to a cat, but Hibshush turns the insult into a compliment when he adds that “the cat’s nature is understood,” perhaps meaning that the cat’s devious nature enables it to survive. He cautions Halévy that while locals, who are used to the ways of the tribesmen, may stand up to them, strangers must employ moderation and persuasion.117 This, then, is another courage story, with Halévy heedlessly scorning the timidity of the Oriental Hibshush, while the latter appreciates the importance of assessing a dangerous situation, so as to make the right decision about whether an aggressive or meek posture is the wiser course. This dilemma surfaces again in the continuation of their trek. As they proceed, Halévy tells Hibshush that from now on they will simply ignore any tribesmen they encounter, and not even return their greeting. Hibshush tries to dissuade him from this policy, because it would infuriate the bedouin and endanger themselves, but Halévy is adamant, and Hibshush resigns himself to their fate, saying: “Welcome, divine decrees!” This remark, which expresses Hibshush’s frustration at his inability to open Halévy’s eyes to the implications of his imprudent behavior, also showcases his sense of humor.

Mareb The Najran region is the northernmost point of Halévy’s itinerary, near the route to Riyadh. After exploring the region for Himyarite inscriptions, he turns

115 A Vision of Yemen, 180–81. 116 Ibid., 193–94. 117 Ibid., 182–83.

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back and heads south, towards the upper Jawf. It is August, when the inhabitants suffer from famine, and are compelled to roam the roads in search of travelers to rob. Halévy admits that he and his entourage were often forced to hand over their provisions to famished marauders, a form of involuntary gift giving. He returns to al-Ghail, in the lower Jawf, and continues south-southeast, towards Mareb, known to be the site of Himyarite civilization.118 Copying inscriptions at Mareb proves difficult, because of an Indian living in Sana’a, who sells Mareb antiquities to Englishmen in Aden, and is naturally hostile to westerners exploring the area. He therefore deputizes a local agent named Moussellil to shadow Halévy in Mareb and try to find grounds to inform against him before the authorities. Unable to evade Moussellil, Halévy decides to leave the city for the surrounding countryside.119 His Arab travel companions harass him en route, demanding food and hoping for money, but he manages to escape their company on Friday, at Sirwah, where he explains that he must spend the night, and this gambit succeeds, because Jews are known to avoid traveling on the Sabbath. Halévy comments that “in this land, where religion is everything, one prefers to have dealings with a devout heterodox than with a free thinker or one who is merely indifferent.”120 This remark implicitly clarifies for his readers that he is not actually a pious believer, a type with whom he assumes his readers would not identify. The observation is intended to justify his strategy of masquerading as a pious Jew, a policy he assumes his readers will find strange, if not hypocritical and hence reprehensible. Halévy continues to endure suspicion and hostility as he seeks Himyarite relics. In ʻArsch Bilqis, near Sirwah, agitated locals – women as well as men – suspect him of sorcery and threaten violence. He has the presence of mind to warn them that God punishes anyone – including their children and flock – who kills a Jerusalemite. Halévy has found another opportunity to portray himself for his European readers as calm and quick-witted, in contrast to the volatile locals. This is also not the first time he has capitalized upon his assumed identity as a Jerusalemite, with its halo of holiness. The stratagem enables him to resume copying, and he writes in Hebrew characters, ostensibly to work more quickly.121 Hibshush, too, foregrounds the issue of courage in his account of the Mareb leg of their expedition. In Sirwah, Hibshush realizes that there are

118 “Rapport,” 42–44. 119 Ibid., 50–51. 120 Ibid., 53. 121 Ibid., 56–57.

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many Himyarite relics with inscriptions and tells Halévy that it will take him a day or two to copy them. Halévy replies that they will both do the work, to save time, and Hibshush warns Halévy that his participation would place them both in jeopardy. Halévy insists, and Hibshush offers to copy inscriptions for free if Halévy is merely trying to spare himself the expense of paying for his services. If, however, Halévy is simply determined to participate in the act of copying, Hibshush, who sees the mortal danger in which this would place them, will bring him to the site and then leave and “no longer be his friend.” Halévy does not relent, and in the morning, they proceed to the Sirwah fortress, where Hibshush engages some local bedouin in conversation while Halévy begins copying an inscription. Hibshush strolls around the area and copies a number of inscriptions. He is interrupted by a local, who summons him to where Halévy is now being held prisoner, his papers confiscated, after refusing to heed the local sheikh’s order to desist copying. Hibshush quickly hides his own work and springs to Halévy’s defense.122 He reprimands the bedouin for abusing indigent strangers instead of offering them hospitality, in the proud bedouin tradition. This appeal to local pride and tradition strikes a cord, and they are saved for the moment and soon able to flee.123 Hibshush’s account of this incident underscores his image of the European stranger as heedless of very real perils, which require diplomacy and an ability to communicate with the locals in their idiom, meaning their culture as well as their language. The travelers confront a similar threat at Ashjah, still in the Sirwah area. A tribesman threatens them and tells them that everyone knows that Halévy is a European spy, who during his travels has been recording the country’s topography, settlements, and markets. Hibshush denies the accusation and claims that Halévy is searching for a long-lost relative, but his interlocutor is unconvinced and demands to inspect the travelers’ belongings. Hibshush understands that he must hide his copies of inscriptions and urges Halévy to give him his as well. Halévy, however, is infuriated, calls Hibshush a fool, contemptible and lowly, “fleeing a faint sound, scared of our own shadows and feeble of heart.”124 Punning on the name Ashjah, Hibshush responds that shajaea, i.e.

122 Goitein notes that Halévy’s version of this incident contradicts Hibshush’s, with each traveler claiming that he had the foresight to hide the copies – “Rapport,” 55; Travels in Yemen: Joseph Halévy’s Journey, 194, n. 25. 123 Ibid., 201–07. 124 He alludes here to Lev. 26.36.

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bravery, is useless, and that the only solution is for Halévy to give Hibshush his copies. “Do you not know,” he asks Halévy, “that even a child of the tribesmen can do with us as he pleases; and who will inquire after us and fight our battle, for we are strangers?” Halévy capitulates, and eventually the two manage to escape their enemy’s clutches.125 This tale counterpoises western courage and eastern prudence, depicting western courage as foolish or mad. But not all of Hibshush’s tales are one-sided. As at Najran, he suffers terribly from thirst during the journey to Mareb, and Halévy scolds him, after he berates the guide for not bringing them expeditiously to a settlement. Halévy points out that obviously all the travelers in the party are thirsty and urges Hibshush to have faith in divine deliverance. Hibshush is comforted, implicitly acknowledging Halévy’s stoicism. When they reach a settlement, they are offered food, and Hibshush asks for water. Their hosts tell him to wait till they have eaten, but he cannot wait, and begs pitifully for water. They comply, and he drinks and drinks, unable to stop. Halévy is forced to prohibit him from drinking more, telling him that he will do himself harm, and instructs him to wait for the coffee that will follow the meal.126 Here Hibshush portrays Halévy as the level-headed European and himself as the child-like Oriental, with the former directing the latter by virtue of his medical knowledge and self-control. Similarly, Hibshush enjoys a smoke from someone’s hookah, and admits that he loves tobacco. He recalls that on a previous journey he felt a powerful longing for tobacco, and Halévy told him, in jest: “Hayyim, inhale sand instead of tobacco!” Halévy appears in this anecdote more friendly than usual towards Hibshush, both because he addresses Hibshush by his given name and because of the note of humor in his comment, although his suggestion also has an element of condescension, if not mockery. Following the hookah episode, however, Hibshush admits that he suffered a terrible headache, after being given bran to smoke instead of tobacco.127 This is, thus, a self-deprecating tale, with Hibshush depicting himself as a slave to his addiction. It also problematizes the issue of the stranger-host relationship, because in this instance Hibshush is clearly the innocent stranger, and while Halévy is one too, he exhibits a selfreliance that enhances his dignity, both in Hibshush’s eyes and in those of the reader.

125 Ibid., 209–10. 126 Ibid., 192–93. 127 Ibid., 194–95.

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Towards the end of the Mareb expedition, Hibshush narrates an incident in which Halévy expresses appreciation of Hibshush, instead of his usual aloof posture. The two find themselves in the midst of a bedouin shooting war, aside from suffering from heat, hunger, and thirst.128 Hibshush suggests that they abandon the expedition, and Halévy agrees, and makes a speech of sorts. He expresses gratitude to Hibshush for taking him to various Himyarite locations previously unknown to him, since he had intended only to visit Mareb by the route described by a previous traveler (whom Goitein identifies as Arnaud). Halévy also observes that they would have been molested by the local bedouin if they had not been traveling light, which was not the result of foresight, but simply of luck, Halévy’s things not having arrived in time from the Haraz region.129 Halévy’s gratitude and appreciation must have been music to Hibshush’s ears, and they humanize him in the eyes of the reader.

Assessment Halévy and Hibshush return to Sana’a, and the mission comes to an end, with Halévy expressing regret only that he was unable to make a more comprehensive study of northern Arabia. Indeed, further such expeditions followed later in the century, primarily and famously those of Eduard Glaser, whose investigation was far more comprehensive. It was Glaser, in fact, who prevailed upon Hibshush to write his account of the expedition with Halévy.130 Halévy provides a better subject than Glaser for our purposes, however, because he was accompanied by Hibshush, affording two literary perspectives on a single voyage, a unique experience among travelers to Yemen. Thus, this chapter examines a stranger-host encounter with a triangular structure: Halévy,

128 Note, however, Steven Caton’s observation that when warring tribes shoot at one another, they purposely miss their target by a comfortable margin, because their intention is to communicate aggression, for the sake of protecting their honor, rather than to actually kill someone: Caton, Peaks of Yemen I Summon, 12, 30–31. 129 A Vision of Yemen, 196. 130 Glaser also left accounts of his own journeys, which doubtless merit analysis of the type conducted here: Eduard Glaser, “Meine Reise durch Arhab und Haschid,” Petermanns Mitteilungen 30 (1884), 170–83, 204–13; Idem, “Von Hodeidah nach San’a vom 24. April bis 1. Mai 1885: Aus dem Tagebuch des Forschungsreisenden Eduard Glaser,” Petermanns Mitteilungen 32 (1886) 1–10, 33–48; Eduard Glasers Reise nach Mârib, ed. Müller, David Heinrich and Nicolaus Rhodokanakis Wien, 1913. See also Walter Dostal, Eduard Glaser – Forschungen im Yemen (Wien, 1990).

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Hibshush and the Yemenites with whom they interact. As always, we lack the Yemenites’ point of view. The narrators attribute thoughts and feelings to the locals, but this illuminates what the traveler senses or imagines is going through their minds, which is valuable for understanding the traveler, but of limited utility with respect to his local counterpart. The leitmotif of the Halévy-Hibshush encounter is the knowledge exchanged between the two travelers. Hibshush offers to copy inscriptions for Halévy without knowing the Himyarite language. Copying inscriptions on a high cliff, he writes, is arduous and indeed perilous, and would be easier if he knew the language. He reports that Halévy promised to teach him the language after the successful completion of their journey.131 Thus, Halévy, the stranger, has a body of knowledge of value to the local, which he dispenses in a controlled manner tailored to his own advantage, preserving the Orientalist hierarchy. Not only the language opens up to Hibshush, or so he anticipates, but also Yemen’s ancient heritage, the Himyarite civilization. Relics of this lost world lie strewn across the landscape, but the Yemenites associate them with either sorcery or buried treasure, and lack information about the history and culture that imbue these artifacts with meaning. Meeting Halévy enables Hibshush to regard them and the ancient civilization they preserve in historical context, a perspective not hitherto available to any Yemenite. One can only speculate whether his new understanding of Yemen’s ancient history opened his eyes to the broad concept of world history. More significant for Hibshush is his exposure to European ways of thinking about science and natural law. This finds expression primarily in terms of his attitude towards magic, mysticism, and traditional Jewish theology. Initially, Hibshush wants to meet Halévy, who is reputedly a scholar, to learn about holy letters and names, about which he had already learned something from local rabbinical scholars. Instead, Halévy “immersed me [him] in the bath of the salvation of knowledge, and I cleansed my intellect of the filth of the demons that dwell within me, and freely gave to others more honest and good than me, the evil servants that do my will by adjurations . . . ” This makes Hibshush feel devoted to Halévy, and desire to serve him, and so, learning from others that Halévy’s interest is in the inscriptions, which in Yemen are thought to contain the names of “the angels of ancient demons and their servants,” he offers Halévy copies he had already made of such inscriptions, and thus their relationship is born. Hence, there is an inherent connection between Halévy’s

131 A Vision of Yemen, 115–16.

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scientific knowledge and quest and Hibshush’s intellectual awakening to the modern disdain for occult knowledge.132 Hibshush returns to the motif of his “immersion” in the course of his travelogue. In Wadi Najran, when he seeks to learn the secret of the disconsolate family, he pretends to believe in astrology. He feels guilty about tricking them in this manner, for it has become impossible for him to believe in the stars, “since my master Joseph baptized me in the mikveh of thought.”133 Later, Hibshush has a second encounter with Harun, his guide in the Jawf, and learns that the latter suffers from epileptic fits, and attributes these to his possession by demons, whose names he has learned. Harun wants to tell Hibshush the location of hidden treasures, which his demons have revealed to him, but Hibshush regards him simply as a victim of “melancholia,” substituting a western-style diagnosis for the traditional theory of spirit possession. He then addresses the reader: “Oh, reader, regard the intellectual poverty of these brothers of ours, who took as truth the words of this invalid and rejoiced in them, men and women alike.”134 Hibshush takes pride in his new education, which in his eyes places him at a certain remove from his people, who may be fellow Yemenites, but are simple rustics. Halévy’s impact on Hibshush endures, and twenty years later he writes to Halévy, and mentions that when he returned to Sana’a at the end of their voyage, some people shunned him for his attraction to “science and knowledge,” which they deem heretical. He admits to Halévy that he is disappointed that the latter has done nothing to stimulate the Jews of Europe to help his brethren obtain a secular education and civil rights. From Hibshush’s perspective, Halévy dangled the gift of education, but left Yemenite Jewry to languish in ignorance.135 Meeting Halévy is also the catalyst for Hibshush’s repeated discussion of courage. Hibshush attributes courage to Halévy in his discussion of the beliefs of the people of Shira’, and he relates this quality to Halévy’s skepticism and lack of empathy, qualities he does not locate in himself or his people, whom he characterizes as naive and easily affected by folk beliefs. Hibshush’s only reservation with respect to the stranger’s courage is his comment that the cat

132 Ibid., 67–68. Gerber contrasts Hibshush’s response with that of Sapir, who, observing that the Yemenites are masters of practical kabbalah, decides to master this discipline, and to that end strives to acquire books and manuscripts in this field. See: Sapphire Stone, 59r-v; Gerber, Ourselves or Our Holy Books?, 136–38. 133 A Vision of Yemen, 168–69. 134 Ibid., 189. 135 Travels in Yemen: Joseph Halévy’s Journey, 356–57. The self-serving nature of the European voyages to Yemen is the theme of Gerber’s monograph.

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survives by being devious, meaning that direct resistance may be courageous, but can be foolish and dangerous. This attitude surfaces later in the Mareb region, when Halévy impatiently insists that they ignore the tribesmen, and refuses to heed Hibshush’s warnings that such a posture would almost certainly end in their death. Travels in Yemen’s treatment of courage is nuanced. At al-Madid, Hibshush suggests that courage is the prerogative of those who are free, and hence free of persecution, which implies a sociological explanation for the European temperament. And Hibshush implies a similar approach to the problem in the tale of the boys drowned in the Jawf, when he links the courage of the victims to their freedom and nobility, in contrast to Yemen’s urbanites. Again, when the bedouin in the Mareb region praise Hibshush for stabbing a scorpion, they compliment him from being from the valley rather than the mountains, namely the cities. The scorpion story does not only imply that Yemenites are not naturally timid, it also instructs us that the same is true for Hibshush himself, regardless of the self-image he projects relative to Halévy. At this moment he casts off the western narrative and shatters the hierarchical structure. Stoicism, another quality Hibshush attributes to Halévy as opposed to himself, seems to be linked to courage. This is implied in Hibshush’s observation that Halévy is unperturbed when he and others are frightened of an imaginary snake while camping in the wilderness. Similarly, in Mareb, while Hibshush suffers acutely from thirst, he describes Halévy as calm and controlled. This self-restraint is opposed to his own self-image, which is of someone emotional and spontaneous. The image of the unflappable European is of a piece with his superior knowledge, which grants him greater control over his environment and circumstances, and hence affords a greater degree of self-reliance. A number of incidents in Travels in Yemen foreground Halévy’s sang-froid, and while this is the very quality that Hibshush sees as imperiling them, it sometimes elicits his admiration. This complex of qualities coalesces into a single concept – power. Thus, in a truly Saidian sense, Hibshush acknowledges the power of Europe, and arrogates to himself and his people a subaltern status. He does not doubt that Halévy occupies a higher rung on the social and intellectual ladder, and his own task is to acquire enlightenment and emulate the visitor’s manner. For the reader, however, Hibshush’s praise for Halévy is unsettling, because time and again the latter’s behavior towards Hibshush is aloof and condescending. It is tempting to speculate that Hibshush embeds a critical substratum beneath the surface of his admiration for Halévy, but he seems sincere, and gives no indication that his text merits such a sophisticated and textured reading.

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Halévy offers readers no insights into his assessment of his companion’s character, whom he does not so much as mention. On the other hand, in his description of the wedding at al-Madid he observes that in the Orient, as opposed to the west, people do not conceal their emotions. On the same occasion, he contrasts the image of the Jewish warrior to that of the timid Yemenite Jew, after witnessing the celebratory firing of pistols. Courage and emotion are the same qualities upon which Halévy remarks in this incident, indicating that Hibshush is fairly successful at grasping the European mindset. Halévy drops his habitual façade on his Sabbath in al-Ghail, where we find him warm and empathetic in his remarks about the poor Jewish laborer, for whom the Sabbath is particularly valuable. The sentiment is tinged with condescension as well as sympathy, but it is a far cry from his customary posture. Hibshush’s exposure to western attitudes towards nature and science and, more fundamentally, to the European persona, are the main gifts he receives from his companion and employer; what does Halévy get from the Yemenites? He, too, acquires an education, from his observations of the land life of Yemen, but especially from his many conversations with locals, which sometimes deserve to be called interrogations. His observations on the geography, topography, economy, society, and beliefs constitute a body of knowledge that he obtains on the scene, rather than from his studies. All of this is apart from the body of knowledge at the heart of his decision to come to Yemen, namely Himyarite inscriptions. Admittedly, this knowledge was the Yemenites’ gift to Hibshush as well, confirming our initial observation that in this expedition, the stranger-host encounter has a triangular, rather than a binary, structure. Our travelogues attribute a number of observations to the Yemenites, to whom Hibshush and Halévy alike represent alien societies and cultures, notwithstanding their Jewish identity. This leg of the stranger-host triangle is most starkly demonstrated in the honor killing story, when each of the three participants has his own perspective and is shocked by the norms of the other: the family cannot fathom the others’ ability to tolerate the dishonor of an illegitimate birth, Halévy is outraged by the possibility of abortion and polygyny, and his view astounds Hibshush, whose concern for human life is paramount.136 Outstanding in the Yemenites’ reaction to the two strangers is their shock at the physical appearance of both. In Hibshush’s case, there is only

136 Alan Verskin emphasizes the triangular aspect of this incident: A Vision of Yemen, 6–8.

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the incident in which he is taken for a “Satan” on account of being inordinately hirsute. Halévy, on the other hand, repeatedly amazes his hosts with his light complexion, which elicits the comment that he must be an angel or a woman. And Arnaud triggers the same association a generation earlier, such that this cannot be treated as a peculiarity of Halévy’s appearance or writing style. The association of moral or spiritual characteristics with black and white colors is tagged from the modern perspective with the enslavement of Africans in the New World. The comments in the narratives of Halévy and Hibshush are useful precisely because our geographical context is Yemen, not Africa, and thus unrelated to the racial history that usually lies at the heart of such scholarly discussions. Moreover, when locals identify Arnaud with the Mahdi, we understand that the association of whiteness with purity does not represent the internalization of a European bias but is rather an expression of a local mindset and culture. This last issue introduces the story of Halévy’s earlier voyage, to Ethiopia, which concludes our study of this type of traveler.

Halévy in Ethiopia Ethiopia is but one of many exotic lands which aroused the interest of Europe in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the colonial project was in high gear. The great powers competed for control of seaports offering access to India and Asia, but intellectual and spiritual authorities had their own interests. The Beta Israel of Ethiopia were important to missionaries like Henry Aaron Stern, who hoped they could be persuaded to accept Christianity. Some Jews identified the Beta Israel as Jewish and raised their voices in favor of establishing ties with them, with the intention of bringing them into the fold. In November 1864, Jacob Sapir, home from his odyssey to Yemen and points east, published letters in Jewish newspapers calling upon world Jewry to help the Beta Israel. He was particularly exercised by the presence of missionaries in Ethiopia and explained that he had planned to travel there from upper Egypt, but his intentions were foiled when he fell ill. He proposed that David Magar, formerly a member of the rabbinical court of Alexandria, be dispatched. A month earlier, and with no connection to Sapir’s efforts, Azriel Hildesheimer, the rabbi of the Jewish community of Eisenstadt (Hungary), published a letter in a number of Jewish newspapers with an agenda similar to Sapir’s. Hildesheimer’s letter suggests practical measures, including sending a delegation

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to Ethiopia. This was after he had written to several Jewish leaders, hoping to convince them to establish a fund in Hungary for the aid of the Beta Israel. In February 1865, Halévy, then a thirty-eight-year-old teacher in the Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Istanbul, published a letter in the Hebrew newspaper Hamagid, volunteering to undertake a mission to the Beta Israel. In addition, he wrote to Nathan Marcus Adler, the chief rabbi of England, proposing himself for the Ethiopia mission, but without result. Halévy also wrote to the leaders of the Alliance in Paris, explaining why he was an appropriate candidate for such a project. Halévy received a recommendation to the Alliance by Meir Leibush Wisser (also known as Malbim), among the period’s most illustrious rabbis. Two years passed before the Alliance decided to underwrite Halévy’s journey, who by now had moved to Paris and made the acquaintance of a number of its leaders. The decision was made in March 1867, and two months later Halévy was on his way, in the heart of the crisis over the imprisonment of Henry Aaron Stern and other British subjects.137 Halévy’s travelogue is regarded as the first reliable account of the Beta Israel.138 The purpose of the text reflects the traveler’s mission, namely, to bring back information about the Falasha, the term for the Beta Israel then in use. As always, our focus is on the stranger-host encounter, rather than the local society and culture. Because for our purposes the journey to Ethiopia is ancillary to the Yemen voyage, we will not follow the progress of Halévy’s itinerary, but merely examine incidents and observations that relate to his Yemen experience. Some Ethiopia material does not relate directly to the Yemen voyage, but sets it in the broader context of the stranger-host encounter. Early in his Ethiopia travelogue, Halévy offers a bland generalization about Africa and Africans: “Africa is prey to gross superstition, to senseless prejudices which, destitute of all moral feeling, are based on selfishness and on the

137 Menachem Waldman, Beyond the Rivers of Ethiopia: the Jews of Ethiopia and the Jewish People [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1989), 138–66. See also Bernard Nantet and Édith Ochs, À la decouverte des Falasha: Le voyage de Joseph Halévy en Abyssinie (1867) (Paris, 1998), 63–107. 138 The most complete record of Halévy’s journey is an English translation of a report he wrote in French for the Alliance, which was never published, and has survived only in English translation: “Travels in Abyssinia,” trans. James Picciotto, Miscellany of Hebrew Literature, ed. Albert Lowy (London, 1877), 2:175–256. See also: “Mission d’Abyssinie,” Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle 1 (1868), 57–60; Idem, “Rapport au comité central de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle concernant la mission auprès des Falachas, presenté dans la séance du 30 Juillett 1868,” Ibid., 2 (1868), 85–102; Idem, “Excursion chez les Falacha en Abyssinie,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (March-April 1869), 270–94.

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instinct of self-preservation . . . The true African appears to be a primitive creature without any culture whatsoever; he can only just repeat the fables and legends that were transmitted to him by the Arabs with their religion.”139 This is a classic statement of the Orientalist image of non-European nations, so extreme as to represent a caricature. Particularly noteworthy, however, is the closing comment about the impact of the Arabs on Africa. Later, Halévy meets some Roman Catholic priests, whose mission is to stem the advance of Islam. Halévy declares their mission futile, because Arabic culture “seems destined to assimilate all other African nations, and to become one of the most powerful sections of mankind.”140 These remarks about the future power of Islam echo a statement by Halévy in his Yemen travelogue. In his review of bedouin society, Halévy criticizes the sherifs as morally deficient, and maintains that the hypocritical combination of religious leaders who behave badly is the “true force” of Islam, which in his view explains its spread into Asia and Africa.141 The Ethiopia travelogue reveals that the latter prognostication was not born in Yemen but was the fruit of his African experience. Africans, he finds, form impressions of Europeans which are sometimes misguided. At Asous, the villagers offer him a large dish of hot milk, and he notes that this is their custom for all strangers. Amplifying this generalization, Halévy explains that they do not ask to be paid, but later ask for gifts, in his case his trousers, shoes, and shirt. Halévy interprets the prevalence of begging as a reflection of their belief that a gift from a stranger is a mark of esteem and a harbinger of good luck. However, he also attributes it to the impression that all Europeans are rich, a notion he deems mistaken.142 Other attitudes towards Europeans underscore the abyss separating the two civilizations. At Massawa, Halévy concedes that the Africans generally treat Europeans well, referring to them as “Ifrendji.” On the other hand, he mentions that this term is not a friendly expression, for he writes that he heard some children singing a song with the refrain: “The Ifrendji will be thrown into the bottom of the sea.”143 Color is a great divider, and in Yemen, Halévy relates the story about the Ethiopian Jews’ amazement that he was Jewish, because of his color. This

139 “Travels,” 189. 140 “Travels,” 200; “Excursion,” 271–72. 141 “Voyage au Nedjrân,” 587. 142 “Travels in Abyssinia,” 198. 143 Ibid., 190.

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incident does not appear in his African travelogue, or rather, the only encounter relating to color does not involve the Falasha. On the frontier between Sudan and Ethiopia, the leader of his caravan is afraid that the Ethiopians will accuse him of bringing a spy into the country. His fear is soon realized, and the caravan is surrounded by an angry mob. Ostensibly Halévy’s fair skin is responsible for their suspicions, but Halévy grasps that the true cause is his Arab attire, and, thinking quickly, changes back into European garb, which instantly pacifies the hostile locals.144 The other Ethiopia encounters do not relate to Halévy’s Yemen accounts, but serve to illustrate aspects of the stranger-host encounter that we have already witnessed. Moving from the general to the particular, we note the presence in the Ethiopia account of the universal pattern of the stranger’s ordeal. In Kabta, Halévy relates that religious leaders question him to ascertain if he is truly a Christian. He writes that he knew enough about Christianity to answer their questions, and they stop harassing him when he seizes the initiative and begins posing questions of his own. This is a clear example of the host challenging the stranger to prove his mettle before he can be accepted.145 The Ethiopia travelogue presents a number of features typical of the experience of western strangers in particular. A local sheikh demands that Halévy repair his antique rifle, apparently in the belief that all Europeans are excellent craftsmen. Halévy does not dare disappoint him and asks the local Falasha smiths to supply him with a new spring mechanism, fortuitously affording him an opportunity to spend time with them. This incident involves gift exchange, with the sheikh demanding a gift that is in keeping with the age-old association of Europeans with technological expertise, particularly of weapons. Ironically, it is the local craftsmen who provide the solution to the sheikh’s problem and offer Halévy the gift of their service and company. There are also some incidents of gifts being refused or denied. A Falasha village has only one copy of Psalms, and the villagers ask Halévy for a copy of portions of the Bible, their expectation apparently rooted in the standard practice of missionaries to distribute printed Bibles. Halévy has none to hand out and is forced to deny their request.146 Elsewhere he does so on principle. The Falasha of Volka’it want to give him an amulet for the continuation of his journey, but he refuses it, quoting the

144 Ibid., 209–10. 145 Pitt-Rivers, “The Law of Hospitality,” 94–99. 146 “Travels in Abyssinia,” 231.

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verse “The guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps” [Ps. 121.4]. His interlocutors acknowledge the truth of this statement, allowing Halévy to present himself as wiser than them, in true Orientalist fashion. In this incident, his gift refusal is an express statement of his European disdain for amulets, a common theme in his Yemen travelogues. The anecdote about the mob scene mentions that Halévy disguised himself in Arab garb, a behavior common among western travelers to Oriental lands. We also find him donning African clothing: he prepares to move on to the Gondar region by changing into a local outfit, consisting of a calico sheet and Sudanese sandals.147 The practice of local disguise illustrates the motif of the western traveler’s aplomb, a quality that surfaces repeatedly in Halévy’s Yemen account, often in tandem with the theme of the westerner’s courage. Thus, in Ethiopia, while camping out in the open, Halévy and his porters are approached by jackals and a hyena, and our narrator has the presence of mind to drive them away by firing a few rounds from his revolver.148 Finally, Halévy’s Ethiopia account includes some stranger-host encounters that are specifically Jewish. He writes that on Saturday afternoons the Falasha would come to his hut and read the Bible with him, in Amharic or Geez. Halévy would try to explain the text, offering the gift of his Jewish education, and serving as a sort of rabbi, a function we find him filling in Yemen on a number of occasions. The Ethiopia voyage differs fundamentally from his trip to Yemen in that the Jewish aspect of the former is not incidental and logistical, but rather is the point and focus of the expedition. Obviously, therefore, it occupies center stage in his account, though only in his report to the Alliance, and not in the one for the French Geographical Society. At one point he waxes eloquent about the solidarity of the Jewish people. When three Jews from Kochi visit him, which pleases him no end, he writes: “Among no nation do we find the feeling of brotherhood so powerful as among the Hebrew race. At the sound of the magic word ‘Israel,’ distances are forgotten, all differences of colour, language, and costume vanish, and the idea of a community of origin joins all hearts together.”149 Here, for Halévy, the gap separating stranger from host is replaced by brotherhood, a sentiment he does not express in his Yemen travelogue.

147 Ibid., 220. 148 Ibid., 198; “Mission d’Abyssinie,” 59. 149 “Travels in Abyssinia,” 191.

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Fig. 4: Daniel150.

Halévy’s Ethiopia journey lasts fifteen months, and he returns to Paris in July 1868. He is accompanied on his return trip by Daniel, an eighteen-yearold Beta Israel youth, who asks to join him. Halévy renders in French Daniel’s Amharic formulation of his purpose, which expresses a classic Orientalist sentiment: he seeks a religious and scientific education so that eventually he can become the teacher and “civilisateur” of myriads of people seeking “lumière,” meaning enlightenment.151 Daniel can be considered the Falasha’s gift to world Jewry, for Halévy writes that the Falasha chose to send him, to convey their respects. This is the most concrete result of Halévy’s voyage, and an element absent from his odyssey to Yemen.152 If Sapir’s gift of marriage to the unwed

150 Source: Faitlovich Collection, Sourasky Library, Tel-Aviv University. The back of the photograph is stamped: Travaux Photographiques A. Cintract, 5, Rue Daubenton, Paris. See also Jacques Faïtlovitch, Quer durch Abessinien (Berlin, 1910), 79. 151 Ibid., 250; “Rapport au comité central,” 86. 152 Earlier, In 1856, Ludwig August Fränkl purchased a Falasha at the Cairo slave market and brought him back to Vienna: Louise Hecht, ‘“The Servant of Two Masters:” Jewish Agency for Austrian Culture in the Orient before the Era of Emancipation,’ Austrian Studies 24 (2016), 26–30.

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expectant mother is the greatest gift from stranger to host in the Yemen travelogues of this study, Daniel is the greatest gift from host to stranger. However, as noted, the gift is reciprocal, since from the point of view of Daniel and the Beta Israel, Halévy’s agreement to take Daniel with him was an invaluable gift, and the education he hoped to acquire in France an even greater one.153

153 Similarly, Edward Lane brought back from Egypt an eight-year-old Greek slave girl named Nafeesah, whom he married in 1840.

Merchant Yemen attained international fame as a source of coffee during the early modern era, with the great powers vying for political and economic control. Agents of various European nationalities based in the port city of Mocha flocked to Bayt al-Faqih, the central coffee market, to garner their share of the available supply. Indian merchants, known as Banyans, were a permanent presence in ports and markets, and, though little is known of their stranger-host experience, they were part of the country’s social fabric, the only stable non-Muslim minority apart from its age-old Jewish constituency.1 With the decline of the coffee trade in the eighteenth century, Yemen’s economic centers lost their cosmopolitan flavor, as international commerce shifted to new production sites, such as Zanzibar. The country reverted to its introverted, provincial, character, marked by the cultural homogeneity to which the Jews were the only major exception. Only rarely did the occasional European traveler disturb the thoroughly Arab human landscape. But Yemen’s position along the Red Sea ensured that it would continue to appeal to European powers, who valued its coastline as a gateway to India and Asia, and to neighboring Africa. Hudaydah, rather than Mocha, became the country’s principal northern port, where east-bound ships would dock after Jedda, while Aden, in the south, served as a waystation for ships crisscrossing the Indian ocean. This had been true since time immemorial, but Aden’s importance grew with the advent of long-distance steamship travel in the 1830s, because of the need to take on coal. Aden’s strategic value impelled Britain, driven by its East India Company, to occupy the city in 1839, and it remained under British rule until 1967. 1 On the Banyans in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and their role in facilitating commerce between India (and Asia), Arabia and Africa (chiefly Ethiopia and Somalia), see: Richard Pankhurst, “Indian Trade with Ethiopia, the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 14, #55 (1974), 453–97; R. B. Serjeant, “The Hindu Bāniyān Merchants and Traders,” ȘAN’Ā` an Arabian Islamic City, 432–35. Banyans were held in extremely low esteem, partly in the context of the tribesmen’s disdain for trade as an unworthy occupation; tribesmen classified traders with Jews, butchers and barbers as “weak people,” to whom they granted protection: see Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen, 120–23. Vom Bruck notes that the sadah, namely the Prophet’s descendants, also view trade as beneath them: vom Bruck, Islam, Memory and Morality in Yemen, 163–67. However, vom Bruck also comments that the sadah are sometimes denigrated on account of their origins outside Yemen, which is contrasted with the Jews, who are deemed “pure Yemenis,” because they are known to have lived in Yemen from time immemorial: Ibid., 200–01. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-006

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Egypt was another international power to strive for Yemen domination. Ibrahim Pasha took control of the Tihama in 1826. In 1840, he ceded control to Hussein ibn-Ali ibn-Haidar, who was nominally loyal to Constantinople, and in so doing, continued to frustrate Britain’s territorial ambitions. The opening of the Suez canal in 1869 stimulated the Ottoman empire to renew its efforts to control Yemen, and, in 1872, the Turks sent troops to occupy Sana’a – not for the first time – and to fortify other Yemen positions. This did not pacify the country, for the Turkish regime faced periodic resistance from the Imams for the rest of the century, which they put down through a combination of diplomacy and warfare.2 The return of Turkish sovereignty to much of Yemen, including Sana’a and Hudaydah, opened up the country to foreigners. The Ottoman empire was still a major power, with diplomatic ties to European countries and a highly developed government bureaucracy. Warfare continued to disrupt daily life and threaten the stability of the regime, but on the whole, Turkish sovereignty gave travelers confidence that their rights to security and justice would be respected. Consequently, an increase in the presence of outsiders after 1872 is palpable and undeniable.

David Samuel Carasso Two years after the Turkish takeover of Yemen, David Samuel Carasso, a Jewish merchant hailing from Thessaloniki, travels to Sana’a. Thessaloniki, in today’s Greece, was within the Ottoman empire, and thus formally Muslim, but it was a cosmopolitan metropolis, and certainly as western as it was eastern. Thinking of Carasso as western is, therefore, technically justifiable on both geographical and cultural grounds. However, his travelogue expresses a sense of superiority to the Yemenites that is rooted in his identity as a Turk. At this point in history, the Ottoman empire was a powerful and advanced society, and no less a colonial power than Britain or France. His attitude and behavior are, therefore, Orientalist regardless of his origins, reminding us that the binary characterization of Orientalism does not do justice to the complexity and diversity of the interactions and perceptions of travelers and locals in the Middle East.

2 Thomas E. Marston, Britain’s Imperial Role in the Red Sea Area (1800–1878) (Hamden CT, 1961), 399–401; Macro, Yemen and the Western World, 27–31, 36–37; Isa Blumi, “The Frontier as a Measure of Modern Power: Local Limits to Empire in Yemen, 1872–1914,” The Frontiers of the Ottoman World, ed. A.C.S. Peacock (Oxford, 2009), 289–304.

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Unlike the travelers whose experience we have examined thus far, Carasso comes to Yemen for an extended stay. He arrives in the fall of 1874 and returns to Istanbul in 1880, where he publishes Zikhron Teman (i.e. Yemen Memoir), a Ladino account of his sojourn and the primary source for the following discussion.3 Carasso comes to Yemen to engage in commerce, but not for the coffee trade, and this is a new attitude, previously found only among the Banyans. Some Sana’a Jews engaged in commerce, as we read in a Hebrew letter published in 1862 in the periodical Ha-Carmel, although in 1872 a report in HaLevanon, another such publication, notes that few of Aden’s Jews do so.4 In 1875, a third Hebrew newspaper, Ha-Havazelet, publishes a letter by “a Jew who for commerce spent a few months in Yemen,” which is the first report of a Jewish foreigner who traveled to Sana’a to engage in trade.5 Carasso is probably the letter’s author, for its stated intention is to share with the readership “the condition of the Jews living in that land,” a responsibility that Carasso energetically pursues in Yemen Memoir.6 This declaration is accompanied by the announcement, on the title page, that Carasso’s travel account is intended “for the reader’s pleasure.”7 This is only the book’s first indication that Carasso is a highly self-conscious author, who never loses sight of his readers. What sort of pleasure does Carasso have in mind? The preface explains that Carasso is following the example of travelers of other nations, who profit from the sales of their printed travel accounts if they supply information about “anything

3 Zikhron Teman ó el Viage en el Yémen (Constantinople, 1880). [http://www.kb.dk/books/jud sam/2010/maj/jstryk/object88731/da/]. Carasso began publishing Zikhron Teman in weekly installments on April 9th (28 Nissan). On Carasso, see: Moïse Franco, Essai sur l’histoire des Israélites en l’Empire Ottoman depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours (Paris, 1897), 215–19; Isaac Raphael Molho, “David Samuel Halevi Carasso ve-Sifro Zikhron Teman,” Harel: Kovetz Zikaron leha-Ravi Rephael Alsheikh, ed. Yehudah Ratzabi and Yitzhak Shivtiel (Tel Aviv, 1962), 226–30; Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 121–90 – pp. 127–90 are a Hebrew translation. Tobi’s Hebrew edition only includes Part 2, covering Carasso’s travel experience, without Part 1, a history of Yemenite Jewry, which Tobi says is derivative and not particularly accurate. The following discussion is based on Tobi’s translation, although I refer to the Ladino original to clarify particular formulations. 4 Moshe Sachs in Ha-Carmel 20 Tamuz 1862 (Year 3, Issue A), 3: see Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 285–86; Ha-Levanon 9 (1872), #4, 15 Elul, 31–32: Tobi, Ibid., 300–01. 5 Ha-Havazelet 5 (1875), #48, 29 Elul, 387–88: Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 269–70. For an earlier period, see Mordechai Abir, “International Trade and the Jews of Yemen in the 15th-19th Centuries” [Hebrew], Pe’amim 5 (1980), 5–28. 6 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 269. 7 Similarly, the preface states that the book’s aim is “affording the gentlemen great pleasure:” Ibid., 125.

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new.” He, too, having traveled for six years, “hoping to learn that new things are unlike the old, and thus affording the gentlemen great pleasure,” has decided to publish the story of his Yemen odyssey.8 An early example of Carasso’s efforts to entertain his readers with novelties appears at the beginning of his account, in a brief description of the Tihama. He writes that he saw a guzmah, the modern Hebrew term for “exaggeration,” which in this context refers to a natural wonder: “The mouse and cat are brothers and do not harm one another and eat in one place and part from one another without harming each other.”9 This observation reflects Carasso’s assessment that his readers share the age-old European taste for tales of wonders from the exotic Orient. Entertaining with novelty might have seemed easy to Carasso, for he goes on to observe that his is the first book of its kind in Ladino, and that “our people is not used to these matters.” But Carasso frankly admits that his audience’s naiveté makes him uncertain that his book will be well received. The concern that it might not sell many copies motivates him to serialize it, so as to whet the public’s appetite with short segments that will not prove too costly.10 This portion of the preface demonstrates that Carasso shares his thoughts and feelings freely. Although his candid expression of financial concern was transparently an appeal for support, nonetheless, his consistently frank and direct style of writing, with abundant access to his feelings invites readers to enjoy a strong sense of rapport and identification.

From Hudaydah to Ta’izz Following his arrival at Hudaydah, Carasso hires a guide and donkeys, and sets out for Ta’izz, southeast of Hudaydah at an elevation of approximately 1400 meters, well above the Tihama. He packs his donkey with five-days worth of food, to cover the 178 kilometers between the cities, a four-day journey in his estimation. About halfway to Ta’izz, Carasso experiences the strangeness of his new environment. After two nights of travel, he and his party stop at Jarrahi, and Carasso immediately acts to distinguish himself from everyone in the vicinity.11 “Since I was a stranger,” he explains, “ignorant of this place’s customs,” he has 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 131. 10 Ibid., 128–29. 11 Jarrahi is nearly a hundred kilometers from Hudaydah, which makes his progress impressive to the point of straining credibility.

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local people unload his supplies. We are not told what sort of local customs made him uneasy, but perhaps he worried that performing the labor himself might detract from his honor in the eyes of others. He then elects to avoid the local café, “where all the travelers sit,” because, he explains, he would have to keep company with “the Arabs.” Neither of these decisions clarifies how Carasso perceives and presents his identity, but since clearly he arrogates to himself a social status superior to those around him, he must have traveled as a Turk, for as a Jew he could not have expected to be treated with any degree of deference. Yet his self-presentation as a Turk does not imply that he took pains to conceal his Jewish identity, as we shall see. The decision to pack his own food contrasts with Niebuhr’s belief in the health benefits of dining on local fare. The latter policy is of a piece with the choice to adopt local attire, though each involved multiple considerations. In contrast, Carasso’s food policy is a demonstration of otherness. Nowhere does Carasso state that he was motivated by religious dietary restrictions, and plainly he strove to differentiate himself from those around him, a behavior pattern that recurs on many occasions during his sojourn. Carasso’s guide goes off to the café to relax with coffee and a narghile, while Carasso chooses a private spot and deposits his containers, returning to the café only to take a burning coal with which to heat his food. Misadventure follows, for upon his return, he observes that about two hundred cats have ripped open the containers and devoured his meal of bread, fish, and cheese. Carasso cries out, attracting the attention of his guide and the café owner, who say: “What did you do?! Why did you come here?!,” namely to a remote spot. Carasso laughs to hide his embarrassment but confides in the reader that he felt an urge to quarrel with the café owner and threaten to kill the cats. He asks the café owner what sort of proprietor he is, keeping cats where travelers come, and so many cats at that! The latter explodes in laughter, further infuriating Carasso, and explains that some local people “believe in cats” (creantes in los gatos), gathering and feeding as many cats and dogs as possible, with the pious intention of imitating God’s mercy upon all creatures. At this point the proprietor adds that the animals are organized, and, astonished, Carasso asks him to show him where they are. Promptly he calls out some sort of cry, and over five hundred cats appear, twice as many as before!12 The narrator’s astonishment at the story’s finale supplies the element of wonder Carasso associates with entertainment, for he would have expected his readers to respond as he did. The story’s dramatic character was surely another entertaining quality. This is a highly emotional tale, in which Carasso cries out,

12 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 139–40.

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laughs, is enraged, and later astonished. The café owner, too, is amazed at the scene he faces outside his café, and he too laughs, apparently at Carasso’s discomfiture. The readers are thus greeted at the outset of Carasso’s account with lively reportage, which was bound to charm readers into continuing to read. Carasso’s self-presentation in this anecdote also exemplifies his talent at creating a rapport with his audience. He follows the candid admission that he was afraid of committing a faux pas out of ignorance of local custom with an incident in which he does precisely that, ironically poking fun at himself, a literary device bound to foster empathy. Furthermore, Carasso depicts himself as being thrown off balance twice during the incident, and his volatile emotional reactions humanize him in the eyes of his reader by expressing vulnerability. The native proprietor’s behavior is equally complex. He appears as an insider, who interprets the people’s pious folk custom for Carasso. However, he makes it clear that he does not share in either the belief or the custom. This reads like a subtle attempt on his part to align himself with Carasso, ostensibly someone from a progressive, sophisticated society. This anecdote obliquely nods to the Orientalist pattern of locals spurning as superstitious folk beliefs and practices which they expect their European guests to abjure, whether or not they share their guests’ western perspective. The anecdote, however, presents two very different perspectives on the Orient. Initially, the pious custom of keeping the animals is portrayed as childlike, and thus may elicit the stranger’s – and his readers’ – condescending amusement or derision. Yet Carasso is flummoxed by the follow-up incident, in which the cats prove to be organized, a phenomenon he cannot explain. Like western travelers to the Orient, he confronts experiences with the expectation that they are subject to rational explanation, and, failing to imagine a solution, he is forced to acknowledge that the Orient holds mysteries beyond the ken of scientific knowledge.

From Jarrahi to Zabid A more traditional sort of stranger-host confrontation awaits Carasso at the next phase of his itinerary.13 Arriving at a village, his guide suggests they spend the night, because he is in pain. Carasso examines him and deems his pain “a small matter” (cosa chica). Carasso continues: “As is our custom,” I

13 Ibid., 140. Tobi observes (Ibid., n. 5) that Carasso seems to have doubled back, since Jarrahi is further on towards his destination, Ta’izz, than Zabid.

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told him I have a cure, “for I wanted to travel.” He offers the patient a drink of arak from a bottle, at which the latter becomes agitated at having been offered an alcoholic beverage, forbidden to Muslims, and Carasso explains: “for they are very holy” (santos). Distraught, the guide begins to cry, which frightens Carasso, who then lies to him that the draught was indeed medicine, and not arak. At this the guide begins to shout, we are not told what, prompting Carasso to hastily attach himself to a passing party and move off down the road. This incident has a number of Orientalist elements. Its foundation is the widespread view in developing countries of Europeans as medical authorities, a theme we have observed, when hosts would solicit medical assistance, and treatment and medicaments were an expected gift from stranger to host. When Carasso’s guide complains, Carasso assumes responsibility for assessing the seriousness of his condition, a stance which implies presumed superior knowledge and authority, a presumption typically shared by host and stranger alike. In a callous display of what the tale portrays as naked self-interest, Carasso dismisses his guide’s ailment as trivial, and his lack of feeling when he finds himself inconvenienced smacks of the haughty and manipulative attitude towards indigenous people generally associated with western visitors to exotic lands. This behavior pattern becomes more egregious, as Carasso stoops to deception in order to keep moving. Offering succor, he subverts the gift situation by ignoring the well-known Muslim taboo on alcohol, compounding his singleminded pursuit of self-interest with disdain for local values. A third Orientalism element emerges with regard to Carasso’s jaded view of religious observance, which he candidly shares in the terse explanation that the guide became irate because Muslims “are very devout,” a value clearly he neither shares nor expects his readers to do so. The denouement of the incident continues to depict Carasso’s conduct as self-centered. Outrage arouses the guide from passivity, and Carasso acts swiftly and unilaterally, absconding to avoid an imbroglio for having tricked a Muslim into imbibing. Ironically, when the guide weeps, expressing resignation to defeat, Carasso grasps that he is losing control, with the balance of power shifting to his companion. The Orientalism perspective that assesses relationships in terms of power is apposite here, with the stranger exerting initiative and ingenuity to command and maintain a position of superiority and authority vis-à-vis his local counterpart, only to lose control of the situation, ironically, when his victim’s resistance is broken. Carasso baldly shares this tale of how he manipulated and deceived his fellow traveler, and then abandoned him, and we wonder why. He may have expected readers to relish the tale’s elements of drama and adventure. Naturally,

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such an expectation would rest upon the assumption that they harbor no greater sensitivity than he to the values and mores of rustic locals, nor feel more empathy for them. The arduous journey concludes with a saga about the travails of travel, in which the main theme is Carasso’s resourcefulness, another characteristic associated with the western adventurer.14 Carasso’s donkey falls behind his fellow mounts, and although the other travelers come to his aid by beating his animal, this makes it increasingly recalcitrant, until it refuses to budge. Now it is Carasso who is abandoned, although his Arab companions promise to have nearby villagers send a replacement donkey and assure him that he is in no danger.15 Help does not arrive, however and for the next few days Carasso must continue to contend with the problem of his recalcitrant donkey. Initially, Carasso tries in vain to quiet the braying animal, for fear of attracting brigands, but when, at dawn, the animal roots for grass, Carasso grasps that its underlying problem is hunger. The march continues when Carasso offers the donkey bread, but he walks alongside it throughout the day for fear of another breakdown, and at night sleeps with the animal tied to his leg. By the next day he is out of food and drink. Finally, he encounters some Turkish soldiers, who turn out to be acquaintances, and they rescue him with supplies, and escort him to Ta’izz. The unpredictability of travel is a prominent theme in this tale, the slim margin of safety, with the constant possibility of complications that can be both abrupt and dangerous. The level of drama rises precipitously as inconvenience escalates to peril, but in Carasso’s telling, he rises to the challenges of the trying hours and days. Ever the resourceful foreigner, he is constantly proactive, weighing options and energetically pursuing his chosen course of action. His efforts are unsuccessful, for ultimately, he is unable to save himself and must rely on others, but his image is never one of passivity and resignation; unlike his Yemenite guide, he never collapses in tears and despair. A second motif in this segment is the important role of foreign commodities. Carasso relates that he passed the first difficult night alone smoking cigarettes; on the second night he notes: “thankfully I had a lot of arak;” and he is ultimately left with only tobacco. Many western travel accounts dwell on the

14 Ibid., 140–41. 15 Paul Dresch explains that among Yemen tribesmen, to kill a fellow traveler would be considered extremely shameful, but “simply to lose interest in a fellow traveller and leave him to his own devices would excite rather little comment:” Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen, 65.

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use of appropriate devices and supplies, planned in advance in anticipation of possible contingencies, a cultural pattern that is as much a part of the image of western superiority as is the traveler’s personal resourcefulness. The puzzle of Carasso’s perceived and professed group identity, which initially surfaces in his confessed reluctance to sit with the locals in the café, presents itself again in the encounter with his saviors, the Turkish officers. Carasso does not advertise his Jewish identity, and it remains unclear whether the officers are aware of it, or how it might color their attitude towards him. The shared national identity creates a strong bond of solidarity, and the context for this is the powerful degree of alienation from the Yemenite population, “the Arabs,” as Carasso calls them. From the officers’ perspective, the Islamic faith that they share with the local population does not go a long way to forging a sense of kinship, whether because the Turks esteem their society and culture as far more advanced, or because, as soldiers, they continually face armed rebellion from indigenous partisan forces.

In Ta’izz The stranger’s two identities, Turk and Jew, continue to dominate the narrative following his arrival in Ta’izz. Carasso searches in vain for a local to whom he had been recommended, and he comments that his lack of success was in spite of the fact that “they saw that I am a Turk.”16 His officer companions send him down a certain street, where he duly locates four or five Turkish merchants, and he remarks that they greet him “as if I were a rabbi” [como Ribi].17 Carasso’s initial encounter, then, is one of a dual confusion of identity, in which locals fail to identify him in his Turkish guise, and then tag him as a Jew, and a rabbi at that! Carasso shares this last detail in neutral language, without a trace of embarrassment or annoyance, and perhaps he regarded and shared it as simply humorous. The confusion concerning his identity is resolved when he introduces himself to a shop owner, who knows of him. This modest detail is revealing with respect to the circulation among locals of information about the presence of strangers, not only in their own city but in the broader vicinity as well. Carasso sums up: “Everyone rejoiced at my arrival.”

16 Ibid., 142–43. 17 For Tai’zz to have half a dozen Turkish merchants gives a sense of the robust nature of the city’s commercial activity in this period, under the second Turkish occupation.

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The character of Carasso’s travels up to this point departs from other Yemen itineraries in Ta’izz, because Carasso remains in the city for a threemonth sojourn, a choice rooted in his occupation, commerce. His aim is to establish a temporary but stationary existence in Yemen, like that of the Banyans, and unlike other categories of travelers, who spend a very short period in Yemen, and are constantly on the move in pursuit of their mission. The professional perspective comes to the fore at the outset of Carasso’s Ta’izz narrative, for he quickly gives his readers an overview of the local economy. He lists the main agricultural products, supplying the current price for each. Manufactured goods are also detailed, and there is also a thumbnail description of local trade routes.18 Presumably, Carasso offers this information on the assumption that some readers might be tempted to imitate his example. It is his version of the ethnographic data so valued in other Yemen travelogues, and a clear demonstration of the importance he attached to his commercial persona. There is ethnographic data as well, focused on the city’s Jews, and this element confronts readers again with the issue of Carasso’s self-presentation. We read that upon arrival in Ta’izz, he chooses to live as a Turk, concealing his Jewish identity and avoiding his coreligionists. This strategy seems to have been a precaution, to ensure his safety during an initial period of uncertainty, for he abandons the pretense after a few days. The policy change is the result of his encounter with Salvator Viterbo, a Jewish physician from Constantinople. Like Carasso, Viterbo is both a fellow Turkish Jew and a sophisticated professional, and he too is in Ta’izz on an extended stay. There is, thus, almost complete overlap between this stranger and host. Carasso describes Viterbo as “a doctor friend, of the rank of Binbashi . . . a Jew, a good man.”19 We shall return to Carasso’s use of the term “friend” (amigo), and focus here on the three social descriptors that precede the general assessment, “a good man.” The first two, occupation and rank, are public, while Viterbo’s Jewish identity is a private matter, as Carasso’s own secrecy illustrates. Harder to decipher is the relationship between the last two attributes, “a Jew, a good man.” Carasso may equate the two markers and deem Viterbo a good man because he is a Jew, or apart from his Jewish identity. Either way, the combination has a neutral tone, and sounds as though it could have flowed from the pen of a non-Jew as easily as a Jew. This aloof posture may have

18 Ibid., 143. 19 Un amigo doctor con la rutbe di Ben Bashi . . . Judeo, un buon ombre: Zikhron Teman, 109; Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 144.

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intensified the statement in the eyes of his Ladino audience, which was exclusively Jewish. Viterbo tells Carasso about the suffering of the local Jews, offering the stranger the gift of local knowledge. From this point on, the plight of Yemenite Jewry becomes a leitmotif of Carasso’s travelogue, as the persona of the Turkish merchant makes room for that of the Jewish sympathizer and supporter. As Carasso learns more about his brethren’s hardships, he determines to act on their behalf, and his efforts at political and judicial action, in Yemen and abroad, become his gift to his hosts, the Jews of Yemen. Carasso has already evinced a tendency to respond to experiences with vigor and confidence, and he exhibits the same pattern after Viterbo enlightens him regarding the Jews’ travails. He proposes to Viterbo that they visit the Jewish area, a half-hour away. Carasso explains that he would like to observe their condition at first hand, because he only believes what he sees with his own eyes. This attitude connotes a self-reliance and scientific outlook that is part and parcel of his modern worldview.20 Carasso relates that he and Viterbo are escorted by two of Carasso’s “friends” from the local garrison, Melazos and Ios Bashi.21 Their names are of no importance for the story he is beginning to tell, and presumably his decision to share this trivial information is intended to underscore for readers the intimate nature of his relationship with the local Turkish authorities. It may also convey that, although the Turks are Muslims, they do not discriminate against the Jews. Upon arrival, Carasso, indeed, sees for himself the Jews’ humble living quarters, and finds their lamentable conditions heartbreaking. He weeps, but his natural proclivity to action comes to the fore, and he asks Viterbo to take him to the local rabbi, to gain a greater understanding. This encounter has a farcical beginning, for the rabbi doubts that Carasso is Jewish, which comes as no surprise to readers, given what Carasso has shared about his efforts to present a purely Turkish persona. To prove his identity, Carasso addresses his host in Hebrew, but the rabbi laughs, ostensibly at his clumsy performance, but is finally persuaded, after Carasso shows him what calls “various signs” of his Jewish identity, including his tzitzit, a tasseled garment worn under the outer clothing for religious reasons.22

20 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 144–46. 21 Cf. Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 144: “Melazem” and “Yuzebashi.” 22 The “various signs” are not specified and unclear, and the wording “other signs of Judaism, and even the four signs (tzitzit)” is equally opaque. The obvious sign is circumcision, but that strains credulity.

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The moment of identity confusion exemplifies the tension of the initial stranger-host encounter, which in many cultures takes the form of a test or ordeal for the stranger.23 Carasso’s ordeal results not only in assuaging the rabbi’s concern, but also in impressing upon the reader the depth of his Jewish identity, for his familiarity with Hebrew, however partial, and his adherence to the requirement to wear the ritual garment, expose a more profound commitment than that implied in his account thus far. The rabbi is still reluctant to speak freely, on account of Carasso’s Turkish escorts, but once he is assured that they are friendly, he expatiates upon his community’s difficult straits. The rabbi admits that the Turkish occupation has ameliorated their circumstances, although he may have felt constrained to make such an admission in front of the lurking escorts. Carasso writes that he is impressed by what he has learned, the like of which he had not even read in the “Book of Ben-Gurion (the tale of one of the awful things in Jeremiah).” That Jeremiah prophesies the suffering of the Jews would have been common knowledge, but the reference to the Book of Ben-Gurion would have caught readers off guard, for this work, also known as Yosipon, is a medieval work on ancient Jewish history, known only to educated Jews.24 Thus, this citation serves to bolster the tendency to highlight Carasso’s Jewish education and commitment. A drink of arak cements the relationship between stranger and host, who part amicably. Carasso leaves the rabbi with a promise to speak on the Jews’ behalf with the pasha, Mussa Pasha, assuring the rabbi that he and the pasha meet frequently. Nothing comes of this promise, reportedly because the pasha leaves the city to quash a rebellion. Nonetheless, in the remainder of his narrative, Carasso repeatedly intervenes in defense of Yemen’s Jews, as we shall see. The key to his efforts in this direction is his Turkish identity and social standing, which grant him a fair amount of political capital. Carasso’s lobbying also reflects his faith in the justice and fairness of the Turkish regime, which is to be understood in the broader context of the Ottoman empire’s move toward modernization, including the elements of separation of church and state, and of equal rights for all citizens, Jews included. Back in Ta’izz, Carasso jumps into the fray, engaging in a legal struggle to combat the persecution of the Jews.25 The episode is triggered by a violent incident, in which he witnesses a Muslim beating two Jews on the street, and demanding that they accept Islam. The second victim tells Carasso that the 23 Pitt-Rivers, “The Law of Hospitality.” 24 We have already encountered Yosipon in the story of the encounter between Peter Forsskål, of the Danish expedition, and the Jews of Magrába. 25 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 146–48.

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Muslim is insane. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of this assertion, but its purpose is to convince Carasso, the Turkish (Jewish) outsider, to excuse the aggressor’s behavior.26 The locals appear to be habituated to this type of harassment, which does nothing to undermine their basic sense of security, and thus they eschew confrontation, which is more likely to provoke further incidents than to produce fundamental change. Thus, the beaten Jews regard Carasso, rather than their assailant, as the real threat to their security. Carasso complains to a Turkish officer, who brushes him off, but another such incident occurs on the following day, and, throwing caution to the wind, Carasso assaults the Muslim, and demands that he convert to Judaism. Passersby promptly attack Carasso, and an Albanian merchant named Abedin, another “friend,” invites Carasso into his nearby store to protect and calm him.27 Ten gendarmes arrive to arrest Carasso, who promises to appear before the local magistrate within two hours. In court, the violent Muslim is excused for his violent behavior on the grounds of insanity, whereupon Carasso harangues the court about the maltreatment of the Jews. The judge is reluctant to rule in Carasso’s favor, and the trial drags on for four days. Carasso demands that the Muslim be imprisoned, but nothing is decided. Carasso brings the affair before the Ta’izz high court and argues for the Jews’ fair treatment. Initially, he rests his claim on humanistic grounds, insisting that Jews are also human beings, but then he switches tactics and adduces the Prophet’s command to treat them fairly.28 He concludes his address with the threat that he will write to Constantinople and the European press, and indeed, immediately thereafter, he reports the incident to the Hakham Bashi (Chief Rabbi) in Constantinople and to the press. Carasso concludes his narrative of the incident with the dubious assertion that he later learned that the Arab in question was banished and the Jews’ condition slightly improved.

26 Maimonides advises the Jews of twelfth-century Yemen to attempt to attenuate the judicial punishment of a Messianic pretender by persuading the authorities that he is insane. This incident was well-known, and may have inspired the victims in this case to argue for their assailant’s insanity in order to safeguard him from judicial punitive action, which in their estimation could only lead to a worsening of relations with their Muslim neighbors. 27 We thus learn of the presence of other foreign nationals with shops in Yemen at this time, who clearly know one another. However, this Albanian enjoys a different status than Carasso, for while both strangers are Ottoman citizens, the Albanian is a Muslim, and thus the Yemenites’ coreligionist. On Ottoman rule in Albania, see Isa Blumi, Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire: A Comparative Social and Political History of Albania and Yemen, 1878–1918 (Istanbul, 2003). 28 This is a rare glimpse of Carasso’s familiarity with the religion and values of Islam.

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The incident portrays Carasso as a new Moses, who becomes an activist for his brethren after witnessing a violent act against them. And Carasso also resembles Moses in that Moses, too, had a murky identity, with a public national identity that differed from his private religious one. In the courtroom, the judge asks Carasso: “Who are you?” and the latter replies: “I don’t have to tell you; it is enough that you know that I am a Jew, one of their people, with the right to speak on their behalf.” Clearly, Carasso assumed that the judge knew he was Jewish and was merely questioning the basis for his role as their champion. The question “Who are you?” suggests that the judge trod carefully, cognizant that Carasso might be well connected. And, indeed, Carasso seems to have expected that justice would prevail, presumably because of the weight of Turkish authority. On these grounds, however, the incident was a disappointment, for the Turkish officer on the street dismissed Carasso’s outrage. From this point in the narrative, Carasso is frequently frustrated at the failure of the local Turkish leadership to implement the liberal policies legislated and enforced in Constantinople. He testifies to his faith in the new system in his initial presentation of a humanistic claim for Jewish toleration, and the moment he switches to the Quran argument seems to be the moment he grasps that he is longer in Kansas, as it were. Carasso’s disappointing experience with the Ottoman judicial system in Ta’izz is illustrative of the historical development of the Ottoman regime in Yemen in the decades following the 1872 conquest. An initial policy of exporting to Yemen the program of imperial reform, the Tanzimat, gave way to a more cautious policy, of adapting Ottoman policies and administrative structures to local mores. In the judicial realm, this meant backtracking from the Ottoman platform of equality before the law to recognition of the inferior judicial treatment of the “tolerated minorities” (dhimmi), as prescribed by Islamic law. Although, of course, the Turks were Muslims, they regarded the Yemenites as savages for blocking their efforts to institutionalize the values they regarded as modern and civilized. Nevertheless, the authorities soon learned that they could gain popular support by waving the flag of Muslim solidarity, albeit at the expense of the modern values they had intended to inculcate among the wild Arabs when they swept through Yemen in triumph.29

29 Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London, 1999), 50–52; Thomas Kühn, Shaping Ottoman Rule in Yemen, 1872–1919 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New York University 2005), 151–58. On the workings of the judicial system in Yemen, before, during and after the period in question, see Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley, 1993).

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From Hudaydah to Sana’a After a three-month stay, Carasso leaves Ta’izz for Hudaydah on September 7th, 1874, saying nothing about the purpose of his journey or about the journey itself. He does reveal that he was ill in Hudaydah for two months, so the sojourn could not have been terribly successful, but he does record a minor triumph. A local Arab brings him a Hebrew book and a Torah scroll, and Carasso has him arrested, in an effort to learn where he had obtained the objects, which Carasso assumes were taken from their legal owners. The unlucky opportunist confesses that they were from Al-Nar, a village on the way to Jabel Haraz, and is imprisoned for six months, in an unusual instance of Turkish justice in Carasso’s narrative.30 The hapless dealer falls into Carasso’s hands because he is unaware of his Jewish affiliation, in another example of the latter’s misleading self-presentation. The dealer would have regarded Carasso’s behavior as treacherous, as returning evil for good, and regardless of the law’s determination of right and wrong, Carasso would seem to him to have behaved dishonorably. A closer look at the anecdote’s language reveals a more subtle point. We read that the Arab “brought” (troucho)31 Carasso the book and scroll, a linguistic choice that avoids explicit reference to a commercial transaction. This phrasing nicely demonstrates the tendency of gift exchange accounts to avoid specifying a quid-pro-quo arrangement, in order to subtly emphasize the donor’s largesse, even when a reciprocal gift is anticipated and in fact deemed obligatory. Recuperated, Carasso’s departs for Sana’a on October 25th. After an arduous trek through the Tihama, he reaches higher ground, and enters the lush Wadi Haraz, to his delight and relief. He stops to rest, and swallows about six grains of quinine and eats a few onions before drinking from the stream. He explains that this is what travelers ought to do to avoid feeling ill, and he promises to list medicaments and their doses at the end of the book, for the benefit of future travelers.32 The addressee of this information is, thus, not the armchair traveler, but one who really might undertake a similar journey, like the merchant Carasso has in mind when he details commodities and prices. The broader context for this comment is the image of the western traveler as the possessor of medical knowledge and useful paraphernalia, as repeatedly evidenced in earlier travelogues.

30 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 151. 31 Ibid.; Zikhron Teman, 120. 32 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 152–53.

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This story grants the impression that Carasso traveled alone, and indeed, he states explicitly: “when I set out no one was with me.” But “no one” apparently refers to travelers of comparable social standing, for he immediately notes that on the second day of the journey “we began entering the wadi called Wadi Haraz.” Like virtually all foreign travelers in Yemen, Carasso was accompanied by a local guide, and just as Halévy ignored Hibshush, Carasso’s escorts, too, were invisible to him so long as their shared treks was uneventful. Carasso instructs his escort to remain alert while he sleeps. Later he asks the guide whether it will take a long time to reach Manakhah. “He replied that we will arrive after twelve o’clock, namely at three hours into the night, for it is their way to give signs (señas) of the way, since they are unfamiliar with the clock.”33 Crowing about the superiority of western technology was playing up to his readers, and in the same breath Carasso is boasting of how conversant he is with the Yemenites’ ways, and thus an ideal interpreter of Yemenite culture for the edification and entertainment of his home-bound audience. He spends the following day in Manakhah, pursuing what has obviously become his top extracurricular priority, visiting his “brethren” (mis hermanos), the Jewish community. He makes sure to explain that he presented himself as a Jew, implying that otherwise this would not have been obvious, as we have already seen. Carasso asks to meet Aron Sihip, who dominates the local coffee trade, but unfortunately was out of town.34 This is a rare case of the convergence of Carasso’s two identities, Jew and merchant.

In Sana’a Arriving at Sana’a, Carasso stays at the home of a Jew from Izmir named “I . . . [Ib]n G . . ., ” who lives “among the Arabs.”35 The decision to avoid the Jewish quarter indicates that “Ibn G” shares Carasso’s strategy of identifying himself as a Turk, rather than a Jew. “Afterwards,” Carasso adds, “I stayed in this city, Sana’a, for a long time and started to reunite (aguntarmi) with the Jews and see what their situation was.” While this pronouncement foregrounds Carasso’s commitment to his coreligionists, ironically, the phrase “started to 33 Ibid., 153; Zikhron Teman, 125. 34 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 152–55; Zikhron Teman, 127. 35 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 156. Tobi identifies this family as Ghiyat, an Izmir family known to have lived in Ta’izz and later in Aden. This identification would be certain if the Ghiyat could also be placed in Sana’a.

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reunite with the Jews” underscores the gap that, in his perception, separates him from them. Yet Carasso not only continues to lavish attention upon the Jews, this becomes his preoccupation and the main theme of his travelogue. He narrates three lengthy and complicated incidents, all involving the lowly status of Yemen’s Jews, and all highlighting his efforts to intercede on their behalf. Looking backward, we realize that the Ta’izz episode is only the first indication of a behavior pattern in which Carasso leverages his status as a Turk to combat the persecution of Yemenite Jewry. The first such incident is also the one with the broadest scope, both in the sense that it refers to all of Yemen, and not just Sana’a, and also because it is the most sustained and profound of his efforts. Carasso recounts his role in the activity leading up to the appointment by the Ottoman regime in Constantinople of a Hakham Bashi, or Chief Rabbi, for Yemen’s Jews, a step Carasso deems crucial for the amelioration of their status. Carasso’s struggle on behalf of Yemenite Jewry is, of course, his greatest gift to his Jewish hosts. It is, however, one of a distinctly colonial nature, characterized by a lopsided imbalance in the status of donor and recipient. The stranger, Carasso, abetted by his confederates in Europe and Turkey, confers the gift of political intervention upon the Yemenite hosts, who are but the passive objects of the foreigners’ political largesse. Moreover, as the tale of the insane Muslim assailant subtly indicates, what appears to the donor as an act of generosity on his part can strike the recipient as a burden when it brings unforeseen and unpleasant consequences. This type of complication lucidly illustrates the fraught nature of gift exchange. The Hakham Bashi campaign is triggered by an event that took place in October 1875, when Turkish forces struggled to put down a rebellion north of Sana’a. The Ottoman forces suffered a substantial number of casualties, and the commanding officer ordered the wounded evacuated to Hudaydah by stretcher. Burdening Sana’a’s Muslims with this onerous task must have seemed the wrong choice, presumably because they could be expected to balk, given their presumed sympathy for the rebel forces, coupled with the difficulty of the task, given the length of the trek and the steep and treacherous terrain.36 It therefore fell to the Jews, whose protests fell upon deaf ears. The forced march got as far as Manakhah before that city’s Jews 36 On the Turks’ strategies in governing the unruly Yemenites, see Thomas Kühn, “Shaping and Reshaping Colonial Ottomanism: Contesting Boundaries of Difference and Integration in Ottoman Yemen, 1872–1919,” Comparitive Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27 (2007), 315–31.

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succeeded in calling a halt to the mission, and having their exhausted brethren released, though not before three Jews had perished from the ordeal.37 This incident convinces Carasso of the need for immediate, energetic, action. He urges the heads of Sana’a’s Jewish community to write letters about the incident to Constantinople and Europe, particularly to the Hakham Bashi of Constantinople, Moshe Halevi, as well as to the foreign press; Carasso forwards these letters to their addressees. He then creates a council of local community leaders, and seeks their permission to ask the leaders of the Constantinople Jewish community to arrange for a rabbi to be sent to Yemen as Hakham Bashi, an acknowledged Ottoman official, and thus one enjoying governmental support. Ever practical, Carasso stipulates that the Sana’a community would assume financial responsibility for their new leader, to the tune of forty lire (i.e. riyals, or Maria Theresa thalers) per month. The local leaders plead poverty, a reaction Carasso clearly anticipated, because he promptly proposes that the sum be raised from a new community tax on meat, arak, and oil. This suggestion meets with the council’s approval, and the Hakham Bashi project gets underway.38 This initiative is the mature expression of Carasso’s ambition to modernize the status of Yemen’s Jews, and it is thus his greatest gift to them. Carasso does so in three steps. Giving the Yemenites the benefit of his global perspective, he directs Sana’a’s Jewish leaders to make their people’s plight known around the world through a public relations campaign. He then introduces them to the notion of communal government, an institution which apparently was previously unknown in Yemen. And finally, he devises not only the general idea of lobbying for a Yemenite Hakham Bashi but also the precise and detailed strategy for how to put this suggestion into effect. The Constantinople community duly names Isaac Shaul as Yemen’s new Hakham Bashi. The incumbent happens to be Carasso’s brother-in-law, though whether Carasso had a hand in his appointment is unclear. Shaul embarks for Yemen, and Carasso, touting his political influence, writes that he notified the Turkish court in Sana’a as soon as Shaul landed at Hudaydah, so that they could arrange a mounted military escort. Carasso seems to have cleverly designed this maneuver so as to demonstrate to all, and particularly to the Arab population, the honor in which the Ottoman authorities regard the Jewish dignitary. Trumpeting his connections with the city’s merchants, Carasso relates that he asked all of them – Greeks and Turks, as well as Jews – to shut their

37 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 97–101. 38 Ibid., 105–08, 158; Zikhron Teman, 132.

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shops on the day of Shaul’s arrival, and that a large crowd duly assembled outside the city’s walls to greet the new official.39 Carasso’s narrative of this affair portrays him as the hero, and indeed the savior, of Yemenite Jewry. This would be sufficient reason to make readers skeptical of its accuracy, and in fact other historical documents assign him a more modest role, attributing the initiative to others, particularly the Hakham Bashi of Constantinople.40 This corrective enhances our understanding of Carasso’s self-presentation to his readership, which is as significant to this study, or more so, than the ways in which others perceived the events in which he was involved. Carasso exploits his personal relationship with Shaul in a maneuver designed to save a Jewish youngster from apostasy. This young unfortunate was imprisoned after being falsely accused of a crime, and, in keeping with Yemenite custom, his captors offered him the opportunity to gain his freedom by accepting Islam. To gain access to the prisoner, Carasso has Shaul ask the Pasha to have the physician, a fellow Jew, treat the sick prisoners, and the good doctor instructs the youth how to respond when questioned about his beliefs, such that, rather than abandon Judaism, the lad is released from prison.41 This is but one in a series of incidents in which Carasso flexes his political muscle on behalf of Yemenite Jewry, but Shaul’s role in this episode introduces another element. Although Carasso as well as Shaul are outsiders from the Ottoman heartland, in Sana’a Carasso assumes the role of insider, the savvy local, who knows the ins and outs of the city’s administration, including not only its laws but also its unofficial and even its shady customs. He thus becomes an insider-outsider, a new position in the tales of Yemen travel.42 Shaul’s tenure as Yemen’s Hakham Bashi is not particularly successful, for tensions arise between himself and the Jewish community, largely surrounding his demands for extravagant financial support. Carasso becomes aware of the general discontent, and, never one to watch passively from the sidelines, advises Shaul to modify his behavior, presumably taking this liberty on the basis

39 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 159. Note the presence in Sana’a of Greek merchants, as well as those of other nationalities. 40 See: Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 122–23; Yaron Harel, “The Relations between the Jewish Community of Sana’a and the Sephardic Hakham Bashi Yitzhak Shaul” [Hebrew], East and Maghreb 7 (2004), 47–48. 41 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 163–64. 42 The relationship between this status and the extraordinary duration of Carasso’s sojourn in Sana’a will be explored below.

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of their personal relationship as well as their shared Turkish identity and allegiance. At this point Carasso probably regrets having lobbied on behalf of his brother-in-law in the first place. Shaul persists, and two years later his story reaches its unhappy denouement with his illness and death.43 Apart from the Hakham Bashi episode, which is the centerpiece of Carasso’s Yemen sojourn, his stranger-host encounters in Sana’a include a series of incidents in which he witnesses the Jews’ maltreatment at the hands of their Arab neighbors, and intervenes on their behalf. The first of three such episodes involves a physician named Isaac Hayyim Uzhalvo, who was in the city in the spring of 1879. Carasso must have felt a bond with Uzhalvo, for the latter was not only a coreligionist but also a compatriot, as evidenced by his Turkish honorific, Kaymakam Bey (i.e. District Governor). The doctor differs from Carasso in having brought his family with him, which suggests that, like Carasso, he was not simply passing through Yemen, but there for an extended stay. His presence fits into the broader context of the Turkish occupation, for, as we shall see, the coterie of Turkish officials provided themselves with proper medical care by bringing staff and equipment to their colonial outpost. Carasso writes that Uzhalvo, who directed the local hospital, was ordered to work on the Intermediate Days of the Passover festival, in violation of Jewish law, and accordingly, a young Jew is sent to bring him food. Arabs attack this youth on his way to the hospital for wearing a green robe, a garment reserved for dignitaries.44 The story has a happy outcome, for Uzhalvo reports the incident to the Turkish court, which punishes the offenders.45 As before, Carasso emphasizes his role in the story, when he describes the young servant as “my companion (compañero), Samuel Cohen, a local resident, whom I had (tenea) in my house,”46 implying that it was he that dispatched Cohen to aid Uzhalvo. This, then, is a story of two “local strangers,” Carasso and Uzhalvo, with Carasso extending largesse to a fellow outsider of identical status. The reality of a society of strangers in Yemen is unique to this period in that country’s history, and hence gave rise to new types of stranger-host encounters. This same Samuel is also the protagonist of the second episode in this series, and once again he appears as the luckless victim of Arab persecution. Carasso explains that by law, namely Shari’a law, Jews may not ride animals. As a Turk, Carasso rides to work on a donkey despite his Jewish identity, but

43 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 161. 44 Carasso implies that this servant is a local resident, but it is puzzling that a Yemenite Jew would make the mistake of wearing the cloak of honor on the street. 45 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 165–66. 46 Cf. Ibid., 165, who translates: “my friend . . . whom I raised.”

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he has his Jewish servant – who accompanies him on foot – walk the animal home. This servant is the aforementioned Samuel, and one day, as Carasso makes his way home in the company of a fellow Turkish Jew, he orders Samuel to ride the donkey instead of leading it, to see if the Arabs actually observe the prohibition. The servant demurs, but Carasso insists, having sworn the lad to obey him, and declaring that “he is no Jew” if he reneges. In a somewhat apologetic tone, Carasso admits that he might have relented, but his Turkish friend and assorted passersby were flightier (caprigioso) than himself. The luckless servant rides, trailed at a hundred paces by Carasso and his companion. Some Turks from Carasso’s neighborhood tag along, laughing at the expectation that “some Arab would be harassed by us that evening.” At first the experiment fails, for Arabs who see the mounted Jew do nothing, because they also spot the entourage, and note that the Turks take no action. Carasso then sends Samuel ahead, while he and the others hide in a nearby garden. Promptly, a sheikh and his three companions accost the servant, and, noticing the animal’s expensive saddle, the sheikh moves to take the donkey, as is his right under Islamic law. When Carasso sees that the sheikh is about to beat Samuel, he leaps from hiding to upbraid him, and forces him to admit that the Jew is superior to excrement, which Arabs have no qualms about loading onto their donkeys.47 The Turkish onlookers beat the Arabs before handing them over to the police, threatening to prosecute them, though with no intention of doing so. As a postscript to this story, Carasso adds that from then on, he repeated this behavior as a matter of routine.48 Sana’a’s various group identities – Arab, Turk and Jew – come into play in this encounter. In this tale, the Turks accept the Jews as equals – and not only Carasso but all Jews – and scorn the Arabs, in whose humiliation they eagerly cooperate. Carasso acts as both Turk and Jew. He is a Turk in engineering the scenario in which Samuel the Jew serves as bait merely to satisfy his curiosity. This is the ugly aspect of the incident, for Carasso intentionally subjects his servant to fear and danger, manipulating and abusing him. Yet Carasso’s Jewish identity is never in doubt, for it is obviously the driving force behind his aggression. Additionally, Carasso intimidates Samuel into doing his bidding by reminding him that “he is no Jew” if he breaks his oath of obedience, although for him to play the card of their Jewish fraternity under the circumstances is heavily ironic.

47 This is a reference to the Yemenites’ collection of excrement for use as fuel. 48 Ibid., 166–68.

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Carasso’s servant appears in one more tale of Arab-Jewish confrontation, and yet again we find him on the front line. The story begins with the information that Sana’a’s Jews are forced to remove carcasses from the city streets. Carasso relates that one day he feels ill and sends Samuel home from his shop to prepare flavored coffee for him. On his way back with the drink, a group of Arabs attempt to force Samuel to remove a carcass. Carasso explains to his readers that Samuel is of priestly descent, and, as such, Jewish law prohibits him from coming into contact with a corpse or carcass.49 To avoid the problematic assignment, Samuel asks his interlocutors to hold his drink while he finds some more Jews, since the carcass is too heavy for one person to move. Of course, he does no such thing, but rather hurries to the shop to tell Carasso what transpired, and Carasso laughs at his ingenuity, “although I was left without the jimini (coffee pot).”50 Various aspects of this anecdote suggest that it occurred after Carasso became culturally acclimated. Rather than adhere rigidly to the mores of his home country, Carasso is able to appreciate a local drink, in which cinnamon and ginger are added to coffee husks. What is more, Carasso’s expectation was that the beverage would alleviate his stomachache, which shows a surprising degree of respect for the local medical culture. Third, the punchline of this tale is Carasso’s appreciation of his servant’s quick-witted maneuver. This sort of sneaky response to discriminatory practices was second nature to a Yemenite Jew, given the Jews’ powerlessness, but it contrasts starkly with Carasso’s pattern of direct confrontation. The anecdote suggests that over time Carasso grew able to appreciate the predicament of the helpless natives, and to enjoy the little victories they occasionally carried off by means of clever stratagems. At the same time, the image of the devious Orientals contrasts with the modern westerners image of themselves as honest, direct, and forthright, and from this perspective, cleverness is seen as underhanded, and thus a mark of moral corruption.

Conclusion Carasso’s attempt to heal his ailment with a local remedy deviates from the general pattern of strangers offering locals the gift of medical assistance and supplies, a pattern rooted in the assumption – often shared by their hosts – that 49 We may doubt Carasso’s explanation, and posit that Samuel simply sought to avoid an onerous task, particularly since he was engaged in serving his employer. By proffering a religious explanation rather than merely one of convenience, Carasso may sought to portray the servant’s tricky behavior in a more favorable light. 50 Tobi, The Jews of Yemen in the 19th Century, 169–70.

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the visitor comes from a civilization with a more advanced state of science and technology. Apart from this incident, however, Carasso generally shares this mindset. He relates that in Yemen every year many children die of chicken pox, because the Yemenites are unfamiliar with vaccination. We read that repeatedly Carasso attempts to convince locals of the value of this practice, but he is unsuccessful even when he provides physicians – presumably Turkish ones – who offer their services gratis.51 Gift refusal is a common behavior, exemplifying the fraught nature of gift exchange, and in this case it seems rooted in the fear and suspicion of what must have seemed like an invasive and dangerous procedure. Readers of Carasso’s travelogue will sympathize with the Yemenites’ suspicion, in light of the tale in which he hoodwinks his local guide, giving him arak for his pain after promising medication. On the whole, Yemen Memoir offers very few examples of this straightforward sort of gift exchange, and this is attributable to the major difference between Carasso and the travelers of previous chapters. Carasso comes to Yemen for a lengthy stay, so lengthy that it is more properly termed a sojourn than a visit, and although gift-giving might have been wise for putting his arrangements in place, Carasso had every intention of establishing a self-sufficient establishment. Moreover, if Carasso would have imagined himself needing some sort of assistance, it would have been the Turkish authorities rather than the local Arabs that would have figured in his planning. The fundamental difference between Carasso’s experience and that of earlier travelers is rooted in the Turkish occupation, which is also at the heart of the ambivalence concerning his identity, as both Turk and Jew. This issue surfaces in a number of the incidents we have explored, and while earlier travelers were as mindful of what differentiated them from Yemen’s Jews as of what united them, Carasso is far more deeply embedded than his predecessors in his foreign national identity, and this is obviously because at the time Yemen was ruled by his own nation state. Additionally, by the time of Carasso’s voyage, the modernization project was well under way, in the Ottoman empire as well as in Europe, such that the abject position of Yemenite Jewry, and their harassment and persecution at the hands of the Arab authorities and populace, became viewed by enlightened nations as intolerable, and world Jewry felt increasingly responsible to intervene on their behalf. This heightened sensitivity would have sharpened Carasso’s awareness of the gulf separating him from his Yemenite brethren. Carasso not only embraces this perspective of political philanthropy, he presents it as the purpose of his literary endeavor. Lamenting the continued

51 Ibid., 188.

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persecution of Yemen’s Jews, notwithstanding the improvement wrought by the Turkish occupation, Carasso expresses the hope that international intervention, among others by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, will bring radical change. “Long live the Alliance!,” he cries, and adds: “I expect from God that when this book entitled Zikhron Teman is published, the gentlemen will devote all their energy to assist these poor people . . . so that they can benefit as we and others do. . . ”52 The strategy of international involvement expresses a keen political awareness, for in the late Ottoman empire, those in power were acutely sensitive to the problem of the empire’s negative image among the nations of western Europe.53 Carasso refers here not only to the benefit of political-legal freedom and equality but also to the benefits of education and progress. He declares, in what is a model of the Orientalist attitude: “Most of them [the Yemenite Jews] are intelligent people, and with the assistance they can receive from the aforementioned sources, they can quickly distance themselves from ignorance . . . They can receive all sorts of educational training.”54 One of the declared goals of Carasso’s travelogue, then, is to promote the civilizing of Yemen’s Jews, which, in typical Orientalist fashion, implicitly portrays them as barbarians. The broader context of Carasso’s mission is the Ottoman strategy of civilizing Yemen through the creation of a set of civil institutions similar to the modern ones in Constantinople.55 Many of the incidents we have read illustrate the generalization elaborated by Thomas Kühn, that the Turkish authorities learned that the modernization of Yemen needed to be implemented with tact and sensitivity, which in practical terms meant the allocation of a degree of authority to the local Yemenite leadership, an approach that dashed the Jews’ hopes for a rapid and radical improvement of their conditions.56 This dynamic, of energetic efforts on behalf of Yemen’s modernization meeting with vigorous local opposition, is a quintessential feature of Carasso’s stranger-host encounters.

52 Ibid., 170–71. 53 Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, 135–65. 54 Ibid. 55 Deringil, ‘“They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery:” The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (2003), 327–33; Idem, The Well-Protected Domains, op. cit., and, for education, 101. See also Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” American Historical Review 107 (2002), 768–96. 56 See Thomas Kühn, “An Imperial Borderland as Colony: Knowledge Production and the Elaboration of Difference in Ottoman Yemen, 1872–1918,” The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (2003), 5–17.

Explorer Renzo Manzoni

Fig. 1: Renzo Manzoni1.

Renzo Manzoni, born in Milano in 1852, states that he undertook his Yemen expedition “for scientific purposes.”2 This formulation is not only vague, it takes liberties with the truth. Manzoni confesses that he grew up with a desire to travel to exotic lands, after devouring his father’s extensive collection of printed travel accounts. He is an explorer in spirit, though not in the sense of Dias or Columbus, who sought to discover unknown lands. This type of explorer, driven by a thirst for adventure and experience but without a particular mission, is the subject of this chapter. Manzoni’s odyssey begins in 1876, roughly coterminous with that of Carasso. He accompanies an experienced traveler to Morocco for approximately a year, and follows this expedition with one to Ethiopia, also in the company of a veteran. By then he feels ready to undertake a journey of his own, and sails from Morocco to Aden in March 1877, with the intention of continuing on to Sana’a.

1 Source: Renzo Manzoni, El Yèmen: Tre Anni nell’Arabia Felice. Escursioni fatte dal Settembre 1877 al Marzo 1880 (Roma, 1884), frontispiece. 2 Ibid., dedication. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-007

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In Aden, Manzoni studies Arabic for several months in the home of Giuseppe Bienenfeld-Rolpf, Italy’s consul. He departs for Sheikh Othman and joins a caravan for Sana’a. He is accompanied by a servant named Muqbèll, whose common language with Manzoni is French, which was a kind of “neutral territory,” since it was an acquired language for both parties. Manzoni narrates Muqbèll’s family history in some detail, which reveals that Manzoni strove to know Muqbèll, and found his story of interest.

Aden to Sana’a (20.9.1877 – 15.10.1877) From Sheikh Othman, Manzoni’s caravan reaches Al-Hawtah, southeast of Lahij. He is visited by the local sheikh’s two secretaries, who discreetly inquire about his destination and purpose. The author confides that in the Orient it is important to be honest, but only sometimes. We are then told that, knowing that this same sheikh impeded Halévy from proceeding to Sana’a, and forced him to return to Aden, Manzoni allays the sheikh’s suspicions by responding that he has come to go hunting. This placates the sheikh’s secretaries, and, though ostensibly a lie, turns out to be not entirely so, for throughout the travelogue Manzoni reports with pride the results of numerous hunting expeditions, making it clear that he was fond of the sport.3 The encounter with the sheikh’s secretaries offers a platform from which the worldly Manzoni can enlighten the naïve European reader about the complexity and dangers that can entrap the innocent foreigner in the mysterious Orient. It is a striking change from his self-portrait as an ingenue prior to his arrival in Aden, and clearly, he matured during his years in Yemen. Manzoni’s description of Yemenite life and culture reflects his image of the naïve European, for he expects no prior knowledge from his reader, and explains basic concepts, such as Ramadan, which fell during this stage of his journey. Two hours after leaving Al-Hawtah, Manzoni’s caravan stops to rest in the shade from the intense heat. Manzoni and Muqbèll are approached by three shepherdesses from a nearby bedouin camp: the elderly Selma, the young Garìa and the very young Elie. Selma reaches for Manzoni’s narghile, sends Elie for a glowing piece of fuel, and she and Garìa proceed to smoke, all without a word of introduction or explanation. Manzoni comments that bedouin are not as scrupulous as city dwellers in their observance of Ramadan but adds nothing

3 For example, Manzoni goes hunting in forests in the Sana’a region and kills hares and deer – El Yèmen, 100.

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about their rather forward behavior. Smoking a strange man’s pipe is surely an act likely to be interpreted as a gesture of friendliness, and in this case perhaps even an erotic one. Manzoni responds to their initiative, offering the women sugar water with mint extract, which they accept. He characterizes the women as “freethinkers,” and is emboldened to tempt them with gin, which they sip, and find strong but excellent. This is Manzoni as the stereotype of the European purveyor of alcohol to Muslim natives, ignoring their cultural norms after concluding that they habitually flout them anyway.4 The leader of the camp joins them, and after asking Manzoni about his party, goes off and returns with food for the animals and coffee, tobacco, and fire for the travelers. In a typical display of honor, not only does the chief not expect payment for his supplies, he refuses any payment, even of a single thaler. The caravan is, however, augmented by approximately a dozen men from the bedouin camp, after Manzoni accedes to their request to join them. The men explain that they seek to enhance their security and that of their heavily laden beasts of burden, about twenty in number. The narrator comments: “See strange people!,” but goes on to explain that the Arab honor code, specifically its hospitality norms, renders it taboo to molest someone’s guest, which explains the locals’ expectation of safety with Manzoni and his party.5 Whether the chief regarded this arrangement as a passive sort of recompense for his largesse is uncertain, or at any rate Manzoni does not present it as such. The travelers continue north, into the mountainous region leading to the capital. The area is reputedly thick with brigands, but Manzoni is unmolested, which he attributes to letters of recommendation written for him by BienenfeldRolpf, the Italian consul at Aden. For instance, he learns that, based on these letters, Obesc Saleh, a notable of Al Jalila, a town located north of Ad Dali, tells the bedouin leaders of Ad Dali and Khuraybah that Manzoni is the consul’s brother!6 Manzoni marvels at the currency of his countryman’s word among the bedouin, and it is indeed a valuable gift from host to stranger, terms appropriate here even though consul and traveler hail from the same – foreign – country. A second reason that Manzoni’s caravan is not molested by bandits is that the bedouin are afraid of the bands of monkeys which inhabit the mountains and descend on campsites at night. Manzoni, like Halévy in Ethiopia, drives the

4 Ibid., 18–19. 5 Ibid., 20–21. This insight into the treatment of strangers resembles the code of honor presented in greater detail in the travelogues of Halévy and Hibshush. Note, however, that Manzoni mentions (p. 31) that he was armed with a revolver. 6 Ibid., 36.

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monkeys away with a few rounds from his revolver.7 This is a classic European tale of the foreigner’s courage and resourcefulness, which are contrasted to the Oriental fatalism and pusillanimity. These qualities are generally linked to Europe’s superior technology, but in this case the narrator stresses that the bedouin are armed. The message, then, is that Europeans are more capable than Orientals by virtue of their cultural superiority, which in the European mind explains their history of innovation and creativity. The monkeys story also communicates the Orientalist message of the European’s ability to dominate nature. Like the legendary Stanley and Livingstone, Manzoni advances into the heart of the savage countryside, and copes successfully with the hazards that await him. So, apart from pitting the European in a kind of competition with the local savages, the anecdote celebrates his ability to grapple with unforeseen difficulties posed by the physical environment. The same Obesc Saleh hosts Manzoni in Al Jalila, and the visitor forges a warm relationship with the family. Obesc Saleh’s father finds Manzoni charming, and marvels openly that one with such a fine and gentlemanly appearance could be anything but a Muslim; “Become a Muslim,” he repeatedly exhorts Manzoni, “and we will be in paradise!”8 This was the most flattering compliment the patriarch could have bestowed upon his guest, expressing a desire to shrink the gap separating stranger and host, albeit without a pluralistic sentiment. Obesc Saleh’s son unwittingly intensifies the family’s relationship with Manzoni. His mother brings him to Manzoni to treat him for diarrhea and loss of appetite. The stranger gives him bismuth subnitrate, which effects what Manzoni describes as a veritable miracle. This event has a ripple effect, for word spreads that “a great physician” is in town, and the European is besieged by men, women and children seeking medical assistance.9 This, Manzoni explains, is a general phenomenon, since in Muslim countries Europeans are assumed to know everything, simply because they can read and write. He ridicules the Arabs’ assumption that all human knowledge is contained within a single book, from which the Yemenites conclude that he must

7 Ibid., 36–37. Later, just five days short of Sana’a by camel, Manzoni has his second encounter with Yemen’s macaque monkeys. Residents of a nearby town warn him that they inhabit a nearby mountain, and he retrieves his rifle and marches uphill to hunt them, accompanied by two villagers. However, his health was still not completely restored after a brief illness, and he suffers symptoms that force him to go back without achieving his purpose – Ibid., 77–78. 8 Ibid., 42. 9 Ibid.

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be capable of curing their ailments.10 And Manzoni warns his readers that, should they find themselves in a similar predicament, it would be folly for them to be honest and protest ignorance of the medical art, because the locals would merely assume that they withheld their knowledge and service out of ingratitude and callousness. Hence, armed with a stock of medicines and handbooks of basic medical advice, he proceeds to diagnose and treat the ailing of Al Jalila, who, he maintains, often seem to feel better simply by having been treated by a European. To most he gives suspensions containing aloe vera, laudanum or aconite, while in some cases he feels that a simple shot of cognac is appropriate. Manzoni sums up that over time he fancied himself rather proficient at this sort of basic doctoring. This anecdote harks back to earlier tales, in which European travelers in Yemen are asked to offer medical assistance. Sapir and others also experienced the locals’ skeptical response to being told that the traveler has no medical knowledge. And in Carasso’s travelogue we encountered the element of a European purveying alcohol as medicine. These aspects of the stranger-host encounter are remarkably stable, regardless of changes in Yemenite life over decades and even centuries. That same afternoon, Manzoni goes hunting, in the company of a few local men. He shoots a few doves and sparrows, which his delighted companions fetch for him, a demeaning image of locals performing the task performed at home by dogs. Manzoni’s Arab acquaintances now regard him as a skilled hunter as well as physician, and he remarks that a reputation is easily acquired among such a wonderful but ignorant people. Manzoni observes that although the bedouin are intelligent, they neither remember the information they acquire nor reflect upon it, although he is unsure whether to attribute these qualities to fatalism, apathy, or both. With encouragement and praise, Manzoni avers, the bedouin are able to do great things, an observation that in the same breath praises and patronizes them.11 The best site for hunting in the Al Jalila region is a well, located a short distance from the village, because of the animals’ need for water. Fetching water is women’s work, and Manzoni explains that this arrangement enables him to interact closely with local women, who, he reports, quite enjoy the experience. We are also told that, unlike in Morocco, bedouin women do not cover

10 He later comments that the Arabs’ ignorance should not be attributed to their religion, noting the favorable attitude to science expressed in some Quran passages and in the Abassid Caliphate and al-Andalus. Additionally, he compares them to the rustics of Spain, Greece, and southern Italy, whose ignorance cannot be attributed to their Christianity – Ibid., 46. 11 Ibid., 42–43.

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their faces in the presence of strangers, which he believes facilitates their uninhibited interaction with him. This scene has an erotic flavor, which is mitigated, but not altogether effaced, by Manzoni’s assurance that on these occasions he is always accompanied by Arab men.12 Erotic elements appear with lesser subtlety in the vicinity of this anecdote. Manzoni describes in some detail the physical attributes of the bedouin male and female and is particularly complimentary about the beauty of the women, even applying to them the image of Olympian goddesses! European portrayals often include this erotic element, which is yet another form of Orientalist expression, and had not lost its cultural currency. In describing the bedouin mode of adornment, he relates that he sent a gift of cosmetics – a stick of Chinese ink – to the wife of Thàbet, a member of his traveling party, about whom he remarks to his servant that the more he sees her, the more she enters sweetly into his heart. This might be interpreted as a bold, offensive, gesture, expressing indifference to the social constraints of the host society. Manzoni’s reference to the charming woman by the name of her husband rather than herself suggests that he was well aware that he was making advances of a sort to someone else’s wife, and yet he shares this anecdote in an offhanded manner, and says nothing about an angry reaction by Thàbet or other male companions. Elsewhere, Manzoni observes that the freedom enjoyed by bedouin women in the Yemen countryside contrasts sharply with the way urban women, such as at Yerim, are cloistered and closely supervised, with their faces hidden in public.13 Manzoni’s stranger-host encounter is further enriched in Al Jalila, where, for the first time, he eats from the same plate as his servant Muqbèll, explaining that the latter had become more his friend than his servant. Obviously, Manzoni understood his relationship with Muqbèll as hierarchical, but such was likely the case even when the servant’s employer was an Arab. Regardless, the social mores of eating served to respect and preserve the gap separating Manzoni and Muqbèll, and while Manzoni implies that closing the gap represents an act of largesse on his part, and he seems proud of himself for condescending in this fashion, we cannot know whether Muqbèll perceived it that way: if he regarded the traditional eating arrangement as “separate but equal,” rather than as hierarchical, he might have interpreted Manzoni’s intimacy not as a mark of friendship, but rather as a breach of his privacy and an intrusion upon his personal space.

12 Ibid., 55. 13 Ibid., 48; cf. 81. Nonetheless, Manzoni adds that the Yerim women who came to sell bread to him and his party did unveil their faces and converse freely.

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In this context, Manzoni expatiates on the Yemenites’ eating habits, to which he compares Muqbèll’s favorably. The servant eats with his fingers, as do his countrymen, but assiduously avoids dirtying them or putting them in his mouth. This behavior enables him to avoid licking his fingers, a custom Manzoni finds disgusting, noting that the Yemenites would lick not five fingers but fifty if they had as many! His intolerance is typical of European treatments of this topic dating back centuries, which exhibit an outlook no more pluralistic than that which Obesc Saleh’s father expressed towards his European guest.14 Further along the road to Sana’a, outside Arbat el-Gala’a, a village south of Yerim, Manzoni encounters a friendly sheikh by the name of Muhsin Ali Hussein, who surprises him with a delicious cooked meal. Manzoni learns that the sheikh had lived in Aden and made the acquaintance of a number of Europeans, as well as with an Arab friend of Manzoni’s, to whom he feels obligated. Manzoni is able to reciprocate with gin from his flask, but regrets that he has no brandy, for which the sheikh expresses a preference, notwithstanding the Muslim taboo on alcohol. Seated together on Manzoni’s carpet during the meal, the sheikh expatiates on his sympathy for Christians and admiration for the English, and expresses the hope that “the Frengi,” namely the European Christians, will do away with the Turks, whom he despises. These sentiments may have been sincere, rather than mere politesse, not only in light of Hussein’s Aden connections, but also given that Yemenites generally found Turkish rule oppressive. Manzoni parts amicably from his friendly host, politely declining the sheikh’s offer of home hospitality, because he is anxious to forge on to Sana’a.15

Sana’a (15.10.1877 – 22.3.1878) Protocol required that upon entering the city, the Customs Office must be the stranger’s first stop, and accordingly Manzoni arranges to bring his chests on the following morning. During the inspection, he explains to the customs officer that much of his equipment is photography paraphernalia, whereupon the latter asks to have his portrait taken and Manzoni readily agrees.16 Bartholdi engaged intensively in portraiture, as we have seen, but this is the first instance of a local requesting the gift of a portrait from the Western stranger.

14 Ibid., 55. 15 Ibid., 78–79. 16 Ibid., 91–92.

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Manzoni presents himself to the governor, Mustafa Assim Pasha, who mentions that he hails from Crete and is the son of a Christian renegade. Manzoni goes on to list other high government officials who are of similarly exotic origins: the city’s governor hails from Montenegro and attended military school in Paris, the local military commander is Syrian, and the pasha’s secretary is Albanian.17 The diverse origins of these powerful men confirm, as Carasso’s tale makes apparent, that Yemen, or at least Sana’a, became considerably more cosmopolitan under Ottoman occupation. Manzoni then seeks out Ismail Hakki, the city’s military commander, to request permission to take pictures in the city, a wise diplomatic move, given the perennial suspicion of foreigners as spies. The latter agrees, and like the customs officer, asks Manzoni to photograph him, or rather his house and garden, rather than his person. The house Manzoni rents is situated next to Hakki’s, and their relationship becomes friendly. In particular, Hakki encourages his nephew, Islam, to associate with Manzoni, and this relationship blossoms. Islam asks Manzoni to instruct him in photography, and offers to teach him Turkish in return, a lovely example of stranger and host exchanging gifts of knowledge.18 But unlike the familiar model of gift exchange, this is an arrangement that functions for an extended period of time. And unlike forms of long-term cyclical gift exchange studied in the anthropological literature, the Manzoni-Islam relationship is continuous, rather than periodical. It delineates the boundary separating the traveler whose stay is brief from one on a lengthy sojourn, sometimes lasting so long as to blur the line between stranger and host. This quality is also apparent from another Manzoni incident. Manzoni orders from Milano a large selection of seeds for flowers and vegetables, which he then distributes among Sana’a’s garden owners, commenting that for the first time Sana’a households have vegetables and flower salads of the kind commonly found in Italy.19 This, too, is a form of gift that takes time: time to order and receive from a great distance, time to plant and cultivate, and ultimately time to experience and enjoy. It is thus another impressive example of the kind of gift typical of the long-term sojourner. It is also an Orientalist gift, insofar as the European visitor imposes – with the best of intentions – his way of life on the local, traditional, one, taking it for granted that he is bettering their quality of life. 17 Ibid., 94. 18 Ibid., 99. There is irony in the fact that the local Yemenite offers to teach the European stranger a third-party language, namely the language of the Turkish occupiers of his land. 19 Ibid., 100.

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Manzoni carefully studies his physical and social environment, crisscrossing the city in all directions. He uses instruments to ascertain its coordinates and document its climate, and photography to provide visual access, publishing the fruits of his labor in the Milanese periodical, L’Esploratore. Manzoni also assiduously cultivates local contacts, several of whom he reaches through the qadi, Hussein al-Qoladhi, who tutors him in Arabic and in Arabic mores, including the teachings of the Quran. These activities, however innocent, appear to justify the Yemenites’ suspicion that foreign visitors to their country are intent on spying for their enemies. Once settled in Sana’a, Manzoni writes to his contacts in Milano, to ask how they want him to proceed with the project of developing commercial relations with Yemen, but the response, while positive, is vague. Opportunity beckons when Manzoni learns that a society for Red Sea commerce has been created in Italy. He is appointed its Yemen representative, which seems to offer a vehicle for profit, a pressing need now that funding has not materialized for his exploration of central Arabia. Manzoni is instructed to report on the commercial opportunities in Yemen, and he responds by requesting that the society fill various orders from Sana’a’s pasha and other wealthy residents, which would enable him to compile data on the logistics and costs of conducting such transactions. The Milano response is tepid, which exasperates Manzoni, and this happens again when the pasha asks Manzoni to order a large supply of quinine from Italy; although the contract is signed, the price of quinine rises before the order can be filled, causing Manzoni’s Milano contacts to refuse to honor it. Bienenfeld-Rolpf, Italy’s Aden consul, intervenes to salvage the transaction, by ordering the quinine directly from the Italian manufacturer. In light of his efficient handling of the affair, Manzoni decides to travel to Aden to meet with him about how best to advance his own entrepreneurial ambitions.20

To Aden and Back (23.3.1878 – 1.8.1878) The Arabs’ armed rebellion against the Turks poses a major obstacle to Manzoni’s progress to Aden, and he trumpets his courage and initiative in confronting the danger, contrasting his behavior with the temerity of the natives.21

20 Ibid., 226–28. 21 Ibid., 240–42.

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More prominent in the chronicle of this voyage are its erotic elements, and he foregrounds his encounters for the titillation of his European readers. At Walan, we learn that “la belissima Saida,” Manzoni’s host’s wife, who is tall and beautiful and makes a “Bohemian” impression, entertains Manzoni with stories after supper, and upon taking her leave, tells him that Christians are very simpatico. Galloping on towards Mabar, he spots a pretty young shepherdess by the road, who sits with her back to him, watching her flock. Alarmed at the sound of his approach, she jumps to her feet, at which Manzoni’s mule takes fright and lunges aside, launching Manzoni – hat and all! – into the air. The maiden retrieves his hat for him, and Manzoni and his servants laugh heartily at the harmless mishap.22 In Dhamar, Colonel Mustah Bey fetes him with a lavish banquet followed by musical entertainment. The music is accompanied by a dance performance, and Manzoni, as the honored guest, is invited – and expected – to join the dancers, who are described as young and comely. The prettiest among them, “truly a beauty,” stares at Manzoni continually, such that his host jokes that she must have fallen in love with him, and Manzoni laughs and makes light of his remark. Manzoni describes the dance at length, emphasizing the dancers’ risqué attire and erotic performance. “In Europe,” he explains, “dance is an active exercise, consisting of cadenced movement, in playful combinations of legs or perfectly controlled jumps.” Conversely, “in Arabia, as in any other Oriental country, dance is only a continuous succession of poses, attitudes, gestures, contortions, whose only purpose is to express to those present the most voluptuous sentiments.” Manzoni admits that the dances he observed were too licentious to be described in detail. “Unfortunately,” he concludes ironically, “this is the duty of every traveler.” His description, however, is lurid enough: at the peak of their paroxysms of lasciviousness, the dancers hurl themselves onto the knees of the most important spectators, presumably a reference to himself. The high point is the “dance of the bee,” in which the prettiest dancer feigns being stung by a bee, and then vainly tries to find her assailant in her clothes. Her girlfriends join the search, in the course of which they gradually disrobe her of all but a light veil, which they wave as they dance, allowing the spectators to glimpse the parts of her body that Manzoni avows ought to remain hidden.23 22 Ibid., 229–30. 23 Ibid., 233–34. The dance of the bee is known from Flaubert’s description of the performance by Kuchak Hanem, and Flaubert notes that the dancer’s musicians are blindfolded, such that only the European male visitors witness her lascivious performance, which climaxes

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Arriving in Aden on April 6th, 1878, he is warmly received by BienenfeldRolpf, who, however, leaves for Italy four days later, leaving him in the care of his brother Vittorio. Manzoni offers a generous description of the city’s physical and social conditions but has nothing to say about the two months he spent there, which clearly did not allow him to realize his goal. On June 18th, he embarks on a return journey to Sana’a, but rather than retrace his steps, he elects to proceed via Ta’izz, Mocha, Hudaydah, and Manakhah, with the aim of gaining a better grasp of the area west of Yemen’s central mountains. The travelers lodge in a village belonging to a sheikh named Salem. He and his wives ask Manzoni for medications, but the traveler cannot oblige, because during the journey he has lost the keys to his chests; nevertheless, his hosts ask him to examine the patients, and he acquiesces.24 Eventually the keys are found, and Manzoni prepares potions of sugar water and “medicaments,” with which the locals are perfectly satisfied.25 Once again, the locals expect the European traveler to be equipped with medications and medical knowledge. Salem will not accept payment for his hospitality, ostensibly because that would impugn his honor and reputation, reducing his behavior to a commercial transaction rather than an expression of largesse. Therefore, Manzoni proffers material gifts: a revolver and a hundred cartridges for Salem, and Indian cotton fabric for his two wives. Like the medication, these gifts are typical of travel accounts dating back to the early modern era, as we have seen. The cycle continues, as Salem reciprocates with a cornelian set in a silver ring which he says belonged to his paternal grandfather. He expresses the hope that the ring will serve as an amulet to protect Manzoni from the devil’s temptations, and that it will remind Manzoni of him in years to come. Unlike Manzoni’s standard gifts, Salem’s is unprecedented in the Yemen travel literature, in terms not only of the object but particularly the sentiment: it is not logistical, like lodging or food, but avowedly the expression of a personal relationship. Manzoni exclaims: “If only my mother, father and grandmother could see me at that moment! How beautiful is the life of the explorer!”26 I

in her total nudity. See Porter, Haunted Journeys, 177. Said writes that Flaubert sees Kuchak Hanem as “peculiarly Oriental in her luxurient and seemingly unbounded sexuality.” See Said, Orientalism, 186–88. 24 Ibid., 279. 25 Ibid., 293. 26 Ibid., 294.

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suppose that it was precisely the personal quality of the encounter that elicited his reaction. En route to Ta’izz, Manzoni and his party stop briefly, and are joined by a party of three shepherdesses, who casually join their conversation. As with his previous shepherdess encounter, Manzoni lends this moment an erotic flavor by commenting that they are pretty as well as pleasant. At first the maidens are afraid of Ciccia, a monkey Manzoni adopted as a pet during his Yemen sojourn, but they take heart when they see how docile she is and how affectionately she treats Manzoni.27 This interaction reiterates the contrast between European courage and Yemenite timidity, although the girls may simply have been unfamiliar with the concept of pets. Manzoni returns to the theme of his own courage, for no sooner does he lie down to rest, when Ciccia awakens him in alarm, for a group of huge monkeys approaches them on their way to a nearby stream. With two shots from his rifle, Manzoni kills one monkey and wounds another, causing the rest to flee and Ciccia to jump and shout with joy.28 The remainder of this journey is less eventful. Muhsin Mahdi, the sheikh of the village of Mawiya, twenty five kilometers east of Ta’izz, presents Manzoni with a small Arabic manuscript about Jesus, which the traveler translates for his readers.29 We have seen that Europeans traveling in Yemen prized old books and manuscripts, but Manzoni voices no such agenda, which makes the sheikh’s gift an especially powerful expression of his awareness of the strangers’ general behavior pattern. As he travels from town to town, Manzoni enjoys a series of reunions with European friends, all of whom are in Yemen in a medical capacity. In Ta’izz, Manzoni is hosted by Giorgio Aidonides, a military pharmacist, and in Hudaydah by a Greek physician named Attanasaki; the latter treats Manzoni and his servant for a fever.30 Ignazio Copello, another military pharmacist, greets Manzoni joyfully in Manakhah, and the two enjoy a weekend together under Copello’s roof.31 These acquaintances and friends constitute an expatriate network, affording each other a cultural oasis. It is another feature of Manzoni’s Yemen experience that is only possible for those on a long sojourn, and one found

27 Ibid., 266. 28 Ibid., 295. 29 Ibid., 298. 30 Ibid., 312, 356, 359. 31 Ibid., 385.

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only following the Turkish occupation of 1872. This situation blurs the distinction between stranger and host, for, as westerners and Christians, the expatriates never fully integrate into Yemenite society, and yet they are functional in everyday life and capable of extending hospitality. The network is remarkable also for its cosmopolitan nature, for, of Manzoni’s hosts, only Copello is a fellow Italian.32 Clearly, being European and Christian provided a strong enough basis for the establishment of a meaningful relationship among these sojourners.

Jews El Yemen does not chronicle any personal encounters between Manzoni and the Jews of Yemen, but as is the case with practically all Yemen travelogues, the stranger shares his impressions of the Jews’ appearance and way of life. In Manzoni’s case, he suggests a number of comparisons between those of Yemen and of Morocco, which he had visited prior to his Yemen voyage. Manzoni writes that between Aden and Al Jalila, he only found Jews in Al-Houta (i.e. Lahij), where they have their “street.” However, from Qa’tabah (between Ad-Dali and Damt) north towards Sana’a, almost all the villages have a Jewish quarter. Manzoni finds them very clean, which he contrasts with the filthy Jews of Morocco, in terms of both their houses and clothing. The Jewish women strike him as very ugly, apparently because they refrain from displaying any sort of jewelry and finds the men’s traditional sidelocks ugly too. On the other hand, he appreciates their date brandy, despite its low alcohol content, and we may surmise that acquiring the brandy must have necessitated at least a minimal degree of interpersonal contact.33 Remarks about Sana’a’s Jewish quarter appear in Manzoni’s description of the city. The Jews’ houses, he explains, are ugly and dilapidated on the outside, because of the Muslims’ need to subjugate them. However, the interiors are beautiful and perfectly clean, from which he extrapolates: “Truly the Jews of Yemen are respectable from many points of view, physical as well as moral.”

32 His surname suggests that it is Italianized, presumably from Koppel, which, coupled with the given name Ignazio, points to northern or eastern European origins. 33 Ibid., 74–75.

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This remark betrays a hint of prejudice against Jews, for the contrast between the exteriors of the Jews’ habitations and their interiors would be worthy of comment on aesthetic grounds, such that the note regarding their character is gratuitous. As before, Manzoni goes on to contrast the clean Jews of Sana’a with those of Morocco. He shares a story about a Jewish family from Mazagan (i.e. Al Jadida), which cooked food in a copper vase that they also used as a chamber pot; too, they wore expensive, beautiful, clothing that was “indescribably dirty.” His disgust during the dinner in Mazagan contrasts with his experience at dinner in the Sana’a home of a rich Jew named Yihye ben Da’ud, whose abode is sparkling and his hospitality courteous. The description of this experience suggests that Manzoni’s remark about the Jews’ character was directed at his European readers and was less a reflection of prejudice on his part. Manzoni also distinguishes between the Jews of Sana’a and Morocco with respect to their treatment by the Muslim majority. While in Morocco the Jews are caught in a vicious cycle, in which they are maltreated, and respond with verbal injury, in Sana’a the Arabs give the Jews no cause to insult them so long as the latter behave in the humble manner prescribed by Islamic law. This distinction, which carefully clarifies that the Jews suffer from the same legal disabilities in Yemen as in Morocco, portrays Manzoni as a perspicacious observer, with an ability to make subtle distinctions that is possible for visitors on long sojourns. Beauty surfaces frequently in Manzoni’s accounts of his Yemenite encounters, and he comments on the subject with respect to the Jews as well. In his eyes, Sana’a’s Jews are quite ugly: skinny and shriveled, with a sallow complexion. Of the women, he declares never having seen a beauty. Here the Jews of Morocco compare favorably, for Manzoni admits that the Jewish women of Yemen could not possibly compare to the Jewish belles of Morocco, with their immense eyes and lascivious glance, an expression of Orientalist eroticism. Manzoni suggests that the Jews of Sana’a are ugly because they marry only among close relatives. He attributes this tendency to the haughty scorn they suffer from the Arab majority, which has led them to create their own internal caste system, such that the wealthy behave like aristocrats, and disdain their less fortunate brethren. This reads like an astute observation, but from an aloof, ethnographic, perspective but with a trace of ridicule. Among the occupations of Sana’a’s Jews, Manzoni lists goldsmiths, jewelers, and the producers of excellent brandy, plaster domestic ornaments and stained-glass windows. He adds that they also engage in banking, “their great

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original sin, and found in the Orient!” This remark, unquestionably antisemitic, probably refers to the Gospel tale of money changers in the Temple, as well as, or perhaps rather than, to the Jewish loanbankers of medieval Europe, about whom Manzoni’s readers could be expected to know little or nothing.34 In contrast to the Jews of Sana’a, those of Aden trade in ostrich feathers, though some are moneychangers. Manzoni reports that the Arab and Somali businessmen treat them with disdain, but their attitude troubles the Jews not at all. El Yèmen offers a photo of a Jewish ostrich feathers merchant from Aden and another with the simple caption “a Jew of Aden:”

Fig. 2: “Jewish ostrich feathers merchant”35.

34 Ibid., 127–29. 35 Source: El Yèmen, 265. 36 Source: Ibid., 445.

Fig. 3: “a Jew of Aden”36.

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Sana’a 2 (1.8.1878 – 19.1.1879) Studying Arabic and taking photographs are Manzoni’s main occupations during his second stay in Sana’a. His photography becomes useful to others in the summer of 1878, when guinea worm disease breaks out among Sana’a’s Turkish soldiers, hospitalizing hundreds. At the request of Hristo Stambolski, the hospital’s senior physician, Manzoni photographs various stages of the disease.37 Although Stambolski is also a foreigner, in this gift exchange he is the host, who benefits from the stranger’s advanced technology, including knowhow as well as equipment. We also read that Manzoni teaches French to the son of a high Turkish official; the two sons and nephew of the region’s governor also take up the language under his tutelage. Clearly, in Turkish circles, French was considered important – French rather than Italian – and Manzoni, as an educated European, was expected to know it. The gift of language is thus bilateral, with Manzoni studying Turkish and teaching French. It is another of his gifts of knowledge, parallel to the photography instruction he provided earlier to his language tutor. On January 19th, 1879, Manzoni is forced to leave Sana’a for Aden after becoming embroiled in the country’s political turmoil.38 This turn of events is typical of Yemenite politics, for the Second Turkish occupation was a period of chronic instability, with power changing hands frequently and abruptly. Consequently, those enjoying close relations with high officials found themselves suddenly persona non grata and in danger of imprisonment or worse. Thus, Manzoni is not harassed for spying, as one might expect of a foreign traveler; like so many locals, he falls from grace alongside the influential authority figures whose friendship he had cultivated and whose fortunes have now deteriorated.

Somalia, Aden, Sana’a A brisk ten-day journey brings Manzoni to Aden, and he stays nearly two months, until March 27th. After a few days of hunting and sailing with expatriate friends, he crosses the Red Sea to Berbera, to explore the Somali coastline, with the intention of contributing to the ongoing debate over the best site for an Italian port. This plan runs aground immediately, because a military expedition into the hinterland, led by Ibrahim Bey, the new Egyptian governor, massacres a large number

37 Ibid., 393–94. On Stambolski and his treatment of this disease, see the following chapter. 38 Ibid., 413.

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of natives; Manzoni then reasonably fears that the Somalis would target him, as a foreigner, to avenge their countrymen. Things go from bad to worse, as Manzoni antagonizes the governor and barely extricates himself from his clutches by virtue of his Italian citizenship, returning to Aden posthaste. After a lengthy period of illness and convalescence, Manzoni is elated by the news that the central Ottoman government in Constantinople has appointed his old friend, Ismail Hakki, governor of Yemen. Confident that he will no longer be caught in the web of political intrigue, he elects to travel back to Sana’a, his third and last such journey, and departs on January 11th, 1880. In Ta’izz, he receives a visit from Musta Bey, the regional governor, which makes him feel that he has returned to Yemen in triumph. Manzoni confides that, in conversation with the governor, rather than admit that the Italian government had let him down during the imbroglio that forced him to flee Sana’a, he declared that it had acted with dignity and firmness. He confesses: “The duty to defend the behavior of the Italian Minister towards one of his compatriots is truly very painful for a poor traveler.”39 Here patriotic sentiment forces Manzoni to draw the line between himself and the people of Yemen, a boundary he feels must not be crossed, regardless of his sense of betrayal at the hands of his countrymen. On the 17th, Manzoni leaves Ta’izz, accompanied by an honor guard of four Turkish police officers, and he comments sourly that only now, when he no longer has anything to fear, does he travel with an armed escort. This gesture of respect is more than a gift of hospitality, it is a clear statement of the governor’s political support, not only for Manzoni personally, or for the Italian nation, but most important, for Ismail Hakki, with whom Manzoni was, and remains, closely associated. In Sana’a, he continues to enjoy his rehabilitation, but lingers only long enough to gather his belongings before departing for Hudaydah on February 21st on his return voyage to Italy. The Orientalist elements of the stranger’s Yemen experience are more prominent in Manzoni’s travelogue than in the texts examined above. This may have been a function of his youth and exuberant personality, but it probably also reflects the passage of time, for the pressure of the European presence in the Middle East became increasingly oppressive and inescapable. The British conquest of Aden, the creation of the Suez canal, and even the Ottoman occupation, pressed upon the traditional way of life in the realms of politics, economics, society, and culture, and Europeans traveled the region with greater confidence in their safety and superiority, and, concomitantly, with less humility and respect for local mores.

39 Ibid., 442.

Soldier Carasso’s narrative leaves no doubt that he identified with the Turkish nation and regime, which may be partly attributable to the importance of his native city. For a millennium, Thessaloniki was the Byzantine empire’s second city after Constantinople, and it continued to enjoy this degree of prosperity and prestige during the Ottoman period. Salonikans participated in the Greek War of Independence in 1821, and in the 1870s the city was enjoying vigorous demographic and economic growth. The citizens of other countries subject to Ottoman rule did not identify with the Empire to the same degree. And those in power reciprocated this attitude, regarding them as foreigners, while still holding them liable for taxation and military service. This chapter focuses on two Turkish soldiers who hailed from subject nations. Both left written accounts of their military service in Yemen, and although their experiences differ radically from one another, the theme common to both is a powerful feeling of alienation from the nation they served. The army’s ranks were filled with such troops, whose presence was especially marked in remote areas, which were deemed less strategically sensitive. This consideration explains the survival of two such accounts in Yemen, among the most peripheral of the Empire’s territories. The experiences of these soldiers, who lived in Yemen for extended periods roughly at the same time as Carasso and Manzoni, enrich our understanding of the stranger-host encounter in Yemen during the second Turkish occupation.

Hristo Stambolski Hristo Stambolski (1843–1932), of Kazanlăk in Bulgaria, located roughly halfway between Sofia and Burgas, studied medicine at the military medical academy in Istanbul, graduating in 1868. In September 1877, he was assigned to serve in Yemen, and spent a little over a year at Sana’a’s Turkish military hospital, returning to Bulgaria at the beginning of 1879. He published his memoirs in Bulgarian, in three volumes (1927–1931), devoting the third volume to his Yemen period.1

⁀ ⁀ ⁀ 1 Hristo Tanev Stambolski, Avtobiografiia , dnevnits i i spomeni (Sofia , 1927–1931). See also Bernard Lory, ed. and trans., Le Yémen en 1877–78 tel que l’ont vu deux médecins Bulgares: Hristo Stambolski & Josif Ljubenov (Istanbul, 2008). Ljubenov served at the Sana’a military hospital at the same time as Stambolski, and published his Yemen memoir in a brochure, and in three installments in the military journal Voenen Žurnal: 2,5 (1885), 429–41; 2,6–7 (1885),

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-008

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Fig. 1: Hristo Stambolski2.

During the voyage to Yemen, Stambolski remains ignorant of his ultimate destination, and suspects that he will be stationed in Aseer, in southwestern Saudi Arabia, a desolate location suitable as a punishment for a political exile. He hopes for a Sana’a posting, particularly because he knows that there he will have two Bulgarian colleagues: Vasil Popmarkov, a classmate, and Zaharia Draganov, a former student. Stambolski’s Turkish shipboard companions assure him that Sana’a is a real possibility, because the Pasha had already submitted two requests for a doctor from Istanbul, following outbreaks of guinea worm among the Turkish soldiers in Yemen.3 Stambolski’s Yemen narrative commences with his arrival in Hudaydah. Osman Pasha, the city’s commander, is out of town, and the doctor is forced to await his return. He is disappointed by his uncomfortable accommodations but is soon extricated by an Istanbul acquaintance named Manolaki, a Greek physician serving as director of the local Turkish hospital. Manolaki gets permission

553–68; 2,8 (1885), 690–703. His account is purely descriptive, with no account of the author’s experiences, including his interactions with the host population. 2 Source: Bulgarian Archives State Agency. ⁀ ⁀ , dnevnits i i spomeni, 3:12. 3 Stambolski, Avtobiografiia

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from Osman’s unfriendly assistant to host Stambolski, after guaranteeing that the latter would not leave town. For the next few days, the two doctors stroll together after breakfast, with Manolaki introducing Stambolski to some of the city’s foreign merchants, including Vardukas and Abanos, two Greek dealers in coffee and spices. The pattern of strangers forming associations with other expatriates while distinguishing themselves from the local Muslim population is familiar from the narratives of Carasso and Manzoni and underlines the cosmopolitan character of Yemen during the second Turkish occupation. While Manolaki tends to his hospital duties, Stambolski continues to explore, accompanied by his colleague’s Greek servant. At the city’s Turkish hospital, three physicians, a Turk, an Armenian and a Jew, brief Stambolski about the region’s prevalent maladies, and he shares this information with his readers. This is a gift of knowledge from host to stranger. However, we note that the three staff members are all non-natives of Yemen, such that the newcomer is briefed by relative strangers, rather than by actual natives. We understand from Stambolski’s narrative that it was Carasso’s Turkish identity, rather than his Jewish one, that was primarily responsible for the distance between himself and the locals. Permission finally comes from Sana’a for Stambolski to depart for the capital. He and Manolaki deliberate about whether a guide or military escort would be advisable, or perhaps both. They consult Vardukas and Abanos, both of whom recommend Ghanem, a local Arab, and advise Stambolski about the appropriate fee. Abanos dissuades Stambolski from requesting a military escort, on the grounds that the local villagers detest the Turkish forces. Here, too, the interface with locals is conducted through fellow expatriates, who function as a social network. Two days later Ghanem and Stambolski set out.

From Hudaydah to Sana’a The journey is not uneventful, for the travelers are caught in a sandstorm and become disoriented, a potentially fatal complication. Stambolski relates that at one point Ghanem points to the sky, and while initially Stambolski thought Ghanem was instructing him to pray for salvation, implying that death was imminent, eventually he realizes that the gesture was an indication that the weather was clearing and the stars were now visible, making navigation possible. The momentary incident reveals the cultural gap separating stranger and host, and more specifically, the European’s predisposition to associate Arabs with religious sentiment rather than rational thought.

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The two are again overtaken by a sandstorm, and Stambolski loses heart and laments his misfortune. He wonders whether his guide intended all along to rob and kill him with impunity, and we marvel at how quickly fear leads to a breakdown in trust. Stambolski is encouraged when he recalls the trials reported by Comte de Buffon, the French naturalist, during his travels in various continents. This remark complements the writer’s admission of his suspicions about Ghanem’s nefarious intentions, for just as the crisis alienates him from his local companion, so does an intersection, namely the memory of a fellow European stranger’s experiences, hearten him in the face of his own travails.4 At Marawi’ah, some twenty kilometers east-northeast of Hudaydah towards Sana’a, Ghanem makes a vain attempt to procure provisions for Stambolski, but the villagers, having seen Stambolski in his Turkish uniform, identify him with their oppressors and insist that they have nothing to offer, even after Ghanem insists that the doctor is a Christian and a stranger. The travelers ask the village sheikh to determine whether the doctor is to be regarded as a Christian or a Turk. At the sheikh’s insistence, Stambolski demonstrates his religious affiliation by crossing himself three times, and the satisfied sheikh orders the villagers to cooperate.5 The challenge posed by the villagers offers another instance of identity confusion during the Turkish occupation, but the case differs somewhat from Carasso’s. To locals, Carasso and Stambolski were both worthy of disdain as infidels, but there were nuances to their respective image and status. Jews were perceived as weaker and more vulnerable than Christians, because they did not enjoy the support of foreign powers. On the other hand, Christians were far more alien, for while Yemen had no Christian communities, Jews had been living there since time immemorial, and thus were more familiar. Hence, although the Yemenites were equally perplexed when confronted by a Christian or a Jew in Turkish garb, they could be expected to react differently in each case. Ghanem’s argument that Stambolski ought not to be regarded as an enemy because he is a Christian exposes the paradox that locals could be expected to exhibit greater sympathy for a Christian than for a coreligionist: Christians were outsiders, and thus not primarily responsible for the Turkish occupation, while to be robbed of independence by fellow believers would seem a betrayal, and thus particularly irksome. Stambolski and Carasso were alike in this respect, but the Yemenite tradition of contempt for Jews might make the locals doubly resentful of a Turkish Jew during the occupation.

4 Ibid., 3:43–44. 5 Ibid., 3:46.

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Sana’a Upon arrival in the capital, Stambolski presents himself to the governor (vali), Mustafa Assim Pasha. Stambolski launches into a tirade against Istanbul’s military authorities for assigning him to Yemen, an act of ingratitude, as he saw it, after his ten years of faithful service to the Empire. For the newly arrived physician to confess that he was anything but enthusiastic about his new posting may seem tactless, but the governor is not only not offended, he openly echoes the sentiment, asserting that the Istanbul authorities assign to remote locales those officials whose views do not accord with their own. The pasha explains that he was reassigned to a political post in his native town of Chania, in Crete, after expressing politically liberal views during his stint as Minister of Artillery in Istanbul. Later, he was transferred again, this time to Tripoli in Libya, for continuing to broadcast liberal views, and on to Sana’a after a third such incident.6 We thus learn that, paradoxically, Stambolski’s first stranger-host encounter in Sana’a, involving the city’s highest political official, was with a fellow expatriate, and a disgruntled one at that, in yet another example of the new diversity characteristic of Yemen under Turkish rule. The governor’s response suggests that Stambolski’s outburst was not spontaneous. Apparently he knew what tack to take with the pasha, indicating that he had prior familiarity, either with his superior’s career or simply with the norms of diplomatic chitchat, which expected officials in remote postings to gripe about their posting, a bonding experience which establishes camaraderie. This would explain why the pasha did not feel constrained to demonstrate his loyalty to the regime. He also did not find it necessary to demonstrate hierarchical superiority vis-à-vis Stambolski, although his informality may reflect his liberal views rather than a social norm. Stambolski’s meeting with the governor then turns from grousing about the past to the present and the future. There is some polite conversation about European politics and the Empire’s difficulties with the current war with Russia. Stambolski writes that he prudently avoided speculating about its outcome, and he may have regarded this portion of the conversation as a test of his diplomatic acumen. The pasha then asks about Stambolski’s journey to Yemen and inquires into the state of his health and finances. The doctor makes no secret of the fact that he is short of funds, adding that he thought he might improve his situation by offering French lessons to junior officers. The governor promptly announces

6 Ibid., 3:55–56.

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his intention of posting Stambolski at Sana’a’s military hospital, rather than in Aseer. Stambolski confesses delight, not least because of the 1500 piastres he learns he is to be paid. However, he is also pleased that the governor expressed sympathy for his plight and criticism of the Istanbul authorities. The governor may have also found satisfaction in confounding the plans of the higher-ups in Istanbul. Falling afoul of the Istanbul authorities, the pasha lost his comfortable position in the capital and was exiled, so to speak, to the Empire’s periphery. Now, having discovered in Stambolski a kindred spirit, he does exactly the same in reverse, exerting his power to move Stambolski from periphery to center, at least within the immediate geographical context. This move is emblematic of the difficulty the Empire experienced in governing remote regions, as officials in the periphery undermined the intentions and plans of their Istanbul superiors. To unpack a bit further Stambolski’s conversation with the pasha, it is plain that although both express profound disappointment at having been posted to Yemen, a variety of issues were in play. The pasha was exiled to prevent his continued political agitation, which is precisely why he is resentful. Stambolski expresses no political leanings, and merely complains of the government’s ingratitude. Clearly, he too would have preferred Istanbul, but this preference is taken for granted and not explained. Apart from the pleasures of metropolitan life, we may speculate that Stambolski preferred Istanbul because it held greater possibilities for professional advancement. In contrast to these concerns, however, neither of which is made explicit, money turns out to be an important consideration for Stambolski. Apparently, a remote posting carried with it the added inconvenience of lesser remuneration, which was bothersome even though a peripheral locale naturally offers fewer opportunities to incur expense. The governor is immediately sympathetic to this predicament, which, indeed, he seems to have anticipated, reinforcing the sense that intuitively he grasped Stambolski’s thinking. Of course, the pasha’s generosity was not entirely selfless, as keeping the physician near to hand was decidedly in his own interest. Having learned from the governor that the latter intended to consult Stambolski’s Bulgarian colleagues, Draganov and Popmarkov, Stambolski proceeds directly to Draganov’s home, who quickly sends for his colleague. The three sit down to lunch, during which Stambolski gives his hosts information (valid until his departure for Yemen) of the raging Russo-Turkish war, in which their homeland serves as battleground. Here, then, is another twist in the identity confusion typical of this period, for although the participants in this social gathering share a professional identity, and are citizens of the Turkish empire and in fact serve in its armed forces, their fundamental bond is

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their Bulgarian nationality, which stands in tension – if not direct conflict – with their Ottoman allegiance. Draganov seems to take Stambolski under his wing, for towards evening the latter learns that his colleague has arranged a two-room apartment for him near his own home and invited him for supper. Draganov goes so far as to install a bed in Stambolski’s new abode, and engages the services of Yahya, a Turkish-speaking Arab domestic. Stambolski does not comment on whether the cost of these services was substantial, or whether he was expected to bear it, but at the very least Draganov used his superior knowledge of local conditions to offer the newcomer the gift of logistical support. Stambolski’s next interview is with the Turkish military commander, Ismail Hakki. This meeting is no more Turkish in character than the preceding ones, for Hakki hails from Albania, and greets Stambolski in French, having been educated at the Paris military academy.7 The interview is interrupted by the sudden appearance of Manzoni, who arrived in Sana’a three days earlier and now reports to meet the commander. Stambolski moves to take his leave, but Hakki stays him and introduces Manzoni as a traveler and geographer sent by France’s Société dés Inscriptions, in short as another Halévy. Manzoni remains for over an hour, conversing mainly about the RussoTurkish war, and directing many questions about the war and the army to Stambolski. Manzoni also expatiated about the virtues of Abyssinia, finding its people barbaric but its natural resource superior to those of Yemen. This exchange convinces Stambolski that Manzoni is a spy, particularly because he asks so many questions about sensitive matters.8 Manzoni did engage in a form of economic espionage, gathering information to promote commercial relations between Yemen and Milano. Still, it is plain from his account that his adventure-seeking spirit dominated his experience, while his economic agenda was secondary. Manzoni declares that his sole mission is to study Yemen’s ancient monuments, which declaration we know enough to discount, but the commander readily promises his cooperation. Stambolski’s audience also ends amicably, although he is disconcerted by Hakki’s casual admission to Manzoni that the Istanbul authorities exiled Stambolski to Aseer for political reasons, since the consequences for himself could be dire if the commander were convinced that he was a traitor. A day later, Stambolski visits the hospital, accompanied by his Bulgarian colleagues. He is cordially received by the hospital director, who had been notified that Stambolski would serve on the surgery ward and had arranged to have the

7 Ibid., 3:61. 8 Ibid., 3:62.

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necessary equipment made available to him. The Turkish doctors on staff at the hospital are former students of Stambolski and are glad of the opportunity to be brought up to date regarding political developments at home, as well as the news about friends and relatives. Over the next few days, Stambolski makes repeated visits to the hospital, and prepares the building’s two biggest halls for his patients.9 The hospital, as a Turkish institution, is clearly an expatriate oasis, insulating Stambolski and the other foreigners from the local population on any but the professional level, and offering them a social network. The last of Stambolski’s initial round of meetings is a second interview with the governor, Mustafa Assim Pasha. Stambolski is discomfited when the pasha contradicts his account of the progress of the Russo-Turkish war with current information garnered from military sources, and even points out that some of the events that have come to his attention occurred before Stambolski’s departure from Istanbul. This conversation highlights the hierarchical relationship between the two men, even if such was not the governor’s purpose. In any case, the pasha does not press Stambolski, and he acquiesces without hesitation to the doctor’s request that his shipment of medical supplies be brought from Port Said as soon as possible. Moreover, the governor unburdens himself to Stambolski about the challenges he faces as the country’s highest official. He complains about his subordinates, and describes the administration as generally chaotic, pointing the finger at Arnauts, Kurds, Circassians, and other outsiders, whom he describes as undisciplined and incapable of work. Respect for law and order has deteriorated, hampering attempts at reform. Officials sent from Istanbul are ignorant and corrupt, and they foment unrest between various sectors of the population, in order to spur Istanbul to send more and more troops. Following orders, the pasha dispatched his only two battalions to quell the unrest, and, disregarding instructions to cajole the rebels into complying with the Turkish tax regulations, these forces attacked their villages with canon fire; they were acting under orders from Hakki, and thus the government proved unable to act in a united fashion. The pasha blames the military expedition for the spread of guinea worm and promises to aid Stambolski in any way possible in the effort to stem the spread of the disease.10 Stambolski’s autobiography has little to say about his year in Sana’a, beyond his efforts to diagnose and treat the victims of guinea worm disease, a project he documents with the aim of publishing his results after returning to

9 Ibid., 3:63. 10 Ibid., 3:64–66.

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Bulgaria.11 His last stranger-host encounter occurs in December 1878, when the governor summons him to share the news that Bulgaria has gained independence. The significance of this gift of information is that Stambolski is now free to return home. The pasha grants him permission to depart, and generously underwrites the cost of the journey. He instructs Stambolski to proceed to Aden, and board the British ship “Columbia” for Suez in the guise of a British subject who has lost his passport. The plan succeeds, and Stambolski arrives in Istanbul at the beginning of the new year.12

Summary Manolaki and Draganov adhere to the familiar pattern of extending logistical as well as social support to the stranger with whom they share some sort of bond. In this travelogue more than others considered thus far, information proves a crucial commodity, which initially Stambolski imparts, but later receives, once his information is no longer current. The backdrop to these precious exchanges is the Empire’s political turmoil, which proves life-changing for various characters in this account, including the doctor. The other quality that stands out in Stambolski’s saga is the dizzying array of national and religious identities, which reflects the kaleidoscopic nature of life in Yemen’s larger cities under Turkish occupation. Actual Turks are hardly to be found in this travelogue, although Stambolski and his colleagues speak Turkish and lived for a time in Istanbul. In fact, we wonder just how Turkish the Turks in Carasso’s narrative were, for some of the people he encounters could have been, like Stambolski, natives of lands subjugated by the Ottoman Empire. The fruit of the Empire’s policy of banishing dissident elements to peripheral areas was to create a cadre of officials from a hodgepodge of nationalities, with minimal loyalty. Arabs are equally absent from Stambolski’s travelogue. The local population blends into the scenery, and there are barely any instances of Stambolski interacting with actual Yemenites, apart from those who provide services, such as his guide and servants. Stambolski’s tunnel vision, which filters out all but those who are, like himself, Turkish citizens of other nationalities, also explains the absence of the Orientalist perspective from his account, for people with little interest in the indigenous population are not given to speculation about the state of their cultural development.

11 Ibid., 3:88–92. 12 Ibid., 92–95.

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Saʻīd ibn Muhammad Al-Suwaysī Our second soldier’s travelogue is by Saʻīd ibn Muhammad Al-Suwaysī, a native of Jaffa, in Palestine, who is conscripted into the Turkish army and shipped to Yemen in July 1895, nearly twenty years into the second Turkish occupation.13 The young Saʻīd refers to his journey as jihad, but at the same time laments his inability to raise the fifty French lire that would have enabled him to purchase his freedom from military service. Consequently, he boards a steamship crammed with 2200 soldiers. The vessel docks at Hudaydah after a harrowing fifteen-day voyage, during which 220 soldiers desert and others die and their bodies thrown overboard. The ship continues to Mocha, where Saʻīd and his shipmates enjoy a fortnight of respite. The troops must then venture northward towards Dhamar, which they reach by way of Ta’izz, Ibb, and Yarim. Here, after a four-day rest, Al-Suwaysī and his fellow conscripts undergo three weeks of combat training.

Fig. 2: Gustav Bauernfeind, Jaffa, Recruiting of Turkish Soldiers in Palestine14.

13 Isaac Hasson and Albert Arazi, ed., Le Voyage de Sa’id ibn Muhammad Al-Suwaysi au Yaman (1307/1890–1313/1895), (Wiesbaden, 2008) [henceforth: Al-Suwaysī]. Page numbers refer to the original Arabic text of Al-Suwaysi’s travelogue, which is appended to the HassonArazi publication. 14 Source: Small, A Distant Muse, 31.

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Saʻīd’s first Yemenite encounter occurs during his march east, from Dhamar to Rada’a, where his unit’s mission is to collect taxes from the bedouin. Towards evening his unit bivouacs, and the soldiers are uneasy, because they suddenly confront a large number of monkeys.15 The monkeys soon disappear, but AlSuwaysī and his comrades awaken in the morning to find their tarbushes gone, and they are flummoxed to see the monkeys wearing them. A clever comrade, who happens to possess a second tarbush, demonstratively puts it on his head only to throw it down; the monkeys promptly do the same and the soldiers retrieve their headgear. This is a well-known folktale, documented in India and elsewhere, popular in many lands and doubtless also in the Arab world.16 We cannot know whether Saʻīd’s tale is a fabrication, or whether the enterprising comrade remembered the folktale and turned it to his advantage. In any case, assessing the truthfulness of the anecdotes recorded in the various Yemen travelogues is not the responsibility of this analysis; our concern is with the light the narratives shed on the voyagers’ perspectives, and this tale is no exception. The encounter is with animals, not humans, and yet the anecdote is illuminating with regard to the narrator’s overall experience. The confrontation paints Yemen as a wild country, a desert that is also a kind of jungle, with wild beasts, both animal and human. The tale’s humorous denouement follows the model of countless stories of humans overcoming natural obstacles with their superior intellect and resourcefulness, and yet Al-Suwaysī’s tone is somewhat cowed. The troops find the monkeys intimidating, and we recall that Saʻīd and his fellows are far from home, and moreover, that in none of their home countries are they likely to face a horde of wild animals. The admission that they were frightened carries with it the implication that they were peaceful folk – in fact not very martial – who never considered adopting Manzoni’s tack of driving off the monkeys with their firearms. In the tense but comical moment of the confrontation between the two armies (as it were), it is by no means certain that “civilization” will prevail, and this attitude becomes characteristic of Saʻīd’s battlefield experiences. His travelogue communicates a pervasive sense of unease and even dread. Time after time,

15 Note that in Al-Suwaysī’s narrative the Turkish force always marches during the day and rests at night. The decision to march in daylight, despite the extreme heat, probably stemmed from security considerations. 16 Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Literature (Bloomington, 1955–1958), B786: “Monkeys always copy men.” See also Thompson and Jonas Balys, The Oral Tales of India (Bloomington, 1958), 83, citing Kashmir.

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Saʻīd describes himself as helpless in situations involving not only alienation but also threat, and he exhibits neither bluster nor confidence in his ability to overcome adversity. From this sort of dry run, Saʻīd’s unit quickly moves on to an actual violent encounter. In the middle of the following night, they come under attack by a sizeable rebel force. The trumpet sounds: “Attack at the summit!,” and while some of the eight hundred Turkish troops climb the adjacent mountain to fight, Al-Suwaysī and a friend take cover. Ignoring Saʻīd’s advice, his companion lights a cigarette, giving away his position, and he is promptly felled. The terrified narrator can only hug the boulders until dawn signals the end of the battle, which leaves 435 bedouin dead, nearly a third of the attacking force, as well as 150 of Saʻīd’s comrades in arms.17 The Turkish force reaches its destination, Rada’a, and presents its fiscal demands. The citizens respond with defiance and abuse: “Cleanshaven Greeks! – from us you will receive neither money nor gifts, neither she-camels nor camels, but only blows!”18 “Cleanshaven Greeks” drives home the sentiment that the Turks may be Muslims, but they are not brothers. Their shaved faces are an abomination to the Yemenites, who associate shaving with godlessness and European civilization. Indeed, the Rada’ans’ message is that they regard the Turks as no less heathen than Christians. The insult alludes to Turkey’s Byzantine roots, and indeed, it is clear from Al-Suwaysī’s narrative that the Ottoman army is largely populated with conscripts from countries other than Turkey, including the empire’s Greek and Balkan possessions. The phrase “neither money nor gifts, neither she-camels nor camels” is also revealing with respect to the Yemenites’ perception of the Turks. While the occupying power sees taxation as the lawful obligation of the population to the ruling authorities, the Yemenites refuse to acknowledge the legal basis of the fiscal demand. Instead, they situate the transaction in a context of gift exchange, in which they, as local inhabitants, would naturally extend themselves to outsiders in the name of hospitality were they treated with deference and courtesy, rather than with the threat of coercion. What stands out in the Rada’ans’ response, then, is not simply the universal loathing of the taxman, but, more particularly, the sense that the Turks have committed an outrage to Yemenite honor. The Yemenites’ reference to their willingness to offer gifts to strangers highlights their sense of honor, and also the equality, if not superiority, of their standing to that of the foreign invaders.

17 Al-Suwaysī, 3v-4r, §11. 18 Ibid., 4r, §12.

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At dawn, the Turkish force bombards the city, and, encountering no further resistance, enters it, only to find it deserted. For three days, not a soul is in sight, when on the fourth day the troops come across two Jews, the first to appear in Al-Suwaysī’s travelogue.19 Questioned as to the inhabitants’ whereabouts, the Jews plead ignorance – even after they are beaten – presumably for fear of the consequences from their neighbors of giving them up. The commanding officer has one of them tied to the mouth of a canon and threatened with instant death, but the Jew accepts his fate with stoic resignation and is blown to bits. The second Jew is asked whether he would prefer to inform on the townspeople or suffer the fate of his brother, and replies: “like him.” His resistance is broken once he too is tied to the canon’s mouth and the fuse is about to be lit, and he leads the enemy to a pile of rocks concealing the mouth of a cave containing a thousand people. Now the Jew abandons his laconic posture, and tells his captors that they would not have found the hideout even after years in Rada’a, had not God led them [the two Jews] to them [the soldiers], causing his friend to suffer gravely at their hands. The bravado in this remark represents the Jews’ attempt to recover his honor despite the ignominy of his capitulation. In a similar vein, he piously attributes the incident’s unfortunate outcome to God, “the cause of all causes,” rather than to the occupying forces. The encounter with the Jews has some local and some universal features. We remain ignorant of the whereabouts of Rada’a’s other Jews, but these two, at least, were not sequestered with the rest of the city’s residents. In this respect, the story reflects the nature of the Jews’ relationship with their Muslim neighbors: they share a single physical and cultural environment, and are acknowledged as a local, permanent, bloc of the country’s population. But although they are in this sense “together,” they are also “apart,” living in their own quarters, outside the walls of Yemen’s cities and towns, enjoying a different – worse! – set of civil rights, pursuing other occupations, and adhering to their own religious rituals and customs. Another universal feature of the Yemen stranger-host encounter expressed in this incident is the role of the Jew as intermediary. As in numerous travelogues, it is the Jews who supply the outsiders with important information about local conditions. In this case, of course, the Turks did not seek out the Jews in particular, and neither did the Jews help them of their own volition.

19 On the Jews in Al-Suwaysī’s travelogue, see Yosef Tobi, “Al Yahas ha-tzava ha-Turki liYehudei Teman ba-shanim 1890–1895 (`al pi sepher ha-zikhronot shel Sa`id ben Muhammad al-Suwaysi le-Teman),” Tehudah 26 (2000), 34–39.

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Tales of Jews betraying their cities to invaders are an ancient and universal topos, condemning the Jews as traitors, à la the biblical Judas, and as the obdurate foes of Christ and Muhammad. We might even suspect the authenticity of this anecdote, did we not know our narrator to be a simple soul. What is more, Saʻīd tells the story flatly, without obloquy for the Jews’ betrayal, although neither does he condemn his superiors for the gruesome execution. Yemen’s Jews surface again in Saʻīd’s account of his unit’s next military confrontation. He is with a force that travels to al-Gharb, southeast of Luhayyah, for the same purpose of tax collection. The townspeople raise flags of cooperation, and extend generous hospitality for three days, but during that time a large rebel force surrounds the town, and on the fourth day Al-Suwaysī’s unit finds itself under siege. The commanding officer writes to Sana’a about his predicament, and summons “one of Yemen’s Jews” to deliver the message, negotiating a price of twenty riyals. The officer watches with astonishment as the Jew wraps the written message in a piece of fabric, which he inserts into his rectum. The courier explains that the rebels are sure to question and search him, and when they find nothing, he will tell them that he is merely traveling to Sana’a to claim his salary, and about a mile later, he will remove the letter from its hiding place. Saʻīd describes the Jew as setting out “like the wind.” He slows as he approaches the rebel camp, successfully passes their examination, and continues at a leisurely pace until he is out of their sight. Then he races to Sana’a “like one of the jinns of Suleiman ibn Da’ud,” namely King Solomon,20 and reaches the city in a day and a night instead of the four days usually required for such a journey.21 In Saʻīd’s account, the Jew does not volunteer for the mission, he is summoned, and we wonder why: Why would the Turkish commander choose a Jew to deliver his letter? Once again, the liminal status of Yemen’s Jews suggests an explanation, with the officer cognizant of the Jews’ complicated relationship with the Arab majority and limited allegiance to local authority. We should also return to the anti-Jewish theme of the Jew as disloyal to any regime, which makes them likely candidates for a mission involving betrayal of the Arab forces. The crux of the courier story is the Jew’s resourceful behavior, in devising a stratagem for concealing the letter. This element may imply that the Turks saw the Jews as clever and even devious, qualities which in Europe are part of an old stereotype. The notion that a Jew could be expected to risk life and limb for

20 Quran, Surah Saba, 34.12. 21 Al-Suwaysī, 5v-6r, §16.

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the opportunity to earn a sizeable sum also sits well with the stereotype of Jewish avarice, and greed and deceit often appear together as an explanation for the Jews’ economic success in the early modern and modern period. These images are European in origin, but may have circulated more widely, reaching a wider geographical and cultural orbit. The second motif in this tale of the Yemenite Jew is his extraordinary speed. The folklore and literature of the Near East are rich in similar stories of supernatural speed, such that Saʻīd may have unthinkingly shaped the story in this mold with the expectation that readers would share his set of associations. The Jew’s speed is likened to that of “one of the jinns of Suleiman ibn Da’ud.” The analogy to King Solomon is stronger than to wind, and of greater relevance to the narrative at hand, given that the protagonist is, so to speak, one of King Solomon’s descendants. It is therefore reasonable to posit that the narrator selected this image as appropriate to the present context. After two successful military confrontations, Al-Suwaysī’s unit enjoys a month of rest and recreation. Towards the end of this delightful interlude, Saʻīd falls ill and is hospitalized. For two months he languishes, failing to respond to the twice-daily sulphate treatments, which the narrator claims are the country’s only available medicament. Tired of eating rice soup morning and evening, he finally opts to rejoin his unit, apparently assuming that he would fare no worse out of the hospital than in. At this point a Jew enters the story. Saʻīd recalls that a Jewish doctor of the rank of Binbaşi appears, notices his condition, takes his history, and performs a thorough examination.22 Concluding that Saʻīd’s illness requires no special treatment, he merely orders the staff to care for him well and feed him properly. Within a week, Saʻīd has recovered and when the doctor returns to inquire after his health, Saʻīd blesses him with wishes for a long life.23 The doctor is, of course, an Ottoman official, like those we have already encountered. Thus, while this story is about an encounter between an Arab and a Jew, it does not involve Yemenites. At any rate, it provides insight into the narrator’s attitude towards Jews, which is decidedly neutral: Saʻīd notes that the physician is a Jew, but this identity carries no particular connotation. More precisely, we do not read that the patient expects the Jewish doctor to display extraordinary prowess – though this is the thrust of the anecdote – but neither does he suspect him of malicious intent on account of his religious identity. Saʻīd’s neutrality stands out in light of his Palestinian origins, for by now,

22 Possibly this is Salvator Viterbo, mentioned by Carasso. 23 Ibid., 9v-10r, §25–26.

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towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Jews were becoming a modest presence in the Holy Land. Soon after, physicians play a leading role in another anecdote. In Dhamar, civilians and soldiers, including the narrator, fall ill, and after three weeks the patients have neither died nor convalesced. Specialists arrive from Sana’a and diagnose malignant catarrhal fever. They order a roundup of the city’s dogs, who are to be slaughtered and their hides, heads, limbs, and organs scattered along the road the troops habitually take at mealtimes. That evening, the soldiers are fed an ample meal of dog meat and beans, and then conducted along the road strewn with the animals’ remains. Realizing what they have been fed, the troops vomit violently and at length, until their stomachs are empty. They are then given sulphate and cow’s milk, and sent to bed, and wake up “strong as camels.” The physician who designed the unorthodox treatment explains that the disease can only be banished by something more dreadful.24 The story’s focus is on human ingenuity, like the tale of the monkeys and that of the Jewish courier. The incident clarifies Saʻīd’s attitude towards medical treatment. Here, as in the story of Saʻīd’s own illness, sulphate, ostensibly the only available chemical treatment, and one which proved useless for Saʻīd, apparently succeeds in overcoming the epidemic. Yet while in both tales recovery is due more to natural treatment than to pharmacological intervention, rather than scoff at the doctors’ incompetence, in both instances Saʻīd esteems their wisdom.

Dhamar Soon after, Al-Suwaysī is wounded in battle. A bullet pierces his leg, and at the hospital in Dhamar, the Turkish doctor determines that the leg must be amputated. Saʻīd pleads to avoid the operation, and at the last minute the commanding officer arrives and halts the proceedings. At Saʻīd’s request, the commander orders his subordinates to summon a local physician, and they return with ʻAlī, who claims expertise at setting fractures. The latter is promised one hundred riyals if treatment is successful. ʻAlī interviews Saʻīd and takes him home after learning that he is twenty-three, an Arab rather than a Turk, and a native of the Holy Land. At this point, Saʻīd enters into his most intense encounter with the Yemenites and their world. His hosts care tenderly and diligently for his wound and lavish

24 Ibid., 11v, §29–30.

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him with food. They are hungry for information about the Holy Land, so Saʻīd tells them “about the boulder that hung in the air,25 about the al-Aqsa mosque, about the ancient place of worship,26 about the Hebron hills, about the cave of Our Lady Sarah and Our Lord Isaac the zealot, and about Our Lord Joseph the Righteous.”27 This is a lovely moment of gift exchange, as the hosts bestow upon the stranger extravagant material gifts, and he reciprocates with a gift of knowledge so precious as to move his listeners to weep and kiss his hand.28 We cannot help but wonder about the quality of Saʻīd’s information, given that he was a simple youth from Jaffa, who had probably visited the holy sites of Palestine rarely if at all. His expansive report is easily attributable to a desire to please his hosts and play up his image, given their generosity, their keen curiosity, and the esteem in which they hold him by virtue of his holy origins. Other members of ʻAlī’s family are equally awed by the fact that Saʻīd hails from Al- Quds, Jerusalem, a metonymy for the Holy Land. During his convalescence, he accompanies his hosts to a gathering of the extended family in honor of a birth, and ʻAlī reveals his guest’s holy origins, whereupon all the men rise to their feet and then seat him in the center of the room. Saʻīd joins them in an evening of smoking the narghile, chewing khat and drinking gisher, after which the celebrants pass the night praising Allah.29 Once again, the locals are honored by the presence of a son of Palestine, and introduce him to their culture. Saʻīd describes these experiences in detail, indicating that they were new to him, leading him to assume that his readers, too, would find them as novel and entertaining as he did.30 Saʻīd’s holy origins put him in ʻAlī’s good graces immediately, but actually the latter was favorably disposed towards him from the moment he discovered that the patient was an Arab rather than a Turk. The Yemenites’ hostility toward the Turks is a leitmotif of the Al-Suwaysī narrative, and not only in the obvious sense that the young Palestinian and his comrades had come to Yemen to suppress local resistance and collect taxes. We have seen that, in Rada’a, the locals

25 This is a reference to the boulder in Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock; Halévy was questioned about the same wonder. 26 The ancient Temple of the Jews. 27 Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs. 28 Al-Suwaysī, 18v, §46. 29 Khat chewing is a social activity of central importance in Yemenite society, as documented in the fieldwork studies of twentieth-century anthropologists. See the bibliography in the preface. 30 Ibid., 20r-v, §48.

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abused the solders as cleanshaven Greeks, and in a later encounter the troops are also taunted as drinkers of alcohol and givers of false testimony.31 The theme of religious hostility is fleshed out in the last scene of Saʻīd’s interaction with ʻAlī, in the final days of his stay in the physician’s house. The two pray together at the local mosque, and Saʻīd relates that as soon as he enters the mosque, a townsman stops praying and moves away from him. Others, too, keep their distance, and Saʻīd explains that this is because they believe that the Turks are not true believers, and that their prayer is sheer hypocrisy. Saʻīd asks his host why this is so, and ʻAlī responds that his people believe that one may not shave, drink alcohol, offer false testimony, abandon prayer, or take a life forbidden by Allah – a longer list of transgressions than that offered earlier in the text. The youth protests that he, his comrades, and the Turks share these norms, but ʻAlī insists that Turkish officers do commit these prohibited acts, and are not punished under Islamic law, because they are only subject to civil law, of which, ʻAlī explains, his people know nothing; allegedly this is also why the locals refer to the Turks as Greeks, i.e. heirs to the Hellenic and later Byzantine empire.32 Yet despite the Yemenites’ refusal to acknowledge their Ottoman occupiers as believers, they accept Saʻīd by virtue of his Palestinian origins. Not only does ʻAlī take Saʻīd into his care, the family embraces him to the extent that Saʻadia, the physician’s wife, expresses her wish that once Saʻīd is discharged, he will marry Surriyya, their fifteen-year-old daughter, and live with them. Saʻīd describes the girl as “pretty, her eyes anointed with antinomy, light weight, with wonderful qualities, who wounds the heart with every glance,” and he gives them the answer they seek.33 Whether marrying the charming girl was actually Saʻīd’s intention remains a mystery. When his recovery is complete, Saʻīd travels to Sana’a to obtain his discharge papers, and with the document in hand, proceeds directly to Hudaydah with his fellow discharged soldiers to take ship for home. Nothing further is said about ʻAlī and his family, and we are forced to conclude that, while Saʻīd avoided rejecting their offer, so as not to disappoint or alienate them, he never shared their plans for his future. Ultimately, it seems that Saʻīd selfishly availed himself of his hosts’ generous hospitality – both in terms of creature comforts and friendship – without being honest about his true intentions. In this case, gift giving turns out to be one-sided, and ends in ingratitude and disappointment. It is the

31 Ibid., 14r, §36. 32 Ibid., 20v-21r, §49. 33 Ibid., 18r, §45.

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only moment when Saʻīd deviates from his image as a simple and honest soul, to dissimulate and behave in an underhanded fashion. The tale of Saʻīd’s six-year Yemen sojourn, from 1890–1895, ends abruptly with his return to Jaffa. His father has died, but other than that little has changed. Saʻīd’s job as a clerk in the local office of the Health Department is restored to him, and he marries a few days after his return. His brother Hassan gives literary form to Saʻīd’s odyssey, but only in 1900, five years later.34 Saʻīd devotes some attention to the physical environment of Yemen but almost none to its cities and population. His is an earthy memoir, the personal account of a youth who finds himself in trying circumstances, and lives to tell the tale. There are harrowing battle scenes, with much blood, death, and destruction, and Saʻīd relates them with careful attention to the particulars of logistics and troop movements. He dwells in detail upon his own suffering from hunger, thirst, fatigue, and pain during these campaigns, and conversely, serves up sensuous descriptions of the physical delights that occasionally come his way, of feasting, rest, and relaxation. Happily, Saʻīd’s travelogue engages with our central concern, the strangerhost encounter. He pays some attention to Yemen’s Jews, as we have seen, although he experiences these encounters indirectly, as an observer rather than an actor. The narrative is dotted with episodes of his interactions with individual Yemenites, and he dwells not only on his attitude towards them but also on their views regarding his people and the Empire. The bulk of Saʻīd’s material on interaction appears towards the end of the text, during his final, protracted, period of convalescence in Dhamar. This imbalance reflects the nature of his experience, for during his years of active service he is surrounded by comrades and has only a vague impression of Yemenite society and culture. Throughout the narrative, he refers to the Yemenites collectively as bedouin, and only in one anecdote does he relate that the Ottoman forces ask some captured rebels about their tribal affiliation, expressing an awareness that Yemenite society is at least partly tribal.35 Personal encounters only become possible for Saʻīd during his stay with ʻAlī, when he lives as a civilian, although even then his status as an Ottoman subject comes to the fore. As a Palestinian, from a peripheral area of the Empire, Saʻīd is no more sophisticated than the Yemenites he meets, which explains why he does not express disdain for the host nation. For the most part, he expresses deep respect

34 Hassan’s role explains why Saʻīd is repeatedly referred to as “the narrator:” Ibid., 12v, §32; 17v, §44; 24v, §54. 35 Ibid., 17r, §43.

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for the Ottoman regime, not only for the leadership, laws, and procedures with which he himself comes into contact, but also for the Empire in general. At the same time, he does not denigrate the Yemenite nation, and describes the rebels as fierce fighters, without portraying them as barbarians. So, although the Turkish occupation of Yemen is an instance of modern colonialism by a Muslim nation, this particular source lacks the patronizing, hierarchical, tone characteristic of European memoirs and travelogues. Religion is the crucial issue in the stranger-host encounters recorded in the Al-Suwaysī narrative, and from his perspective it is at the heart of the tension between the people of Yemen and those representing the Turkish occupation. Saʻīd is puzzled and troubled by the Yemenites’ conviction that he and his cohort are infidels. But the stigma is rooted in the Turkish nation’s adoption of European norms, be it shaving or alcohol consumption, both taboo to pious Muslims, so in this sense the friction is fundamentally a struggle over modernization. The book’s tales of military encounters express this theme in their own idiom. The rebels exhibit a sophisticated sense of tactics, and are perfectly competent in the use of firearms, but the Ottoman army has artillery, and in one engagement after another, resistance in Yemenite towns collapses when shells rain down upon the city. The superior firepower of the Turkish forces represents the overwhelming might of technology in the competition for political domination, a cultural force at the heart of the modern colonial enterprise. Saʻīd’s attitude toward this dynamic is not especially triumphalist. For one thing, he relates moments of terrible fear and drama, when the bedouin forces threaten his life, and victory seems anything but certain. As a simple infantryman from Palestine, he knows nothing about artillery, and is as awed by its power as are his mortal foes. This gives his narrative a human quality, with Saʻīd and his comrades encountering the Yemenites at eye level. So, although the Turkish colonialist enterprise serves as the backdrop to the Al-Suwaysī experience, the Yemenite stranger-host encounter is far more nuanced when seen through the eyes of this particular protagonist.

Images Manzoni’s exultant cry, “How beautiful is the life of the explorer!,” is the only such expression of delight on the part of the strangers in Yemen studied in this book. Some of the journeys are unquestionably successful: Bartholdi immortalizes the impressive range of people he meets in Yemen, Halévy returns home with hundreds of Himyarite inscriptions, and even the Danish expedition achieves its purpose of compiling data on the country’s natural and human environment. Ah, but at what price? Niebuhr is the Danish expedition’s only survivor, and disease ravages other travelers, whose victory in the struggle for health was by no means assured. Other mortal threats also imperil our travelers, chief among them the lawlessness of the Yemen countryside, where bands of bedouin brigands preyed upon all and sundry, and felt especially fortunate when strangers fell into their hands, who were not only infidels but also presumed to be affluent and friendless, easy pickings. Survival aside, most of the travelogues bemoan the physical hardship their narrators endured as they moved across the countryside. The steep and rocky terrain in the mountainous Haraz region was both exhausting and painful, as they cut up their feet during the trek. The Tihama was equally brutal, for here the heat and humidity were unbearable, and movement along the sandy landscape laborious. Surprisingly, only one of our travelers, Sapir, admits to suffering from homesickness. Parting from his family at the outset, he writes, “was like the day of death.”1 He tells the rabbi of Jirwah that had he, Sapir, chosen a trade other than the rabbinate, “I would not have been exiled from my place, suffered tribulations and abandoned my wife and children; they worry about me, not knowing where I am, and my heart longs for them, not knowing whether they are still alive!” On Passover he weeps at being away from home: “I abandoned my table, surrounded by cute children, my soul’s delight.”2 In these and other ways, the sagas of our Yemen travelers conform to the universal motif of travel as an ordeal, an idea familiar from the classics of world literature, including the Bible and The Odyssey.3 The following pages

1 In the same vein, Flaubert’s travel account begins by describing the day he took leave of his mother as “an atrocious day, the worst I have ever lived through.” See Porter, Haunted Journeys, 170. 2 In what follows, there are no references to sources that appear earlier. 3 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 7–13. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-009

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survey other characteristic elements of the travel experience as they surface in the tales of Yemen’s strangers, highlighting the impressive variety of these experiences, notwithstanding the commonalities they share. The ordeal aspect of travel also finds expression in the universal pattern of subjecting the stranger to a test, in an effort to size up his talents and whether he is to be considered a boon or a threat.4 Sapir is tested throughout his journey, his hosts in Jirwah probing his knowledge of Jewish mysticism, and the apostate at Thila interrogating him to assess the extent of his wisdom. Although in none of the instances noted in this book do our travelers run the risk – documented in the anthropological literature – of being killed if they fail to impress, any such failure entails a loss of prestige, with ominous consequences. An ordeal to which many travelers to Yemen were subjected, beginning with Varthema, is the suspicion that their purpose is espionage. “An immense multitude” surrounds Adolph Von Wrede, drags him from his camel and disarms him; his captors bring him to the Sultan and demand his execution as an English spy.5 Halévy, too, is taken by some to be an English spy, following his interrogation by a large crowd in Sana’a. Bedouin take Bartholdi for a spy when they discover his photographic equipment, and Manzoni’s photography is probably partly why Stambolski – himself a stranger! – sizes him up as a spy. The nineteenth-century land grab by foreign powers, including the Ottoman occupation of Yemen, supplies a reasonable historical context for these suspicions, and the strangers’ religious identity as infidels aggravates the Yemenites’ suspicions. Fundamentally, however, the locals express the suspicion of strangers found in every society.6 If not spies, then hunters for buried treasure; this, too, is a topos in the hostility that the encounters with strangers in Yemen usually trigger. And foreigners do come in pursuit of treasure, though they seek ancient inscriptions, rather than gold. Forsskål, of the Danish expedition, reports that when Niebuhr sought to copy an inscription, Arabs demanded a tip, explaining that foreigners who copy inscriptions use them to recover treasure from the ground.7 Arnaud is

4 Pitt-Rivers, “The Law of Hospitality.” Paul Dresch notes that in tribal society, a visit with unfamiliar strangers begins with an elaborate exchange of courtesies, which transform the stranger from someone seen as potentially hostile into a guest or fellow traveler, to whom kindness and hospitality are due: Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen, 62–63. 5 Haines, “Account of an Excursion in Hadramaut, by Adolphe Baron Wrede,” 111–12. 6 A century later, anthropologists have observed the same attitude, and Paul Dresch attributes it to a need for privacy: Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen, 54. 7 “Peter Forsskål’s Journal,” 4:333.

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closely questioned about his ability to discover buried treasure. Halévy’s escort dies under torture intended to force him to reveal the location of the treasures he had taken with his foreign client. Another trial of the travel experience is the loosening of one’s group identity. Yet while finding oneself anonymous can be disorienting, most travelers describe this experience as liberating and adventurous, for the dislocation affords an opportunity to try on another identity and be different from whom they have always been. The vehicle for this identity shift is generally the assumption of some form of disguise, in attire, in name or both.8 Disguise and identity games are found throughout the narratives of this book, beginning with the members of the Danish expedition, who assume local names and apparel; Niebuhr, for example, becomes Abdallah. The avowed purpose of disguise is improved safety, whether in the hope of actually fooling locals as to their foreign origins, or at least of reducing the alienation they are likely to encounter on the part of their hosts. Thus, Arnaud shaves his mustache to avoid antagonizing the Yemenites. Ulrich Jaspar Seetzen, a botanist, travels in the Yemen highlands posing as Hajji Mussa, a physician, but is murdered, nonetheless. The same motivation may be attributed to Bartholdi, whose self-portrait with his companion Gérôme depicts both travelers in Arab garb. This was common practice among Orientalist artists in the Arab world, not only to avoid attracting unwelcome attention but also to feel inspired by their adventure. Thus, Edward Lane became Mansur Effendi during his Cairo sojourn in the 1820s, dressing as an educated Turk, and, similarly, Richard Burton and W. Robertson Smith assumed Arab names and dress during their travels. Rana Kabbani explains that disguise “came to serve as leisured play-acting for the wealthy. It appealed to a jaded Victorian imagination by making a journey East more exotic and it seemed to allow the traveler a deeper access to a cloistered world which he thought guarded its secrets closely.”9 Hence, apart from the practical advantage of disguise, artists relished the play aspect of this element in their experience. Not so Halévy, who grumbles about the need, pressed upon him by his Sana’a coreligionists, to dress in local clothing, which he finds distinctly uncomfortable.

8 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 107–08. 9 Eickelman, The Middle East, 28, 35; Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 89. Note, however, that Arminius Vambéry, who traveled disguised as a dervish named Rashid Effendi, declares his pseudo-Oriental identity “confined to external things . . . in my inmost being I was filled through and through with the spirit of the West.” See Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire, 149.

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Nor is the device altogether successful, for although Halévy dresses as a Jerusalemite – apparently inspired by Sapir – nevertheless he is set upon by commoners. Elsewhere, however, he wards off hostility by threatening locals with the divine punishment reserved for those who molest Jerusalemites. Hibshush, Halévy’s local companion, feels the need to alter his outward appearance for his excursion to Ghayman, even though he is a Yemenite Jew. Clearly, being a Sana’a urbanite would mark him as a stranger and attract suspicion, and so he masquerades as a local Jew. This is just one example of the intricacies of identity games, because Hibshush the Yemenite turns out to be almost as much of a stranger as Halévy once the two leave Sana’a. The identity issue is more complex for Carasso, who on various occasions presents himself as either Turk or Jew. Being a Turk offers him elevated status, and upon arrival in Yemen, he carefully avoids the local café, to avoid being identified as an Arab. Thereafter, he repeatedly uses his Turkish identity to challenge the local norms of harassing the Jews, by taking up the matter in the Ottoman courts. His self-presentation is convincing, so much so that he must produce his ritual fringes to convince the rabbi of Ta’izz that he is a coreligionist. Our two soldiers’ identity as Ottoman subjects proves problematic because they personify the oppressive occupation. Hence, Stambolski runs into difficulty acquiring provisions when local villagers identify him as a Turk, and thus an enemy. His escort prevails upon them by insisting that Stambolski is a Christian, and Stambolski promptly crosses himself three times to convince them. The logic behind this argument is that locals would view a Christian as less of an enemy than the Turks, who are viewed not only as foreign conquerors but also as traitors to Islam. Outward appearance comes into play here as well, for the Yemenites refer to the Turks as “cleanshaven Greeks” in Al-Suwaysī’s narrative, such that their facial hair stigmatizes them at a glance.10

Skin Stranger and host alike identify Yemenites as black and Europeans as white. Wolff, for example, describes the Imam of Sana’a as “completely black, like a Bedooeen,”11 and, as we have seen, Stern describes his Arab companion as an

10 Facial hair was an issue for Arnaud, as we have seen, and was also of interest to Bartholdi. 11 Wolff, Journal, 390–91; Idem, Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, 53; Idem, Travels and Adventures, 509.

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“uncouth, black Arab.” Time after time, our travelers encounter or generate identity confusion with respect to their skin color. Sapir describes himself as “a strange, white man,” and writes that he made his face black, like the locals, whose visage he describes as “black and sunburnt.”12 The local rabbi sympathizes with his condition, to which Sapir responds, jokingly: “If I look like you (pl.) [i.e. dark-skinned], I am lucky still to be alive!” By his response, Sapir acknowledges the contrast between the color of stranger and host, without however implying that white is superior to black. Halévy is aware of the association of stranger and host with white and black respectively, and on one occasion uses it to his advantage. He is suspected of being an enemy of Islam and convinces his interlocutor that he is harmless by letting the cotton garment fall from his shoulders and asking whether his complexion does not indicate someone who is a stranger to Yemen. In Rawda, Halévy tells his listeners that Ethiopia’s black Jews were amazed that he was Jewish, because they assumed all Jews must be black. Apparently, this anecdote is a response to the amazement aroused by his whiteness. The black-white associations prevalent in Yemen cause foreigners to alter their appearance in order to disguise their origins. To ensure that Arnaud’s whiteness will not place him in danger, his companions have him sit on his camel completely covered with a blanket. Other travelers disguise, rather than conceal, their skin color. Sapir blackens his face to resemble the locals, and similarly, Halévy smears his hands, legs and torso with soot and black material to disguise his whiteness before embarking on the quest for Himyarite inscriptions. In a number of tales, the travelers encounter locals who are so amazed by their skin color as to doubt that they are human. A group of bedouin who meet Arnaud conclude that “only God could know what this creature is.” They go on as follows: According to one: “Look at how everything about him is delicate, even his shoes!” Another adds, admiringly: “This is a person too delicate to be exposed to the weariness of the desert; he must have been created solely to be carried on a divan to the mosque, dressed in a beautiful white shirt. Is he not the Mahdi?” “Indeed,” another says, “this is obviously a bird of God, a bird of paradise.”

Accordingly, one of these bedouin announces to the townspeople: “We have brought the Mahdi!” In imagining the savior as white and delicate, these locals

12 Sapphire Stone 1:48a, 49a.

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internalize the European dichotomy between white: spiritual and black: earthy, with their respective aesthetic associations of beauty and ugliness.13 Similarly, at Milh, a Muslim is amazed that Halévy can write in Arabic, and concludes that he must be an angel, and Halévy explains that his fair complexion led him to this conclusion. At Rawda, too, women are unsure what sort of creature Halévy is, but since they are convinced that a man could not be that fair-skinned, they speculate that he must be a woman. Angel or woman, both theories rest on the association of whiteness with delicacy, and thus blackness with masculine virility. It is surely no coincidence that men conclude that Halévy must be an angel, and women that he must be a woman. Elsewhere, bedouin women conclude that Halévy is an angel after one caresses his face and reaches for his chest. Other women do not doubt his human identity: a woman is heard saying: “If only someone could have his child, who would be like him.” Here skin color is tinged with eroticism, a combination that is found in travel accounts from as long ago as Varthema, who reports that the local queen is attracted to him because he is fair-skinned, and he suspects that she has designs upon his future. A link between the erotic element and the motif of coloring is also noticeable in the report of the English naval officer, Stafford Bettesworth Haines, concerning his 1843 Yemen voyage.14 In his technical description of the area and its inhabitants, Haines finds it appropriate to describe and assess the men and women of Yemen with respect to their beauty.15 The women of the Subeihi tribe

13 The positive and negative connotations of whiteness and blackness respectively are still found among the tribesmen of Yemen, in whose parlance to dishonor someone is to blacken his face, and conversely, honorable conduct is known as whitening of the face. See: Serjeant, “South Arabia,” 227–28; Dresch, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen, 59. Meneley reports that a Zabid landowner would not allow his son to study agriculture, for fear that his son might work in the fields and “turn black.” – Meneley, Tournaments of Value, 63. And, indeed, Meneley observes that great landowners will be relatively pale, while field laborers will be darker-skinned: Ibid., n. 12. She adds: “The whole complex of ideas surrounding ‘blackness’ or ‘whiteness’ is complicated by concepts of beauty, morality, and racial origins, as well as manual labour.” Messick and Gerholm maintain that the akhdam, or servants, are relatively darkskinned: Messick, Transactions in Ibb, 99; Gerholm, 133. Other fieldwork studies, however, do not associate the akhdam with dark skin. In Al-Gades, in the Ibb district, there were not only the akhdam but also the ahgur, and it is the latter who were black-skinned: see Shelomo Dov Goitein, “Portrait of a Yemenite Weaver’s Village,” Jewish Social Studies 17 (1955), 10. Bujra, who studied a Hadhramawt community, defines the akhdam purely by economic criteria: Bujra, The Politics of Stratification, 40–43. 14 Haines, “Memoir of the South and East Coasts of Arabia, Part Two,” 104–60. 15 By commenting on the beauty of men as well as women, it may be that his remarks are more aesthetic than erotic in nature.

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are “delicately formed, with very dark eyes and long beautiful hair.”16 Those of the Aqrabi tribe are “generally pretty, of a slight, elastic, healthful form, which, added to great cheerfulness, creates a charm not often awakened by the tawny inhabitants of a tropical and desert country.”17 The Mahari tribe are “when young, very good-looking, especially the females; but as with the males, their skins are discoloured by the dye from their dress.”18 The Fudhlis “are a fine, bold-looking race of men: the women are the prettiest we have seen in all the parts of Arabia we have visited.”19 And the mountaineers of Subhan are “handsome, well made and always well armed . . . Their women are handsome and much fairer than any seen on the coast.”20 We see that Haines’ remarks on the Yemenites’ beauty concern men as well and women, and consistently refer to the two themes, eroticism and coloring. His travel account continues as follows: “Curiosity induced me to ask them [the Fudhli females] how they accounted for being so fair, and their reply was, that it was owing to their drinking nothing but milk from their childhood.”21 This encounter is a rare example of a text which exposes what the host population makes of their visitors, albeit in the stranger’s voice. The women seem to have internalized the western view of coloring, but attribute their own fairness to abstinence from alcohol, implicitly criticizing the European way of life. The pattern recurs in Haines’ description of the Jewish women of Yemen: They “are modest, though they wear scarcely any covering, and their young men have a Jewish cast of countenance. Their faces are longer than Arab faces generally are, their eyes large and bright, and they have figures that would have delighted the eye of Canova, could he have seen them. They are much fairer than the Arabs of the coast, and were apparently pleased to see men stouter and fairer than those of their own tribe. Indeed, they were frequent lookers-on at my crew when playing at cricket; and I then had forty fine extra Europeans on board, having saved the crew of the Reliance whaler, which had been wrecked on one of the Curia Muria [Khuryan Muryan] Islands.22

Here, as well, we find the convergence of eroticism and coloring. The erotic element comes across not only in the description of the women’s beauty but also in his comments on their liberal behavior, an element common to many travelogues of European travel to Yemen.

16 Haines, “Memoir of the South and East Coasts of Arabia, Part Two,” 130. 17 Ibid., 132. 18 Ibid., 112. 19 Ibid., 140. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 117–18. 22 Ibid., 121.

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Tales of western travel to the Arab world often include, or even foreground, the erotic aspect of stranger-host interactions. Eroticism was an important feature of the European image of the Orient, as the prospect of distance from the social constraints of home stimulated fantasies of sexual adventure. This aspect is reflected in Orientalist art, with the harem and the bath offering opportunities to depict nudes – all imagined – and, as we have noted, Bartholdi is unusual in eschewing romantic fantasy in favor of documentary realism. Whether erotic testimony symbolizes the West’s domination of the Orient or simply reflects the prurient fantasies associated with foreign travel, it appealed to the readership, and almost always finds a place in accounts of travel to Yemen. Focusing once again on coloring, Arnaud relates that the women of Mareb ridiculed, rather than admired, the whiteness of his skin. He adds that despite their veils and indigo cosmetics, he could see the beauty and whiteness of their skin and could tell “what they would have looked like au naturel, after a bath.” This encounter is plainly erotic entertainment for his European readers, for it offers the paradoxical combination (found in many such stories) of admiration and disgust, the disgust implied in the comment that the women’s beauty would only be evident after a good scrubbing. The tale of Halévy recoiling from a woman’s overtures has this same element of disdain, at the same time characterizing Arab women as bold. This combination is also found in Wolff’s run-in, when a bedouin woman reaches into his tent to grab his neckerchief, causing him to run out of the tent “as if from a wild beast.” Similarly, Lewis Pelly, a British officer who traveled through Arabia in 1865, relates that when he refused to sell his buttons and handkerchiefs to bedouin women, “they laughed and said ‘All right but we must have them,’” and proceeded to cut them off and take them.23 Halévy introduces the combination of eroticism and disgust with respect to Yemen’s Jews. As jewelers, he explains, the Jews are allowed to visit the rooms of women. A Mecca dignitary questions the propriety of this norm, whereupon the Jews are summoned and asked what they think of Arab women. They appease the critic with the reply that they find Arab women extremely impure, and thus lacking appeal. Not so Manzoni, who expresses only admiration in his account, which is the richest in erotic encounters. The three unaccompanied shepherdesses freely take his narghile, and he sizes them up as “freethinkers” and plies them with hard liquor, which they accept without hesitation, in disregard of the Muslim taboo on alcohol. Women also interact freely with Manzoni at a well, and he

23 Lewis Pelly, Report on a Journey to Riyadh in Central Arabia (1865) (Cambridge, 1978), 21.

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attributes this to the willingness of bedouin women – as opposed to city dwellers – to uncover their face. The strangers behave boldly away from urban settings, while in the cities and towns the Arabs were notorious for secluding their women from interaction with outsiders. Thus, while the genres of harem and water-bearer are very popular in Orientalist art, paintings of the water-bearer could, theoretically, depict actual encounters, while those of the harem could not. Manzoni’s account of a banquet held in his honor is the most salacious of his erotic tales. Young and pretty women in risqué attire dance provocatively, and he explains that “in Arabia, as in any other Oriental country, dance is only a continuous succession of poses, attitudes, gestures, contortions, whose only purpose is to express to those present the most voluptuous sentiments.” He cannot bring himself to describe the licentious performance, sharing only that the dancers hurl themselves onto the knees of the more important spectators. More lurid still is his description of the “dance of the bees,” a kind of striptease very much to his liking.

Contrasts The motifs of danger and disguise, color and eroticism, speak to the broader question of the impressions that stranger and host form of each other during their Yemen encounter, the theme of this book. The sources – admittedly, all from the pens of strangers – give voice to these impressions in the deeds as well as the words of the travelers and the Yemenites they meet. A set of qualities appear over and over in the accounts we have examined, and, notwithstanding the fascinating variations in their articulation, they provide a composite image of how the Orientalist travelers perceived the Orientals, and how they saw themselves in their hosts’ eyes. Images of the Arabian landscape in Orientalist art vividly illustrate that Europeans saw the Arab character as derived from the natural environment. The climate is harsh and the topography treacherous, and the people are correspondingly rugged and merciless – in a word, barbaric. Sapir and Hibshush are disgusted by the eating habits they encounter: the room is usually suffocatingly smoky (from the unventilated kitchen) and everything is filthy, including the diners. Their descriptions of these meals echo those of dozens of European travelers to Arab lands, who are nauseated by the practice of eating with the fingers from a communal pot or dish. This element is also found in Manzoni’s travelogue, although he approves of the eating habits of his servant Muqbèll.

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The Yemenites’ lack of refinement is a benign aspect of their barbarity; the country’s lawlessness and violence threaten the strangers at every turn, and indeed cost a shocking number of visitors their lives. Bartholdi’s scene of armed Arabs on horseback, his “escort,” represents a familiar genre in Orientalist art, signifying to the European audience that the Orient is a savage land, with perpetual danger to life and limb. The barbarity of the Orient befits its image as an ancient land, which is what attracted Europeans in the first place. Whether the source of their fascination was the Bible, Pharaonic Egypt, or the kingdom of Himyar, western travelers expected to see not only ancient sites but ancient people. Foreigners assumed that the inhabitants of these lands would look the way they expected the people of the ancient world to look – as their own disguises testify – and behave in a primitive manner befitting the dawn of civilization. But the disdain and condescension westerners expressed towards the locals appears in their writings alongside the view of the East as romantic, an almost antithetical attitude. In visual image and literary account, Europeans see the Orient as exotic, and this colors their view of the people in a more sympathetic hue. Yes, the Yemenites are savages, but while this quality has a threatening aspect, it also evokes simplicity, naivety, and even nobility. Thus, for example, the Jews receive Wolff cordially, unaware of his designs on their souls. Hibshush pokes fun at his companions in Ghayman for mistaking a snake for a demon. Halévy amuses readers with the tale of local officials who rifle through his belongings and are mystified by his socks, at whose purpose they can only guess. Westerners associate the Yemenites’ simplicity with a childlike gullibility, especially on account of their folk beliefs. Halévy dresses as a qudsi, a Jerusalemite, and is therefore questioned about a rock that is believed to loom in mid-air above the Dome of the Rock, which the locals also discuss with AlSuwaysī. Rather than cast doubt upon this myth, Halévy responds that the rock is only visible to very holy men, and therefore he is unable to report about it. The anecdote portrays the Yemenites as simpletons and Halévy (and his western audience) as sophisticates, although at times Halévy expresses fondness along with his patronizing attitude. Travelers also contrapose the rational and phlegmatic European with the emotional and excitable Yemenite. Reporting about a wedding in al-Madid, Halévy explains that in the Orient people do not conceal their emotions as they do in civilized lands, such that even the most ordinary occurrences occasion general excitement. The image of the European as controlled and rational places him in a position to dominate the uncivilized natives, as Halévy demonstrates throughout his account, in a microcosm of the Orientalist narrative.

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The superiority of the European temperament comes across in a cluster of qualities imputed to them in the travelers’ accounts. Their emotional control relates to their image as more stoic than the locals. During the journey to Mareb, Halévy scolds Hibshush for complaining of thirst, and when they reach an oasis, Hibshush drinks so much that Halévy must order him to desist before he harms himself. The strangers’ fortitude also takes the form of courage, which is contrasted with the locals’ pusillanimity. Sapir describes himself here as brave, and adds: “unlike my brothers, the sons of Yemen.” In many incidents, the Yemenites are fearful of supernatural forces, like the snake of Ghayman in Hibshush’s account, and the European is unmoved, because of his scientific mindset. Thus, Halévy dismisses the Arabs’ fear of the spirits at Na’ith, that glow in the dark, explaining to readers that these are mere will-o-the-wisps. The theme of the westerner’s courage appears repeatedly in Hibshush’s narrative. Of Halévy, he states bluntly: “Being himself a man without fear, he belittled the dangers incurred by others.”24 Thus, when tribesmen demand to inspect Halévy’s and Hibshush’s belongings, Hibshush urges his companion to hide his inscriptions, but Halévy calls him a fool, and expresses contempt for the Yemenites’ cowardice. Ostensibly, Hibshush takes this characterization to heart, but at times he casts a different light upon it. He links courage to environment when he explains that the Jews of al-Madid are more courageous than those of Shira’ because they are less subject to persecution, and hence less cowed; this would seem to attribute the courage of westerners to the freedom they enjoy, rather than to their inherent nature. On another occasion, Hibshush questions the value of his companion’s courage. An elderly Jew saves them from the extortionary demand for money by shouting at the bedouin, and while Hibshush candidly expresses amazement, Halévy scolds him for his timidity. In this instance, however, rather than take the rebuke to heart, Hibshush responds that aggressive behavior is the prerogative of the locals, who enjoy tribal protection, but strangers must treat the tribesmen with extreme caution, for bluster could place them in jeopardy. Hibshush also offers an anecdote that portrays his own countrymen as courageous. Four young Jews are found drowned in a body of water, and locals reconstruct that three of them died trying to save their comrade, which Hibshush regards as a mark of valor. In various ways, then, Hibshush acknowledges the

24 Travels in Yemen: An Account, 30.

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westerner’s courage, but tempers his appreciation with other sentiments, implicitly redressing the imbalance between stranger and host. Along the lines of Hibshush’s warning about the need for caution, our travelogues contrast west and east in terms of their respective predilection for direct and indirect action. Carasso relates that his servant employed a clever stratagem to evade being harassed by a group of Arabs. The tendency of the Yemenite Jews to outwit those who seek to dominate them contrasts starkly with Carasso’s own behavior, as he repeatedly tackles acts of persecution head on, relying on his status as a Turkish citizen. His experiences imply a preference for direct and honest action over devious and evasive behavior, and yet he is able to laugh with appreciation at his servant’s ingenuity. At the same time, in numerous tales it is the stranger who must maneuver adroitly to extricate himself from an awkward or dangerous situation. Arnaud is pressed to pronounce the Muslim proclamation of faith and pretends to comply by substituting a French profanity that sounds like the Arabic formula. Similarly, in Hudaydah, Sapir uses his wits to escape a lynch for failing to pay homage to a Muslim elder. Of course, he could have simply done so, and avoided the problem, and, furthermore, readers are unlikely to be impressed by tales that portray Sapir as clever, given that locals cheat him of his possessions not once but twice during his voyage. The image of westerners as direct and courageous emerges from their command of nature. It is implicit in their passion for hunting, a common motif in Yemen travelogues. Abraham Parsons hunts wild fowl with some fellow Englishmen and Haines and his men shoot a few partridges.25 Manzoni kills hares and deer in the Sana’a region. Hunting is a recreational activity for Europeans, implying affluence and leisure, and contrasting with the harsh conditions of Oriental lands. It involves advanced technology – firearms – another European advantage. And their notion that nature exists to be exploited for their benefit reflects the colonialist mindset as well as the culture of their homeland. A series of tales involving a confrontation with nature illustrates the relative images of stranger and host. En route to Sana’a, Sapir notes the presence of monkeys. He explains that he and his party were warned that provoking them could be dangerous, and therefore adds: “We did not touch them, and they did not touch us.” This is a rare case of the stranger respecting local mores, without the disdain expressed by many travelers. Manzoni, on the other hand, portrays himself as resourceful and courageous for dispersing the monkeys by discharging his weapons. Manzoni also expresses his domination of nature by taking a monkey

25 Haines, “Memoir of the South and East Coasts of Arabia, Part Two,” 139.

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home with him, the way westerners brought home ancient artifacts. With a complete lack of bravado, Al-Suwaysī admits that the monkeys made him and his fellow troops nervous, and when they awaken to find that the monkeys have taken their hats, they recover them through stratagem rather than violence. Al-Suwaysī expresses a respect for his natural environment like that of Sapir, and no desire to dominate the ecosystem. Carasso’s encounter with cats points in a different direction. During the journey inland, he and his party stop for a meal; he leaves his supplies unattended, whereupon, to his chagrin and amazement, hundreds of cats suddenly appear, devour his provisions and vanish. Carasso is further astonished when the local proprietor tells him that the animals are organized. Carasso asks him to prove this by producing them; he issues a call and over five hundred cats come running. Carasso is at a loss to explain what he has witnessed, notwithstanding his knowledge of the natural order. It is a rare occasion of the westerner doubting his mastery of nature and admitting that the Orient remains a mysterious land.

Gifts Gift exchange, a universal component of the stranger-host encounter, is ubiquitous in the accounts of Yemen travel, and the gifts reflect and contribute to the impressions the two parties form of one another. The gifts are both material and cultural, and they are anything but one-sided. On both sides, there is a remarkable continuity between the gifts offered during encounters of the early modern era and those of the nineteenth century. Among our travelers, there is significant overlap in terms of what is exchanged, but endless variation in the ways the two parties to the exchange act and react. The hosts’ principal gift is hospitality. Travelers require food and lodging, and for a Yemenite host to slaughter a sheep on the occasion of a foreign visitor, or to offer him a khilʻa, a ceremonial robe of honor, is a common experience among early modern travelers, while offerings of butter and coffee (or qishr) are standard fare. Hibshush summarizes the norms of Yemenite hospitality: “Many of the wealthy Yemenites who are inclined to be charitable devote particular rooms in their homes for all the poor wayfarers, and the homeowner personally honors the stranger and serves him with whatever he needs: coffee, tobacco for the water pipe, and food.”26 Hibshush stresses the host’s piety, both in his

26 Travels in Yemen, 42.

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emphasis on the host’s personal service and in the reference to poor wayfarers in particular. Travelers frequently testify to their host’s largesse, which even extends to marriage proposals. Alexander Hamilton visits Yemen repeatedly in 1712–1716, and relates that “in all the streets [of Sana’a] there are brokers for wives, so that a stranger, who has not the conveniency of an house in the city to lodge in, may marry, and be made a free burgher for a small sum.”27 In several instances, the Yemenite host does invite his European visitor to marry a local girl and remain. This happens to Cloupet in 1788, but the prospective bride rejects him. A Mr. Smith, traveling in Yemen on Haines’ behalf in 1843, is enticed to remain with the offer of “a wife and some sheep.”28 Al-Suwaysī is encouraged to marry the daughter of his Sana’a hosts, and agrees, but absconds at the earliest opportune moment. In Yemen as elsewhere, hospitality demonstrates political power simply by the host arrogating to himself the right to address the stranger’s needs. Pierre Emile Botta’s host, the Dola of Hays, forbids the townspeople from accepting payment from Botta for goods or services, and demands that they present the charges to him instead. Profligate hospitality serves as a device to uphold or augment one’s honor. When the Jewish sheikh of al-Ghail take up a collection for Halévy, Harun, the traveler’s escort, donates his wife’s silver rings, and the sheikh must accept his gift even though Harun is not affluent, because refusal would have impugned Harun’s honor. Salem, one of Manzoni’s hosts, offers him a silver ring with a carnelian. This is the most extravagant of the material gifts from host to stranger recorded in our corpus.29 However, in contrast to Halévy’s escort, Salem was the sheikh of his village, and thus far wealthier. In any case, Manzoni is less moved by the ring’s value than by its sentiment, for Salem expresses the hope that his gift will remind Manzoni of him later in life, giving voice to a personal bond between stranger and host without parallel in the Yemen travel literature. Information about the natural environment, such as topography and water supply, is essential for travelers. Before setting out, travelers to Yemen invariably read Niebuhr, and the accounts of European predecessors, cited by nearly all of our travelers, were a source of information of this sort. Sapir and Halévy know about Wolff and Stern, whose accounts they harshly criticize.

27 Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies (London, 1744; 1930), 39. 28 Haines, “Memoir of the South and East Coasts of Arabia, Part Two,” 117. 29 We get a sense of its value from the fact that in 1698 an ambassador from the Imam of Yemen to Shah Sultan Husayn offered his host carnelian trinkets: see Um, “Foreign Doctors at the Imam’s Court,” 267.

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That said, the most important source of such information is the Yemenite hosts, who offer this to the strangers as a cultural gift. This is one of the aspects of Yemen travel that highlight the peculiar position of the Jews as intermediaries between foreigners and locals, namely the Muslim majority population. Niebuhr visits Muscat on his way home, and reports that the head of the Jewish community supplied most of his information.30 The Jews of Milh teach Halévy geography, directing him to areas with Himyarite inscriptions, and he notes explicitly that they were his main source. Strangers in Yemen hardly ever travel unaccompanied, and the guides they hire ensure their basic necessities and preserve them from natural dangers and human predators. The guides’ knowledge of local conditions also enables them to facilitate relations with local authorities and smooth over confrontations. Most travelers also hire servants, who offer similar advantages. Accounts of Yemen travel devote considerable space to these relationships, which are certainly the most intense stranger-host encounters in terms of time spent together, often under trying circumstances. In what may seem an abuse of this relationship, Wolff claims to have baptized his servant, although Halévy later exposes this as a lie. Sa’id, Sapir’s servant, illustrates the importance of the servant when their arrival in a village elicits no response from the inhabitants: Sa’id stands in the street and loudly berates all and sundry for their inhospitable behavior. Manzoni proudly relates that at a certain point in his voyage he ate from the same plate as his servant, explaining that the latter had become more his friend than his servant. Only Carasso exhibits a lack of respect and consideration. His guide feels poorly, and after Carasso fails to convince him that he is not unwell, he offers him medicine, which is actually arak. The guide is distraught at having transgressed the taboo on alcohol, but Carasso abdicates responsibility and decamps. The flow of knowledge from local to stranger implicitly places the former in a position of greater power, contradicting the Orientalist image of the native population as benighted. The role reversal is explicit in Sapir’s Yemen travelogue, and is the most significant aspect of his stranger-host encounter. On a number of occasions, he candidly relates that the Yemenites turned out to be more knowledgeable than he on matters of Jewish law and lore. For example, Sapir’s hosts criticize his pronunciation of a liturgical term, and when he corrects them, they offer a volley of arguments which he is unable to refute. He also comes to realize that the Yemenites’ knowledge of Jewish magic is greater than his, and exerts himself to acquire their texts, coming home with

30 Niebuhr, Beschreibung, 14.

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an abundance of literary riches in manuscript. The upending of the Orientalist narrative is startling and significant. Like the incident of Carasso and the cats, the stranger is forced to question whether he or his host is the true repository of knowledge, but unlike Carasso, this is a leitmotif of Sapir’s Yemen experience, rather than a lone incident. Strangers typically offer their hosts gifts of technology. Firearms are always well-received: In 1711, French merchants in Mocha offer the Imam of Sana’a a pair of pistols, and in 1823, Robert Finlay, a doctor at Britain’s Mocha trading post, offers the Imam of his day a double-barreled percussion gun.31 Manzoni offers Salem, in lieu of payment for his hospitality, a revolver and a hundred cartridges. Another staple is alcohol, and it serves the Orientalist narrative because it portrays Muslims as weak or depraved for wanting it despite their own religious taboo. Cloupet expatiates on the Arabs’ taste for alcohol and entertains his readers by relating that he spiked the soft drink he offered some Arab visitors, much to their delight. Locals ask Wolff for alcohol on a number of occasions, and he refuses because of the religious prohibition, implicitly damning them for their hypocrisy. In a village south of Yerim, Manzoni enjoys a delicious meal, and offers his host gin from his flask after being unable to offer brandy, which the sheikh says he prefers. This is another aspect of the Jews’ peculiar position in Yemenite society, for, as infidels, they are not subject to the Muslim restriction on the consumption of alcohol. In 1618, at Mocha, a Jew sells liquor to the British sailors of the Anne Royall. Niebuhr observes that the Jews of Sana’a produce alcohol but notes that they sell only among themselves. Indeed, the leaders of the Jews of Shibam bring Sapir bottles of brandy when they visit him on the Sabbath. In 1835, the French explorers Combes and Tamisier land at Luhayyah, and are set upon by locals demanding medical attention. This illustrates the Yemenites’ assumption that westerners have medical knowledge and carry medicines in their luggage, and indeed, medical expertise and supplies – commodities both intellectual and material – are among the most popular gifts demanded of western travelers to Yemen and dispensed by them.32 Manzoni is flooded with ailing locals seeking succor, whom he treats with actual medicines or just a dose of brandy, in an expression of the crossover between the two European panaceas.

31 P.J.L. Frankl, “Robert Finlay’s Description of Sanaa in 1238–1239/1823,” British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin 17 (1990), 20. 32 Thus, Anne Meneley reports: “I routinely disappointed women hoping that I was something useful like a medical doctor instead of an anthropology doctoral student.” – Meneley, Tournaments of Value, xv.

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He justifies his medical pretensions by explaining that the locals would not believe a European’s claim to know no medicine, and indeed, Combes’ and Tamisier’s protest that they know no medicine falls on deaf ears. This behavior pattern recurs in other contexts. At Haribah, a bedouin woman insists that Arnaud check her son’s horoscope and rejects his claim to be ignorant of this science. When the locals test Sapir’s knowledge of kabbalah, they cannot believe that he is ignorant of this discipline, since he hails from Jerusalem, and they suspect that he is unwilling to share his knowledge, either because he deems them unworthy or because he is stingy by nature.33 These cases represent the generalization that locals expect foreign guests to have important knowledge that they lack, simply because they come from elsewhere, and are universally reluctant to accept disappointment.34 An apostate asks Sapir to diagnose his ailment, “because everyone thinks that all Jerusalemites are doctors and adjurers.” Here the medical expertise expected of the stranger is rooted in his presumed familiarity with Jewish occult knowledge rather than western medicine, an assumption rooted in his origins, namely Palestine, the seat of Jewish mystical lore. Elsewhere, Sapir is asked to heal someone with magical techniques, but instead he makes a medical diagnosis and, denying knowledge of adjurations, prescribes a course of medical treatment which proves effective. This experience reflects Sapir’s unusual position between East and West, for, as a rabbinical authority from the Holy Land he is knowledgeable in kabbalah, while also aware of the state of European knowledge. By the mid-nineteenth century, another achievement of European technology reaches Yemen, the photograph. Bartholdi mainly photographs sites, executing portraits in drawing and watercolor. His portraiture is not his gift to the locals, but rather their gift to him, in agreeing to serve as subjects. The opposite is true for Manzoni, who accedes to photography requests from locals, including portraits. He also agrees to teach a local young man photography in exchange for lessons in Turkish, an exchange of knowledge advantageous to both parties. On occasion, however, photography created a rift between Yemen travelers and their hosts, who suspect them of espionage. Turning from technological to social gifts, the Yemen travel accounts exemplify the norm articulated by Georg Simmel that strangers are generally invited to mediate local disputes, by virtue of their status as outsiders to the conflict.35

33 Sapphire Stone, 1:55v. 34 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 97–98. 35 Simmel, “The Stranger,” 145–46. Similarly, Serjeant observes: “It seems to me almost a characteristic of the society to turn to a third party to mediate in even quite trifling transactions.” – Serjeant, “South Arabia,” 240. See also Messick, Transactions in Ibb, 413.

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Charles Doughty, for instance, travels through the Arabian desert with a group of bedouin in 1876–1878, and when their leader’s wife is angry with her husband, and leaves his booth for her family’s, the sheikh is forbidden by custom from reclaiming her, and is forced to ask Doughty, the stranger, to retrieve her. This incident demonstrates Simmel’s generalization within a family context, but the pattern appears repeatedly in a broader social setting.36 In Kukhlan, Sapir is invited to test the competency of a local religious functionary disqualified by the Sana’a rabbinical court, but refuses to countermand the actions of his colleagues.37 It is his outsider status, more than the assumption of expertise, that induces the locals to entreat him to intervene, and this incident exemplifies the pattern of a stranger (or host) electing to refuse to bestow the gift asked of him, regardless of possible unpleasant consequences. At the time of Halévy’s visit, the devotees of kabbalah in Yemen rely on the Zohar to challenge the accepted fashion of curls dangling from women’s faces. The Muslim notables are asked to arbitrate the dispute, but merely refer it to the Sana’a rabbinical court, which rules in favor of the status quo. Halévy’s opinion is solicited, as though he were a rabbinical authority, and he rises to the challenge, citing a Mishnaic source in support of the traditional practice. As a man of science, his antipathy to the mystical outlook is predictable, and his highhanded conduct reflects the image of the westerner as direct, which is characteristic of his behavior throughout the voyage. Halévy’s legal opinion is also sought regarding a dispute that erupts over a recent ruling prohibiting milk produced by gentiles. The ruling is rooted in an understanding of chemistry, which is why Halévy rules in its favor, and it is ironic that in this case, when the challenge to tradition stems from the world of science, the consequence – which Halévy supports – is a decidedly less liberal policy than the one observed in Yemen since time immemorial. The supreme social gift on the part of a stranger in Yemen is Hibshush’s marriage proposal to a young woman in Wadi Najran. His intention is to save the girl, who is pregnant out of wedlock, compelling her family to save their honor by putting her to death. This is a Simmel-like situation, in the sense that the travelers stumble upon a crisis to which the locals can find no happy solution. However, Halévy intervenes to forbid the marriage, just as he torpedoes

36 Travels in Arabia Deserta (New York, 1925), 1:233. This resembles the documented custom of tribe members negotiating transactions with their peers by means of men who do not bear arms: see Serjeant, “South Arabia,” 240. A century later, in Zabid, the husband personally would go to the home of his aggrieved wife’s natal family, to which she had retreated in anger, to apologize and retrieve her: Meneley, 155–56. 37 Sapphire Stone, 1:104v.

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Hibshush’s initial suggestion that he perform an abortion. Once again Halévy dons the mantle of rabbinical advisor, and, in his imperious manner, fires off arguments from Jewish law about abortion and illegitimate offspring, apparently assuming that he could compel the family to accept the child and refrain from harming the mother. In Orientalist fashion, the western scientist seems rational and his Yemenite companion sentimental, a hierarchy the latter appears to internalize, although his rendering of the tale implicitly solicits the reader’s sympathy. The information brought to bear in the resolution of a local conflict is a kind of cultural gift, another type of commodity offered from stranger to host. Travelers are generally a source of information about the world beyond the local community.38 To illustrate, Ibrahim Pasha willingly gives Pierre Emile Botta a letter of recommendation to Sheikh Hassan in the hope that on his return, Botta would bring him information about the state of the country.39 Hibshush notices this, for he observes that Halévy “was not lacking in the traveler’s quality of telling his hosts what they saw and heard in the world, in order to make them [their hosts] like them.” For the most part, however, the traveler’s purpose in sharing his intellectual resources with his hosts is to raise them up from barbarian ignorance. For missionaries, this means winning souls for the Christian faith, and one of the main paths towards this goal is education. The Protestant emphasis on the Bible stimulated the missionary societies to promote literacy, and Andrew Porter writes: “One of the most important features of missionaries’ work lay in their contribution of education through schools and colleges.”40 Wolff was typical of the missionary practice of distributing books, mainly Bibles. The societies also printed their own tracts for distribution among the heathen. The gifts of the missionaries encouraged the local population to question and probe themselves and others on matters of doctrine and faith. The results were meager when measured in terms of baptisms, for there were few converts among the Arabs and no more among the Jews. However, a new dynamic emerged, for soon there were Muslim printing presses, which churned out works against Christianity, like Jawad ibn Sabat’s anti-Christian polemic, printed in Calcutta in 1814.41 The educational initiatives also bore fruit that exceeded the missionaries’ vision, as local leaders took advantage of the education to promote their people’s advancement. 38 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 105. 39 Botta, Relation d’un voyage dans l’Yemen, 14. 40 Porter, Religion versus Empire?, 317. 41 Green, Terrains of Exchange, 26–27.

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The goal of bringing enlightenment to the Arab world was common to other categories of travelers. William Gifford Palgrave, an English Jesuit (though not a missionary) who traveled to Arabia in 1862–1863, declares that he did so “[in] the desire of bringing the stagnant waters of Eastern life into contact with the quickening stream of European progress.”42 This was not Halévy’s avowed purpose, but Hibshush certainly regarded it as a boon to him personally, and he praises Halévy for “baptizing him in the mikveh of thought,” liberating him from superstitions like the belief in adjurations.43 And twenty years later, Hibshush writes to Halévy that when he returned to Sana’a there were those who shunned him for having been attracted to “knowledge and enlightenment.”44 Indeed, Hibshush is an extreme example of locals who internalize the values of their western visitors, sometimes to the point of embracing their own unflattering portrayal. Carasso refers to the benefits that education could bring to his Yemenite brethren. He finds them intelligent, and therefore expects that they will be able to escape their current state of ignorance. This condescending remark reflects the western view that knowledge flows exclusively from west to east, an attitude Sapir shared until his Yemen encounters taught him otherwise. Ironically, among our travelers, Sapir, the Palestinian rabbi, is the voice of colonialism and western modernization. The Jews of Aden complain to him that their lives are harder under British rule than previously, because, although their living conditions are more aesthetic and hygienic than before, the cost of living is higher, due partly to new taxes and partly to the rising tide of immigration. Sapir responds that life is unquestionably better under the new regime, particularly because the Jews now enjoy a legal status equal to that of their Muslim neighbors. His hosts, however, are not convinced, and like the colonial subjects of many lands, they question the advantages of the civilization foisted upon them.

Conclusion The images that stranger and host form of one another in nineteenth-century Yemen mirror the motifs of Orientalist narratives from the period’s European literature and art. The roots of these impressions, however, are much deeper.

42 Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia, 244. 43 A Vision of Yemen, 168–69. 44 Travels in Yemen: Joseph Halévy’s Journey, 356.

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The king of Denmark cautions the expedition’s members to avoid arousing suspicions that they have come in search of treasure or for espionage, and to be careful not to take liberties with their women. Clearly, Europeans were already aware of motifs that echo in the narratives of travelers a century later. The repeated appearance on both sides of the stranger-host encounter of a fairly standard complex of impressions, with both positive and negative elements, reflects the altogether human tendency to draw upon prior knowledge in the very act of perception, such that we see what we expect to see. People invariably process a new experience by amalgamating the unknown and the known to create order and meaning, and the travel experience is no exception, with regard to both natural and human encounters. This explains the significance of “intersections,” when travelers glean information about their destination from those who have already made the journey, or from those they meet along the way. Because these veterans come from the traveler’s own cultural environment, their experiences are likely to reinforce the novice’s prior expectations, and also to create new ones which he is likely to confirm. It is, however, the limited uniformity that stands out in the Yemen strangerhost encounters. Not only is Yemen different from other countries of the Orient, whether Persia or India, but there are also important distinctions between the people of Yemen’s various regions: the Tihama, Hadhramawt, Mareb and the highlands, particularly Sana’a.45 Each travel encounter is unique, and individual experiences temper and occasionally confound the dominant themes. The variation is so extensive that our collective impression is rich and textured. The stereotypes are there, but we can see the trees as well as the forest.

45 Similarly, Said’s Orientalism has been criticized as too sweeping, because it does not recognize the nuance in travel writing: see Hilal Hajari, British Travel-Writing on Oman: Orientalism Reappraised (Oxford, 2006).

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Index 1001 Nights X, 96 ʻAli 300, 301, 303 Abanos 287 Abedin 255 Adeida Miriam 84 Adler, Nathan Marcus 181, 236 admiration XI Africa 27, 47, 89, 96, 126, 235, 236–237 Agha, Ali 12 ahgur 310 Aidonides, Giorgio 278 akhdam 310 al Badihi, Yahya 168 al-Dahiri, Zecharia 3 al-Haymi, Hasan ibn Ahmad 18–19 al-Makki, Sayyid Abbas b. Ali al-Musawi 20 al Qafih, Salim 168 al-Qoladhi, Hussein 275 al-Suwaysī, Saʻīd Muhammad 294–304, 308, 314, 317, 318 Albania 255, 274, 291 alcohol 34, 40, 83, 250, 279, 302, 311, 312 Alexander, Michael Solomon 49, 70 Alfondi 177 Ali 73 Ali, Mohammed 48, 63 Alliance Israélite Universelle 172, 195, 203, 236, 239, 266 Ameira, Yehia 73 amulet 163, 167, 170, 207, 218 animals 108, 185, 186, 239, 264, 268, 316 –camel 32, 99, 108, 111, 112, 124, 140, 221, 223, 296, 300, 309; cat, 247, 317, 320; dog, 65, 75, 197, 247, 300; donkey, 18, 32, 72, 110, 112, 166, 196, 204, 216, 246, 250, 262–263; monkey 157, 185, 269, 271, 278, 295, 316–317 anthropology VII–VIII antiquity, antiquities VIII, 21, 99, 101, 104, 137, 151, 153, 175, 189, 198, 221, 227, 231, 291, 305, 314, 319 antisemitism 3, 8, 22, 34, 35, 53, 74, 83, 93, 218–219, 255, 280, 281, 297, 298, 299

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110710618-011

Arabic 4, 21, 22, 23, 36, 37, 44, 47, 60, 61, 62, 84, 103, 149, 176, 213, 222, 310 architecture 101, 107, 112, 117, 118, 121 Armenia 86, 287 Arnaud, Thomas-Joseph 103, 190–194, 195, 230, 235, 306, 307, 309, 312, 316, 321 Aroussi, Joseph 204 artist IX, 95–145 Ashkenazi, David Judah 187 Ashkenazi, Judah 187 Attanasaki 278 attire 29–30, 40, 97, 127, 132, 133, 135, 142, 171, 179, 196, 210, 211–212, 214, 238, 239, 247, 279, 288, 295, 296, 302, 322 Australia VI –Adelaide 183; Bendigo, 172, 180, 181; Melbourne, 172, 173, 177, 180–181, 183; Sydney, 172, 182 Azulay, Hayyim Yoseph David 148, 154, 157, 158, 200, 219, 224 Banyan (Indian) 3, 8, 137, 197, 227, 243, 252 baptism 66–67, 78, 89–90, 198, 319, 323 Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, Jules 103 Bartholdi, Frédéric-Auguste 95–145, 273, 305, 306, 307, 312, 314, 321 Barukh, Ezekiel 186 Baurenfeind, Georg Wilhelm 23, 25, 30, 33 bedouin/ tribes(men) X, 30, 39, 54, 58, 72, 75, 79–80, 112, 122, 190, 192, 193, 202, 207, 208, 209, 210, 213, 214, 220, 226, 228, 230, 233, 250, 268, 269, 271, 296, 303, 305, 306, 308, 310, 312, 313, 315, 321, 322 –Aqrabi 311; Fudhli, 311; Mahari 311 qerawi 209, 213, 218; sherif 209, 217–218, 219, 237; Subeihi, 310 Belly, Léon 101, 103–104, 122, 134 Ben Da’ud, Yihye 280 Ben Sa’adia, Joseph 152 Ben-Said, Salim 214 Ben Simkha, Pinehas 66 Beni Jabar 79–80 Benjamin, Israel Joseph 149, 177

342

Index

Berchère, Narcisse 101 Berggren, Lars 23, 25 Bey, Ibrahim 282 Bey, Mustah 276, 283 Bible (Torah) 4, 21–22, 37, 43, 57, 166, 169, 170, 177, 178, 187, 198, 221, 222, 239, 257, 305, 314, 323 Bienenfeld-Rolpf, Giuseppe 268, 269, 275, 277 Bienenfeld-Rolpf, Vittorio 277 Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen IX books/manuscripts 4, 24, 37, 38, 61, 73, 166, 213, 232, 257, 323 Botta, Pierre Emile 64, 189, 318, 323 Bou Bakr, Ali IV, XV, 134 Brill, Yehiel 148, 195 Bronkhorst, Stephen H 70 Buddhism 175 Bukhara 62, 65, 66 Bulgaria 293 –Kazanlăk 285 Burchardt, Hermann 136, 145 Burma 184 –Yangon 172, 185 Burnes, Alexander 64 burnoose 97, 210 Burton, Richard 307 Byron, Lord X, 95 café 112, 114, 115, 247, 308 Campbell, Mary 43 Carasso, David Samuel 244–266, 308, 316, 317, 319, 320, 324 Carey, William 46, 63 Carne, John 56, 58, 64, 67 cemetery 71, 184, 217 Chasseriau, Théodore 96–97 Chedufau 63 child 5, 14, 15, 29, 51, 58, 63, 85, 86, 115, 123, 126–127, 129, 139, 144, 154, 159, 192, 202, 229, 302, 305 China 44, 45, 184 Christians V, 3, 42, 74, 127, 155, 166, 183, 184, 238, 273, 276, 279, 288, 296, 308 Ciccia 278 circumcision 29, 119–120, 155, 180, 181, 183, 253

cleverness 161, 179, 193, 200, 202, 207, 226, 227, 250, 264, 295, 298, 300, 316 Cloupet 39, 318, 320 coffee 6, 14, 184, 185, 214, 243, 258, 264, 269, 287, 317 Cohen, Samuel 262–264 Cohen, Yehiel Bekhor 177 color 97, 131, 134, 138 Combes, Edmond 40–41, 320 Comendan, Ezekiel 187 commerce/merchant 7, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 27, 35, 40, 41, 75, 76, 78, 81, 165, 172, 177, 178, 221, 243, 245, 251, 255, 258, 260, 275, 287 Congregazione/Collegio di Propaganda Fide 46, 50 Constanti 131–132 conversion 19, 40, 180, 184, 270 Copello, Ignazio 278 corruption 31, 64, 85, 159, 168 courage/cowardice 74, 99, 161, 165, 205, 206, 207–208, 210, 213, 222, 226, 227, 228, 232, 233, 234, 270, 278, 315 Crete 274 –Chania, 289 Cruttenden, Charles 190 D’Beth Hillel, David 175, 177 Daniel 240 Darwin, Charles 125 De Buffon, Comte 288 De la Roque, Jean 15, 40 De Laporte de Castelnau, François Louis 112 Delacroix, Eugène 96, 97 demon/Satan 167, 192, 200, 206, 215, 217, 232, 235 Denmark (Danish) VIII, 21–39 King 23–24, 194, 305, 306, 325 dervish 55, 59, 65, 72, 307 desert 98–99, 103, 108, 112 Deshayes, Eugène 101 Devaux 63 dhimmi 3, 256 diplomacy 6, 13, 17, 18–19 disguise 2, 25, 72, 87, 101, 176, 189, 192, 197, 199, 202, 203, 222, 223, 227, 307, 309

Index

dissimulation 1, 74, 75, 87, 191, 192, 193, 199, 201, 303 Doughty, Charles 322 Draganov, Zaharia 286, 290, 291, 293 Drummond, Henry 50 eating/fasting 73, 82–83, 161, 163, 167, 184, 200, 216, 221, 272–273, 280, 300, 311, 313 Egypt 25, 29, 44, 47, 48, 49, 81, 95, 96, 100, 101, 102, 126, 144, 244 –Alexandria 151, 235; Cairo, 25, 29, 35, 37, 78, 101, 102, 103, 104, 112; Port Said, 292; Sinai, 25, 55, 56, 58; Suez, 293 Eliyahu 74, 76 Eliyahu, Mullah 89–90 Elkohen, Hayyim 196 Elwood, Anne 42, 43 emissaries (rabbinical) 4, 82, 147–188, 222 England (Britain) 6–11, 171, 181, 182, 185, 186, 227, 236, 243, 306, 320, 324 –London 47, 50, 51, 68, 69, 70, 71, 91, 173, 181, 182, 183 eroticism X, XI, 5, 15, 24, 29, 40, 58, 83, 98, 123, 124, 135, 142, 193, 219, 269, 271– 272, 276, 278, 280, 310–313 escort/guide 73, 74, 75, 108, 124, 130, 205, 207, 214, 220–221, 225, 229, 246, 258, 260, 283, 287, 307, 314, 318, 319 espionage 4, 5, 24, 122, 166, 194, 197, 205, 228, 238, 274, 275, 291, 306, 325 Ethiopia (Abyssinia) VI, 4, 18, 65, 84, 89, 122, 129, 195, 204, 235–241, 243, 267, 291, 309 –Asous 237; Denkalia, 141; Gondar, 19, 85, 239; Kabta, 238; Massawa, 55, 237; Volka’it, 238; Zera Workee, 84 ethnography VII, 21, 24, 34, 36, 67, 101, 125, 148, 174, 209, 217–218, 252, 280 European misconduct 11, 15, 24–25, 31, 34, 325 Fadal 134 Falasha (Beta Israel) 87, 235, 236, 239 Fasiladas 18 Fatma 127 Feinstein, Hayyim Yaʻaqov 171–172

343

festival –Lag baʻOmer, 174, 185, Ninth of Av, 184; Passover, 166, 169, 179, 183, 207, 215, 262, 305; Pentecost, 221; Purim, 178; Ramadan, 161, 163, 268; Tabernacles, 170 firman 11, 12, 13, 67, 104 Finlay, Robert 320 Flad, Johann Martin 70 Flaubert, Gustave X, 95, 276–277, 305 food preparation 37, 167, 183, 184, 186, 219, 223 Fortoul, Hippolyte 100 Forsskål, Peter 22–23, 29–31, 36–39, 189, 306 France, 7, 14, 39, 88, 189, 320 –Colmar, 100; Paris, 100, 122, 144, 195, 236, 240, 274; Saint Malo, 14, 16 Fränkl, Ludwig August 240 fundraising 148, 149, 151, 157, 158, 172–173 Galicia 185 Gautier, Théophile 96 genre art 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 120, 139 geography 1, 21, 22, 24, 46, 89, 92, 189, 198, 213, 234, 319 Germany, IX, 23, 37, 52, 68, 69, 70, 80, 85, 88, 145, 183, 189 –Göttingen 21, 22, 23 Gérôme, Jean-Léon 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 113, 121, 124, 125, 143, 307 Ghanem 287 Ghiyat 258 gift exchange V, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 17, 20, 26, 27, 28, 58, 59, 64–65, 79, 80, 85, 167, 175, 177, 180, 181, 182, 199, 216, 224, 227, 238, 239, 257, 265, 269, 274, 296, 302 gifts 317–324 –activism 254, 260; alcohol, 10, 11, 40, 41, 57, 58, 59, 83, 166, 249, 254, 269, 271, 273, 319, 320; amulet, 65, 196, 238; animal, 17, 18, 186; armament, 8, 10, 16, 18, 19, 42, 65; art, 13, 145; Bible, 43, 58, 59, 60, 62, 81, 84, 166, 198, 238, 323; blessing, 59; books/manuscripts, 4, 21, 60, 61, 78–79, 84, 155, 178, 213, 278;

344

Index

circumcision, 181, 183; cloth(ing), 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 27, 32, 41, 58, 80, 166, 237, 277, 317; cosmetics, 272; dance, 276, 313; education, 60, 92, 174, 274, 282, 321, 323, 324; flowers, 15; food, 8, 9, 10, 26, 28, 31, 64, 65, 84, 166, 273, 276, 317; garden, 218; gold objects, 177, 178; healing, 7, 14, 16–17, 24, 26, 27, 31, 41, 62–63, 79, 92, 161, 163, 165, 167, 170, 176, 181, 191, 196, 249, 264, 265, 270, 277, 278, 319, 320–321 henna, 26; hospitality (infra); house, 218; idol, 64; jewelry, 216, 218, 277, 318; knowledge, 2, 7, 14, 26, 29, 35, 36, 79, 153, 155, 163, 176, 178, 180, 181, 187, 196, 204, 213, 222, 231, 232, 234, 239, 252, 274, 275, 282, 287, 290, 297, 301, 318–319, 321, 323; kohel (antimony) 26, 97, 205, 302, 312; letter, 32, 64, 73, 101, 156, 157, 177, 184, 189, 195, 196, 203, 269, 323; map, 61; marriage, 224, 240, 302, 322; mediation (disputes), 65, 86, 167, 168, 182, 211–212, 223, 321; meeting, 35; money, 27, 28, 31, 32, 84, 85, 172, 176, 293; music, 6, 9, 12, 27, 84, 190, 276; perfume, 18; person, 240; photograph, 119, 273, 282, 321; plants, 274; poem, 20; precious stone, 178, 277, 318; ritual object, 178; sermon, 178, 187; slave, 18, 98; soil, 4; specimens, 31; spices, 13; technology, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 26, 27, 31, 32, 65, 79, 84, 119, 145, 190, 238, 277, 320 Glaser, Eduard 230 Gobat, Samuel 55 Gollet de la Merveille, Godefroy 14, 15 Greece (Greek) 3, 57, 101, 112, 131, 241, 260, 278, 286, 287, 296, 302, 308 –Thessaloniki, 244, 285 Green, Nile 59 greeting 29 Guillaumet, Gustave-Achille 98 guinea worm disease 286, 292 Haga, Cornelius 13 Haig, F.T. 91–92

Haines, Stafford Bettesworth 190, 310–311, 316 Hakham Bashi 172, 255, 259–262 Hakki, Islam 274 Hakki, Ismail 274, 283, 291, 292 Halevi, Abraham ben Eliezer 2 Halevi, Moshe 260 Halévy, Joseph 66, 189–241, 268, 269, 305, 306, 307, 309, 310, 312, 314, 315, 318, 319, 322, 323, 324 Hamagid 172, 173, 236 Hamilton, Alexander 318 Hanem, Kuchak 276–277 hardship 52, 55, 67, 72, 74, 76, 157, 204, 221, 225, 229, 230, 305, 315 harem 41, 42, 98, 111, 113–114, 312, 313 Harun 216, 232, 318 Hasenfratz, Amilcar 144 Hassan 189, 323 Hassan (al-Suwaysī) 303 Hebrew 4, 22, 36, 37, 38, 73, 87, 161, 174, 219, 220, 221, 222, 253 Heynes, Edward 9, 10 Hibshush, Hayyim 66, 189–241, 269, 308, 313, 314, 315, 317, 322, 323, 324 Hildesheimer, Azriel 235 Himyarite 5, 104, 169, 189–241 Holland (Dutch) 12–14, 182, 183 –Amsterdam 37, 172, 184 Holy Land (Palestine) 4, 25, 48, 69, 82, 87, 101, 103, 147, 164, 169, 170, 172, 175, 178, 222, 299, 300, 303, 321 –Hebron 82, 173, 180, 301; Jaffa, 294, 301, 303; Jerusalem, 5, 49, 53, 57, 62, 153, 158, 161, 164, 175, 177, 180, 207, 222, 301, 314, 321 honor/dignity 27, 30, 48, 62, 85, 125, 134, 149, 152, 158, 187, 208, 216, 219, 224, 234, 269, 296, 297, 318 hospital 262, 282, 285, 286, 287, 290–293, 299, 300 hospitality 6, 28, 31, 32, 39, 75, 83, 85–86, 117, 149–150, 153, 156, 158, 175, 176, 187, 189, 196, 197, 204, 206, 214, 216, 220, 228, 237, 269, 273, 277, 291, 296, 298, 302, 317–318, 319 Hungary 12, 195

Index

–Eisenstadt 235 hunting 41, 221, 268, 271, 282, 316 Hussein, Muhsin Ali 273 Ibn ʻAbd al-Rahim, al-Hadj Salim 19 Ibn al-Mujawir, Yusuf ibn Yaqub 1 Ibn G 258 Ibn-Haidar, Hussein Ibn-Ali 244 Ibn Sabat, Jawad 323 Ibrahim 129, 135 identity 2, 6, 87 Imam 13, 16–17, 18–19, 32, 33, 161, 163, 166, 244, 308, 320 Imer, Édouard 98, 101 India VI, 61, 143–144, 151, 172–176, 182, 184, 295 –Alleppey 177 Amritsar, 57; Bombay, 17, 25, 32, 42, 56, 60, 61, 106, 172, 174, 178, 179, 187; Calcutta, 172, 175–176, 177, 178, 180, 323; Chennai, 177; Goa, 4; Hindustan, 137, 138; Karnataka, 185; Kashmir, 58; Kochi, 172, 174, 175, 177, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 239; Mawlamyine, 172; Mysuru, 186; Ratnagiri, 187; Surat, 3; Trankebar, 21 Indonesia –Jakarta 172, 176, 179, 183, 184; Semarang, 184 inscription 5, 36, 169, 189–241, 195 “intersection,” 39, 64, 81–82, 174, 195, 197– 198, 200, 268, 288, 318, 325 Ios Bashi 153 Iran (Persia) 47, 60, 69, 70, 81–90, 96, 103, 136 –Balfroosh 82; Bandar Kangan, 88; Borazjan, 81, 83; Bushehr, 81, 89; Futenbad, 85; Hillah, 85; Hormuz, 3; Isfahan, 84, 86, 87; Kazerun, 87, 88; Kermanshah, 87, 88, 89; Meshed, 88; Qom, 83; Shiraz, 34, 83, 84; Torbat Heydariyeh, 57 Iraq –Baghdad 69, 179; Basra, 69, 87; Hit, 84; Mosul, 82 Ireland 183

345

Islam 1, 24, 143, 145, 152, 163, 193, 205, 207, 212, 220, 237, 301, 302, 316 Italy 1, 7, 15, 275, 279, 283 –Milano, 262, 275, 291 Jacob, Ezekiel Judah 178 Jesuit 4, 45, 324 Jesus 78, 155, 278 Jews V, 3, 8, 11, 17, 34, 61, 88, 89, 113, 135, 143–144, 145, 156, 190, 206, 209, 217, 218, 219, 239, 279–281, 297, 311, 314 –and alcohol , 11, 34, 83, 320; antiquity, 37, 37, 39, 153, 164, 169, 170, 198, 219, 243, 288; as mediator, 8, 9, 11, 196, 297, 298, 319; as outsider, 11, 209, 218, 297, 298; blacksmith, 152, 199, 219; jeweler, 215, 219, 280, 312; merchants (ostrich feathers), 281; moneychanger, 281; physician, 287, 299; Sana’a, 35–36, 61, 66–67, 76, 156, 157, 167, 171, 197, 245, 259, 279–281, 320, 324 Jourdain, John 6 Judaism 4 Keith-Falconer, Ion 92–93 Ketelaar, Joan Josua 17 Khayl II, Shukr 205 Kramer, Christian Carl 23, 25 Kurdistan 62 –Jezireh, 87; Mardin 62, 65 Ladino 245, 246 Lambert, Henri 63 Landan 81 Lane, Edward IX, 241, 307 Law/justice –Jewish 4, 153, 154, 164, 167, 170, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 187, 211, 219, 220, 222, 223, 224–225, 264, 319, 322; Muslim, 3, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 166, 168, 196– 197, 204, 211, 212, 256, 262, 263, 280, 322; Other, 181; Ottoman, 255, 257, 262 Lawrence, T.E., X Leon 184 Libya

346

Index

–Tripoli 189 Lithuania 148, 175 liturgy 153, 164 Ljubenov, Josif 286 Mabrout 131–132 Magar, David 235 Mahdi 192, 193, 235, 309 Mahdi, Muhsin 278 Maimonides 61, 160, 213, 255 malaria 25, 93 Malta 51, 52, 53, 55, 59 Manolaki 286–287, 293 Mansoora, Saida 76 Manzoni, Renzo 165, 267–283, 287, 291, 305, 306, 312–313, 316, 318, 319, 320, 321 Marathi 174, 187 market 14, 32, 78, 98, 157, 158, 159, 165 marriage (wedding)/divorce 40, 83, 96, 119, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 210, 223, 224–225, 234, 280, 302, 303, 314, 318, 322 Martyn, Henry 47 Mauss, Marcel V Melazos 253 Messiah (messianism)/Redemption 3, 67, 88, 155, 156, 174, 205, 207, 255 Michaelis, Johann David 21 Middleton, Henry 9 missionary 4, 15, 17, 18, 43–93, 156, 177, 197, 198, 235, 238, 323 Mohammed, Ali 127 Monserrate, Antonio 4 Montenegro 274 Morocco 44, 96, 267, 271, 279, 280 Moussellil 227 Mu’ayyad 18 Mueller, Otto 17 Muhsinah 200 Muqbèll 268, 272, 313 Muscat 140, 186, 319 Muslims V, 93, 159–160, 176, 196, 202 Mussa, Abraham 3 Mutawakkil 19 muzayyin 209 Nafeesah 241

Nahmias, David 164 naïve-gullible/sophisticated 87, 150, 154, 155, 157, 159, 168, 169, 170, 200, 202, 205, 206, 232, 314 Napoleon 95, 137 narghile 115, 118, 247, 268, 301, 312 Nassi 150, 174, 186, 187 Nataf, Joseph (ben Al-) 66, 198 New Zealand –Dunedin 178, 183 newspaper 148, 181, 235, 236, 245, 260, 275 Niebuhr, Carsten 22–39, 115, 195, 247, 305, 306, 307, 318, 319, 320 noble savage X, 39, 46 nudity 29, 123, 312, 276 occult 7, 24, 29, 36, 38, 63, 85, 153, 155, 159, 160, 162, 163, 167, 168, 170, 174, 191, 196, 199, 203, 204, 209, 211, 219, 222, 224, 231, 232, 306, 315, 319, 321, 322 ordeal 2, 154, 162, 238, 254, 305, 306 Orientalism VIII–X, 21, 24, 31, 33–34, 36, 38, 40, 56, 58, 61, 72–73, 76, 81, 88–89, 97, 99, 145, 150, 151, 153, 155, 161, 165, 168, 171, 175, 188, 193, 200, 205, 206, 210, 218, 220, 220, 224, 233, 237, 239, 240, 244, 248, 249, 266, 270, 274, 293, 312, 314, 319–320, 325 Orœki [Iraqi], Shalom ha-Kohen 35 Ottoman empire XI, 3, 244, 254; official, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 252, 262, 273, 274, 299; soldier, 250–251, 285–304 Pàez, Pedro 4 Palgrave, William Gifford 324 Parkes, Fanny 52, 56, 64 Parsons, Abraham 41–42, 316 Pasha, Djafar 12 Pasha, Ibrahim 56, 61, 63, 189, 244, 323 Pasha, Mussa 254 Pasha, Mustafa Assim 274, 275, 289, 292 Pasha, Osman 286 Pasini, Alberto 103 Passama, J. 189 Paulus, Athanasius 157 Pelly, Lewis 312

Index

Périer, G.B. 112, 122 Péronnère 101 Phillips, Fanny 70 photography 101, 105, 107, 122, 145, 273, 274, 282, 306, 321 physician 14, 16, 17, 23, 41, 50, 63, 92, 176, 187, 252, 261, 262, 265, 270, 278, 286, 287, 299, 300, 307, 320 Pilgrims Progress 61 Pinto, Fernão Mendes 2 plants (189) 21, 24, 26, 189, 274 poison 8, 31, 84 Popmarkov, Vasil 286, 290 portrait(ure) 97, 102, 125–145 Portugual 2, 3, 5, 7 potlatch 80 Pringle 41–42 Purday, Charlotte 70–71 qadi 18, 20, 158, 168, 196, 222, 224, 275 Qara 196, 197 Qara, Joseph 61, 164 Qara, Yahya 157, 166, 197, 203 Qasimid 13 qishr (gishr) 28, 264, 301, 317 qudsi 159, 165–166, 202, 207, 213, 220, 227, 308, 314 Quran 41, 161, 255, 271, 275, 298 rabbi 4, 50, 57, 61, 62, 66, 75, 76, 82, 84, 87, 88, 89, 92, 152, 157, 160, 166, 167, 168, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 184, 187, 196, 211, 222, 239, 251, 253, 305, 308, 309, 322 Rachmim, Chacham 82 Rajpurkar, Joseph Ezekiel 174, 187 ransom 5, 57, 80, 206 Rassan, Abder 131–132 rational, controlled/emotional 25, 154, 160, 207, 210, 212, 217, 221, 225, 233, 239, 248, 314 Reform Judaism 68, 223 Rehavi, David Ezekiel 174, 185 Reinmann, Solomon 184–188 religious debate 37, 39, 41, 92, 176 Renan, Ernst 195

347

renegade/apostate 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 17, 18, 161–162, 165, 187, 261, 274, 306, 321 Rennett, William 8 Ricci, Matteo 45, 67 Ritter, Carl 198 ritual (objects) 59, 120–121, 148, 160, 164, 170, 174, 179, 184, 253 robbery 80, 157, 197, 227, 269 Roberts, William 177 Robinson Crusoe 61–62 rose water 5, 6 Russia 181, 289, 290, 291, 292 Saadia Gaon 37, 61 Sabatier 104, 121 Sabbath 78, 166, 168, 179, 182, 212, 214, 224, 227, 234, 239, 320 Sa’id 158, 161, 319 Saʻidi, sadah 152, 166, 243 Said, Edward VIII–X, 97, 233, 325 Saida 276 Sakakini brothers 104 Salaha 133 Saleh, Obesc 269, 270 Salem 167 Salem (sheikh) 277, 318, 320 Sapir, Jacob 78, 147–188, 195, 200, 235, 306, 307, 309, 313, 316, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 324 Sarafi 39 Sassoon, David 151, 178, 179, 182 Saudi Arabia 275 –Al-Lith 62; Aseer, 286, 290, 291; Hejaz, 3, 13, 49, 103; Jazan, 57; Jedda, 1, 25, 49, 55, 62, 151, 243; Mecca, 1, 2, 20, 189, 219, 312; Riyad, 226 Sawa, Girgis 112, 117, 122, 127, 132 Scheffer, Ary 100 Schur, Zev Wolf 184 Seetzen, Ulrich Jaspar 60, 64, 189, 193, 307 servant 7, 28, 35, 36, 86, 158, 161, 183, 197, 262–264, 272, 287, 291, 316, 319 Shaul, Isaac 260–262

348

Index

sheikh 41, 75, 79, 80, 158, 189, 205–206, 212, 228, 238, 263, 268, 273, 277, 278, 288, 318, 320, 322 Sibahi 141 Sihip, Aron 258 Simmel, Georg 65, 86, 162, 167, 182, 211, 223, 321, 322 skepticism 41, 89, 154, 159, 163, 168, 170, 202, 203, 205, 206, 232 skin color 1, 73, 111, 142, 166, 192, 193, 199, 204, 206, 213, 235, 237–238, 239, 308–313 slave 2, 12, 18, 27, 98, 181 sloth X, 107, 113, 115, 118 Smith 318 Smith, W. Robertson 307 Smolenskin, Peretz 184, 185 snake 201, 213, 225, 233, 314 Sneersohn, Hayyim Zvi 173, 178, 181 soldier 119, 166, 196 Somali(a) 127, 129–130, 138, 243, 281, 282–283 sorcery/witchcraft 7, 24, 29, 63, 160, 167, 168, 199, 227 Stambolski, Hristo 282, 285–293, 306, 308 steamship 104, 106, 122, 243, 294 Stern, Henry Aaron 68–93, 155–156, 162, 235, 236, 318 Sternschuss, P.H. 69 Sudan 21, 86, 103, 105, 238, 239 –Gedarif 86; Khartoum 87 Suez canal 96, 101, 144, 244 Sueilla, Jusuff 130 Suleiman 160 Surriyya 302 Sweden 22, 23, 26 synagogue 35, 37, 158, 175, 177, 178, 182, 184, 205, 218 Syria 274 Talmud 4, 153, 169 Tamisier, Maurice 40–41, 320 Tanzimat 49, 256 tax 171, 208, 260, 285, 292, 295, 296, 298, 308, 324

Ten Tribes 56, 202–203 Thàbet 272 theology 37, 38, 77, 174, 205, 207, 217, 222 Theophani 71 tobacco 121, 229, 250, 269, 317 Toledot Yeshu 37, 38 travel (experience, writing) V, VI, VII, 2, 40, 43–44, 67, 73, 74, 149, 151, 152, 166, 184, 186, 200, 204, 211, 219, 220, 225, 227, 231, 236, 245–246, 248, 266, 268, 305, 307, 325 treasure 24, 192, 194, 200, 203, 205, 213, 215, 231, 232, 306, 325 Tudor, Frederic 176 Turkey (Turk/Turkish) 247, 260, 263, 308 –Adrianople 195 Turkistan 63 United States 176 Usque, Solomon 2 Uzhalvo, Isaac Hayyim 262 Valentia, George Annesley 39 Vambéry, Arminius XII, 325 Van de Graeff, Cornelius 13 Van den Broeke, Pieter 12, 13 Vardukas 287 Varthema, Ludovico VI, 1–2, 25, 306, 310 Vayssières, Jean Alexandre 103 venality X Vicars, Murray 69 violence X, XI, 9, 24, 62, 80, 97, 98, 124, 159, 165, 182, 189, 193, 197, 211, 214, 221, 223, 227, 230, 254–255, 262, 263, 296, 297, 314 Viterbo, Salvator 252, 299 Von Haven, Friedrich Christian 22–23, 32 Von Wrede, Adoph 190, 193, 306 Walpole, Georgianna Mary 51, 67 Wamberger, Hermann XII, 325 water 41, 98, 106, 115, 124, 139, 142, 159–160, 229, 313 watercolor 100, 101, 105, 133, 138 Way, Lewis 53–54

Index

weapon 8, 10, 18, 96, 107, 121, 124, 209, 218, 238, 239, 269, 270, 271, 277, 278, 295, 304, 306, 311, 316, 320, 322 Wellsted, James 190 Wilson, John 49, 174, 187 Wisser, Meir Leibush (Malbim) 236 Wolff, Joseph 49–67, 81, 155–156, 162, 197–198, 308, 312, 314, 319 women 11, 16, 24, 26, 29, 41, 42, 98, 124, 126, 139, 142, 151, 154, 159–160, 164, 183, 193, 204, 210–211, 211, 213, 219, 235, 268, 271–272, 276, 278, 279, 280, 310–313, 318, 320, 321, 322, 323 Yahya 291 Yemen –ʻAmran 158, 166, 169; ʻArsch Bilqis, 227; Ad-Dali, 269, 271; Aden, 1, 3, 6, 12, 92, 104, 106–110, 126, 162, 170, 190, 196, 227, 243, 268, 273, 277–278, 281, 324; al-Ghail, 213, 227, 234, 318; alGharb, 297; al-Hawtah, 7, 268; al-Hazm, 214–215; al-Houta, 279; al-Jadidah, 280; al-Jalilah, 269, 270, 272; al-Gades, 310; al-Madid, 203, 210, 233, 234, 314, 315; Al-Nar, 257; Arbat el-Gala’a, 273; Arhab, 198; ash-Shihr, 12; Ashjah, 228; Bajil, 72; Bayt al-Faqih, 14, 28, 40, 59, 61, 111, 115, 116, 136, 243; Damt, 279; Dhamar, 12, 36, 168, 276, 294, 300–304 Ghayman, 199–201, 308, 314, 315; Hadhramawt, 4, 55, 190, 221; Hainan, 4; Hajara, 154; Hajjah, 167; Haraz, 75, 196, 230, 257, 305; Haribah, 191, 321; Hays, 111, 140, 189, 318; Hima, 157; Hodafa, 36; Hudaydah, 28, 56, 65, 71, 117–121, 122, 131, 152, 170, 189, 243, 246, 257, 259, 260, 277, 278, 283, 286, 294, 302,

349

316; Ibb, 310; Jarrahi, 246; Jawf, 203, 208, 213–220, 232; Jirwah, 152, 305, 306; Kawkaban, 168; Khabb, 220; Khuraybah, 269; Kukhlan, 167, 322; Lahij, 268, 279; Luhayyah, 25–27, 36, 41, 111, 121, 298, 320; Mabar, 276; Magrába, 36–39, 254; Manakhah, 75, 157, 196, 258, 259, 277, 278; Marawi’ah, 288; Mareb, 190, 193, 202, 226–230, 312, 315; Mawahib, 17; Mawiya, 278; Mazagan, 280; Meneyre, 28; Milh, 213, 310, 319; Miqara, 222; Mocha, 2, 3, 8, 11, 13, 14, 20, 25, 28, 31, 39, 41, 42, 61, 64, 80, 111, 112, 131, 243, 277, 294, 320; Mudmar, 157; Muqalla, 54; Na’ith, 205; Najran, 215, 220–226 Nihm, 203, 208, 209; Perim, 123; Qa’tabah, 279; Qiryat al Jebel, 166; Qishn, 12; Rada’a, 1, 168, 295, 296, 301; Rawda, 204, 309, 310; Rijla, 222; Safan, 73, 156, 203; Sana’a, 3, 5, 32, 77, 164–166, 197, 258–264, 273–275, 279, 289–293 Sa’wan, 169; Sayyan, 36; Shahara, 18–19 Sheikh Othman, 92, 268; Shibam, 157, 158, 161, 166, 168, 169, 320; Shira’, 205, 206, 232, 315; Sirwah, 227; Subhan, 311; Ta’izz, 7, 32, 36, 246, 251–256, 277, 278, 283, 308; Tan’em, 37, 169; Thila, 161, 306; Tihama, 28, 111, 246, 305; Uhr, 75; Wadi Doan, 193; Wadi Najran, 198, 224, 231, 322; Walan, 276; Yafid, 157, 158, 159, 196; Yerim, 25, 272, 273, 320; Zabid, 60, 62, 111, 114, 248, 310, 322; Zaydiyah, 61 Yosipon 37, 38, 254 Zanzibar 243 Zarkhee, Ali 76