Al-Hujariah (), also known as
Mikhlaf
''Mikhlaf'' (, plural ''Makhaleef''; ) was an administrative division in ancient Yemen and is a geographical term used in Yemen. According to Ya'qubi there were eighty-four ''makhaleef'' in Yemen. The leader of a ''mikhlaf'' is called a ''Qil'' ...
al-Maʿafir () (al-Maʿafir region) and Mapharitis (Μαφαρῖτις), is a mountainous region in southwestern Yemen. It has an estimated population of one million. Most of the region is located inside
Taiz Governorate
Taiz () is a governorates of Yemen, governorate of Yemen. The governorate's capital Taiz, the third-largest city in Yemen, is among the most important commercial centres in the country, owing to its proximity to farmland, the Red Sea port of Mok ...
and some of it is located in
Lahj Governorate.
The region includes
al-Qabitah District,
al-Ma'afer District,
Jabal Habashi District,
al Maqatirah District,
ash-Shamaytan District,
as-Silw District,
al-Wazi'iyah District and
al-Mawasit District.
History

Al-Maʿafir is a
Himyarite
Himyar was a polity in the southern highlands of Yemen, as well as the name of the region which it claimed. Until 110 BCE, it was integrated into the Qataban, Qatabanian kingdom, afterwards being recognized as an independent kingdom. According ...
tribe.
Al-Maʿafir region is mentioned in Greek sources as Mapharitis. According to Greek sources, the capital of Al-Maʿafir was Sawe (Σαυή), or modern-day
Sawwa ().
Ancient history
7th century BCE Sabaean campaign

Al-Maʿafir region appears in many ancient South Arabian inscriptions. The oldest known inscription that mentions al-Maʿafir dates back to the seventh century BCE. The inscription is part of an inscription called ''Naqsh an-Nasr'' or ''Inscription of Victory'' (RES 3945). The inscription describes
Karib'il Watar
Karibʾīl Watār Yahanʾm ( Sabaean: , romanized: ; 7th century BCE), sometimes distinguished as was probably the most important ruler of the early days of the Sabaean Kingdom. He is sometimes regarded as the founder of the kingdom proper, as ...
's attack on the cities of al-Maʿafir during his campaign against Awsan. Karib'il Watar destroyed and burned the cities of al-Maʿafir, killing 3,000 and taking 8,000 prisoners.
The city of Sawa was mentioned seven times in an inscription that dates back to the time of
Il Sharh Yahdhib and Yazl Bayan. Another city in al-Maʿafir region, Dhabhan Dhi Hamram, was also mentioned in the South Arabian inscriptions. In a Qatabanic inscription that is known as ''Naqsh al-ʿUd'' (RES 3858), the city of Dhabhan Dhi Hamram was mentioned next to other cities,
Sabir, Salman, Hamir and Hajran and a people called people of Azaz were mentioned as inhabitants of the region. Dhabhan Dhi Hamram is located in today's Mawiah and Khusha. Another city called Dhabhan Dhi Qashram is mentioned in South Arabian inscriptions and is located in today's Dhabhan sub-district.
The inscription of Samaʿ that is dated to the third century CE mentions the tribe of al-ʿArooq which is located in the al-Maʿafir region and their Himyarite king Shamar Yaḥamid. Another tribe and a city called al-Mashawilah that are located in the al-Maʿafir region mentioned in many inscriptions. One of the inscriptions says that the Himyarite king Dhamar Ali Yahbour the first sent one of his soldiers named Mabhal to spy on "Hajram Maswalam".
Classical sources
The oldest mention of al-Maʿafir region in classical sources is by
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...
, who called it "Maforitae". It was then mentioned in the book
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
The ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' (), also known by its Latin name as the , is a Greco-Roman world, Greco-Roman periplus written in Koine Greek that describes navigation and Roman commerce, trading opportunities from Roman Egyptian ports lik ...
, which mentions a city, "Seua," located in "Mapharitis."
Islamic sources
Al-Maʿafir was known for its
cloaks and garments, which were called "Al-Maʿafiri". A Maʿafiri garment was brought to
Muhammad
Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...
, and
Abu Sufiyan said, "May Allah curse this fabric and who made it." Muhammad responded by saying, "don't curse them
he Maʿafiri people I am one of them and they are part of me".
According to Islamic sources, the Himyarite king
ʼAsʿad al-Kamil covered the Kaʿaba with Maʿafiri fabrics.
Al-Hujariah and the Yemeni Civil War
According to the Sanaa Center for Strategic Study, as of 2020, Al-Hujariah was "a hotbed of training camps" for irregular militias affiliated with
Al-Islah, a Yemeni Islamist movement.
Al-Hugariyyah Arabic
The people of al-Hujariah pronounce the letter
Qaf (Arabic: ق) like
Ghayn
The Arabic letter (, or ) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). It represents the sound or . In name and shape, it is a variant of ʻayn ...
(غ) and
Gīm (ج) as . According to ''
ibn Mākūlā'', the reason for the similarity between the Cairene pronunciation and the Hugariyyah pronunciation could be related to a story that is narrated by Muslim historians about a group of people called ''al-Ruʿah'' (shepherds) who left the Arabian Peninsula and invaded Egypt or a rumor about a man from al-Hujariah whose name was ʿAwn (عون) who ran away to Egypt and was therefore called ''Far ʿAwn'' (''Far'' means escaped in Arabic, ''Farʿawn'' means Pharaoh).
According to Janet C. E. Watson, the phoneme ''jim'' is pronounced as
voiced velar stop
The voiced velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages.
Some languages have the voiced pre-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypic ...
, /g/, in both the Cairene and the Hugaryyiah Arabic. This was probably the case in
Proto-Semitic
Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the linguistic homeland for Proto-Semitic: scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant, the Sahara, ...
and early
Pre-classical Arabic
Pre-classical Arabic is the cover term for all varieties of Arabic spoken in the Arabian Peninsula until immediately after the Arab conquests and emergence of Classical Arabic in the 7th century C.E. Scholars disagree about the status of these ...
.
Places of interest
ِAl-Hujariah is home to several castles, including Dolmolwah, Ibn al-Moghalis, Sodan (today known as al-Maqatirah), Jabal Thokhr, and Kharbat Saloq.
Notable people from al-Maʿafir
*
Muhammad Ibn Said Al Dhobhani
*
Almanzor's Arab ancestors.
*
Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi
*
Ibn Hisham
Abu Muhammad Abd al-Malik ibn Hisham ibn Ayyub al-Himyari (; died 7 May 833), known simply as Ibn Hisham, was a 9th-century Abbasid historian and scholar. He grew up in Basra, in modern-day Iraq and later moved to Egypt.
Life
Ibn Hisham has ...
*
Tarif ibn Malik
*
Abdul Fattah Ismail
Abdul Fattah Ismail Ali Al-Jawfi (; 28 July 1939 – 13 January 1986) was a Yemeni Marxist politician and revolutionary who was the ''de facto'' leader of South Yemen from 1978 to 1980 after the overthrow of President Salim Rubaya Ali. He served ...
See also
*
At Turbah
References
{{coord, 13, 22, 23, N, 43, 56, 29, E, region:YE, display=title
ceb:Al Ḩujarīyah
Populated places in Taiz Governorate