Hadhramaut: Encyclopedia II - Hadhramaut - Modern history of the Wadi Hadhramaut

Hadhramaut - Modern history of the Wadi Hadhramaut

The Qu'aiti sultans ruled most of Hadramaut, under a loose British protectorate, the Aden Protectorate, from 1882 to 1967, when the Hadhramaut was annexed by South Yemen.

The Qu'aiti dynasty was founded by 'Umar bin Awadh al-Qu’aiti, a Yafa’i tribesman from Southern Arabia, whose wealth and influence as hereditary Jemadar of the Nizam of Hyderabad’s armed forces enabled him to establish the Qu’aiti dynasty in the latter half of the 19th century, winning British recognition of his paramount status in the region, in 1882. The British Government and the traditional and scholarly sultan Ali bin Salah signed a treaty in 1937 appointing the British government as 'advisors.' in Hadhramaut. The British exiled him to Aden in 1945, but the Protectorate lasted until 1967.

In 1967, the former British Colony of Aden and the former Aden Protectorate including Hadramaut became an independent Communist state, the People's Republic of South Yemen, later the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. South Yemen along with Hadramaut was united with North Yemen in 1990 as the Republic of Yemen. See Yemen for recent history.

The capital and largest city of Hadhramaut is the port Al Mukalla. The population of Yemen is crowding into its Hadramaut cities: Al Mukalla had a 1994 population of 122,400 and a 2003 population of 174,700, while the port city of ash-Shahir has grown from 48,600 to 69,400 in the same time.

The father of Osama bin Laden came from this area.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Modern history of the Wadi Hadhramaut", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki