Ancient history

Traders of the Gold and Incense Road

  The most prominent and celebrated figure of Yemen’s ancient history is the legendary Queen of Sheba (named Bilqis in the Arabic Tradition) , who visited King Solomon during the 10th century B.C. bringing with her a large retinue and an abundance of gold and spices . Challenging Solomon with riddles, she eventually had to capitulate to his wisdom and accept his God . This exotic story has sparked the imagination of countless generations and has found entry into three Holy Books: the Bible the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast and the Holy Koran. Yet among all the Sabaean inscriptions found in temples and houses discovered so far, not one makes mention of her.
Prehistoric tools and settlements have been found in various places in Yemen. Archaeologists recently discovered that irrigation in the Marib oasis dates back at least 5 millennia . The ancient South Arabian Kingdoms which started out as theocracies, all developed in the mouths of large wadis between the mountains and the great desert . The kingdom of Saba with its capital at Marib was the most powerful, at times dominating all of the South Arabia . The great Marib Dam, built to harness and exploit the seasonal floods by means of an elaborate irrigation system , provided sustenance for some 30,000 inhabitants and was counted among the wonders of the ancient world. The Sabaeans were not only great builders and technicians, but also successful traders .
The Greeks and Romans called the southern part of the peninsula "Arabia Felix", glorified by the fabulous wealth supposedly enjoyed by its inhabitants. Since the domestication of the camel (around 1500 B.C.) large Sabaean caravans moved north along the edge of the desert , covering in 60 - 70 days the distance from Qana on the Indian ocean to Ghaza on the Mediterranean sea. The trade route, which was protected by the kingdoms along the way, became famous as the "Gold and Incense Road". Incense was an item of high prestige, burnt in large quantities in the temples of the Mediterranean civilizations. It grows naturally only in the lower Hadhramaut. Among the luxury goods supplied by Sabaean merchants were spices, ebony, silk, fine textiles from India, rare woods, feathers, animal skins, and gold from East Africa. To secure their trade monopoly , the Sabaeans kept the origin of their riches a secret , perhaps inventing for themselves the myth of their spectacular wealth.
At the end of the second century A.D., a new power emerged in south Arabia : the Himyarites . They eventually conquered Saba and established their rule over all Yemen . But the first centuries A.D. were a time of great changes in the world, that eventually also led to the downfall of the ancient South Arabian civilization . The trade monopoly was broken when the Romans started to deal with India directly via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The overland route declined , and social and religious structures began to disintegrate. Negligence caused the final destruction of the great Marib Dam in 570 A.D. which, according to Arab traditions , caused thousands of Yemenis to emigrate to the north and establish a new Arabic countries . Judaism and Christianity spread among the people , and the old celestial gods lost their power . Eventually, Yemen became deeply involved in the Persian-Byzantine power struggle . In 530 A.D. a joint Himyarite and Persian army cooperated to free Yemen from Ethiopian colonists. The Persians remained in power until the arrival of Islam in 628 A.D.

  Islamic History

The emergence of Islam sparked a spiritual revival in the region , profoundly changing and reshaping the Middle East. The Persian governor of Sana’a, Badhan, was the first to embrace Islam . Other prominent figures followed, bringing in their whole families and tribes . The prophet Muhammed (p) himself sent missionaries to Yemen, who built the first mosque. In the Islamic conquest of 7th and 8th centuries, Yemenis constituted a large part of the Islamic forces, some of the famous leaders of the army were from Yemen, like Moosa Bin Nosir who opened Spain and reache the French borders. Settling down as far away as Tunisia and Andalusia, they excelled as architects , administrators and merchants . Yemen became a province at the southern edge of the large Islamic Empire .
Because of its remote geographical locations, a number of petty states and semi-independent kingdoms were established in rapid succession, controlling various parts, and sometimes all of Yemen from different capitals. Among these was the Zaydia Kingdom (821-1012) with its Capital Zabid in the Tihama, where the first university of Islamic learning and natural science in South Arabia was established . It is said that algebra was invented here. Another important centre of Islamic learning is the Great Mosque of Sana’a , which still boasts an extensive library of handwritten books. The Souleyheia dynasty ruled much of Yemen from 1046 to 1138 . Queen Arwa bint Ahmed (Second Queen of Sheba), well remembered and still loved today, ruled the whole Yemen from her small town in Jiblah for over 60 years until her death at the age of 92. Taiz became a capital in 1174 under Turan Shah al-Ayyubi the brother of the famous Salah Addin who fought Richard the Lionheart in Palestine . It was the centre of a splendid Sultanate, under the Rasulid dynasty from 1229 - 1454, a period of great wealth and building activity . The Zaydi dynasty of Saada lasted longest and was overthrown with the last Imam in 1962. Founded in 897 by Al-Hadi Yahia , a descendant of the prophet, their Shiite teaching of Islam is still adhered to by most of the northern tribes of Yemen.
Colonial Powers With discovery of the sea route around Africa to India. Yemen quickly gained strategic importance to the European powers, first the Portuguese, then the British . The interests of the Europeans frequently clashed with the rulers in Egypt and the emerging superpower of the Middle East, the Ottoman Turks. The Turks occupied Yemen in 1538, but fierce resistance, especially from the Zaydis in the North , led to their expulsion in 1635. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Yemen again experienced a prosperous period after the world had discovered a new drink that originated from Yemen: Coffee . Holding the world production and trade monopoly of coffee , Yemen allowed British, Dutch, French, and later American trade missions and factories to be established at the Red Sea port of Moka . But coffee production declined steeply after the European powers established plantations in their own colonies. In 1729, the Sultan of Lahej gained independence from the ruling Zaydi Imam. In an attempt to secure the trade route to India , the British occupied the port of Aden in 1839. This prompted the Turks to safeguard their interests along the Red Sea by taking the northern part of Yemen in 1848. The border between North and South Yemen was fixed by the two colonial powers in 1905.

  Modern History ·

North Yemen (before unification)

After the Turkish withdrawal in 1918, North Yemen became a sovereign monarchy, ruled by the Zaydi Imam Yahya Hameed Addin . In an effort to protect his country against harmful foreign influence , he pursued a closed-door policy, thereby depriving his subjects of any chances of development. The resistance movement of the "Free Yemenis" operating from Aden instigated the assassination of the Imam in the revolution of 1948 . However , within a week, his son Ahmed had regained power over the country with the help of the Northern tribes. Reigning from Taiz, he exactly followed the line of his father’s outdated, despotic style of government. When Imam Ahmed died in 1962 of wounds inflicted upon him in various assassination attempts, his son Al-Badr took power, Al-Badr supported the revolutionary forces during his father’s regime, but when he gained power he turned against the revolutionary forces and swore that he would follow his father’s line. This forced the revolutionaries to fight , and on 26th Sep. 1962 the revolutionary forces led by Colonel Abdullah Al-Salal proclaimed the Yemen Arab Republic with Sallal as its first President. Imam Al-Bader had escaped to the north and started a civil war with help of the tribes loyal to him, and support from Sudi Arabia. Egyptian troops came to support of the republicans, while the royalists were backed by Saudi Arabia . The struggle of Yemenis to defend the republican system lasted until the great victory after the Seventy Days siege of Sana’a city in 1968. ·

  South Yemen (before Unification)

Aden received the status of a British Crown Colony in 1937, while the rest of South Yemeni territory became the "Aden Protectorate " following the conclusion of peace treaties with some 1300 tribal chiefs . The "Federation of South Arabia" founded in 1959 on a British initiative, sought to give the protectorate a new political and administrative structure . However, the South Yemenis wanted to establish their own sovereign state. Two competing liberation movements started armed resistance in the late 1960s : the National Liberation Front(NLF), a communist group, and Front for Liberating Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY), inspired and supported by Egypt’s president Gamal Abdul Nasser and North Yemen. In 1964, Britain promised independence by 1968, but hastily withdrew her forces in late 1967, leaving power in the hands of the NLF . A Soviet-style "People’s Democratic Republican of Yemen (PDRY) was established with strong ties to the Eastern block. South Yemen was the only declared communist state in the Arab world and by its nature rather isolated from other Arab countries, which consider Islam their basis of government.

  The Unification of North and South Yemen

Unification had from the outset been the declared goal of the two republics. However, ideological differences as well as the conflicting interests of the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia, who each backed one of the parties, made a union seem impossible. South Yemen propaganda and infiltration into the southern parts of North Yemen led to the eruption of the first border clashes in 1971/72. By mediation of the Arab League, a treaty was signed in October 1972 between the two governments to negotiate the term of unification. The declaration was renewed and confirmed after another border war in 1979. In 1981, President Ali Abdullah Saleh (YAR) and President Ali Nasser Mohammed (PDRY) signed a draft constitution for the unified state , that envisioned a mixed economy, a political system of parliamentary democracy, Islam as official religion and Sana’a as the historic and political capital. A number of joint companies were established and in the late 1980s restrictions on travel and communication were eased. In 1986 Ali Salem Al Beedh, succeeded Ali Nasser Mohamed after the bloody clashes of January 1986. The thaw of East-West relations and profound changes in the Eastern Block finally paved the way for speedy implementation of Yemeni unification plans. Inspired by the fall of the Berlin wall, President Ali Saleh (YAR) and the Head of the Yemen Socialist Party concluded the "Aden Agreement" on 30 November 1989. For the first time a fixed timetable for unification was agreed upon. In the face of workers’ strikes and mounting discontent in economically weakened South Yemen, and the enthusiasm of all Yemeni people in the South and North, the unification was declared in Aden on 22 May 1990, with Sana’a the political capital city and Aden as the economic capital . The Socialist party, with the support of some Gulf states, declared the separation of the Unified Yemen on 5th May1994, and a full scale war broke-out, but the unification army with support of all Yemeni people defended the unification and gained victory against the secessionist communist army on the 7th July 1994. Leaders of the communist party escaped out of the country Yemen remains Unified and it will last unified forever.