The Graves of Tarim, that is, the whitewashed, domed tombs of Tarim and other places in the southern Yemeni Wadi Hadhramaut, constitute the starting point as well as the destination, spiritual or otherwise, of a far-flung Indian Ocean diaspora. This diaspora has received a fair share of attention in scholarship over the past two decades, and Engseng Ho's work forms a welcome addition to this growing body of scholarship. In contrast to the monographs by Hartwig, Boxberger, Bang, and Freitag,Footnote ⁶ and to the edited volumes by Freitag and Clarence-Smith and de Jonge and Kaptein,Footnote ⁷ and the forthcoming work by Ahmed Ibrahim Abu Shouk, Ho aims less at a reconstruction of the history and ethnography of a complex and geographically diverse diaspora and more at a conceptualization of how this diaspora constituted itself through a very specific combination of ‘spiritual and earthly lineage’, which found its embodiment in the Sufi order of the Tariqa ‘Alawiyya.Footnote ⁸ Thus, Ho discusses that group of Hadhrami migrants who, through their descent from the Prophet, through specific religious and genealogical practice, and through the conscious production of texts reflecting on these practices, succeeded in remaining an identifiable, if highly heterogeneous, group of Hadhramis abroad, that is, a diaspora. Those who, for reasons of descent, practice, or choice, did not maintain these practices, were simply assimilated and no longer formed part of the diaspora.

While thus taking the graves – and their physical and metaphorical presence and challenge – as his starting point, Ho's work consists to a large extent of a very elegantly and inspiringly written analysis of genealogical texts and practices over time and space on the one hand, and historical and current practices related to these texts and the enactment of the history contained therein on the other. It is this rather unusual ethnographic take on a genre traditionally used for hagiographic or historiographic purposes, and the combination with a historical analysis, that makes the text an inspiring read.

The first part, on burial, discusses matters of origin. In Chapter 1, Ho analyses the role of graves as lieux de mémoire (even if he avoids this allusion to Paul Nora), as symbolic acknowledgements of ‘the shift in allegiance – from origins to destinations – that migrants take whole lifetimes or more to come to terms with’ (p. 1). Ho combines this with an animated reflection on the different meanings of the destruction of the tomb of Abu Bakr al-'Aydarus (d. 1484) in the immediate aftermath of the Yemeni Civil War. This tomb, in his analysis, was specifically linked to the process of Hadhrami migration, and to the larger diasporic experiences of absence and burial elsewhere, which – in the case of those with saintly lineages – led to the transplantation of holy sites from the country of origin, Hadhramaut, to places as far apart as Lamu and Solo.

While the second chapter charts the history of the Tariqa ‘Alawiyya in Hadhramaut, its major origins and rites, and its spread across the Indian Ocean, the third chapter investigates the difficult relationship between native Hadhramis and those who thought themselves to be returning to a homeland only to find that, as muwalladin or descendants of migrants, they were regarded as foreigners. This is used to explicate the paradoxical perspective on migration, and the moral values attached to the homeland, which constitute part of the attraction but also the increasing unattainability of the homeland for former migrants and their descendants.

Part Two (Chapters 4–6) explores the genre of the biographical dictionaries, which trace Hadhrami (‘Alawi) lineages across time and geography. In a fascinating discussion, Ho shows how Hadhrami genealogy served to preserve the narrative of the Hadhrami origins by focusing on patrilineage. At the same time, the lives of the migrants intersected with those of the host societies through intermarriage. Due to their descent from the Prophet, as well as their origin from the Arabian Peninsula and their religious practice, many Hadhramis were sought-after partners in marriage: to join their genealogy was, in the words of Engseng Ho, a desirable ‘gift’ (p. 152), allowing the migrants rapid social ascent.

The last part (Chapters 7–10) discusses various modes of return – the more traditional ones as pilgrimage or as projects of moral and cultural education, as well as repatriation resulting from nationalist politics or individual family circumstances. It also discusses transnational historical vision, such as the ‘mutuality of fantasies’ and ‘interests’ (p. 291), which led to a temporary joining of forces of the interests of certain muwalladin, most notably the much-praised Abu Bakr al-Kaf, with the quintessential ‘Englishman on the spot’, Harold Ingrams. This experiment of creating a secure transnational space ended with the victory of nationalist projects around the Indian Ocean.

This brief resumé does not do justice to the rich texture of the book, which coins many new and seductive terms. A case in point is the denotation of Hadhramis as ‘local cosmopolitans’ (pp. 188–90): this certainly captures much of a pre-modern and non-Western cosmopolitan practice, although the rather offhand use of a term that has become extremely fashionable in a particular type of globalizing discourse disguises rather than illuminates some of the problems associated with the adaptation of this concept. Unfortunately, this is a fairly common problem in the text, at least from a historian's perspective: often, elegant and eloquent prose seems more apt at evoking associations than at clear-cut analysis. Another case in point is the apodictic statement that ‘In a society of migrants, what is important is not where you were born, but where you die’ (p. 3). Of course this is an interesting and, as Ho convincingly demonstrates, very fruitful thought. Yet, as an apodictic statement, Ho himself belies its veracity when discussing, in Chapter 10, how cosmopolitans could become a minority when political circumstances changed and ‘everyone had to become a citizen of a state’ (p. 306).

Besides such conceptual weaknesses, historical interpretations seem at times too strongly twisted to fit the argument. Two examples should suffice to illustrate this. The destruction of the grave of Abu Bakr al-'Aydarus, discussed at the outset of the book, is explained as follows: ‘The controversy over the graves may thus be viewed with profit, more generally, as having to do with issues of mobility’ (p. 8). While it is certainly interesting to insert the problem of absence and mobility into the discussion of the cult of the saints, it is a gross overstatement of the case to suggest that mobility is at the heart of a theological debate centring on issues of transcendence and intercession. In many ways, al-'Aydarus presented a symbol of southern, and Hadhrami and translocal, identities (cf. p. 16) that were opposed to those of the attacking Salafis, but the role of mobility therein should not be overstated, exactly because the dispute over tombs and saint worship has a much longer history and is thus embedded in competing translocal and highly mobile discourses and practices.

Another case in point is the aforementioned conjunction of British and muwallad interests in the 1930s, which led to a forceful imposition of sultanic rule under British tutelage in Hadhramaut. Ho rightly points to the fact that those historians who eulogized the project employed the idiom of ‘reform’ in a very ideological fashion (p. 293). However, Ho's statement that ‘The idea of “reform” … a propaganda device honed to fit into many conflicting demands simultaneously, was so well faceted that it still provides grist for the historiographic mill’ (p. 293) amounts to an outright dismissal of a longstanding local project at establishing internal security and stable political rule, as well as of the very widely shared call for political change among partisans and (many, though obviously not all) opponents of cooperation with the British.

Read primarily not as a work on Hadhrami history but on diasporic theory, however, the book contains a wealth of inspiring ideas. Thus, it asks us to rethink processes of translocal linkages that are all too often uncritically lumped together under the misleading label of globalization (pp. 3–5). Its inspiring discussion of intersecting genealogies, and the relevant meanings of male and female lineages, as well as the historical practices associated with specific types of genealogical construction, will contribute not only to diaspora studies but to discussions on genealogy at large. Thus, the book will be an inspiration for anthropologists and anthropologically interested historians investigating diasporic communities, and, as such, will certainly command much attention.