Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-02T13:33:33.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Zaydism at the Crossroads

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

Najam Haider
Affiliation:
Barnard College, New York
Get access

Summary

The contemporary Zaydī Shī‘ī community continues to struggle with the challenges posed by Sunnī traditionism. These challenges have persisted through the end of the Qāsimī Imāmate in 1853, the rise of a new Zaydī Imāmate (the Ḥamīd al-Dīns) in 1918, and the establishment of a Yemeni Republic in 1962. This chapter is organized chronologically and begins with an examination of the continuities between the later Qāsimī and Ḥamīd al-Dīn Imāmates. It then turns to the Republican period, during which the state has patronized a version of Zaydism that closely resembled Sunnī traditionism while persecuting Hādawī Zaydī communities. The chapter ends with a survey of the multiple strategies Hādawī Zaydī scholars have used to create a space for themselves in the social and political landscape of twenty-first-century Yemen.

The Ḥamīd al-Dīn Imāmate (1918–62)

After the collapse of the Qāsimī Imāmate in 1853, Yemen endured twenty years of chaos (1853–72) followed by thirty-five years of Ottoman rule (1872–1918). In 1890, Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā Ḥamīd al-Dīn (r. 1890–1904), a descendant of the first Qāsimī Zaydī Imām, organized a rebellion in northern Yemen with the support of a tribal coalition that included a number of the most important Sayyid clans. He was succeeded by his son al-Mutawakkil Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad (r. 1904–48, subsequently referred to as Imām Yaḥyā), who seized control of the entire country in 1918 after the Ottoman defeat in World War I. This marked the start of the last Zaydī Imāmate in Yemen.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shi'i Islam
An Introduction
, pp. 169 - 181
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Dresch, Paul, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Haykel, Bernard, Revival and Reform in Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), particularly 190–229, focusing on the history of Yemen in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Google Scholar
Messick, Brinkley, The Calligraphic State (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), which examines authority in the modern period but assumes a Sunnī traditionist narrative of Zaydism.Google Scholar
Bonnefoy, Laurent, “Varieties of Islamism in Yemen: The Logic of Integration under Pressure,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 13 (2009): 26–36.Google Scholar
vom Bruck, Gabriele, Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen (New York: Palgrave, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
vom Bruck, Gabriele, “Regimes of Piety Revisited: Zaydī Political Moralities in Republican Yemen,” Die Welt des Islams 50 (2010): 185–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamidi, Ayman, “Inscriptions of Violence in Northern Yemen: Haunting Histories, Unstable Moral Spaces,” Middle East Studies 45 (2009): 165–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haykel, Bernard, “A Zaydi Revival,” Yemen Update 36 (1995): 20–21.Google Scholar
King, James, “Zaydī Revival in a Hostile Republic,” Arabica 59 (2012): 404–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinault, David, “Sunni, Shia, Zaydi: Religious Identity and Sectarian Proselytizing in Contemporary Yemen,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 33 (2009): 1–18.Google Scholar
Salmoni, Barak, Loidolt, Bryce, and Wells, Madeleine, Regime and Periphery in Northern Yemen (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2010). This is the most comprehensive analysis of the Ḥūthī uprisings between 2004 and 2010.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa, Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winter, Lucas, “Conflict in Yemen: Simple People, Complicated Circumstances,” Middle East Policy 18 (2011): 102–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×