Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

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2. Introduction Locating Memory: The Dialectics of Incorporation and Differentiation

   1. Introduction Locating Memory: The Dialectics of Incorporation and Differentiation

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 1-25

3. Framings

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

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   2. The House of the Prophet

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 29-43

   3. The Zaydi Elite during the Twentieth-Century Imamate

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 44-63

   4. The Anatomy of Houses

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 64-85

4. Growing to be ’Alid

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 87-87

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   2. Snapshots of Childhood

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 89-101

   3. Performing Kinship

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 102-127

5. Self-Fashioning in the Idiom of Tradition

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 129-129

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   2. The Politics of Motherhood

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 131-144

   3. Marriage in the Age of Revolution

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 145-162

   4. “ ’Ulama of a Different Kind”

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 163-184

   5. The Moral Economy of Taste

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 185-195

6. Engaging Difference

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 197-197

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   2. Defining through Defaming

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 199-215

   3. Memory, Trauma, Self-Identification

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 216-236

   4. History through the Looking Glass

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 237-247

   5. Conclusion Frontiers of Memory

      • Gabriele vom Bruck

      Pages 248-254

7. Back Matter

   Pages 255-348

   PDF

Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen tells a story of a Yemeni hereditary elite which was overthrown in the 1962 revolution in North Yemen. For over a millennium, they had enjoyed exclusive rights to the leadership of the Imamate, the religiously sanctioned state. Following the violent removal from power of King Faysal of Iraq in 1958, the overthrow of the Yemeni Imamate - the longest lasting Hashimite rule in the Middle East - confirmed the decline of Hashimite power (held by ruling generations claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad). However, rather than concentrating on recent political history, Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen highlights the personal predicament of those targeted by the revolution, in which they served as the foil for the new regime's moral and political ascendancy. Focusing on the cultural politics of memory, the book explores how members of the elite remember in the process of making sense of their current lives and formulating responses to adversity.

• bibliography
• childhood
• Familie
• Generation
• Iraq
• Islam
• memory
• Middle East
• Moral
• politics
• Tradition

"This highly original book offers fresh insight into how traditional ideas of person, society, and responsibility, reworked in the cauldron of revolution and rapidly changing economic and political conditions, remain central to understanding contemporary society and identity politics. Always clear and accessible, Vom Bruck integrates the perspectives of women and men, seamlessly showing how Yemenis of different generations and positions in society struggle to interpret what happened to the Yemen-and to themselves-in the past. This riveting account offers vital keys to understanding contemporary social, religious, and political trends in the Yemen and elsewhere." - Dale Eickelman, Dartmouth College

GABRIELE VOM BRUCK lectures in the Anthropology of the Middle East, Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK.

Policies and ethics