Archive

Mawza, Yemen

Description

Background: To understand how the Mawza Exile came to fruition, broad geopolitical processes must be understood. The first geopolitical process concerns the ever impending danger of Ottoman Turkish expansion threatening the Zaidi Islamic nation[4]. A common claim during the period was that Yemenite Jews were pro-Ottoman, hence creating great suspicion within Arab Muslim political spheres regarding the activities of Jews. The rationale for Yemenite Jewish support for the Ottomans was that the Ottomans, by exerting jurisdiction over Yemen, would allow for a contiguous empire that would grant Yemen’s Jews direct access to return to Eretz Israel[5]. There were many in the Yemenite Jewish community who would seek migration to Eretz Israel, be it for intense religious fervor or even due to economic advancement, hence making such suspicion against their community that much worse[6].

This aforementioned religious fervor present in the Yemenite community would also create Arab Muslim animosity towards the Yemenite community, specifically due to the rise of the Shabbattian Messianic Movement. Many in the Yemenite community had inclinations towards the approach of an upcoming messianic age, and the tales of Sabbatai Zevi would only inspire pseudo-Messiahs to arise in Yemen[7]. Some of such pseudo-Messiahs would make provocative exclamations towards the Muslim ruling class about the re-establishment of another Jewish state in Yemen, a harken back to the Himyarite Kingdom.

These two aforementioned reasons would combine with the third and final reason, Zaidi Islamic fundamentalism and sectarianism, to manifest in an attempted genocide of Yemenite Jewry. The Zaidi Islamists were a dominant yet competing sect in the battle for power in southern Arabia. Promises of the revival of a Shia Islamic utopia by the Zaidis were an immediate method to consolidate power, and such promises pit both Jews and the Ottomans as heavy roadblocks in creating such a state. Such Islamic fundamentalism would provide a clear basis for al-Mutawakkil Isma'il (the predecessor of King al-Mahdi Ahamd, the king who would carry out the Mawza Exile) in making his famous decree that “there shall not be two religions in Arabia,” as such a ruling was based off an apparent quote by the Prophet Muhammad[8].

The Mawza Exile: The process of the Mawza Exile begins first with the Qasidim Imam, King al-Mutawakkil Isma'il, who had grown increasingly wary of Jews in his kingdom. The king would issue increasingly severe decrees against the Jews, such as the 1667 Atarot decree which banned Yemenite Jewry from wearing their traditional Jewish headdress, the sudra. The decrees would only become harsher as al-Mutawakkil Isma'il made an initial decree for mandatory conversions of Jews to Islam, and when the Jews refused, al-Mutawakkil Isma'il enacted punishments such as Jews being ordered to stand naked in the sun for 3 days. The ultimatum to the Jewish community was conversion or deportation[9]. The views of the Jewish community towards Isma’il are captured by a Jewish poet at time who recounts "Since the day that they removed the turbans (sudras) from our heads, we are full of orders which he decrees [against us]. He has placed over our heads [a governor] who is the master of oppression!"[10]. King Al-Mahdi Amhad would succeed al-Mutawakkil Isma'il but invoke even harsher decrees, including the destruction of synagogues in various Jewish areas[11]. In the summer of 1679, he gave an even harsher ultimatum to the Jewish community: convert or death.

Arab tribesmen, who would occasionally subvert Islamic law in order to protect Jews under their jurisdiction (as attacking a tribesman’s Jew was seen as an attack on his honor), would go on to petition the king to rescind the decree for death in favor of a lighter punishment, hence the king chose banishment to Zeila, on the African coast of the Red Sea[12]. The king directly ordered the Jews of Sana’a to be expelled and gave broad orders to all other provincial governors to also begin expelling their Jews[13].

While the Jews were passing through respective Arab towns on their way to the African coast, chiefs of the Sabaean tribes who had overseen respective Jewish communities pleaded with the king to rescind making the Jews cross the sea and to let them be banished to the Yemeni coastal area of Mawza instead[14]. The Sabaeans’ thinking was that, in order to escape death, many Jews would convert and they could more easily be brought back to their previous dwellings than if they were in Africa.

The Jews of Sana’a were soon joined by other Jewish communities in Mawza and only those on the eastern portion of Yemen would be spared from the ruling as such governors could more easily disobey enforcement from the king[15]. Around 60-70% of all Yemenite Jews would perish here, many from the heat, others from plague, and others from starvation[16]. The community would remain in Mawza for one full year, until 1680, as many Arab governors and tribes complained that goods only produced by Jews were not in supply[17].

Many attempted to return only to find their homes occupied by Arab tenants, hence many communities would establish Jewish quarters in other parts of cities, while others would simply relocate[18].

Mawza, Yemen

© Mapbox, © OpenStreetMap