ABSTRACT
Voice and Power, ed. R.J.Hayward & I.M.Lewis (ALC Supplement 3, 1996): 171-189.
1. Middle-class sensibilities and the case against the zar
This is the story of the legal battle between Northeast African headwomen of the zr and the religious, administrative and commercial middle class of Aden, The records of this battle, part of the Aden Residency Records of the India Office,1 begin in December 1923 with a petition by fifty-four men (‘the undersigned inhabitants of Aden, Arabs, Somalis and Indians’) to the British colonial administration. The petition, dated 23 December 1923, requested the government to take legal action to stop the practice of zr:
The subject which we bring forward for consideration is the great nuisance caused to us by an irreligious performance usually held in Aden among women, which is called ‘ZAR.’
