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The history of Yemen stretches back over 3,000 years, and its unique culture is still in evidence today in the architecture of its cities, towns and villages. From approximately 1,000 BC this region of the Southern Arabian Peninsula was ruled by three successive civilizations: Minean, Sabaean and Himyarite.   These three kingdoms all depended for their wealth on the spice trade.  Aromatics such as myrrh and frankincense were greatly prized in the ancient civilized world and were used as part of various rituals in many cultures, including Egyptian, Greek and Roman. 

In the 11th century BC, land routes through Arabia were greatly improved by using the camel as a beast of burden, and frankincense was carried from its production center at Qana (now known as Bir Ali) to Gaza in Egypt.  The camel caravans also carried gold and other precious goods, which arrived in Qana by sea from India.

The chief incense traders were the Minaeans, who established their capital Karna (now known as Sa'da), before they were superseded by the Sabaeans in 950 BC. 

The Sabaean capital was Marib, were a large temple was built.  The mighty Sabaean civilization endured for about 14 centuries and was based not only on the spice trade, but also on agriculture.  The impressive dam, built at Marib in the 8th century, provided irrigation for farmland and stood for over a millennium.  Some Sabaean carved inscriptions from this period are still extant.

The Himyarites established their capital at Dhafar (now just a small village in the Ibb region), and gradually absorbed the Sabaean kingdom.  They were culturally inferior to the Sabaeans and traded from the port of al-Muza on the Red Sea.  By the first century BC, the Romans had conquered the area.

The British conquered Aden in 1839 and it was then known as the Aden Protectorate.  The British also made a series of treaties with local tribal rulers, in a move to colonies the entire area of Southern Yemen.   British influence extended to Hadhramawt by the 1950s and a boundary line, known as the ‘violet line’ was drawn between Turkish Arabia in the North and the South Arabian Protectorate of Great Britain, as it was then known.  (This line later formed the boundary between northern and southern Yemeni states in the 1960s.)

In 1849 the Turks returned to Yemen and their power extended throughout the whole of that region not under British rule.  Local insurrection against the Turks followed and autonomy was finally granted to the Zaydi Imam in 1911.  By 1919 the Turks had retreated from Yemen for the last time and the country was left in the hands of Imam Yahya, who became the country’s king. Yemen’s independence was recognized by Britain in 1925.  

Imam Yahya ruled Yemen from 1918 until his assassination in the 1948, failed revolution, and was succeeded by his son Ahmad (1948-1962).  Clashes with the British over Aden were characteristic of Ahmad’s rule, and he sought protection from Cairo, resulting in a short-lived pact between Yemen, Egypt and Syria.

On his father’s death in 1962, Ahmad’s son, Mohammed al-Badr, ruled for only one week before the 26th September Revolution, led by Colonel Abdullah al-Sallal, proclaimed the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR).

The deposed Imam fled to the mountains of the North and his Royalist forces, backed by Saudi Arabia, and waged a civil war against the YAR, which lasted for eight years.  Egypt gave aid to the Republican army and a meeting between Egyptian President Gamel Abdul Nasser and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in 1965 led to an agreement to end the involvement of both these countries in the civil war.   Arrangements were made to hold a plebiscite to allow the people of YAR to choose their own form of government, but this never happened and fighting resumed in 1966.

Egyptian troops withdrew from the region in 1967.  War continued until 1969, when the YAR people and army succeeded to control all regions of Yemen and the Royalists were thrown out of the country.

In the late 1960s, British presence in Southern Yemen was minimal outside Aden itself.  Intense guerrilla fighting throughout the mid-sixties resulted in a British withdrawal from Aden in 1967.  With the closure of the Suez Canal, Yemen’s economy was on the verge of ruin, and the new People’s Republic of South Yemen, which came into being on 30 November 1967, relied heavily on economic support from Communist countries. It became, in effect, the first and only Arab Marxist State.  In 1970 the Republic’s name was changed to the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY).

Mutual distrust between the two Yemenis characterized the seventies, and tensions flared into a series of short border wars in 1972, 1978 and 1979. Two presidents of the YAR were assassinated during this period.  However, under the Presidency of Ali Abdullah Salah of the Hashid tribe, in the late seventies/early eighties, the stability of the YAR steadily improved.  

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