Yemen

“ The inhabitants of Yemen are settled, and for the most part occupied in agriculture and trade, the conditions which favour the pastoral or Bedouin type found in Hejaz and Nejd hardly existing. As in the adjoining province of Hadramut, with which Yemen has always been closely related, the people are divided into four classes:— (1) The Seyyids or Ashrāf, descendants of the prophet, forming a religious aristocracy; (2) the Kabail, or tribesmen, belonging to the Kahtanic or original S. Arabian stock, who form the bulk of the population, and are the only class habitually carrying arms ”

“ Quoth the king to him, "Whence comest thou, O youth?" and he answered, "I come from Yemen."
Then said the king, "Hast thou a need we may accomplish unto thee? For indeed we are exceeding beholden to thee for that which thou didst in the matter of Hudheifeh and his folk." And he let cast over him a mantle of Egyptian satin, worth an hundred dinars. Moreover, he bade his treasurer give him a thousand dinars and said to him, "O youth, take this in part of that which thou deserves! of us; and if thou prolong thy sojourn with us, we will give thee slaves and servants." ”

“ On the earlier maps Arabia Felix stretched as far as Oman—a great mountainous region with a temperate climate. An Arabian author, describing Yemen as it was before the time of Mohammed, wrote: “Its inhabitants are all hale and strong, sickness is unknown, nor are there poisonous plants or animals; nor fools, nor blind people, and the women are ever young; the climate is like paradise and one wears the same garment summer and winter.”
The massive rock promontory of volcanic basalt called Aden, has from time immemorial been the gateway and the stronghold for all Yemen. ”

“ The story of the Turks in Yemen is very modern. In 1630 they were compelled to evacuate Yemen by the Arabs and they did not set foot in the capital again until 1873. In 1871 the Imam of Yemen lived his life in peace, secluded and sensual like an oriental despot in the palace at Sana. Looked upon by the Arabs as a spiritual Sultan he was great, but also powerless to hold in check the depredations and robberies of the many tribes under his nominal sway. ”

“ To the honored, great, and holy Master and Teacher, Jacob, wise and genial, dear and revered sage, son of the honored, great, and holy Master and Teacher, Nathaniel Fayyumi, distinguished Prince of Yemen, president of its congregations, leader of its communities, may the spirit of God rest upon him, and upon all his associates and upon all the scholars of the communities of Yemen. May the Lord keep and protect them. ”

“ In the name of Yemen, he dictated the terms of surrender without any condition in regard to Laylá.
The chief of Basráh laughed him to scorn. 'Go tell the chief of Yemen and his robber friend of the desert,' he said, 'that if they desire my domains they must take them by force of arms. Tell them that Basráh never surrenders: he prefers to live free, or to die fighting.'
The herald took back this proud answer of defiance. On hearing it Yemen wondered and questioned, but Noufal, who was a man of the desert, sudden in temper and quick to act, counselled an immediate attack. ”

“ The British, who had set up a protectorate area around the southern port of Aden in the 19th century, withdrew in 1967 from what became South Yemen. Three years later, the southern government adopted a Marxist orientation. The massive exodus of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis from the south to the north contributed to two decades of hostility between the states. The two countries were formally unified as the Republic of Yemen in 1990. A southern secessionist movement in 1994 was quickly subdued. In 2000, Saudi Arabia and Yemen agreed to a delimitation of their border. ”

“ Such was Arabian Yemen, the home of the ancient Sabæans on the Red Sea, stretching from the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb north-westward for 500 miles. Here a mountain range, rising to 10,000 feet and bordering the plateau desert of central Arabia, condenses the vapors of the summer monsoon and creates a long-drawn oasis, where terraced coffee gardens and orchards blossom in the irrigated soil ”

“ First, a new state has come into the world; and, whatever aid it may receive from the Entente Powers, it must be independent in every sense, or Muslim thought will be outraged. At present, it occupies only the Hejaz, the strip along the west coast of Arabia, with the holy cities, plus a line of advance up the Mecca Railroad to Syria, but its claims are far wider, even to Syria as a whole. Yemen is in anarchy, with the chance that the anarchy will be ended with some sort of British rule, for Yemen forms the back country to Aden, and Aden commands the exit of the Red Sea, the route to India. ”

“ As subjects they offer a favourable contrast to their kindred, the Arabs of El Yemen, a race untameable as the wolf, and which, subjugated in turn by Abyssinian, Persian, Egyptian, and Turk, has ever preserved an indomitable spirit of freedom, and eventually succeeded in skaking off the yoke of foreign dominion. ”

“ In pursuance of this policy British influence is now markedly felt along Arabia’s three coasts. It is firmly planted on the southeast, where Arabia is nearest to India. From Koweit to Muscat every petty potentate exercising an antiquated patriarchial authority has learned to rely on British protection against Turkish encroachments. Aden, on the southwest coast, is a lone outpost of civilization from which western ideas radiate and occasionally reach the plateau land of Yemen or the niggardly wastes of Hadramut. This British seaport is the natural outlet of Yemen. ”

“ For two days they travelled over high, rocky mountains, by the worst roads they found in Yemen. The country was poor and thinly inhabited, and the declivities only began to be clothed with trees and terraced into coffee plantations as they approached the plains. The poorer regions are not considered entirely safe by the Arabs, as the people frequently plunder defenceless travellers; but the party passed safely through this region, and reached Beit el-Fakih after a week’s journey from Sana. ”

“ The Yemen, the Hadramaut, and Nejd, the nurseries of the race, with their agricultural and commercial conditions, afforded them the well-being, the repose, and the moderate activity necessary to the formation of healthy and shapely bodies. Their migrations and caravan leading through desert tracts, their Bedouin life, turned them into hardy athletes, resourceful leaders of men, and determined warriors ”

“ It is the boast of Arabia that it has never been conquered. This immunity from subjugation has, however, been only partial, and is owing to the nature of the country; for although the barren sands of the Hejaz and Nejed have always baffled the efforts of hostile armies, yet the more inviting region of Yemen, the Happy Arabia of the ancients, has more than once allured a conqueror, and submitted to his sway. The inhabitants of this country have been the same in blood and in manners from the dawn of history. ”

“ Regarding Yemen there is234 more probability of a great political change in the near future. Aden is a cinder-heap, but Sana has a fine, cold climate and is the capital of a rich mountain region capable of extraordinary development. ”

“ The present Shereef of Mecca at times dictates to the Sublime Porte while the Bedouin tribes even in Hejaz acknowledge neither Sultan nor Shereef and waylay the pilgrim caravans that come to the holy cities unless they receive large blackmail. In Yemen the Arabs have never ceased to fret under the galling yoke of the Turk since it was put on their shoulders by the capture of Sana in 1873. The insurrection in 1892 was nearly a revolution and again this year (1899) all Yemen is in arms. ”

“ From all accounts, the Turkish Government is trying to open up the Yemen and civilize its people, but up till the present it has been unsuccessful, and as it still keeps those bars on the doors to the Yemen that must ultimately open to the Gospel, it is hindering rather than helping the advance of civilisation. ”

“ Over 2,000 camel loads come into Aden every year, and each load passes through English territory by “block-signal” system, for it is highly taxed. As to its use, step into a kahwah in any part of Yemen shortly before sunset, and you will see Arabs each with a bundle of green twigs in his lap, chewing at the leaves of kaat.
At Taiz I first had an opportunity to meet the Jews of the interior of Yemen. Altogether they number perhaps 60,000 in the whole province. They live mostly in the large towns and very few are agriculturists. ”

“ There are those who desire to see England assume a protectorate over all Yemen, and if ever the Arabs should turn out the Turks, England would be almost compelled to step in and preserve peace for her allied tribes near Aden. Long since the army at Aden has felt the need of a hill-station and only the Crescent keeps the English troops penned up in an extinct crater where life at best is misery.
The southern part of Arabia is of such a character geographically and the coast so barren that it offers no attractions to the most ambitious land-grabber. ”

“ A special characteristic of the Yemen highlands is that fields and inhabited sites are found at the highest elevations, the mountain-tops forming extensive plateaux, often scarped on every side and only accessible by difficult paths cut in the cliffs which encircle them like the escarpments of a natural fortress; a remarkable example of this is Jebel Jihaf on the Aden border, 8000 ft. ”

“ Map of Yemen.
Sabæans.—The ancient name of the people of Yemen was Saba (Saba’ with final hemza) ; and the oldest notices of them are in the Hebrew Scriptures. The list of the sons of Joktan in Gen. x. 26–29 contains in genealogical form a record of peoples of South Arabia which must rest on good information from Yemen itself. Many of these names are found on the inscriptions or in the Arabic geographers,—Sheba (Saba’) , Hazarmaveth (Ḥaḑramaut) , Abimael (Abime‘athtar) , Jobab (Yuhaibib, according to Halévy) , Jerah (Waráḥ of the geographers) , Joktan (Arab Ḳaḥtan; waḳata = ḳaḥata) . ”

“ Accordingly, when the three days had elapsed, the servant of the first treasure came to him and said, ‘Go forth and meet thy harem, together with the treasure I have brought thee from Yemen, part of which is by way of costly merchandise; but the slaves, black and white, and the horses and camels and mules are all of the Jinn. (Now the genie, when he betook himself to Cairo, found Ali’s wife and children in sore straits for nakedness and hunger; so he carried them forth of the town in a travelling-litter and clad them in sumptuous raiment of that which was in the treasure of Yemen.) ”

“ The Yemen Jews are very poor; they present a most peculiar ethnological type. They have a very dark complexion, almost of a deeper shade than that of the Arabs; they have beautifully chiselled features, lustrous eyes, are most simple in their piety and devotion to the Holy City. They still retain their manuscript prayer books, which Dr. Adler states are most interesting. I saw a Yemen woman with her child working in the heat of the sun at what, in Lancashire, would be termed navvy’s work, and at the close of the day saw the clerk of the works give her sixty centimes as her daily wages. ”

“ The region most thoroughly explored is Yemen, in the south-west corner of the peninsula, where the labours of a succession of travellers from Niebuhr in 1761 to E. Glaser and R. Manzoni in 1887 have led to a fairly complete knowledge of all that part of the province west of the capital Sana; while in 1902-1904 the operations of the Anglo-Turkish boundary commission permitted the execution of a systematic topographical survey of the British protectorate from the Red Sea to the Wadi Bana, 30 m. east of Aden. ”

“ A serious revolt broke out in Yemen in 1892. A Turkish detachment collecting taxes in the Bani Merwan lands north of Hodeda was destroyed by a body of Arabs. This reverse set all Yemen aflame; under the leadership of the imām, who had, since the Turkish occupation, Yemen revolt.lived in retirement at Sada, 120 m. north of the capital, the powerful tribes between Asir and Sana advanced southwards, occupied the principal towns and besieged the few Turkish fortified posts that still held out. In many cases the garrisons, Arab troops from Syria, went over to the insurgents. ”

“ Its harbors are few and unsafe. Its mineral resources are to this day unexplored and unknown. Its impenetrable deserts, guarded by a fierce and martial population, have always set at defiance the best-matured plans of invasion and conquest. In the principality of Yemen, appropriately named The Happy, the cultivation of the soil has flourished from time immemorial, but in almost every other province the returns of agricultural labor are discouraging and unremunerative. ”

“ From Menakha to the coast is only two long days’ journey; three by camel. The first stage is to Hejjeila, at the foot of the high ranges, thence to Bajil, a village of 2,000 people, and along the barren, hot plain to Hodeidah. At Bajil the people are nearly all shepherds, and the main industry is dyeing cloth and weaving straw. Here one sees the curious Yemen straw hats worn by the women, and here also the peasant-maidens wear no veils. Yet they are of purer heart and life than the black-clouted and covered women of the Turkish towns. ”

“ The people of Nedjed pass continually through this district in search of coffee-beans, and during the Wahaby dominion there was no other intercourse between Yemen and the northern provinces of Arabia. This country seldom enjoys peace, the mountaineers being hostile to the pastoral inhabitants of the low districts, and often at variance among themselves. They are all very warlike, but the Wahabys have succeeded in checking their private feuds. ”