Singapore’s Arab community traces ancestral roots to Yemen’s Hadhramaut Valley

Wadi Dawan in the Hadhramaut Valley, main picture. (Arab News photo by Munshi Ahmed)
Updated 20 July 2018
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Singapore’s Arab community traces ancestral roots to Yemen’s Hadhramaut Valley

  • Though the Indian Ocean separates the Asian metropolis of Singapore and the Arabian deserts of Hadhramaut, the ties that bind them run deep and go back centuries
  • Situated at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Hadhramaut was at one time a key post on the ancient spice trade route

SINGAPORE: The first car to arrive in Tarim, a historic town in the Hadhramaut Valley of Yemen, was an American Studebaker.

It had traveled across oceans and continents to get there — but not without the help of one prominent Arab family in Singapore.

“Tarim’s first car was bought and imported to Singapore by the Alkaff family,” said Zahra Aljunied, whose forefathers came from Tarim. The 62-year-old senior librarian is a fifth-generation Singaporean Arab from the lineage of Syed Omar Aljunied, one of the first Arabs to set foot in the port in 1820.

“They disassembled the car, put it on a ship, and brought it to Mukallah, which is nine hours’ drive from Tarim,” she told Arab News. “Then it was put on the back of camels, brought all the way to Tarim, where they reassembled the car with the S (Singapore number) plate before it was driven.”

Though the Indian Ocean separates the Asian metropolis of Singapore and the Arabian deserts of Hadhramaut, the ties that bind them run deep and go back centuries.

Almost all Arabs in Southeast Asia trace their ancestry to Hadhramaut, a region on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula in present-day Yemen. Referred to as Hadhrami Arabs, they began migrating to Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in large numbers from the mid-18th century.

Names such as Aljunied, Alkaff and Alsagoff are familiar to most Singaporeans, as streets, buildings, mosques, schools and even a district have been named after these prominent Arab clans. Yet few realize the impact the early Muslim settlers had on colonial Singapore, or on the families they left behind in the homeland.

“When Sir Stamford Raffles founded Singapore in 1819, one of the first things he did was to persuade Hadhrami families to come here,” recounted Singapore’s former foreign minister George Yeo at the launch of a 2010 exhibition about Arabs in Southeast Asia.

“Syed Mohammed Harun Aljunied and (his nephew) Syed Omar Aljunied from Palembang (in present-day Indonesia) were given a warm welcome, and from that time on Singapore became the center of the Hadhrami network in Southeast Asia,” Yeo said. 




Zahra Aljunied, a fifth-generation Singaporean Arab. (AN photo by Munshi Ahmed)

Attracted by Singapore’s free port status, the two men — already successful merchants in Palembang — brought everything they owned “lock, stock and barrel,” said Zahra, whose paternal grandmother came from the line of Syed Omar. 

Syed Omar was born in 1792 in Tarim, a small town in South Yemen widely considered a theological, judicial and academic hub in Hadhramaut. The Malays saw him as a prince because the Aljunied family, being part of the Ba’alawi tribe, can trace their ancestry to the Prophet Muhammad and were regarded as legitimate custodians of Islam. 

But growing up, Tarim was a place that Zahra and her siblings shunned.

“When we were kids, my grandmother or grandfather will say: ‘If you are naughty, we will send you back to Hadhramaut’,” she said, laughing. “So we looked at Hadhramaut as a place we didn’t want to be in. We didn’t look forward to going there.”

But her journey towards discovering her roots took a new turn in 2004, when she became part of a research team from Singapore organizing an exhibition entitled “Rihlah — Arabs in Southeast Asia.” 

That journey drew her back to Hadhramaut five times, and also to Palembang and Java in Indonesia. She discovered that decades of Southeast Asian influence gave Hadhramaut a unique culture not found in other parts of the Middle East.

“When I first went to Hadhramaut, it was so different from Sanaa … It’s their way of life — what they eat, wear, even the language,” she said. 

While men in Sanaa usually wear the traditional Yemeni dress called a thobe, men in Hadhramaut prefer shirts and sarongs, traditional Indonesian clothing often made of Javanese batik. 

“Yes, they dress differently … They eat belacan (the shrimp paste condiment used in Southeast Asia) and keropok (Malay/Indonesian prawn crackers), all imported from Indonesia,” Zahra said.

“You ask me how I’ve assimilated to the culture here, but over in Tarim, they have already assimilated to the culture that is imported from here.” 




Abdul Rahman bin Junied Aljunied, Zahra’s great grandfather. (AN photo by Munshi Ahmed)

Hadhramis have been traversing the Indian Ocean for centuries, said Syed Farid Alatas, professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore.

Situated at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Hadhramaut was at that time a key post on the ancient spice trade route.

“The migration to Southeast Asia was relatively recent compared with the other migrations in East Africa and southern India,” said Alatas, who is also from a prominent Hadhrami family in Southeast Asia.

Famine and economic hardship were some push factors, he added. “But I think you can’t divorce that from a certain interest that Hadhramis have because they were living in the coastal areas. Hadhramaut has a long coast and so they were seafaring and interested in going out, in exploring other places.”

However, the homeland was never far from their hearts. Parents used to send their young sons to Hadhramaut to study in religious schools, where they would to learn Arabic and Islamic values. Sometimes they also married off their local-born daughters to Hadhrami men. 

“They want their sons to know Arabic, so they send them to study there for many years, like my father, my uncle, some of my brothers,” Zahra said. “My grandfather was the same like others before him. They often sent money and many things back to Hadhramaut. Maybe once in three months, my grandmother would get a big carton and put lots of things inside — keropok (prawn crackers), belacan (shrimp paste), the Three Rifles brand (a homegrown brand) men’s singlets.”

Remittances from the Far East soon became the most important source of income for those in the homeland as overpopulation, poverty and arid farming conditions made it difficult to sustain traditional livelihoods such as agriculture, herding and trade.

By the 19th century, Arabs in Southeast Asia dominated trade, commerce and maritime networks. They operated the largest fleets and vessels in the Indo-Malay archipelago, and the port of Singapore became the hub of Hadhrami shipping. For a time, Singapore was also the major transit point for Hajj pilgrims.

Hadhrami Arabs were instrumental in the spread of Islam in the region. Many held high positions in civic and religious affairs or took part in politics. Others owned large swathes of land in the early colonial days — an estimated 50 percent of Singapore’s total land mass at one time, according to one scholar. 

Known for their philanthropy, they also donated much of their land for cemeteries, hospitals and places of worship including famous landmarks such as St. Andrew’s Cathedral and Singapore’s first mosque, Masjid Omar Kampong Melaka — both of which still stand today.

After World War II, however, Arab wealth and prominence in Singapore began to fade, due in part to rent controls as the government sought to curb inflation. The introduction of the 1966 land acquisition act also affected Arab land ownership as the post-independence government bought property  for state development.

Estimates put the Arab population in Singapore at about 10,000 today, but some say that the numbers are difficult to determine as many have assimilated into the Malay community and no longer distinguish themselves as Arabs. 




Syed Harun bin Hassan Aljunied, Zahra’s paternal grandfather. (AN photo by Munshi Ahmed)

“Many Hadhrami emigrants intermarried with their host societies and integrated so completely that after the passing of a generation or two, their descendants could no longer be regarded as members of a diaspora. Others, however, chose to retain their affiliation to the homeland,” wrote historian Ulrike Freitag in her book “Indian Ocean Migrants and State Formation in Hadhramaut: Reforming the Homeland.”

However, she warned that “it would be premature to conclude that members of the Hadhrami diaspora have either all departed or assimilated to the extent of renouncing their Hadhrami identity.”

Some observers say that Singaporean Arabs have lost their identity since many young Arabs no longer speak Arabic and have little ties to Hadhramaut, but Alatas disagreed.

“Have Singaporean Chinese lost their identity?” he asked. “Singaporean Chinese are not like the Chinese in China. Even if they speak Mandarin, they think differently from Chinese in China. On that basis, is it fair to say that Chinese in Singapore have lost their identity?”

Arabs are no exception, he said. “You have Arabs in Singapore who feel and strongly identify themselves as Arab. On the other hand, you have those who have assimilated into Malay society — they know they have Arab ancestry, but they feel Malay.

“Then you have Arabs who are in between, who are creole.”

The war in Yemen has taken a huge human and economic toll on the country and disrupted transport links. Even those hoping to maintain ties with their ancestral home find it hard to return.

Flights have become irregular and expensive, and reaching Tarim now involves a 10-hour bus journey from Salalah in Oman, Zahra said.

“My father also stopped going,” she said sadly. “I miss Tarim.”


Trump wins immediate praise from Republicans in Congress after announcing strikes on Iran

Updated 5 sec ago
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Trump wins immediate praise from Republicans in Congress after announcing strikes on Iran

WASHINGTON: Congressional Republicans — and at least one Democrat — immediately praised President Donald Trump after he said Saturday evening that the US military bombed three sites in Iran.
“Well done, President Trump,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina posted on X. Texas Sen. John Cornyn called it a “courageous and correct decision.” Alabama Sen. Katie Britt called the bombings “strong and surgical.”
Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin posted: “America first, always.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, said Trump “has made a deliberate — and correct — decision to eliminate the existential threat posed by the Iranian regime.”
Wicker posted on X that “we now have very serious choices ahead to provide security for our citizens and our allies.”
The quick endorsements of stepped up US involvement in Iran came after Trump had publicly mulled the strikes for days and many congressional Republicans had cautiously said they thought he would make the right decision. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Saturday evening that “as we take action tonight to ensure a nuclear weapon remains out of reach for Iran, I stand with President Trump and pray for the American troops and personnel in harm’s way.”
Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, were briefed ahead of the strikes on Saturday, according to people familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.
Johnson said in a statement that the military operations “should serve as a clear reminder to our adversaries and allies that President Trump means what he says.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Arkansas, said he had also been in touch with the White House and “I am grateful to the US servicemembers who carried out these precise and successful strikes.”
Breaking from many of his Democratic colleagues, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, an outspoken supporter of Israel, also praised the attacks on Iran. “As I’ve long maintained, this was the correct move by @POTUS,” he posted. “Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and cannot have nuclear capabilities.”
Both parties have seen splits in recent days over the prospect of striking Iran. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican and a longtime opponent of US involvement in foreign wars, posted on X after Trump announced the attacks that “This is not Constitutional.”
Many Democrats have maintained that Congress should have a say. The Senate was scheduled to vote as soon as this week on a resolution by Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine requiring congressional approval before the US declared war on Iran or took specific military action.
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, posted on X after Trump’s announcement: “According to the Constitution we are both sworn to defend, my attention to this matter comes BEFORE bombs fall. Full stop.”


Early humans survived in a range of extreme environments before global migration, study says

Updated 22 June 2025
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Early humans survived in a range of extreme environments before global migration, study says

  • This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age

WASHINGTON: Humans are the only animal that lives in virtually every possible environment, from rainforests to deserts to tundra.
This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age. According to a new study published Wednesday in Nature, ancient Homo sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before they dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago.
“Our superpower is that we are ecosystem generalists,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.
Our species first evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago. While prior fossil finds show some groups made early forays outside the continent, lasting human settlements in other parts of the world didn’t happen until a series of migrations around 50,000 years ago.
“What was different about the circumstance of the migrations that succeeded — why were humans ready this time?” said study co-author Emily Hallett, an archaeologist at Loyola University Chicago.
Earlier theories held that Stone Age humans might have made a single important technological advance or developed a new way of sharing information, but researchers haven’t found evidence to back that up.
This study took a different approach by looking at the trait of flexibility itself.
The scientists assembled a database of archaeological sites showing human presence across Africa from 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. For each site, researchers modeled what the local climate would have been like during the time periods that ancient humans lived there.
“There was a really sharp change in the range of habitats that humans were using starting around 70,000 years ago,” Hallett said. “We saw a really clear signal that humans were living in more challenging and more extreme environments.”
While humans had long survived in savanna and forests, they shifted into everything from from dense rainforests to arid deserts in the period leading up to 50,000 years ago, developing what Hallett called an “ecological flexibility that let them succeed.”
While this leap in abilities is impressive, it’s important not to assume that only Homo sapiens did it, said University of Bordeaux archaeologist William Banks, who was not involved in the research.
Other groups of early human ancestors also left Africa and established long-term settlements elsewhere, including those that evolved into Europe’s Neanderthals, he said.
The new research helps explain why humans were ready to expand across the world way back when, he said, but it doesn’t answer the lasting question of why only our species remains today.


NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander

Updated 22 June 2025
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NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander

  • The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander.
NASA released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace’s lander slammed into the moon.
The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon’s far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week.
The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January.


Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

Updated 22 June 2025
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Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

  • Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations are staying silent, so far, on the Israel-Iran war

After nearly two years of stark divisions over the war in Gaza and support for Israel, Democrats are now finding themselves at odds over US policy toward Iran as progressives demand unified opposition to President Donald Trump’s consideration of a strike against Tehran’s nuclear program while party leaders tread more cautiously.
US leaders of all stripes have found common ground for two decades on the position that Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. The longtime US foe has supported groups that have killed Americans across the Mideast and threatens to destroy Israel. But Trump’s public flirtation with joining Israel’s offensive against Iran may become the Democratic Party’s latest schism, just as it is sharply dividing Trump’s isolationist “Make America Great Again” base from more hawkish conservatives.
While progressives have staked out clear opposition to Trump’s potential actions, the party leadership is playing the safer ground of demanding a role for Congress before Trump could use force against Iran. Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations are staying silent, so far, on the Israel-Iran war.
“They are sort of hedging their bets,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who served under Democratic President Barack Obama and is now a strategist on foreign policy. “The beasts of the Democratic Party’s constituencies right now are so hostile to Israel’s war in Gaza that it’s really difficult to come out looking like one would corroborate an unauthorized war that supports Israel without blowback.”
Progressive Democrats use Trump’s ideas and words
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., has called Trump’s consideration of an attack “a defining moment for our party” and has introduced legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, that calls on the Republican president to “terminate” the use of US armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war from Congress.
Khanna used Trump’s own campaign arguments of putting American interests first when the congressman spoke to Theo Von, a comedian who has been supportive of the president and is popular in the “manosphere.”
“That’s going to cost this country a lot of money that should be being spent here at home,” said Khanna, who is said to be among the many Democrats eyeing the party’s 2028 primary.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, pointed to Trump’s stated goal during his inaugural speech of being known as “a peacemaker and a unifier.”
“Very fine words. Trump should remember them today. Supporting Netanyahu’s war against Iran would be a catastrophic mistake,” Sanders said about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sanders has reintroduced legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran, insisted that US military intervention would be unwise and illegal and accused Israel of striking unprovoked. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York signed on to a similar bill from Sanders in 2020, but he is so far holding off this time.
Some believe the party should stake out a clear anti-war stance as Trump weighs whether to launch a military offensive that is seemingly counter to the anti-interventionism he promised during his 2024 campaign.
“The leaders of the Democratic Party need to step up and loudly oppose war with Iran and demand a vote in Congress,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide, on X.
Mainstream Democrats are cautious, while critical
The staunch support from the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for Israel’s war against Hamas loomed over the party’s White House ticket in 2024, even with the criticism of Israel’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Trump exploited the divisions to make inroads with Arab American voters and Orthodox Jews on his way back to the White House.
Today, the Israel-Iran war is the latest test for a party struggling to repair its coalition before next year’s midterm elections and the quick-to-follow kickoff to the 2028 presidential race. Bridging the divide between an activist base that is skeptical of foreign interventions and already critical of US support for Israel and more traditional Democrats and independents who make up a sizable, if not always vocal, voting bloc.
In a statement after Israel’s first strikes, Schumer said Israel has a right to defend itself and “the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security and defense must be ironclad as they prepare for Iran’s response.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, was also cautious in responding to the Israeli action and said “the US must continue to stand with Israel, as it has for decades, at this dangerous moment.”
“It really seems like the Trump and Iran war track is kind of going along like a Formula 1 racetrack, and then the Democrats are in some sort of tricycle or something trying to keep up,” said Ryan Costello, a policy director for the Washington-based National Iranian American Council, which advocates for diplomatic engagement between US and Iran.
Other Democrats have condemned Israel’s strikes and accused Netanyahu of sabotaging nuclear talks with Iran. They are reminding the public that Trump withdrew in 2018 from a nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions negotiated during the Obama administration.
“Trump created the problem,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, on X. “The single reason Iran was so close to obtaining a nuclear weapon is that Trump destroyed the diplomatic agreement that put major, verifiable constraints on their nuclear program.”
The progressives’ pushback
A Pearson Institute/Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from September 2024 found that about half of Democrats said the US was being “too supportive” of Israel and about 4 in 10 said their level support was “about right.” Democrats were more likely than independents and Republicans to say the Israeli government had “a lot” of responsibility for the continuation of the war between Israel and Hamas.
About 6 in 10 Democrats and half of Republicans felt Iran was an adversary with whom the US was in conflict.
Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American from Arizona, said Iranians are unwitting victims in the conflict because there aren’t shelters or infrastructure to protect civilians from targeted missiles as there are in Israel.
“The Iranian people are not the regime, and they should not be punished for its actions,” Ansari posted on X, while criticizing Trump for fomenting fear among the Iranian population. “The Iranian people deserve freedom from the barbaric regime, and Israelis deserve security.”


Pro-Palestinian protest leader defiant despite US deportation threat

Updated 22 June 2025
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Pro-Palestinian protest leader defiant despite US deportation threat

  • Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential deportation

NEWARK, United States: Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent leaders of US pro-Palestinian campus protests, pledged Saturday to keep campaigning after he was released from a federal detention center.
“Even if they would kill me, I would still speak for Palestine,” Khalil said as he was greeted by cheering supporters at Newark airport, just outside New York City.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential deportation.
He was freed from a federal immigration detention center in Louisiana on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release on bail.
The Columbia University graduate was a figurehead of student protests against US ally Israel’s war in Gaza, and the Trump administration labeled him a national security threat.
“Just the fact I am here sends a message — the fact that all these attempts to suppress pro-Palestine voices have failed now,” said Khalil, who is still fighting his potential expulsion from the United States.
He spoke alongside his wife Noor Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple’s first child while Khalil was in detention, as well as Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Mahmoud Khalil was imprisoned for 104 days by this administration, by the Trump administration, with no grounds and for political reasons, because Mahmoud Khalil is an advocate for Palestinian human rights,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“This is not over, and we will have to continue to support this case,” she added.
Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, is not allowed to leave the United States except for “self-deportation” under the terms of his release.
He also faces restrictions on where he can travel within the country.
President Donald Trump’s government has justified pushing for Khalil’s deportation by saying his continued presence in the United States could carry “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Beyond his legal case, Khalil’s team fears he could face threats out of detention.
“We are very mindful about his security, and the irony is that he is the one being persecuted,” Baher Azmy, one of his lawyers, told AFP.
“But he is committed to peace and because he is rejecting US government policy he is under threat,” Azmy added, without elaborating on any security measures in place for Khalil and his family.