ABSTRACT
Originating from predominantly male migrants marrying into the local populations, Hadramis have over time developed intimate relations with majority populations in Indonesia. The Hadramis, in Indonesia as elsewhere, are mainly Sunni Muslims and mainly belong to the Shafi‘ı¯ school of law (Freitag 1997a; Manger 1997), with a small, but increasing, minority of Shia followers, in accord with the established trend of Shia growth in Malaysia and Indonesia in the latter decades (Alatas 1997b). According to Alatas (1997a: 26), Hadramis abroad fit into ‘a broader definition of Diaspora, comprising dispersal from an original centre, collective memory or myth of the original homeland, a feeling of marginality and alienation in the host country, and continual relating to the homeland, physically or emotionally’. How strongly such a collective memory may function, may differ from locality to locality within Indonesia and from individual to individual (Jacobsen 2007).
