Ḥaḍramawt
ḤAḌRAMAWT
A province of *Yemen, a coastal region of the south Arabian peninsula on the Gulf of Aden in the Arabian Sea, extending eastward from Yemen to Oman. Historically, the name refers to the Ḥaḍramawt sultanates, a collective term for the Qu'aiṭī and Kāthiṛī sultanates, which were loosely under a British protectorate of South Arabia, guided by the British resident at *Aden, until 1957. Society is still highly tribal, with the old Sayyid aristocracy descended from *Muhammad, traditionally educated and strict in their Shāfi'ī Islamic observance. Though Bible dictionaries derive Ḥaḍramawt from Hazarmaweth, a son of Joktan (Genesis 10:26–8), it actually derives from Greek hudreumata or enclosed watering stations at wadis. The frankincense trees that supplied the "Incense Road" grew to the east of the Ḥaḍramawt, in the Dhofar. Ḥaḍramawt was the country of two separate pre-Islamic kingdoms in south Arabia: Kathabān and Ḥaḍramawt. In pre-Islamic time Ḥaḍramawt was almost completely Jewish as local tribes such as the Kindah judaicized, but most of them became Muslim after the country was conquered by the army sent by Muḥammad. Jews, however, continued to live there under the end of the 15th century, when they were killed or expelled as a result of a Jewish messianic uprising. Since then the country was considered as a holy land where the tomb of the mythological prophet Hūd was found, so Jews were not permitted to reside there. Only in the western part were there in modern times some Jewish settlements, such as *Ḥabbān and Bayhān. But the Jewish silversmiths and goldsmiths were allowed to wander all over the country to make a living. Some of them converted to Islam, probably at the end of the 19th century.
bibliography:
R.B. Serjeant, bsoas, 1953, 117–31; M. Rodionov, tema, 8 (2004), 153–68; Lawrence Loeb, in: E. Isaac and Y. Tobi, Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Judeo-Yemenite Studies (1999), 71–99; R. Meissner, tema, 7 (2003), iii–xix.
[Yosef Tobi (2nd ed.)]