Aden is a port on the Gulf of Aden in southern Yemen, east of the Bab al-Mandab strait. Known to Greek writers as Arabia Emporion, it was long a transshipment point for Red Sea trade. In the Islamic era it passed among several Yemeni dynasties and flourished under the Rasulids (13th-15th centuries). The Ismaili missionary Ibn Hawshab preached here briefly, with little success, before basing himself inland. Britain seized Aden in 1839, and it was later the capital of South Yemen (1967-1990). Its ancient Jewish community was found in 1489 to be well versed in Maimonides; after deadly riots in 1947, nearly all its members left by 1967, many through Operation Magic Carpet to Israel.
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Aden through the eras
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Rishonim
Aden's Jewish community is among the oldest in the Arabian Peninsula, traditionally tracing its founding to the destruction of the First Temple. Under the Sulayhid dynasty (11th-12th c.) Aden hosted a substantial community engaged in Indian Ocean trade. The community was closely linked to the Egyptian Maimonidean world: R. Avraham ben HaRambam (1186-1237) corresponded with Adenite communal leaders, and the Cairo Geniza preserves dozens of letters documenting Aden-Egypt rabbinic exchanges.
Acharonim
Aden under successive Yemenite, Ottoman, and British (from 1839) regimes maintained a distinctive Jewish tradition with its own nusach (Nusach Aden), strong Maimonidean halachic orientation, and Judeo-Arabic vernacular literature. The community's geographic remoteness preserved older customs that had been displaced in more central Jewish areas. The British protectorate brought new economic opportunities and intellectual contact with the wider Jewish world; the Adenite community produced major shlichim for the Eretz-Yisrael community and supported the early Zionist movement.
Modern Era
Aden's Jewish community in the 20th century reached its peak of about 8,000 in the 1940s. The 1947 anti-Jewish riots following the UN partition vote killed 82 Jews and destroyed Jewish property; the community was almost entirely airlifted to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet (1949-50) along with their Yemenite co-religionists. By the 1967 Yemenite civil war the few remaining Adenite Jews had also left. Today no Jewish community remains in Aden, but the Adenite tradition is preserved in several Israeli communities and in distinct synagogues in London and Manchester.