Exile of Mawza

The Zaydi imam al-Mahdi Ahmad, applying a rigorist interpretation of a tradition according to which two religions cannot coexist in Arabia, ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Yemen to Mawza, a village on the scorching coastal plain near Mokha, or their conversion.

They departed on foot from Sanaa, from Saada, from Dhamar, and from the villages of the highlands, abandoning their houses, lands, and books. The synagogues were destroyed or converted into mosques, that of Sanaa first of all. In the Tihama, the heat, the lack of water, and fevers caused the death of, according to the Yemeni tradition itself and to the elegies composed on the spot, two thirds of the exiles.

The recall came after a year: the cities could not do without the Jewish goldsmiths, blacksmiths, and armourers. But the revenues did not return to their homes — they were assigned quarters outside the walls, and their status was made harsher. The *Galout Mawza* has remained the great divide in the Memory of the Jews of Yemen; the poet Shalom Shabazi, who lived through it, is its witness.