Tawfiq Alhamedi
PURPOSE
Over centuries merchants, religious scholars, and Sufi mystics have migrated from Hadhramaut, a region in southern Yemen, to various coastal regions of the Indian Ocean. This has led to the formation of Hadhrami diaspora communities in East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Using descriptions of prominent Indian Ocean port cities written by the renowned world traveler Ibn Battuta in the 14th century, this project presents an interactive map that traces his travels in relation to Hadhrami migration and influence on Indian Ocean trade and culture. The purpose of this site and visualization is to highlight Hadhrami migrants who played versatile roles in an interconnected Indian Ocean world.
“...the ocean was no barrier. Rather, it was a long-established arena for cultural exchange...People moved over the sea, in a criss-crossing pattern governed by wind...With them travelled goods and ideas, word-of-mouth and word-in-writing, fashions and habits, linguistic features and seeds, both for new agricultural crops and for intellectual change. The Indian Ocean was to a large extent crowded with ‘middle men’..., trading in different goods, but leaving behind a piece of their baggage - be it material, religious or intellectual.”
(Bang, 2003, as cited in Sheriff, 2010, p. 246).
Guillain 1856: Album, as cited in Sheriff, 2010, p. 81.