The ancient south Arabian language and the first monumental inscriptions in ancient Saba date from about 1000 BC. Between 689 and 681 BC a number of states emerged: the Sabean empire with its capital in Marib, the Qa‘taban state with its capital in Timna (near Bayhan in Shabwa Governorate today), Hadhramaut with its capital in Shabwa (the ancient site now in the desert) and Ma‘in with Baraqish and later Qarnaw (both in Jawf) as its capitals. The states of Ma‘in, Saba, Qa‘taban, Awsan, Himyar and Hadhramaut all controlled, at different times the major trade routes bringing frankincense, silk and spices from the East and various other items from Africa such as ostrich feathers and ivory. All these were transported to the coasts across the Arabian Sea thanks to the monsoons, but then forced to use overland routes and camel caravans to reach their markets around the Mediterranean Sea and beyond, as the Red Sea was far more difficult to navigate.

Ma‘in and Saba ‘developed a prosperous agricultural base and built numerous irrigation works’ (Stookey, 1978, p. 11) including the famous Marib dam, built around 1700 BC which lasted many centuries. It is said to have finally collapsed in the ‘year of the elephant’ 570 AD following decades of neglect due to the weakening of the Himyarite state which then ruled that area. These various states overlapped both in terms of their mutual alliances and with respect to their duration and timing. Yemen was not isolated, with struggles against northern Arab tribes, and also Abyssinians coming from across the Red Sea who had a greater and deeper influence, hence the myth of the relationship between Queen Saba of Yemen and King Solomon of Abyssinia.

After centuries of complex religious beliefs in which a number of deities were honoured, monotheism emerged. Competition between Christianity and Judaism was a later development, but the first ruler who converted to Christianity was the Sabean chief at Zafar. Although Judaism had been present earlier, the first Himyarite rulers converted to Judaism in about 380 AD, leading to the neglect and destruction of many temples. This period of decline largely resulted from a change in international trade which had started by-passing the desert caravan routes. The new trade routes both included marine transport in the Red Sea itself and direct overland treks from Persia to Byzantium via the Gulf and the Euphrates, east of the Arabian Peninsula. South Arabian leaders were distracted from these fundamental economic issues by their concern with religion. Among the ensuing religious conflicts, the Jewish king of Saba Yusuf Ashaar Dhu Nuwas attacked the Christians of Najran, causing a massacre. After further conflict the Christian king Abraha took power in 535 AD in Saba and successfully prevented further attempts at direct Ethiopian rule, but he was the last Christian king, as in 575 AD the area came under Sassanian (Persian) rule.

For about a century from 1038 to 1138, Yemen was ruled by the Ismaili Shi‘i Sulayhid dynasty who were loosely subordinate to the Fatimid caliphate in Cairo. They were based in Zabid, a city which was taken and liberated by Sulayhid and Abyssinian leaders in turn for decades. For a while, their authority reached as far as Sana‘a. Its most famous personality was Queen Arwa who ruled in her husband’s name for over half a century from their base in south-west Yemen, in Jibla near Ibb. Some of her income derived from the tribute paid annually by her agents in Aden and along the southern coast. She remains an extremely popular historical figure centuries later.

Sulayhid rule, focused on the Tihama and highland Yemen from Sana‘a southwards, did not seriously threaten the rise of the Zaydi imamate which had emerged at the end of the ninth century AD and remained the main authority in the far north of Yemen, including Najran, while its southern limits varied. The Zaydi sect originated in the south of the Caspian Sea, and its followers, regardless of multiple religious and political divisions, shared basic beliefs in the right of descendants of Ali and Fatima to rule. As has been demonstrated through the generations in Yemen, the sect can be ‘described as “pragmatic Shi‘ism”: minor ritual prescriptions aside, it differs from Sunni Islam chiefly in its insistence on the institution of the imamate’ (Stookey, 1978, p. 83). The imam must have certain qualifications: ‘he must be adult; male; free (ie not a slave); adept in the interpretation of the sources of law (mujtahid); of proved descent from ‘Ali and Fatima; just, generous, and God-fearing; of sound mind; courageous in war; sound of body and limb; able as politician and administrator; and a distinguished warrior’ (ibid., pp. 84–85). In his interesting analysis of the Zaydi movement, remarkably still valid in the 2020s, Stookey points out that ‘strangely, a sect liberal and accommodating in theology and jurisprudence became intransigent and aggressive on the level of politics’ (ibid., p. 85). In Yemen, the descendants of the prophet are known as sada (sg sayyed) by contrast with terminology used in other Muslim countries where they are called Hashemite or ashraf.

Rivalry between the Fatimid Ismailis and the Zaydis was the main political theme during the two centuries when the country was divided between them in various ways and according to different areas of influence. Thus, until the rise of the Rasulids, the main religious factions in Yemen were Shi‘a, with Ismaili Fatimids in the southern and western parts of the country and Zaydis in the northern highlands.

Zaydism was first introduced to Yemen by Yahya ibn al Husayn al Rassi al Hadi ila al Haqq al Mubin, known as al Hadi, born in Medina in 854 and arriving in Yemen in 893 AD. Invited by members of the Khawlan confederation he took over Sa‘ada in 897 and extended his rule as far as Najran, but failed to take Sana‘a. He brought his version of Zaydism to Yemen (Chelhod, 1984, p. 35) and tried to impose a very austere rule in Sa‘ada, demanding restraint and honesty from his agents and his own family. This did not increase his popularity among the tribes and his philosophy was one of the reasons leading to his involvement in a series of wars against the local squabbling factions which alternately rejected his rule and appealed to him to solve their disputes. His forces reached Sana‘a but he failed to dislodge the Ismaili rulers. His main legacy throughout the following millennium, has been the establishment of a system in which the main Hamdan tribes, the Hashed and the Bakeel, who are still known today as the wings of the imamate, recognise as ruler an imam from among the descendants of the Prophet’s family through the Alid branch. In addition, the relationship he established with the tribes forced them to rely on the sada to mediate and solve their differences.

After yet another interlude of multiple conflicts, mostly within ruling families and factions themselves, the Egyptian-based Kurdish Ayyubids ruled Yemen from about 1174 to 1229. The half century of their rule was characterised by their domination over almost the entire country with the exception of two groups who successfully resisted them: the tribes of Hadhramaut and the Zaydi loyalist areas in the far north. The Rasulids then dominated Yemen for two whole centuries from 1229 to 1454; they are mainly remembered for the fact that their rule was not threatened by external powers as the main states then dominating the Muslim world were busy elsewhere. The remaining Ayyubids and Mameluks were focused on the crusades, the Baghdad caliphate had been destroyed by the Mongols, and the rising Ottoman empire was busy in Anatolia.

Internally, Rasulid leaders’ claim of south Arabian origins helped them gain acceptance from the population. Although they occasionally ruled as far as Najran in the north and Aden in the south, they avoided conflicts with the highland tribes, and ruled from two capitals, Zabid in winter and Taiz in summer. They were responsible for the majority of Yemenis changing religious affiliation, from Ismaili Shi‘ism to Shafi‘i Sunnism.¹ On that basis they continued to compete with the Zaydis who retained their main base in Sa‘ada, and whose influence fluctuated southwards according to circumstances and even included both the coast and interior of Hadhramaut. The Rasulid period is remembered as a time of wealth and prosperity for Yemen, and it left many monuments and other architectural and artistic treasures, including the Ashrafiya mosque in Taiz. In their competition with Zaydism, they turned Zabid into a world-famous centre of Sunni study, leaving architecture which led to Zabid being selected as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1993. Despite this and considerable efforts by many to preserve the city and save it, its deterioration continues.

The Rasulid regime was also characterised by heavy taxation, sometimes beyond the capacity of the landowners and farmers to reasonably satisfy. This was particularly blatant in the Tihama around Zabid. There, taxation rates varied, and the number of date palms in Wadi Zabid changed according to the extent to which excessive taxation simply persuaded farmers to destroy their trees. At the end of the Rasulid period, 120 000 date palms were taxed and Ibn Battuta recorded the exodus from the city to the palm groves for an annual party for leaders and citizens alike (Chelhod, 1984, p. 44).

Regardless of its prosperity, the Rasulid period was not one of peace and quiet: in addition to systematic challenges from the Zaydis in Sa‘ada, the Tihama tribes were constantly rebelling and there were, as is often the case among ruling families, intermittent power struggles within the family itself. There were also rebellions in the mountainous areas of Ibb and Hujariya, populated by smaller farmers without the tribal weight and organisation to be involved in long challenges to central authority.

As brilliantly characterised by Stookey,

While external intervention in Yemen was a political characteristic from Yemen’s very earliest days, in previous centuries this had come from the main dynasties dominating the Middle East as a whole. The following four centuries also involved the dominant Muslim power, the Ottomans, who first arrived in 1539 along the Red Sea coast. The first Europeans, the Portuguese, arrived in the region in the early years of the sixteenth century: they landed in Socotra in 1507, failed to occupy Shihr on two occasions (1523 and 1535) and Aden during the following decades. Unable to dominate the entire country, the Ottomans came and went, often controlling the coasts, particularly Zabid on the Red Sea and Aden and Shihr on the Arabian Sea. The Ottomans sometimes managed to govern parts of the interior as far as Sana‘a, but never kept these for any length of time. On the south coast, foreign incursions persuaded the then dominant Kathiri rulers to move their capital to Seiyun in the interior of Hadhramaut in the sixteenth century.

During the following centuries, the Zaydi Qasimi dynasty (1598–1852) and others largely ruled the country, particularly the inaccessible highlands. They competed with each other, with the Ottomans and eventually with the forces of the viceroy of Egypt Mohammed Ali, who reneged on his formal allegiance to Ottoman rule when he was strong enough. Like all previous dynasties, the area under Qasimi control grew and shrank according to a range of circumstances, depending on each individual imam’s ability to tax and find revenue to finance his military operations.

Zaydi rule depended throughout on two elements: ‘the moral suasion of the ulama and the military power of the tribes’ (Stookey, 1978, p. 150). Imams needed the tribes despite also having at their service both mercenaries and slaves. At its largest, the dynasty extended as far as Dhofar (in today’s Oman) in the east and Asir (in today’s Saudi Arabia) in the north. As pointed out by Stookey, the situation in Yemen made it impossible for imams to establish a centralised government as ‘although the imamate was dependent upon the brute strength of the tribes, it was unable either to make them the instrument of a strong central government, or to prevent them from pursuing aims irrelevant, or hostile, to those of the Zaidi regime. The frequent primacy of tribal tradition and values over the public order the imams sought to enforce is emphasized by the fact that punishment by the imam for disobedience was taken by the tribes as calling for revenge’ (ibid., p. 151).

The end of Qasimi rule was brought about by the loss of revenue from the coffee trade once Mohammed Ali’s forces took over control of Mokha port in the late 1830s, while income from the highlands dropped as a result of constant challenges from local tribes. Britain’s take-over of the port of Aden in 1839 made it a more profitable location from which to export coffee away from taxation. Moreover ‘efforts by authorities in Yemen to prevent this diversion [of the coffee trade] simply encouraged producers to abandon coffee and plant instead the narcotic shrub qat which had been introduced into Yemen from Ethiopia in the year 1543, simultaneously with the coffee plant’ (ibid., p. 158).³

Chaos and a multiplicity of clashes between local rulers led to the return of the Ottomans to Sana‘a in 1872 at the invitation of local notables. During their next and last occupation of Yemen until 1918 the Ottomans ruled with improved administrative standards and the regime took some modest steps towards introducing modern education, improving communications and creating conditions in which the people could pursue their livelihoods. Abuse of power was restricted to lower Yemen as the strong tribes of the highlands were able to resist and, in particular, oppose any form of foreign rule. The Hamid al Din, a new line of Qasimi imams started a 40-year bloody struggle against the Ottomans in 1879 with the selection of Mohammed Hamid al Din, known as al Mansour, to the Zaydi leadership in 1890.

Yahia bin Mansour succeeded his father as Imam in 1904 and w...