The New Student's Reference Work/Aden

A′den, a British Protectorate on the Arabian Coast, about 100 miles east of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Besides the town and port, which are strongly fortified and are used as an important coaling station for British vessels on the way to India via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, the region embraces a protectorate, consisting of a large slice of the Arabian hinterland (area, about 9,000 square miles), arranged in 1905 by Commissioners of the Ottoman and British Governments. This protectorate, which includes Aden, the Island of Perim and the Aden Hinterland, is administered by a political resident of the British Government and made subject to the Government of Bombay, India. In 1911 its population was 46,165. Its trade is almost purely a transhipment one, except that from the interior of Arabia, which consists of coffee, gums, hides and skins. The peninsula on which Aden stands is volcanic, but the climate is healthful, though there is little rainfall, which is unfavorable to agriculture, which, it may be said, hardly exists. In early days Aden was used by the Romans as an entrepot for the empire’s trade with the east. Subsequently it came under Portuguese and Ottoman rule, and in 1839 it was taken from the Turks by Britain.