Aden: Pivot of the East and West

A slice of Arabia that was a part of Bombay! It’s hard to imagine but for about a century, from 1839, the port of Aden in Yemen, on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, was part of British India and administered from Bombay. It even used the Indian rupee as a currency during that period.

Aden’s connection with India was due to its pivotal role connecting the Indian subcontinent to the trading centres of the West, from the time of the Roman Empire, 2000 years ago. It is strategically located at the confluence of the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, and eventually linked them to the Mediterranean when the Suez Canal was built.