| The Dhamar Plain is a region in the central highlands of Yemen where a disunited tribal population continually contended with a succession of invading states for its control over the course of the Islamic period. In order to better understand these processes of contentious subjugation and continual resistance, this dissertation investigates more closely the ways political authority was strategized and produced within the tribe-state dynamic by concentrating on specific spatial practices of power that both undertook. Focusing on the attempts of the Rasulids (13th-15th cen.) and Ottomans (16th-17th cen.) to establish dominance in the Dhamar Plain, four types of political landscapes are explored through the analysis of various sorts of textual and material evidence.;First, the militarized landscape, based on narrations of events of conquest and rebellion that took place in the region, examines the aggressive actions taken to subjugate the local population and how it in turn responded. Second, the ordered landscape, based on bureaucratic records of the Rasulids and Ottomans, exhibits the different ways they organized their administrative systems on top of the local conceptions of territory. Third, the built landscape, based on the archaeological record and descriptions of no longer extant structures, shows the extent and nature of their physical presence in the region in contrast to the vernacular forms of defensive architecture of the local inhabitants. Fourth, the utilized landscape, based on descriptions of the local exchange and craft economy as well as ceramics picked up in archaeological survey, demonstrates the degree to which the Rasulids and Ottomans influenced commerce and craft production in the Dhamar Plain.;Taken together these portraits of the ways power was formed and constituted in the Dhamar Plain not only reveal the reasons the Rasulids and Ottomans were not able to develop a more sustainable authority in the region, but also expose a much broader and more complex network of political relations among various groups and individuals beyond the simplified central dynamic between the tribes and states. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates how theoretical approaches, methodologies, and data sets from the social sciences, history, and archaeology may be combined to provide new insights into and understandings of shared research problems such as tribe-state relations and imperial encounters. |
