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For thousands of years, Yemen has been one of the world’s most important crossroads.
It was home to an ancient kingdom, the legendary land of Sheba, the port that gave its name to mocha coffee, and a strategic gateway between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Its mountains, tribes, empires and divisions have shaped a history as rich as it is complex. However, despite its history, it is also a land where unification is very difficult.
Learn more about the history of Yemen in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Today’s Yemen may at first seem unsuited to a thriving civilization, but its unique geography has given it distinct advantages throughout its history.
The Sarawat Mountains along the Red Sea coast provide protection from the July monsoon winds. The western slope flows into the Wadi Hadhramaut valley, an unusually lush region of the arid Arabian Peninsula.
To thrive in this difficult climate, the early Yemeni states had to take advantage of the monsoon and develop agricultural methods suited to intermittent rainfall. Early urban centers built irrigation systems to distribute water after the July rains and also developed terraced farming to disperse rainfall and reduce soil erosion.
The largest water project was the Great Marib Dam, built by the ancient Sabeans. Built as an earthwork in 1750 BC and completed in the 8th century BC, the Marib Dam was 1900 feet (579 m) long and connected two mountain peaks to form a massive reservoir.
The Marib Dam collected July floodwaters to form a large temporary river that channeled monsoon floods. The wealth generated by the Marib Dam led the Romans to call the region “Felix Arabia,” or Happy Arabia.
To observers from outside the region, Yemen seemed like paradise. The Greek traveler Strabo, who traveled to the region in the 1st century AD, characterized the region’s agricultural production as follows: Many streams water the land, and people enjoy everything in abundance. The country has good shade trees and produces a variety of fruits.
The region’s most enduring legacy was frankincense and myrrh, the aromatic resins produced by the trees. Frankincense and myrrh were highly coveted commodities in the region and were worth more than gold by weight.
This precious aromatic resin is obtained by cutting the bark and collecting the hardened sap as the tree heals.
Roman historian Pliny the Elder described the economic power of the incense trade: “The Sabeans are the richest, because they possess equally the wealth of the Romans and Parthians, and sell the produce of the sea and the forests, and buy nothing in return.”
The story of the Queen of Sheba illustrates Yemen’s economic power and the profits from exports. Sheba was the kingdom of the Sabeans, and Ethiopia also occupied this land.
Historical records about Sheba are limited, but references to the Bible, early Islamic texts, and the Torah depict Sheba as a wise queen of a southern nation who oversaw a powerful trade network.
The Queen is famous for impressing King Solomon with her wisdom and bringing him caravans of gifts. Ethiopian records also tell of an affair between the queen and Solomon that led to the establishment of a new royal lineage.
Yemen’s prosperity ended tragically in the 6th century. A massive flood collapsed the Great Marib Dam, wiping out a thousand years of stability in a single disaster. The destruction of the dam triggered a massive wave of migration across the Arabian Peninsula.
The migration forced urban Yemenis to move to the northern part of the peninsula, which is inhabited by Bedouin nomads and has few cities.
The cultural and linguistic landscape of the entire peninsula was transformed by the migration of Yemeni tribes such as the Aws and Khazraj. As these groups moved north and integrated with the northern Bedouins, a unified Arab culture began to emerge. This synthesis was enriched by the combination of Yemeni literary traditions with Bedouin storytelling, which gave rise to a new form of Arabic prose.
This new linguistic unity and the formation of a unified Arab culture became even stronger after the advent of Islam. After the advent of the Prophet Muhammad, Yemeni immigrants played a major role in the survival of early Muslim communities.
Muhammad’s revelations and teachings caused unrest in Mecca, and in 622, the first year of the Islamic calendar, he was exiled to the city of Medina. In Medina, Muhammad sought help from the Ansar.
The Ansar were comprised of Yemeni tribes who migrated north to Medina and were one of the first people to convert to Islam. During the formation of Islam, protection from tribal communities was essential and Muhammad relied on Yemeni immigrants.
The group has been in Medina since the destruction of the Mirab Dam, where they fought over farmland and water resources. These conflicts were deadly and, seeking a way out, they turned to the Prophet Muhammad for mediation.
The Prophet mediated their dispute, and these two groups became his staunchest allies. They fueled his efforts to spread Islam throughout the Arabian Peninsula, including Yemen, which became one of the first regions to join the Islamic community.
Traditional ancient trade along the Incense Route slowed after the rise of Christianity and Islam. Despite this slowdown, trade in new goods has turned Yemen’s fortunes around and established coffee as one of the country’s signature legacies.
Coffee is believed to have originated in the coastal forests of Ethiopia, and spread throughout the region, reaching Yemen in the 15th century. Arabica coffee grows well in Yemen’s high altitudes and alluvial soil.
The sun-drying process of Yemeni Arabica produced a complex, fruity coffee that quickly became a sensation in the region. Coffee has emerged as a coveted cash crop. Mocha is named after a port in Yemen and refers to the variety, not the flavor, of the coffee.
Yemen’s prosperity was short-lived as it came under Ottoman rule in the 16th century. The Ottoman Empire wanted to control the Red Sea not only for the coffee trade, but also for the pepper trade.
The Portuguese were beginning to establish control over the region, and the Ottomans could not stand idly by. Control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Arabia and Africa was essential for controlling maritime trade from East Africa and the Indian Ocean.
But maintaining control came at a steep price. The Ottoman Empire and their elite Janissary troops struggled to subdue the independent Yemenis. One Ottoman official described the costs of subduing Yemen: “The Ottoman army dissolved like salt in water.”
In Yemen, many people practiced Zaydism, a branch of Shia Islam that differed from Persian Islam. These Yemeni Zaydis never accepted the legitimacy of the Ottoman Caliphate.
The city’s fierce resistance weakened Ottoman power in the region, and in 1635 the empire was forced to retreat, with Yemen falling into the hands of the Zaydi Imam.
The Ottoman Empire returned to the region 200 years later to promote renewal and modernization as part of the Tanzimat Reforms. During this period, the Ottoman Empire came to jointly occupy Yemen.
In the southern part of their territory they were forced to coexist with the British, whose main goal was to secure control over the Gulf of Aden. Yemen’s value to Britain and the Ottoman Empire lay in its potential to control an area linking Mediterranean trade routes to the Indian Ocean.
North Yemen gained independence from the Ottoman Empire with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, and South Yemen was under British rule until 1967. Yemen’s importance to Britain only grew after the war, with the Bab el-Mandeb Strait now controlling access to the Suez Canal.
Yemen became a flashpoint in the Cold War as nationalist uprisings in the region attracted the attention of both the Soviet Union and the United States. In the south, British occupation ended with the establishment of the People’s Republic of South Yemen, the only Marxist-Leninist state in the Arab world. It was controlled by the Yemen Socialist Party, which was affiliated with the Soviet Union.
Soviet interest in Yemen was similar to that of all previous empires. That is, access to major ports and control over strategic geography.
North Yemen fought a fierce struggle with Egypt and Saudi Arabia competing for control of the country during the North Yemen Civil War from 1962 to 1970.
Egypt was interested in expanding its influence down the Red Sea and preventing the expansion of conservative Arab monarchies backed by Saudi Arabia.
But Egypt’s intervention has not had the results President Gamal Abdel Nasser expected, and there will be no quick victory. The Egyptians contributed nearly 70,000 troops to the struggle, which led to a prolonged civil war.
Although the civil war in North Yemen ultimately led to the creation of a weak republican government, it is now clear that Yemen is a country that regional powers are trying to influence for their own purposes.
When communism collapsed in 1990, North and South Yemen were unified and the modern Republic of Yemen was born. But this has not brought unity or solved Yemen’s problems, and the country remains deeply divided and in chaos.
Yemen has emerged as one of the largest global crisis areas since 2014. What was originally a domestic civil struggle escalated into a widespread regional confrontation. The current situation is that the Iran-backed Houthi forces maintain authority in the north, while the Saudi-backed Yemeni government maintains jurisdiction over the south. This reflects centuries of deep-rooted historical hostility.
The conflict has led to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Iranian and Saudi-backed forces have blockaded the port to prevent the other side from asserting control. In the process, they derailed food distribution efforts. The crisis has deepened over the past few years due to the destruction of critical water infrastructure and failure of the monsoon.
According to United Nations data, more than half of Yemen’s population is experiencing severe food insecurity, and the situation is rapidly worsening, with more than 2.5 million children suffering from malnutrition.
For two-thirds of the population, the health crisis may be more serious than the food crisis. The United Nations estimates that about half of the country’s hospitals are currently dysfunctional, either demolished or inoperable due to severe shortages of staff and essential infrastructure.
Cholera is rampant due to the collapse of water resources, and we are suffering from water supply shortage and pollution problems.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the halt in vaccine distribution is causing a resurgence of long-eliminated diseases, such as polio.
Even though Yemen is a single country on the map, it still remains a divided country. It is a land divided between North and South not only by geographical differences, but also by different governments, different allies, and decades of conflict.
Yemen’s history is the story of a land that has always been important beyond its borders. It was home to an ancient kingdom, controlled important trade routes, shaped the history of coffee, and stood at the crossroads of Africa, Arabia and Asia.
But it is also a place where geography, tribal politics, religion and foreign intervention make unity difficult and conflict a constant part of life for centuries.
