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By Root 747 0

Arabian coastal area known as the Hadhramaut, which has been much studied. The two main ports are al Mukalla and al Shihr. This is an important diasporic community, still active today, which has created important economic and religious links all around the ocean. They worked as mercenaries, merchants, religious authorities and humble labourers in Java, Hyderabad, the Gulf, and all of East Africa. They retain ties to their home, send their children home for their education, send back money, and try to retire there. One recent example is Osama bin Laden. His family became very rich in the construction industry in Saudi Arabia, though they retain their Hadhrami links, as indeed it appears does/did Osama. Osama thus should be seen as an extreme example of a Hadhrami bent on propagating a particular view of Islam.

My main interest is in sketching the continuing role of Hadhramis, and others from the heartland, in propagating and purifying Islam around the ocean world. Two examples of Islamic practice may be useful, at least heuristically, to make the point about what they were faced with. On the one hand, Alan Villiers left us a touching vignette of religious practice on board a large dhow in 1940. It was called, very appropriately, the Triumph of Righteousness. There was only one book on board, the Quran, and the master, Hamed, and others often read in it. 'When he came to a good part Hamed would sometimes call a small group together and read aloud, in a very pleasant and well-modulated voice, and they would discuss whatever they had read for hours. They seemed to find perfect content in this book, and never tired of reading it.'157 This then is a humble depiction of orthodox piety among ordinary Arab folk.

Contrast this with the career of a new saint, St Expédit in Reunion, in the Mascarene group. One version of his origins (there are several conflicting accounts) holds that around 1931 a box of sacred relics were sent from the Vatican to Reunion. The label detailing the saint's name fell off in transit. All that was left was a stamp on the side of the box in Italian which said SPEDITO (expedited), whence came St Expédit. Maybe, on the other hand, he was a 'real' saint whose name had been changed. In any case, a cult developed and he has become the patron saint of the island. There are about 350 shrines to him, covered in bright red paint. They have many meanings, including a voodoo element, as these shrines can be used for bedevilment. The saint is invoked to cure sickness, pass exams, settle differences. He appeals to all the religions on the island. The Catholic hierarchy have accepted him and merged him in with the early martyr St Elpiduce. Hindus see him as yet another incarnation of Vishnu, and pray to him if they want children, and Muslims tie cotton threads to his shrine, just as they would with a Sufi shrine. He is also important for the descendants of slaves who still worship spirits like their Malagasy ancestors. Some of the sorcerers on the island have decapitated some of the images in the shrines, either to neutralise his power, or to use the head in their own incantations.158 This sort of religious practice is much more characteristic of the beliefs and customs of most people around the ocean, as compared with the rigid orthodoxy of either ulama or priests. However, for our present purposes the point is that this is what the reformers from the Islamic heartland had to deal with.

These men from the heartland advocated what they considered to be a 'purer' Islam, one closer to the Quran and the customs of the Prophet. Most insidious, from their point of view, was the continuing influence of pre-Islamic practices all over the Indian Ocean Muslim world. There were also now new challenges in warding off irreligious elements of the influence of the west, such as the position of women, and the consumption of alcohol and forbidden food. Finally, it was a matter of warding off innovative un-Islamic practice, such as the veneration of St Expédit.

We can start in India, and look at the career of Sayyid Fadl, very