Yemen Portal


Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Including the Socotra Archipelago, mainland Yemen is located in southern Arabia; bordering Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the northeast, the south-eastern part of the Arabian Sea to the east, the Gulf of Aden to the south, and the Red Sea to the west, sharing maritime borders with Djibouti, Eritrea, Somaliland and Somalia across the Horn of Africa. Covering roughly 455,503 square kilometres (175,871 square miles), with a coastline of approximately 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles), Yemen is the second largest country on the Arabian Peninsula by area, and the largest by population.
Sanaa is its constitutional capital and largest city. Yemen's estimated population is 34.7 million, mostly Arab Muslims, which is estimated to be greater than that of Saudi Arabia. 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. The Sabaeans formed a thriving commercial kingdom that influenced parts of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 275 AD, 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. From its conversion to Islam, Yemen became a center of Islamic learning, and Yemenite troops played a crucial role in early Islamic conquests. Much of Yemen's architecture survived until modern times. For centuries, it was a primary producer of coffee, exported through the port of Mocha. 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 civil war. In 1967, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) gained its independence from the British Aden Protectorate, becoming the first and only communist state in the Middle East and 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...)
Selected article -
The North Yemen civil war, also known in Yemen as the 26 September Revolution, was a civil war fought in North Yemen from 1962 to 1970 between partisans of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom and supporters of the Yemen Arab Republic. The war began with a coup d'état carried out in 1962 by revolutionary republicans led by the army under the command of Abdullah al-Sallal. He dethroned the newly crowned King and Imam Muhammad al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. His government abolished slavery in Yemen. The Imam escaped to the Saudi Arabian border where he rallied popular support from northern Zaydi tribes to retake power, and the conflict rapidly escalated to a full-scale civil war.
On the royalist side, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel supplied military aid, and Britain offered covert support. The republicans were supported by Egypt (then formally known as the United Arab Republic or UAR) and were supplied warplanes from the Soviet Union. Both foreign irregular and conventional forces were also involved. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser supported the republicans with as many as 70,000 Egyptian troops and weapons. Despite several military actions and peace conferences, the war sank into a stalemate by the mid-1960s. Egypt's commitment to the war is considered to have been detrimental to its performance in the June 1967 Six-Day War against Israel. Once the Six-Day War began, Nasser found it increasingly difficult to maintain his army's involvement in Yemen and began to pull out his forces. The surprising removal of Sallal on November 5 by Yemeni dissidents, who were supported by republican tribesmen, resulted in an internal shift of power in the capital, as the royalists were approaching from the north. (Full article...)
List of selected articles |
|---|
Selected biography -
Salim Rubaya Ali (Arabic: سالِم رُبَيِّع عَلي ; 17 June 1934 – 26 June 1978), commonly known by his nickname Salemin (Arabic: سالمين), was a Yemeni Maoist politician and revolutionary who served as the second head of state of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) from 22 June 1969 until his execution on 26 June 1978.
Ali led the left-wing faction of the National Front for the Liberation of South Yemen (NLF), which forced the British to withdraw from southern Yemen on 29 November 1967. Ali's radical Marxist faction gained dominance over the more moderate President Qahtan al-Shaabi's elements, allowing Rubaya Ali to seize power; he retained the title of Chairman of the Presidential Council throughout his term, even as the NLF changed the name of the country from the People's Republic of South Yemen to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1970. (Full article...)
General images -
Selected city -

Zabid (Arabic: زَبِيد) (also spelled Zabīd, Zabeed and Zebid) is a town with an urban population of around 52,590 people, located on Yemen's western coastal plain. It is one of the oldest towns in Yemen, and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993. However, in 2000, the site was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The town was the capital of several ruling dynasties in Yemen over many centuries. (Full article...)
List of selected cities |
|---|
Selected picture -
Selected cuisines, dishes and foods -
Zhug (from Yemenite Arabic سحوق) also known as sahawiq (Yemeni Arabic: سَحاوِق, IPA: [saħaːwiq]), is a hot sauce originating in Yemeni cuisine. In other countries of the Arabian Peninsula it is also called mabooj (Arabic: معبوج), and bisbaas. (Full article...)
Related portals
Religions in Yemen
Arab states
Related portals
Categories
Topics
Related portals
Religions in Yemen
Arab states
Related portals
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
More portals






