ABSTRACT
For centuries, if not millennia, Hadramis have migrated from their homeland in southern Arabia to various destinations around the Indian Ocean, and they have been socially and economically influential wherever they have settled. From Southeast Africa to Insular Southeast Asia, Hadramis have been responsible for the propagation of the Shafi’i school of Sunni Islam, if not Islam itself, and have often been economically successful, particularly in Indonesia and Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Kenya and the Comoros. Yet despite their successes, Hadramis were particularly adept at integrating in their host communities, largely because few women emigrated. Hadrami immigrants married local women and their children enjoyed dual identities, belonging in the land of their birth but maintaining affective and often practical links with the homeland, returning for family visits, education or to retire. The Hadrami diaspora, enduring through time and space, therefore retains a coherent identity that today extends beyond the Indian Ocean world and is truly global.
