Hadramis across three Shores Malacca Straits, Arabian & Red Seas

Abstract

To the obvious correlation of the south Arabian & Southeast Asian shores already conceived in the conference motto, I ventured to add, for relevance, the Red Sea littoral, with special reference to the historical Sudanese sea ports Aidhab & Suakin as hosts of recurrent Hadramis migrations in connection with Southeast Asia since pre-Islamic era down to modern times. Pliny (1st century A.D.), states that departing from ports on what is now Sudan littoral proceeding to India, ships call, after about thirty days, at the Arabian port of Cane, the old port of Hadramout, (Natural History, Book VI. xxvi 101 - 104). In this relation Aidhab, Pliny's Berenice Pan-chrysos, deserve a special mention. In its day it was one of the world's most frequented sea ports, acting as a vital traffic valve regulating pulses of Asiatic, European & African merchandise traffic. To the special placement as world over traffic crossroads, Nature endowed Aidhab with immense resources no less valuable than the active port returns: Her immediate hinterlands abound with mines of gold & precious stones; her sea shores rich with pearl & coral. All the pharaoh's gold came from its mines; the Greeks, the Romans, the Moslems who successively gained rule over Egypt had it worked out for them. But neither the port, nor the ores were in the land of Egypt; it had always been under the sway of a central dynastic central power through vassal kings of the Bega territory occupying Sudan red sea region & its hinter lands. Here the two ends of our story meet & we come to the Hadramis quest.