To the Romans Yemen was Arabia Felix (Fortunate Arabia), whose mountains and fertile plains caught the tail end of the Indian Ocean monsoon rains and were distinct from the barren desert of the rest of the Arabian peninsula.
During the early 17th and early 19th centuries European powers and the Ottoman Empire both struggled to control unruly Yemeni tribes. Evidence of colonial legacies is visible across Yemen.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 resulted in a scrabble for land with Saudi Arabia and the border only finally demarked in 2000. An ongoing conflict between royalist and republican forces in northern Yemen culminated in the assassination of Imam Yayah in 1962, an event which led to the eventual end of the 1,000 year Imamate and the formation of the Yemeni Arab Republic (YAR) in 1970.
During much of this time the southern port of Aden was controlled by the British, through delicate diplomacy their influence extending to much of south east Yemen. However, attacks by Marxist guerrillas fighting for an end to colonial rule resulted in the Aden Emergency and the departure of the British in 1967 and the birth of the Arab world’s first and, to date, only Marxist state, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY).
The disintegration of the Soviet Union saw an end to support for the PDRY. Weakened and exposed, southern efforts towards unification were intensified. Today’s Republic of Yemen was declared in 1990 upon the merger of the Yemeni Arab Republic (YAR) and the PDRY with Ali Abdullah Saleh as president.
The poorest country in the Middle East, Yemen endures a grumbling insurgency by the Zaidi Shiite Al Houthi movement in the north, unresolved separatist unrest in the south and periodic attacks by bands of Al-Qaeda jihadists hold up beyond the writ of the Sana’a government.
More recently a broader civil unrest has seen mass demonstrations in Sana’a, Ta’iz and other regional centres demanding an end to Saleh’s regime, endemic government corruption, and political repression.
Sunni Muslim (especially in the north) and Shia Muslim, with some small Christian and Hindu communities. There is still a tiny Jewish minority.
Social conventions:There are plenty of jokes about Yemeni hospitality, usually involving enforced stays in hidden mountain caves surrounded by armed men. However, with rare exceptions, Yemeni hospitality is traditional, courteous and generous. Yemen is a conservative Muslim country with all the prohibitions that this entails; women in particular should dress modestly and in some instances cover their hair. Mosques with the exception of certain times at Sana’a’s Al Saleh Mosque, and many Islamic holy sites, are off limits to non-Muslims; alcohol is forbidden to Yemenis and restricted to upmarket tourist hotels for foreigners. No such Islamic prohibition applies to qat. Pervading almost all strata of society, buying, chewing and waxing lyrical over narcotic qat leaves is a national obsession verging on addiction – everything stops for qat.
Arabic. English may be understood by some in larger cities.
