Reports emanating from Yemen as early as the 1920s indicated that local Jews were subjectedto a unique statute, known in Jewish sources as the “Orphans' Decree.” Thislaw obligated the Yemeni (Zaydi) state to take custody of dhimmi children who hadbeen orphaned, usually of both parents, and to raise them as Muslims. The statute, anchored in18th-century Zaydi legal interpretations and put into practice at the end of that century, has noparallel in other countries.1 S. D. Goitein suggests that the legal basis for thisreligious interpretation rested on the hadith: “Every person is born to the natural religion[Islam], and only his parents make a Jew or a Christian out of him”(Muhammad al-Bukhari 82, 3).2