Sultanate of Lahej

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sultanate of Lahej or Lahij (Arabic: سلطنة لحج [Salṭanat Laḥij]), or, sometimes, the Abdali Sultanate (Arabic: سلطنة العب دلي [Salṭanat al-ʿAbdalī]), was a state in the British Aden Protectorate and the Federation of South Arabia. Its capital was Lahej (Lahij) and from 1919 it included the area of Subeihi.

[edit] History

Lahej was sultanate of the Abdali dynasty under the suzerainty of the Zaidi imams of Yemen but, after losing the port of Aden to the British Empire in 1839, British influence was increasingly felt. The sultanate was one of the original "Nine Cantons" that signed protection agreements with Great Britain in the late 19th century and later became part of the Aden Protectorate. Lahej typically enjoyed good relations with the British despite the accidental killing of Sultan Fadhl ibn Ali al Abdali by British troops in 1918 who mistook him for an enemy Ottoman Turk soldier. However, in 1958, Britain was worried that the sultan at the time, Ali bin Abd al Karim al Abdali, an Arab nationalist, would refuse to join the British-sponsored Federation of Arab Emirates of the South and had him deposed. Lahej ended up joining the Federation and later the Federation of South Arabia in 1963. However, Lahej was abolished in 1967 upon the founding of the People's Republic of South Yemen and is now part of the Republic of Yemen.