Yemen Portal

Flag of Yemen
Flag of Yemen
Yemen's Location

Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the northeast, the Red Sea to the west, the Gulf of Aden to the south, and the southeasten part of the Arabian sea to the east, sharing maritime borders with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia across the Horn of Africa. Covering roughly 455,000 square kilometres (176,000 square miles), with a coastline of approximately 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles), Yemen is the second largest country on the Arabian Peninsula. Sanaa is its constitutional capital and largest city. Yemen's estimated population is 34.7 million, mostly Arab Muslims. It is a member of the Arab League, the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Owing to its geographic location, Yemen has been at the crossroads of many civilisations for over 7,000 years. In 1200 BCE, the Sabaeans formed a thriving commercial kingdom that included parts of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 275 CE, it was succeeded by the Himyarite Kingdom, which spanned much of Yemen's present-day territory and was heavily influenced by Judaism. Christianity arrived in the fourth century, followed by the rapid spread of Islam in the seventh century. Yemenite troops played a crucial role in early Islamic conquests. Various dynasties emerged between the 9th and 16th centuries. During the 19th century, the country was divided between the Ottoman and British empires. After World War I, the Kingdom of Yemen was established, which in 1962 became the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) following a coup. In 1967, the British Aden Protectorate became the independent People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen), the first and only officially socialist state in the Arab world. In 1990, the two Yemeni states united to form the modern Republic of Yemen, with Ali Abdullah Saleh serving as the first president until his resignation in 2012 in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Since 2011, Yemen has been enduring a political crisis, marked by street protests against poverty, unemployment, corruption, and President Saleh's plan to amend Yemen's constitution and eliminate the presidential term limit. By 2015, the country became engulfed by an ongoing civil war with multiple entities vying for governance, including the Presidential Leadership Council of the internationally recognized government, and the Houthi movement's Supreme Political Council. This conflict, which has escalated to involve various foreign powers, has led to a severe humanitarian crisis. (Full article...)


Map of Sheba in blue in South Arabia

Sheba, or Saba, was an ancient South Arabian kingdom in modern-day Yemen whose inhabitants were known as the Sabaeans or the tribe of Sabaʾ which, for much of the 1st millennium BCE, were indissociable from the kingdom itself. Modern historians agree that the heartland of the Sabaean civilization was located in the region around Marib and Sirwah. In some periods, they expanded to much of what is now modern-day Yemen and even parts of the Horn of Africa, in modern-day Ethiopia. The spoken language of the Sabaeans was Sabaic, a variety of Old South Arabian.

The Sabaeans founded the Kingdom of Saba in the late second or first millennium BCE, considered by South Arabians and the first Abyssinian kingdoms to be the birthplace of South Arabian civilization, and whose name carried prestige. The first Sabaean kingdom lasted from the 8th to the 1st centuries BCE. This kingdom can be divided into the mukarrib period, where Saba reigned supreme over South Arabia, and the kingly period, a long period of decline to the neighbouring kingdoms of Ma'in, Hadhramaut, and Qataban, ultimately ending when a newer neighbour, Himyar, annexed them. Saba was originally confined to the region of Marib (its capital) and its surroundings. At its height, it encompassed much of southwest Arabia, before eventually declining to the regions of Marib. Saba re-emerged from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE. In this time, a secondary capital was founded at Sanaa, which has become the capital of Yemen today. Around 275 CE, the Saba civilization permanently came to an end after another annexation by Himyar. (Full article...)

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Hassan al-Amri with his kids 1965

Hassan al-Amri (Arabic: حسن العمري) (1920 – 7 April 1989) was a Yemeni lieutenant general and Prime Minister of the Yemen Arab Republic for five terms between 1964 and 1971. He was popularly known as The General of Yemen. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Yemen-related articles on Wikipedia.

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Taiz (Arabic: تَعِزّ, romanizedTaʿizz) is a city in southwestern Yemen. It is located in the Yemeni highlands, near the port city of Mocha on the Red Sea, at an elevation of about 1,400 metres (4,600 ft) above sea level. It is the capital of Taiz Governorate. As of 2023, the city has an estimated population of approximately 940,600 residents making it the third largest city in Yemen. (Full article...)

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Libyan asida served with rub and molten sheep ghee; the traditional way to eat Libyan asida is to do so using the index and middle fingers of the right hand.

Asida (Arabic "عصيدة", Maghrebi "Ġsydë" [ˈʕæs(ˁ)iːdə]) is a common dish in the Arab world. It is a lump of dough, obtained by stirring wheat flour into boiling water, sometimes with added butter or honey. Similar in texture to fufu, it is eaten mainly in Middle East and African countries. It is considered one of the most popular desserts and traditional dishes in many Arab countries. (Full article...)


Religions in Yemen


Arab states


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