Middle East Review

by LCDR Youssef Aboul-Enein, U.S. Navy

Daniel van der Meulen in Arabia Felix: Travels and photographs of a Dutch diplomat in Yemen, 1931-1944 by Steven Vink. Published by KIT Publishers and available in the United States through Stylus Publishing, 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, Virginia 20166-2012, $29.50. ISBN 90-6832-193-5, April 2004.

The United States has had formal diplomatic relations with Morocco since 1787 and Tunisia that dates back to the early 1800s. Americans were the first to truly extract and make commercial Saudi Arabia's oil in the thirties, a gift that keep giving to Saudi Arabia. As the west looks to dealing a blow to radical interpretations of Arab and Islamic history, it is important to rediscover westerners who made a difference and contributed to the benefit of the Arab and Muslim world. Examples abound, such as American missionaries who brought healthcare to Kuwait, and Egyptian Jewish industrialists financing and contributing to the preservation of Islamic art as late as the early 1950s. Daniel van der Meulen, a Dutch career diplomat, was fixated with his native Dutch relationship to Arabia.

Van der Meulen arrived in Jeddah in 1926 and the Dutch had established a consulate there and a Muslim Javanese vice-consul in the Holy city of Mecca to cater to the millions of Muslim subjects who arrived from the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia) to undertake the pilgrimage. Britain, France and Russia all opened consulates in Jeddah to cater to their Muslim subjects. In 1931, he made his way to Yemen, the Hadramuat Mountains and south to Aden, there he found a niche for Dutch representation as many Yemeni merchants traded with the Dutch East Indies.

In World War II, Van der Meulen was dispatched to convince the Yemeni Imam Yahya to side with the allies. It took him a year to see the Imam, but was successful in 1943 in convincing the Imam to loosen his ties with Nazis. In 1944, famine gripped the Hadramut region of Yemen, in addition the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies deprived many Yemeni merchant and Javanese relatives from contacting one another and valued income from the East Indies did not flow into Southern Arabia. Van der Meulen convinced the British to air drop food and supplies to starving Yemeni tribes in the Hadramaut, no doubt the Bin Laden's, Bin Mahfouzes and many other tribes have benefited from this humanitarian act.

The book is bursting with Van Der Muelen's photographs of various parts of Yemen in the 1930s to the early 1950s. It shows markets, the capital Sana'a and valleys in which Imam Yahya and his descendants would take refuge and mount civil wars. There is the unique rock palace at Wadi (Valley of) Dhahr and the palace of Sultan Al-Quati in Mukalla along the coast and much more. The first half of the book is in English and the second half in Arabic. This book is only for the FAO or true specialist in Yemen and Southern Arabia. Marines and Army personnel will get a feel for the terrain with the many photos and I also recommend this book for those taking advanced Arabic. Both languages mirror each other from the introductions to the bibliography, and each photo is highlighted in both languages, it makes for an excellent means of practicing (Modern Standard with a touch of Yemeni dialect) Arabic. This work was done with the help of the Yemeni Embassy in the Netherlands, and the Dutch Embassy in Yemen as well as the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam.

Editor's Note: The reviewer spent his childhood in Central Arabia, and now is a U.S. Navy FAO assigned as Middle East Country Director at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.

2004, Foreign Area Officer Association
Herndon, Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve Gotowicki.
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