Habban District is a district of the Shabwah Governorate in Yemen. As of 2003, the district had a population of 29,846 inhabitants.[1] The district takes its name after the town Habban which lies in As Said District, located at 14o21'N. latitude, 47o04'E. longitude. The town is some 275 km east by northeast of Aden by air (425 km overland by the most common route), some 75 km inland from the Gulf of Aden.[2]
Habban, during the period of Wahidi Sultanate, was a trading town of several thousand, located on the western border of the Wahidi Sultanate, which, for the British, defined the boundary of Eastern and Western Aden Protectorate., made very few visits to the area and despite the presence of "air-fields" at nearby 'Ataq and Mahfid, with rare exceptions, left political and military control of the area to the local authorities.[3]
The district was once the home of many Jews, who have since migrated to Israel.[4]
^Judaeo-Yemenite Studies - Proceedings of the Second International Congress, ed. Ephraim Isaac & Yosef Tobi, article: Jewish-Muslim Socio-Political Relations in Twentieth Century South Yemen, by Laurence D. Loeb, Institute of Semitic Studies, Princeton University 1999, p. 73
^Judaeo-Yemenite Studies - Proceedings of the Second International Congress, ed. Ephraim Isaac & Yosef Tobi, article: Jewish-Muslim Socio-Political Relations in Twentieth Century South Yemen, by Laurence D. Loeb, Institute of Semitic Studies, Princeton University 1999, p. 74
^Ma`atuf, Sa`adia bin Yitzkhaq, Habbani Jewry of Hatzarmavet in the Last Generations, published by the Ma`atuf family under the auspices of the local municipality of Bareqeth and greater municipality of Ben Shemen, 1987, 223pp., pages II.
