The Story of Aden

 Part 1 - Haines – The Ingliz Sultan and the formation of Aden

Having focused thus far on the Calicut end of the Red Sea-Malabar trade route, I thought it would be a good idea to head over to Aden and see how the port developed into the place I had heard so much about from old timers in Calicut and fellow expats in the Middle East. Many spoke of relatives who had worked in Aden, and my maternal grandfather, Kannan Menon, had also served with the British Indian Army in Aden! Colonial Aden was later replicated in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, creating vibrant expatriate communities, each functional and unique. As former Governor Tom Hickinbotham evocatively proclaimed, ‘Aden was a world in miniature, where every race, every faith, every ambition converged on a volcanic rock at the edge of Arabia. It was chaotic, beautiful, and doomed to change.’

In the Colaba church cemetery, nestled among other tombs, is a tomb that reads, "Sacred to the Memory of Stafford Bettisworth Haines Esq. Late Captain Indian Navy, who departed this life, 16th June 1860, aged 58 years, deeply regretted.” The British seemed to have a way of denying certain people the glory they deserved if they were deemed unsupportive of the grand image of the East India Company. Haines was a great example of that. He received no honors in his lifetime, nor was he remembered after his death. I will retell his tragic story, continue with the Indians who inhabited Aden after him in a second article, and also mention Haines’s brief connection with Henry Valentine Conolly, the collector of Malabar, who was cruelly murdered in 1855.

Yemen, as it was in the past, had a prosperous trade connection with Malabar and Surat, and I have recounted it often in many posts. Sometime back, I wrote about the Hanuman tunnel to Aden and the Arab Ramayana, highlighting the many connections between India and the Arab world. Well before that, Cairo Jews had established a thriving trade link from Aden to various ports on the West Coast of India, as early as the 12th century. I had recounted Ben Yiju’s story  (as well as that of Allan Bi Hassun) evidenced by the scraps at the Cairo Geniza, decrypted by Amitav Ghosh, and later in Goitien’s and Mordechai’s India book. Then came direct Hadhrami trade with Calicut, and one can say that the Yemenis were, in many ways, the forefathers of the Moplahs of Malabar. Mocha, the preeminent port slightly north of Aden, was where Syed Fadl, the Mambram Thangal of Ponnani (expelled from Malabar in 1852), lived for a while and was revered, according to a report from Haines. Coffee beans from Yemen and Ethiopia were exported from Mocha during the 16^th century. Perhaps it was also the place from which Abu Hasan embarked for Calicut after losing face, following the farting incident.

During 1417-1419, ships from the fifth voyage of the Ming treasure fleet, captained by Zheng He, veered west, and a couple of his ships touched at Aden and Lasa. In 1421, during the 6^th fleet’s voyage, Zafar and Aden ports were visited, and the same may have occurred during the last – the 7^th voyage. In all cases, though the stopovers were due to bad winds, no goods were unloaded because of adverse political conditions at the port. Aden was thus a trading partner of Malabar until the advent of the Portuguese, and I covered this in the linked article (Ottoman links to medieval Calicut). The Mamluk trade connections were detailed in the earlier article (Mamluk-Calicut-Jeddah equations). Aden was also a port on the Hajj route between India and Jeddah, and large ships routinely plied the seas with pilgrims and goods during the Hajj season

In 1513, the Portuguese, led by Afonso de Albuquerque, launched an unsuccessful four-day naval siege of Aden. Before British administration, Aden was ruled by the Portuguese between 1513–1538 and 1547–1548. It was ruled by the Ottoman Empire between 1538–1547 and 1548–1645. In 1609, the Ascension was the first English ship to visit Aden before sailing on to Mocha during the Fourth voyage of the East India Company. After Ottoman rule, Aden was ruled by the Sultanate of Lahej under the suzerainty of the Zaidi imams of Yemen.

British interests in Aden began in 1796 with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, after which a British fleet docked at Aden for several months at the invitation of the sultan. Even before the opening of the new port of British Aden, American ships were loading up with spices and coffee at neighboring Mocha (Captain Joseph Ropes had arrived in 1798). By 1800–1805, Salem merchants dominated this niche, importing thousands of pounds of coffee annually to America. Interestingly, for about a century until 1798, coffee was imported into Boston through Dutch and English traders, and it became a popular revolutionary drink rivaling British tea in America.

In the 19th century, steamships that were less dependent on wind helped create new trade routes, and the first oceangoing ships crossed the Atlantic in 1819. The British took some years to catch up, but they needed a coaling station to fuel shorter-range steamships. The Red Sea increased in importance after the steamship Hugh Lindsay sailed from Bombay to the Suez isthmus in 1830, stopping at Aden to resupply with coal. It was not that they foresaw the Suez Canal, which later made Aden even more important; it was then a strategic location, close to Socotra, which the Portuguese had favored, and critical for the Suez-Bombay Bay route between India, Persian Gulf locations, and Egypt.

Socotra, once popular with 16th-century Portuguese navigators, was the primary choice, and the British Navy sent the 31-year-old Commander Haines for the job. Haines had joined the Bombay Marine as a midshipman in 1817, after arriving in India in May 1818. He was appointed assistant surveyor in 1826. After a brief stint as quarantine master in Bombay in 1832, Haines was appointed to the survey ship Palinurus to chart the south coast of Arabia. In 1833, Haines sailed to Socotra to assess whether it was a candidate for a coaling station on the Bombay-Suez route. Haines determined it was a suitable choice, but subsequent discussions with the Sultan of Shihr about its acquisition did not progress; meanwhile, confident of the prospective sale, the EIC had sent troops to take over the island. After the Sultan’s refusal, Haines reported back to Bombay, and the EIC had to withdraw the troops.

Haines next turned his sights to the Gibraltar of the East, the once-famous port of Aden, which had fallen into disuse and, by 1834, had been abandoned and silted up, with a few inhabitants and some 90 thatched huts. It was, as another traveler explained, a wretched heap of ruins. The Abdali Sultan, Abdel Karim of Lahej, had driven away merchants from the port due to high taxes, and the occupants of Aden, some six hundred, were a motley mix comprising fifty Arab Jews, fifty Gujaratis, and some Arabs. Dhows from Malabar and Surat came sporadically, but only for small trade in cloth and rice. When Haines visited Aden, Abdel Karim had been succeeded by Mahsin bin Fadl, who lived at Lahej, the capital some 30 miles NW. The whole country was still smarting from the Turkish occupation three centuries earlier, yet remained proud of the once-famous, now antique 17’ long guns guarding the port. Haines was convinced that Aden could become a great coaling station, though there was an alternate port, Shuqra, to the east, and he reported as much.

Meanwhile, Mohammed Ali Pasha, the Viceroy of Egypt, was also eyeing Yemen because of the profits Yemen made from coffee sales, so the British had to act with haste. Americans from Salem in Boston purchased almost all of the Yemeni coffee using their Salem East India ships (see article) and were also considering a settlement in Aden. Ali, who had a strong army and navy, was planning to take over Aden, Muscat, Bahrain, Basra, and Baghdad! By 1833, they had already taken Syria and Damascus and were on the brink of moving into Istanbul. Though the Egyptians were laying claim to the area based on earlier Turkish possessions, Haines determined that, legally, it was still owned by the Zaidi Imams (Qasmid dynasty) of Sana, the descendants of the Prophet's son-in-law Ali, until the Abdalis took over in 1728 and created the Sultanate of Lahej. The other powerful Sultanate was the warlike neighboring Fadhli Sultanate, which would prove to be a thorn in the British plans for Aden.

A strange event determined Britain's course of action. On January 4, 1837, the Madras ship 'Deria Dowlut,' a British-flagged vessel belonging to a niece of the Nawab of the Carnatic, went aground (or was intentionally wrecked by her master) in the bay of Koobet Sailan, a few miles from Aden. The ship was full of valuable cargo and pilgrims bound for Mecca. Aden Arabs swarmed the ship, looted it, molested the ladies on board, and took all the goods to the mainland. It was an indignity the British felt had to be addressed. Haines, continuing his surveys, was asked to go to Aden to negotiate its purchase so that a British presence there could deter future incidents and ensure a coaling station was established.

When Haines arrived and met with the Sultan, the latter indignantly denied any involvement in the Deria Daulat outrages but had no answer when it was pointed out that the Aden bazars were trying to sell the stolen goods. Haines explained that the Sultan was therefore liable for the plunder to the tune of $12,000. After stiff negotiations, goods worth $7,800 were taken from the markets, and the Sultan gave a promissory note for the balance $4,200. Furthermore, the Sultan agreed to cede the port against an annual payment of $8,700 and signed a document to that effect. Haines also learned from his contacts that a plot had been conceived by the Sultan's sons to kidnap and murder him and retrieve the promissory note and the agreement. Hearing this, he made a hasty retreat from Aden back to Bombay.

When he returned to conclude the deal, accompanied by a small army escort, he found that Sultan Mahsin had changed his mind and was cold-shouldering him. He would not respond to meeting requests, believing they had been short-changed. Protracted correspondence went nowhere, and with no prospect of direct meetings, Haines decided on military action and, after a series of skirmishes and attacks, forced the Arabs to sue for peace. After further delays, the British sent a couple of ships and armed forces to storm Aden in Dec 1838. In Jan 1839, the British cannonaded the island of Sira, where the great guns were placed, and soon the port was taken and the British flag hoisted. The Abdali Sultan Mahsin finally capitulated and signed the final agreement on Feb 2nd.

Thus, Stafford Haines became the Sultan of Aden. He set about creating a reliable intelligence network comprising the Jews of Aden (at that time there were some 18,000 Jews in Yemen, now none!) and a few Arabs, while also strengthening the defenses around the port. He was soon feared and respected, and became adept at handling Abdali and Fadhili intrigues with aplomb. The Ingliz Sultan, the EIC political agent, then settled down to build an establishment. He built and enlarged the coal depot after Bombay sent out a large number of Indian laborers and artisans. But he did not really obtain administrative help from Bombay, save a couple of Indian clerks. Overloaded with work and unable to withstand the cauldron that Aden was, Haines collapsed and had to be sent back to Bombay on sick leave. Meanwhile, his wife Mary had delivered his son Stafford in Bombay. Soon he was back, defying local rumors that he was dead. At Bombay, the bureaucrats were still unsure of the expenses piling up in Aden and whether the idea of investing further in the port was sound at all.

Nevertheless, Haines was upbeat and, much to the surprise of the local chiefs and Sultan Hamsin, set about formalizing the agreements with local chiefs. Very soon, things were on a gallop. Ships arrived for coaling, and business was brisk. Though he was a man on the move and an answer to all matters concerning Aden, he was very poor at record-keeping and accounting. His informal way of handling correspondence and terrible bookkeeping irritated his superiors at Bombay, particularly John Elphinstone, the governor. Not to be unfair to Haines, he did often ask for supporting staff and a standing army at Aden, but looking at the balance sheets, the Bombay government disregarded all his requests. In Southern Yemen, it became clear that the weak Abdalis, especially Sultan Hasin, had no hold over the perpetually warring Fahdhlis and the other tribes in the vicinity, who were collectively unhappy with the returns from the British and were planning assaults on the British post.

Eventually, Bombay sent Capt. Capon and the 10th Regiment to help Haines, who was under attack and facing an assassination threat. While Capon handled the army, Haines handled the naval side himself. Writing about the huge unrest that followed would take much space, and it was a big mess with several issues involving the French, the slave trade, Egypt, and whatnot. The banning of the slave trade by the British and Haines's stop-and-search efforts upset the Arabs who were making good money trading slaves.

Haines persisted, and in the years that followed, he saw Aden grow into a bustling town. He built a vast circle of Arab friends and became the man about town. But his disregard for proper accounting, as well as his huge expenses, was noticed in Bombay. Even though Aden had become prosperous and the coffee trade had moved south from Mocha to Aden, the EIC in Bombay thought that Haines was somewhat circumspect.

As the Abdalis and the Fadhilis united (other tribes of note were the Yaffaees, Ameers, Aloeees, Subaees, and the Howshabees) to take on the British at Aden, the EIC in India wondered why it should hold on to Aden at such a high cost, especially after the Fadhili attacked an English frigate, the Aukland, and later murdered Captain Milne, who was out on a shooting party. Sultan Muhasin passed away in 1846, and his brother succeeded him. Then the Arabs began their rebellion against the Turks in the region. It was all a mess. I think this was when the Bombay presidency decided it had to come down on Haines and his one-man show with an iron hand. A formal audit was ordered after a full 13 years of dealings based solely on trust. Perhaps it all stemmed from Haines' quibbles and his eventual arrest of the military captain Robert Cogan in 1846, following the clash between the military and civil administration in Aden, with Haines insisting that it should never be the military.

Eventually, a military clerk, Moreas, was deputed to conduct an audit and discovered a deficiency of Rs 282,000 (approx. £28,000) in the books. When faced with the alarming shortfall, Haines vainly tried to shrug it off, saying he was a busy person, always on the move, fighting battles and building a town, and that he had not taken a single day's leave in 13 years. He promised to provide a complete report but did not do so in the 10 months that followed, as he had to be involved personally to handle even more Arab unrest. In 1853, a commission was sent from Bombay to ascertain the finances in Aden, and Haines and others were questioned, much to his indignation. They confirmed the errors found by the previous auditor and reported that Haines was using a private Indian banker, Damjee, from time to time. His Bania clerks had maintained all accounts in Gujarati and were suspected of having engineered the mess with dubious double entries, but in the end, Haines had to face the music. The report of the Commission headed by Major Scobie and Archibald Robinson was submitted to the Government of Bombay, which determined that Haines had committed fraud.

Following this, his services as Political Agent were formally terminated in February 1854, and he was recalled to Bombay to face allegations of financial misappropriation. The big masters thus toppled the Ingliz Sultan, the very same person who had single-handedly engineered the creation of a bustling port city. Haines was confident he could convince the directors in Bombay and return.

Haines must have been somewhat satisfied when he left Aden. A water aqueduct was under discussion with the Abdalis, postal services were being established, and Aden's importance was peaking. The port serviced thousands of ships every year and was considered one of the busiest in the world after New York and Liverpool. Its duty-free status attracted traders and workers from across the Indian Ocean. One could see many Indians, Somalis, Yemenis from the north, Jews, Parsees, and Europeans all hustling in Aden's crowded bazaars.

But he was in for a rude shock in Bombay when he realized he would be held personally responsible for the accounting shortfall. He was mercifully not court-martialed, but customs authorities harassed him by delaying the clearance of his goods, and the government confiscated all his private papers. Unwisely, he decided that his character would be his judge and did not initially hire counsel. Desperate days followed; Haines had to stay in a friend's house as his wife and son departed for England. He soon became a recluse, as Bombay society shamed and avoided him. The Sultanized Englishman who had gone Arab was abandoned, and the man who had seemed selfless all these years was rudely charged and brought before the Bombay courts.

As Richard Burton had observed, Bombay society could be terribly malicious and could easily ruin a man's career. He had said – the rank climate of India, which had a marvelous effect on the growth of vegetation, seemed to have the same effect on the Anglo-Indian character which ‘shot up as if suddenly relieved of the weight with which society controls it in England! The governor John Elphinstone and his council had determined that Haines was guilty and should be shamed and punished.

Haines was formally arrested by the Sheriff of Bombay. The embezzlement trial of 1854, which followed, resulted in the jury declaring Haines ‘not guilty’. The government arranged another trial at the Supreme Court, which also ended with a ‘not guilty’ verdict. The exasperated and furious government blamed an incompetent ‘low-class’ jury and launched civil action against Haines to recover the money, deciding that he was guilty in just 15 minutes. Haines was consigned to a debtors' prison at Mazagon, and Elphinstone concluded that Haines had secreted the money somewhere in Britain. The government made an offer: that he hands over all his property and belongings in return for release, but Haines, after initially accepting, withdrew his consent, as the government would still hold him a guilty man.

As Haines cocked his nose at the enraged authorities, they retaliated by removing his name from the Naval rolls and seizing all his property. It was too much for Haines, who fell ill, both physically and mentally. For a while, he was released to house arrest under 24-hour surveillance. A medical team confirmed that he needed to return to England to regain his health. In the meantime, Mary and his son Stafford sailed back to Bombay, but the government refused to let him go and sent him back to jail. Haines could have published his story and embarrassed the Bombay government, but he would not. He rotted in jail while the Crimean War and the 1857 mutiny raged, and his appeals were dismissed by the EIC brass. In 1860, the new Bombay Governor George Clark finally freed Haines, and he boarded the Poictiers for London, but died on board a week later from severe amoebic dysentery.

Aden’s legal position complicated these deliberations. For nearly a century after the 1839 capture of Aden, the town and its immediate surroundings were under British rule and known as the Aden Settlement. This area became a dependency of the Bombay Presidency. Most decisions were preceded by administrative confusion and complications arising from the unusual requirement that the Political official – the Resident of Aden – was often required to obtain approval from three different authorities: the Bombay Government, the Government of British India (headed by the Viceroy), and the Colonial Office in London! Just imagine the plight of Haines, who was provided with no administrative staff!

Haines was a powerful personality, enterprising, pioneering, and practical. He was said to be a skillful politician among Arabs but not among his fellow countrymen, and poor at estate administration. Some said he was a formidable man, often devious, but added that he was always liked by his colleagues and subordinates, energetic, and determined. In the end, Haines felt that his was a classic case of ‘the waste of a strong life in the service of the East India Company’. Haines could speak Arabic (he could also read Hebrew) and never kept Arabs at a distance, preferring their company to that of Europeans. His maps, sketches, and writings are very detailed, precise, and scientific, and remain useful reference documents.

He was buried in Colaba, but the town of Aden never erected a memorial for their English Sultan. The pompous Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay wrote to the Foreign Secretary of the Government of India: “altogether, the history of Captain Haines is a matter for pity rather than for pride, and it is better that it should not be commemorated”.

Following Haines’ capture of Aden in 1839, the settlement grew from a neglected port of roughly 600 people into a bustling global port and thriving commercial hub of over 20,000 residents. Aden was declared a Free Port in 1850 as it took control of Yemen’s coffee export trade. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, it further developed into a premier global coaling and bunkering station. Telegraph connections to the London-Bombay line were added in the 1870s. In 1901, the harbor was dredged to handle large ships, and in 1919 it shifted to oil bunkering, handling some 6,300 ships every year.

In the second part, we will head to the period between Haines' departure and the revolution – when Aden was home to thousands of Indians. We will focus on the Crater district, study the life of the expatriate Indian, and visit the temples, synagogues, mosques, and fire temples.

References

Precis of papers, Foreign Dept - Aden 1838-1872 Compiled by M Elias

Sultans of Aden - Gordon Waterfield

Pity or Pride? The History of Captain Haines – Fatimah Johnson

History of the Indian Navy: (1613-1863), Volume 2 - Charles Rathbone Low

For those who want to investigate primary materials further, head to the fascinating Qatar Digital Library, which provides all the correspondence.