Jews And Muslims In Lower Yemen: A Study In Protection And Restraint 1918-1949

Professor S.D. Goitein (1900–1985) committed himself to “further the understanding of the world of Arabic Islam and its relationship
to the Jewish people”;1 and he manifested a special passion for the Jews of Yemen, to whom he referred as the “most genuine Jews living among the most genuine Arabs,”2 or the “most Jewish and most Arab of all Jews.”3 Goitein spent much time among Jewish Yemenis who had arrived in Israel during 1949–50, eventually focusing on the population of a Yemeni village, pronounced al-Gades, which was resettled in June of 1950 in Giv'at Ye'arìm village near Jerusalem. Goitein’s ex situ study of al-Gades, carried out etween spring 1952 and summer 1953, 4 resulted in an ethnographic account of the village in his 1955 paper Portrait of a emenite Weavers’ Village and in a linguistic assessment in his 1960 article The Language of al-Gades. Reflecting on this period of work some two decades later, Goitein spoke of “vast collections about these villagers from Lower Yemen, who are so completely different from the townsmen of Higher Yemen, whom I had described in my publications from the 1930’s.”5 Today, the material is housed in the library of the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, together with additional Yemeni materials gathered by Goitein during his decades of Yemeni esearch involvement. My work on the doctoral thesis upon which this book is based was initiated by the Institute’s generous invitation to investigate these collections.

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