Yemen Culture, Map, Flag, Tourist Places

After the breakup of the caliphate, Yemen came under the control of the rising Rassite dynasty, imams of the Zaidi sect who built the theocratic political structure of Yemen that lasted until 1962. The Fatamid caliphs of Egypt occupied most of Yemen from c.1000 until c.1175, when it fell to the Ayyubids, who ruled until c.1250. By 1520, Yemen formed part of the Ottoman Empire, which exercised at least nominal sovereignty until the end of World War I. A turbulent wave of Wahhabism, a puritanical sect of Islam, swept across the Arabian peninsula at the opening of the 19th cent. and drove out the Zaidi imams. Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, acting in the name of the Ottoman sultan, drove out the Wahhabis in 1818, and the Egyptians remained until 1840. The Ottoman Turks then replaced the Egyptians, giving the imam full autonomy in the interior.

It remained within the orbit of various regional powers until, in the 15th century, it became a flashpoint in the struggle between the Egyptians and the Ottoman Empire. Its strategic location subsequently attracted European powers and, during the early 17th and early 19th centuries, there was a constant struggle for control between the Europeans and the Ottoman.The development of trade routes to India and the Far East eventually made protection of the Suez sea route an imperative for the British, who occupied the port of Aden in 1839 as a staging post and military base. The Yemeni hinterland was, for the most part, under the loose control of the Ottoman Empire throughout the 19th century, until 1918, when the Imam Yahya took power in what became the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). Aden and its surroundings, meanwhile, were firmly established as a British colony. Yahya was assassinated in 1948 and his son Ahmed took over. From 1958-1961, the YAR was federated with Egypt and Syria in the United Arab States. Ahmed died in 1962 and an army coup led to civil war between Egypt-backed republicans and Saudi-backed royalists.

By this time, in the south, the British colonial forces faced armed opposition from both the leftist National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY). In November 1967, just before the formation of the Yemen Democratic People’s Republic in the south by the victorious NLF forces, a Republican government took control in the north. There was intermittent warfare between the two Yemens throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s and political instability in the north throughout the 1970s.

In 1978, Lieutenant-Colonel Ali Abdullah Saleh became Head of State. In 1983, he was unanimously re-elected by the People’s Assembly. Meanwhile, in 1978, Ali Nasser Muhammad became Head of State in the south. In January 1986, civil war between rival elements within the armed forces broke out after an attempted Politburo purge. A new government was formed under the former Construction Minister, Haydar Abu Bakr al-Attas. The long-promised merger of the two Yemens took place in 1990, with unexpected ease. Ali Abdullah Saleh became leader of the unified Republic of Yemen.

A number of ancient empires, including the Minaean, Sabaean, and Himyarite, flourished in southern Yemen. The region came under Muslim influence in the 7th cent. In the 16th cent. it became part of the Ottoman Empire and came under the suzerainty of the imams of Yemen. (For a more detailed history, see above history of Northern Yemen or see Arabia.)The British presence in Southern Yemen began in 1839, when forces of the British East India Co. occupied Aden. In 1854 and 1857 the Kuria Muria and Perim islands were ceded to the British, and other mainland areas were purchased by them. Between 1886 and 1914, Britain signed a number of protectorate treaties with local rulers. In 1937 the area, which by then consisted of 24 sultanates, emirates, and sheikhdoms, was designated the Aden Protectorate and was divided for administrative purposes into the East Aden protectorate and the West Aden protectorate. In 1959 six small states of the West Aden protectorate formed the Federation of the Emirates of the South; it was later enlarged to 10 members. Despite considerable opposition from its population, the Aden colony proper was made part of the federation (1963), which was then renamed the Federation of South Arabia (see South Arabia, Federation of).

By 1965, 16 tribal states had joined the federation. However, nationalist groups in Aden remained adamantly opposed to the federation and began a terrorist campaign against the British. Two rival nationalist groups emerged: the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY). Although Britain had promised to withdraw from the region by 1968, the NLF, which had emerged as the dominant group by 1967, forced the collapse of the federation after taking control of the governments of all the component states. Britain accelerated its withdrawal, and Southern Yemen became independent in Nov., 1967, with Qahtan al-Shaabi of the NLF the first president. In June, 1969, he resigned, and was succeeded by Rubayi Ali. In 1970 the country received a new constitution and was renamed the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.Following independence border disputes arose with Oman and the Yemen Arab Republic, some of which led to armed clashes. An accord was signed with the Yemen Arab Republic in 1972 calling for the end of fighting and the merger of the two countries. However, the agreement was not to be implemented for several years. In Apr., 1972, the government of Southern Yemen suffered a severe blow when 25 of its top officials were killed in an airplane crash. Rubayi Ali was ousted in June, 1978, by Abdalfattah Ismail, a radical rival who in 1979 signed a 20-year relation treaty with the Soviet Union. Soviet influence, including the presence of naval bases, became predominant in Southern Yemen, which was the Arab world's only Marxist state. Fighting with Northern Yemen again broke out in Feb., 1979, but was resolved one month later by a peace treaty.

In 1983, Ali Nasser Muhammad, Ismail's successor as president, restored relations with Saudi Arabia and Oman. In Jan., 1986, Muhammad tried to eliminate internal party opposition by killing party leaders and former president Ismail, but rival political fighting erupted for two weeks, after which Muhammad fled to Ethiopia. His supporters were mostly eliminated by the administration of Haider Abu Bakr al-Attas, Muhammad's successor. In Oct., 1988, Attas visited Oman, the first Southern Yemen leader to do so.

The leaders of the two Yemens met in Dec., 1989, when final unification agreements were made, and the borders were opened in Feb., 1990. On May 22 of that year, the two Yemens were officially united. North Yemen president Saleh became the leader of a unified Yemen, and Sana became the nation's capital. By 1993, however, relations between north and south had again grown tense. Fighting between northern and southern army units in 1994 erupted into a civil war between southern secessionists and Yemen's northern-based government. The war lasted for nine weeks and was decisively won by northern forces. Subsequently, Saleh was officially elected by parliament as president of the country, and a coalition government that excluded the leading southern party was established. The new government imposed unpopular economic austerity measures. Muslim extremists committed sporadic acts of violence in the south, and armed tribespeople from remote areas staged kidnappings of foreign tourists.

Yemen's armed forces clashed with Eritrea over control of the Hanish Islands in the Red Sea in the early 1990s; the Hague Tribunal awarded the islands to Yemen in 1998. The president's party won nearly two thirds of the seats in the 1997 legislative elections. In Sept., 1999, in Yemen's first direct presidential election, Saleh was returned to office; candidates from opposition parties were not approved to run, and the government was charged with fraudulently inflating the vote count. In Oct., 2000, the U.S.S. Cole was damaged by a suicide bombing while anchored at Aden and the British embassy was bombed. Also in 2000, a border treaty ending disputes with Saudi Arabia that dated to the 1930s was signed.

President Saleh announced support for the U.S. “war on terror” in 2001 and subsequently received American aid and made some moves against Muslim extremists, but the terror attacks also continued. Saleh's General People's Congress won more than two thirds of the seats in the 2003 legislative elections. In June, 2004, government forces began raids against supporters of Shiite cleric Hussein al-Hawthi, who was accused of sedition and extremism. The cleric had denounced the government's pro-American policies and government corruption. Several months of fighting in N Yemen, in which hundreds died, followed, and in September Sheikh Hawthi was killed and a cease-fire mediated. Fighting erupted again in Apr., 2005, when the government attacked Hawthi's followers after unsuccessful negotiations. In July, 2005, fuel price increases sparked protests and riots across Yemen, leading the government to roll the increases back somewhat.

It's the mountains that makes Yemen habitable. The climate in the Yemeni mountains is the most pleasant on the entire Arabian peninsula, and fertile. The climate along the coast is humid and terribly hot. Just inside the coast starts the desert, that covers everything that is not mountains. Yemen has the highest population density on the Arabian peninsula, but is by far also the poorest country in the region, due to very small oil resources.

Yemen is a country with deep Muslim traditions, but is often most mentioned for its relatively large Zaydi Shi'i group, even if this represents a minority in the country as a total.The population are Yemeni Arabs, and Yemen is one of the most homogeneous countries in the Middle East.Yemen's north is the centre of Zaydism, the second largest group inside Shi'i Islam. Zaydism is known for putting less importance on the position of the Imam, than among the Twelver (Iran), perhaps because the Zaydis have enjoyed far more political and religious freedom than the other. The Zaydis have professed military and violent activities in this century (examples of this is the stubborn fight against the British colonialists in Aden and the occupation of the great mosque in Mecca in 1979).

The Sunnis in the south belongs to a mainstream Sunni Muslim group (but belong to the small Shafi'i school of law). It is not reported about serious problems between the Shi'is and the Sunnis of Yemen.The Christians and Hindus are living along the southern coast, and are "leftovers" from the time when Yemen was an important stopover on the trade between Europe and the East.With the great influx of Negroids in Saudi Arabia, Yemen can claim to be one of the nations closest to the "original" Arabs. This is only partly true, as many peoples (of whom many resembles the "original" Arabs have passed through this region). But this is really no great change from the days of the "first" Arabs, migrations were even more normal then than now.

Yemen is by all respects a poor country, and today it is totally dependent on remittances sent from Yemenis working abroad. Yemen has little industry, but there are positive mineral prospects in the south.Yemen's north has only agriculture as an economic base. The little there is of industry is only producing for a domestic market. Yemen has some mineral industries but few efforts have been put into exploitation, due to heavy needs of investments, and only medium prospects for profits.

Some mountain areas offer quite good conditions for life, thanks to the good conditions for agriculture. Despite the general lack of modern goods (bad roads, few cars, few telephones and TV-sets, etc.), this part of Yemen is well endowed from nature's side, and famine and drought is as good as nonexisting.

Yemen's south (from the city of Aden and up the coast in direction of Oman) is by far poorer than the north, but represents the promising aspects for the future. Many expect that there will be large finds of petroleum and other minerals in the future. These prospects were the main reason for the southern part to want to break free from north in 1994, a disagreemt that lead to the civil war of 1994.

National name: Al-Jumhuriyah al-Yamaniyah
Area: 203,849 sq mi (527,970 sq km)
Population : 20,727,063
Capital : Sanaá
Other cities: Aden, Hodiedah, Tiaz
Language: Arabic
Religions: Islam (including Sunni and Shiite), small numbers of Jewish, Christian, and Hindu
Days of independence: North Yemen (San'a) November 1918, South Yemen (Aden) November 30, 1967.
Highest point: Jabal Nabi Shu'ayb 3,760 m
Currency: Rials