In the early decades of the eighteenth century, Yemen hosted a lively community of merchants that came to the southern Arabian Peninsula from the east and the west, seeking, among other products, coffee, at a time when this new social habit was on the rise. Shipped but not Sold argues that many of the diverse goods that these merchants carried, bought, and sold at the port, also played ceremonial, social, and utilitarian roles in this intensely commercial society that was oriented toward the Indian Ocean. Including sumptuous foreign textiles and robes, Arabian horses, porcelain vessels, spices, aromatics, and Yemeni coffee, these items were offered, displayed, exchanged, consumed, or utilized by major merchants in a number of socially exclusive practices that affirmed their identity and status, but also sustained the livelihood of their business ventures. These traders invested these objects with layers of social meaning through a number of repetitive ceremonial exercises and observances, in addition to their everyday protocols of the trade. This study looks at what happened to these local and imported commodities that were diverted from the marketplace to be used for a set of directives that were seemingly quite non-transactional.
