Islamic Yemen

The Yemenites readily adopted Islam and became important participants in the military and cultural development of the new Muslim world. They looked on it as a continuation and revival of their glorious history and therefore considered themselves entitled to lay claim to special rights in the new state. The ideological justification for those claims was an epic legend of the glories of ancient Yemen that they composed. In Yemen itself, in the Middle Ages the province of the Caliphate rapidly transmuted into a succession of independent states, in which there were frequent reverberations of many radical and exotic teachings.
Various tendencies of Ismailism found a refuge and support in Yemen. It was there that the preparations were made for the Fatimids’ seizure of power in North Africa and Egypt. And the Ismaili Sulayhid state gave history one more Queen of Sheba – the great female ruler Arwa al-Sulayhi. For centuries the north of Yemen was home to the Zaidis, adherents of one of the most moderate and “democratic” tendencies within Islam. Zaidi imams ruled in Yemen for a considerable part of the 19th and 20th centuries. They were overthrown in the 1960s by revolution and a prolonged civil war. Today the Zaidis have again become one of the main sides in Yemen's internal conflict. A notable peak in the development of Yemen during the Middle Ages was the Rasulid state, ruled by a dynasty with close ties to Egypt. That period produced the finest examples of mediaeval Muslim art. Mediaeval Yemen was particularly famed for its silverwork – jewellery for women and clothing accessories for men. Yemeni janbiya daggers are unique in shape and in their symbolic role as a distinctive national emblem.

Yemen also produced a unique kind of Islamic architecture, marked by strict well-proportioned lines, light-coloured, often white walls, inner calm and outward tension. A particular style became associated with the many mausoleums of “saints” that are today being subjected to deliberate mass-scale destruction at the hands of fanatics. Such tombs are a characteristic feature of the landscape of present-day Hadhramaut, where even the many small water cisterns are adorned with domes resembling mausoleums. Mediaeval Yemen, like its ancient predecessor, is famed for its tall tower houses. In many parts they engage in a dialogue with the austere mosques, being ornately decorated using different colours and a play of white window surrounds and roof crenellations. The coastal regions of Yemen, especially on the south, have long been famed for their mariners. They carried Islam to the lands of the Indian Ocean, including Indonesia, Singapore and Zanzibar. Colonies of Hadhramautis still live in those places today, while many elements of Indian Ocean culture are evident in the clothing and ways of Yemenis today. This reflects one of Yemen's historical functions, from ancient times to the present.