ABSTRACT
During its apogee under the rule of Yemen's Rasulid and Tahirid dynasties (1229-1538) Aden was the epitome of the hegemonic regional entrepot. Shipping and trade in the Asian seas before the arrival of the Europeans was largely organized through a network of such entrepots or emporia.1 Located at suitable sites on strategic nodal points throughout Asia's maritime space, they could be port city-states like Melaka/ or form part of larger territorial states as was the case with Aden, Cambay and Zaitun. All jealously guarded their capacity to offer 'an unrivalled choice of commodities, a variety of currency and banking services, and shipping space to all destinations' in order to maintain their regional hegemony and status as collection and distribution pivots in Asian trade.3 While the lifeblood of long-distance trade and shipping was the overseas diasporas of ethnic mercantile communities, no port city could do without the active participation and entrepreneurship of its own indigenous businessmen. The cosmopolitan population of Aden, for example, included many Yemeni merchants-both Muslim and Jewish - besides a large number of more or less permanently resident Syrian and Indians. Foreign traders came from all quarters of the compass, including Persia, India, Somalia, Ethiopia, the Red Sea
and, as the Genizah papers confirm/ Cairo.5 Conversely, Adeni merchants had spun their own networks of agents and relatives stretching into all directions of the wind.
