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Panorama • In Memoriam

O ne of the more controversial and misunderstood per-sonalities in the history of British South Arabia was undeniably Sultan ʿAli b. ʿAbd al-Karim of Lahj. His six-year-long tenure at the helm of the largest and

most important chiefdom of the Western Aden Protector-ate (WAP) was marked by the progressive deterioration of relations between Lahj and the British colonial authorities because of the independent policies he pursued in admin-istering his state. Sultan ʿAli’s case typifies the challenges and pressures posed by British ‘indirect rule’ on local rulers at a time of rising nationalist, anti-colonial senti-ment in South Arabia. His remit to serve the interests of his own people whilst being bound by British advice soon became impossible to reconcile, leading to his deposition and lifelong exile.

Born in October 1922 in the village of al-Hawta, the capi-tal of Lahj, ʿAli was the younger son of Sultan Sir ʿAbd al-Karim b. Fadhl al-ʿAbdali KCMG KCIE (d. 1947) and his second wife, one of the family’s African slaves. Although the young amir [prince] was not expected to become the ruler of Lahj, he was sent to study at Victoria College in Alexandria. There, he rubbed shoulders with the sons of some of the most influential Middle Eastern families of the time and came in contact with the rudiments of Brit-ish education. The outbreak of the Second World War cut his studies short, as he was recalled to the safety of the Aden hinterland.

ʿAli’s accession to the Lahji throne in 1952 was as unex-pected as it was eventful. On the night of his wedding feast his older half-brother, Sultan Fadhl, started to shoot at the guests accusing them of plotting against him. Eventually, Sultan Fadhl had two (according to others three) of his cousins tied to stakes in his garden and shot them from the palace roof. After the incident he fled via Yemen to Jidda and the dola [~ council] of Lahj, which comprised ten members, each from the five branches of the ruling ʿAbdalis and from the five tribes of Lahj, formally replaced

him with ʿAli. His selection on 4 June 1952 caused fric-tion with the family side that had been overlooked in the succession in favour of ‘the slave’s son’, but was received with expectation by the British colonial masters. His suc-cession was conditional on his signing an advisory treaty with Britain, ostensibly in order to avoid any future crises

Sultan Sir ʿ Ali b. ʿ Abd al-Karim b. Fadhl al-ʿAbdali of Lahj KBE (1922–2016).

The Revolutionary RulerSince his death, ʿAli b. ʿAbd al-Karim of Lahj has become

a symbol of resistance and freedom to South Yemenis who seek the restoration of an independent southern state

Thanos Petouris

HH Sultan Sir ʿAli b. ʿAbd al-Karim b. Fadhl al-ʿAbdali of Lahj KBE photographed during his sojourn in London for the corona-tion of HM Queen Elizabeth II by Elliott & Fry, 18 June 1953 (Photo: National Portrait Gallery, London)

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such as the one precipitated by his half-brother’s murderous behaviour. Lahj thus became the last WAP chiefdom to sign an advisory treaty with Britain in 1952.

Because of his British education and young age, Sultan ʿ Ali was not only expected to become a doc-ile instrument in the hands of the experienced WAP Agent, Kennedy Trevaskis. His personal charm and modern ideas also played up to the colonial, orien-talist stereotypes of the ‘enlightened despot’, and early encounters with British officialdom usually left the latter in awe of the young idealist ruler. Thus, Sir Tom Hickinbotham, who as governor had overseen the handling of the Lahj crisis, considered ʿAli the more progressive of his peers, whose politi-cal and economic reforms were already bringing prosperity to his state (Hickinbotham 1958: 134). The British attempts to keep ʿAli inextricably tied to the colonial apparatus included his attendance at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, where he rode in the last carriage of a quaint procession of colonial rulers that included, among others, the Queen of Tonga and the Sultan of Brunei.1 A year later, during the Queen’s visit to Aden, he read the loyal address of the Protectorate in his eloquent English, the Arabic one having been read by Sultan Sir Salih b. Ghalib al-Quʿayti KCMG. And like his father, he was knighted in 1955.2 It is no wonder, therefore, that he would soon appear to assume “the airs of the Shah of Persia” (Trevaskis 1968: 37)!

The pretences of the ʿAbdali court notwithstand-ing, the sultan put forward an ambitious plan to modernise his state, the cornerstones of which were democratisation and the provision of basic services. He set out his political programme in his speech during the opening of the Lahj Legislature, which was the first to be created in the Protector-ate ( al-ʿAbdali 1954). Following the success of the Abyan Cotton Scheme, he introduced a similar project in Lahj, which, contrary to the former, was run exclusively by locals and was able to provide larger revenues to famers. He was also instrumental in recruiting Pakistani doctors for the rudimentary health services of his state and promoted girls’ edu-cation at a time when schooling got little attention beyond the confines of the Aden Colony.

However, two of his policies proved decisive in determining his future. One was his political affin-ity with Egypt’s Nasser. Although most literature on the period describes him as an ardent Nasserist – and one cannot disregard Nasser’s political he-gemony in the Arab world at the time – Sultan ʿ Ali was effectively pushed towards Egypt more out of frustration with sclerotic British policies and their inability to provide support for his reforms. A char-acteristic example is the employment of Egyptian teachers and the appointment of the Egyptian ʿ Abd

Sultan ʿ Ali of Lahj (centre) during his visit in Sayʾun, Wadi Hadhramawt, with Sultan Husayn b. ʿAli b. Mansur al-Kathiri on the right (Photo: Brian Brake, 1958; Reg. No. B.076072; © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington)

The Palace of the Sultan of Lahj in Crater, Aden. Today it houses the National Museum of Aden and the Aden Branch of the Centre of Yemeni Studies and Research (Photo: Thanos Petouris, 2007)

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Panorama • In Memoriam

al-Qadir Bindari as School Supervisor for Lahj.3 Britain had neither the will nor the means to assist local rulers in developing their states, and free Egyptian aid in the field of education provided an attractive alternative.4

The other was his active involvement in South Arabian politics through his endorsement of the South Arabian League (SAL – Rābiṭat Abnāʾ al-Janūb). The League was the first nationalist political organisation to advocate for a united and independent South Arabia. It was under the leadership of Sayyid Muhammad ʿAli al-Jifri and his brothers, an influential family of Upper ʿAwlaqi sāda with historical ties to Lahj. Using Lahj as a safe haven far from the reach of the British authorities, the Jifri brothers were able to stir trouble in various parts of the Protectorate, but also to recruit political support from among the more prominent families. Under their influence, Sultan ʿAli refused to join the nascent Federation, frustrating British designs for the future of the Protectorate. Things came to a head when, after the announcement of the United Arab Republic (UAR), it was rumoured that Lahj was going to follow the example of Imamic Yemen and join the UAR in a loose confederation. After the arrest of the Jifris, Sultan ʿAli went to London to protest, but finding no real support in the Colonial Office left for Italy from where on 10 July 1958 he was given the news of the withdrawal of British recognition to his person. The installation of his cousin, Fadhl b. ʿAli b. Ahmad as sultan paved the way for Lahj to join the Federation.

Sultan ʿ Ali was one of the more pragmatic of the Protector-ate chiefs, who understood the sensibilities of his people and was acutely aware of the dangers of overt British interference in Lahji affairs. Nevertheless, his opponents would frequently point out the paradoxical aspects of his character, including a penchant for fast sports cars, his Ligurian villa, visits to Monte Carlo and a general lifestyle during his travels in Europe that stigmatised him as a bon viveur. We owe one of the more sympathetic accounts of him to his close friendship with the Chief Magistrate of Aden and his wife, who describes in her memoir the frustrations and dilemmas ʿAli faced trying to balance his position between his own principles and the expectations of the paternalistic colonial system that supported him (Knox-Mawer 1961).

After his deposition, ʿAli b. ʿAbd al-Karim found refuge in Cairo, from where he continued to play an important albeit waining role in South Arabian politics. He would often ap-pear on the Sawt al-ʿArab, but already by 1965 he was ex-pressing his exasperation with Egyptian attitudes towards South Arabia and the fact that he had effectively become their prisoner.5 Nevertheless, he continued to participate in the Egyptian-sponsored attempts to unite the South Arabian nationalist organisations under one umbrella. To this end, he participated at the two conferences organised in Cairo by the Arab League (5 July 1964 and 11 March 1965) that led to the founding of the Organisation for the Liberation of the Occupied South (Munaẓẓamat al-Taḥrīr) in Taʿiz. During that conference (3–7 May 1965) both he

and the other former rulers renounced their titles in order to participate as ordinary citizens in the future elections of a free South Arabia (Plass & Gehrke 1967: 265). A lit-tle known fact is that, according to Gehrke, in a last-ditch attempt to support the ailing Federation, the British High Commissioner Sir Richard Turnbull had lifted on 5 March 1966 the exile order on Sultan ʿAli and a number of other SAL members, without them however returning to South Arabia (Plass & Gehrke 1967: 286).

ʿAli b. ʿ Abd al-Karim returned to his native land for the first and last time after Yemeni unification in October 1996. During his stay in Lahj he attracted crowds of well-wishers and addressed tribal meetings. He spent most of his ex-iled life in Jidda, where he died on 20 November 2016. Since his death, he has become a symbol of resistance and freedom to South Yemenis who seek the restoration of an independent southern state. Dubbed al-sulṭān al-thāʾir (the rebel sultan), his image has sprung up on billboards in Aden and Lahj. During the past year, his contribution to South Yemeni history and the anti-colonial movement have been reassessed through the organisation of conferences and academic publications. A similar re-evaluation of Sultan ʿ Ali b. ʿAbd al-Karim’s role and in many ways mistreatment by the British colonial establishment has also been expressed in British historiography (Harding 2009: 192).

Notes1 ‘Ceremonial of the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’.

Recorded in The Gazette (London), issue 40020, 17 November 1953.2 ‘Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood’. Recorded in The

Gazette (London), issue 40366, 31 December 1954, p. 24.3 Bindari was suspected to be running an Egyptian spy ring, especially

after the active Egyptian interference in the Yemeni civil war (Hard-ing 2009: 198).

4 For more on the dispatch of Egyptian teachers across the Arab world by Nasser, see: Tsourapas 2016: 324–341.

5 The National Archives, Kew. FO 371/17986. Confidential report by Donald J. D. Maitland (British Embassy Cairo) to Michael S. Weir (Arabian Department, Foreign Office), 15 January 1965, p. 33.

Literatureal-ʿAbdali, Sultan ʿAli ibn ʿAbd al-Karim (1954): al-Khitab al-Sultani fi

Iftitah al-Majlis al-Tashriʿi li-ʿAm 1954 wa-ʿAm 1955, Aden.Harding, John (2009): Roads to Nowhere: A South Arabia Odyssey,

1960–1965, London.Hickinbotham, Sir Tom (1958): Aden, London.Knox-Mawer, June (1961): The Sultans Came to Tea, London.Plass, Jens and Ulrich Gehrke (1967): Die Aden-Grenze in der Südara-

bienfrage (1900–1967), Opladen.Trevaskis, Sir Kennedy (1968): Shades of Amber: A South Arabian

Episode, London. Tsourapas, Gerasimos (2016): ‘Nasser’s educators and agitators across

al-watan al-ʿarabi: Tracing the foreign policy importance of Egyptian regional migration, 1952–1967’, in: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43/3, pp. 324–341.

Thanos Petouris has been researching the nationalist, anti-colonial movement in South Arabia and the subsequent decolonisation process from British rule in the years 1937–67. His focus is to explain the emergence of national iden-tities during periods of decolonisation, by using South Yemen as the case study. He has been visiting Yemen regularly since 2005. agpetouris@gmail.com