Haushabi Sultanate

Haushabi, or Hawshabi — formally the Haushabi Sultanate — was a state in the British Aden Protectorate, in the mountains of what is now the Republic of Yemen. Established in the eighteenth century, the sultanate took its name from the Haushabi tribe and had its capital at Musaymir. Its place in the imperial order was fixed early: on 14 June 1839 an engagement was entered into with Sultan Mana bin Salam of the tribe, of the same tenor as those with the Abdali, the Fadhli and the Yafai, after a treaty of friendship and peace had been signed that January by two other sheikhs of the Haushabi with the British representative. Sultan Mana bin Salam, though more than once invited by the Abdali and Fadhli sheikhs to join their attacks upon Aden, steadily declined their overtures; he died in June 1858 and was succeeded by his nephew Ubeid bin Yahya, under whom friendly relations with the British were uninterruptedly maintained. Ubeid died in 1863 and was succeeded by his cousin Ali bin Mana, whose relations with the neighbouring chiefs and the British government were for a long time the reverse of cordial — in 1868 he cut off the water supply that irrigated the Lahej territory, and an action followed in which the Haushabi Sultan was defeated. The sultanate endured until the end of the protectorate era in 1967, when its area passed to what became the Republic of Yemen.