3 What was community life like for Yemenis in Cardiff?

Before 1914, the estimated Yemeni population of Cardiff was around 700 people – mostly men – concentrated in the Butetown area of the city. As a community, they regularly held colourful religious processions through the city streets to celebrate Eid and other major Muslim religious occasions. Lascar funerals often attracted public attention because of their traditional dress and rituals unfamiliar to many Cardiff residents. The vibrancy of religious worship increased with the arrival in the late 1930s of a prominent Yemeni Sufi leader and entrepreneur Shaykh Abdullah Ali al-Hakimi. Islam was a defining element of community life, but the mosques they built for worship were not their only meeting places.

High rates of illiteracy among lascars meant they were often unable to get onshore work when they arrived in Cardiff. Many men opened cafés, restaurants and boarding houses for other Arab seamen docking at Cardiff. These Yemeni-run cafés provided alcohol-free venues to meet, play cards and eat Yemeni dishes. Cafés were de facto community centres, but were also frequented by white Welsh people, and so acted as a bridge between the immigrant Yemeni and the existing Welsh communities. They were also important places for white Welsh women to meet Yemeni men.