50 Fun Facts About Yemen

What is the constitutional capital and largest city of Yemen?

It sits on a plateau above 2,000 metres; the government fled to a 'temporary' capital in the south when the Houthis seized it in 2015.

Which two countries share a land border with Yemen?

Across the water it also faces Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia; it is the second-largest country on the Arabian Peninsula.

The ancient South Arabian kingdom of Saba is thought to be which biblical land?

Its rulers took the title Mukarrib, roughly 'unifier'; the kingdom's influence reached across the Red Sea into Ethiopia and Eritrea.

What is the legendary queen who visited Solomon called in Arabic tradition?

Makeda is her Ethiopian name; the great 12th-century ruler Arwa al-Sulayhi was nicknamed 'the junior queen of Sheba' in her honour.

The Sabaeans' Great Dam, an ancient engineering marvel, stood near which city, their capital?

Its final collapse around 575 is mentioned in the Quran; a Roman army of 10,000 was defeated before it could reach the city in 25 BC.

Which Judaism-influenced kingdom succeeded Saba around AD 275 and unified most of Yemen?

Its last rulers were caught between Christian Aksum and Persia; the Sassanids annexed Yemen around 570.

Through which Red Sea port did Yemen export its coffee, lending its name to a chocolate-coffee drink?

By the 17th century Yemen was the world's sole coffee producer; Europeans broke the monopoly by smuggling out trees for their colonies.

The earliest reports of coffee drinking come from the mid-15th century among which group in Yemen?

They drank it to stay awake for night devotions; the habit spread to Mecca and Cairo within a century.

Which port did Britain seize in 1839, holding it until 1967?

It became a vital coaling station on the route to India; 5,000 tribesmen failed to retake it that November.

South Yemen, independent from 1967, held what distinction in the Middle East?

The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen was aligned with the Soviet Union until it merged with the north.

In which year did North and South Yemen unite into the modern Republic of Yemen?

The merger took effect on 22 May; a civil war between the two halves followed within four years.

Who was the first president of unified Yemen, in power until the Arab Spring forced him out in 2012?

He had already run North Yemen since 1978; he famously compared governing Yemen to 'dancing on the heads of snakes'.

How did Yemen's long-time strongman, ousted in 2012, die in December 2017?

He had switched sides against the Houthis days earlier and was caught trying to flee the capital.

The Houthi movement, which seized the capital in 2014, follows which branch of Islam?

Officially called Ansar Allah, it grew out of a 1990s revivalist movement in the northern highlands, where Zaydi imams had ruled for a thousand years.

Which country launched 'Operation Decisive Storm' against the Houthis in March 2015?

It led a coalition of mostly Arab states after President Hadi fled abroad; the Houthis were accused of receiving Iranian support.

Which Yemeni city declared itself the country's 'temporary' capital in 2015?

President Hadi fled there, his home town, after escaping house arrest in the north.

Roughly what share of Yemen's population needed humanitarian aid in 2019, the world's highest?

Some 24 million people; a cholera epidemic in 2017 was at one point killing a person an hour.

Which Yemeni island, closer to Africa than Arabia, has about a third of its plant species found nowhere else?

About 90% of its reptiles and 95% of its land snails are also endemic; the Portuguese held a fort there in the early 1500s.

The umbrella-shaped dragon's blood tree of Yemen's islands is named for what?

The resin has been traded since antiquity as a dye, varnish and medicine; the tree's shape channels fog moisture down to its roots.

Shibam, nicknamed the 'Manhattan of the Desert', is famous for what?

About 500 mud towers rise five to eleven storeys, some over 30 metres, making them early high-rise apartment buildings.

The Old City of Yemen's capital, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been inhabited for roughly how long?

Its Great Mosque dates from the 7th century, and the Salt Market still sells spices, raisins, copper and silver.

Zabid, a former capital and centre of Islamic learning, was placed on which UNESCO list in 2000?

About 40% of its historic houses had been replaced with concrete; it had been a World Heritage Site only since 1993.

Jabal an-Nabi Shu'ayb, the highest mountain in Yemen and in all of Arabia, is roughly how tall?

The western highlands catch the heaviest rain in Arabia, over 1,000 mm a year at Ibb, feeding terraces carved up the mountainsides.

What is the Tihamah?

The name means 'hot lands'; its lagoons breed malaria mosquitoes and its evaporation is so fierce that highland streams never reach the sea.

The strait between Yemen and Djibouti, connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, has a name meaning what?

Bab-el-Mandeb's name is blamed on the perils of its navigation, or on an earthquake legend; it is one of the world's key shipping chokepoints.

Which stimulant leaf, chewed socially across Yemen, consumes up to 40% of the water drawn from Sanaa's basin?

Its active compound is cathinone; a British newspaper warned in 2009 that Yemen could become the first nation to run out of water.

What is a jambiya?

The most prized hilts are rhinoceros horn, at up to $1,500 a kilo, a trade that helped push the black rhino to critical endangerment.

Saltah, Yemen's national dish, is a meat stew topped with a froth made from which spice?

The whipped hulba is added along with sahawiq, a fresh salsa of chillies, tomatoes and garlic, and it is eaten with flatbread at lunchtime.

What is Yemen's most popular sport?

The country's mountains, with peaks above 3,000 metres, also draw climbing and trekking tours in calmer times.

Which of these is Yemen's largest island?

Jabal al-Tair is a volcano that erupted as recently as 2007; the archipelago in the Arabian Sea is bio-geographically part of Africa.

What was Operation Magic Carpet?

Yemenite Jews had formed a distinct community for two millennia; roughly 50 or fewer remain in the country.

Which Modern South Arabian language, with about 70,000 speakers, is Yemen's largest South Semitic language?

Soqotri, its island cousin, has around 57,000 speakers; the ancient Old South Arabian tongues survive only in Razihi.

Which name did the Ottomans give their Yemeni province, headquartered first at Zabid after 1539?

The Zaydi highland tribes' stubborn resistance to the Turks made them national heroes; the Ottomans later ran a Yemen Vilayet from the capital.

Which Portuguese commander occupied Yemen's largest island and attacked its main port in 1513?

Portugal held the port for about 20 years; the Mamluks and then the Ottomans fought them for control of the Red Sea trade.

Yemen's Queen Arwa sent missionaries who founded a lasting Indian community of which sect?

She moved her capital to the small town of Jibla and is remembered as one of the great sovereigns of Yemeni history.

Which brother of Saladin conquered Yemen for the Ayyubids in 1174?

He took Zabid and the southern port within months, but the Zaydi strongholds of the north never fell to the Ayyubids.

Which Sunni dynasty, ruling Yemen from Zabid and Taiz from 1229, claimed the caliphate after Baghdad fell?

Its scholar-kings wrote treatises on everything from astrology to agriculture and quarrelled with the Mamluks over who dressed the Kaaba.

The North Yemen civil war broke out on the death of Imam Ahmad bin Yahya in which year?

Egypt backed the republicans and the Saudis the royalists in a proxy war that lasted most of the decade.

Yemen's first directly elected president won the 1999 vote with roughly what share?

He managed a mere 77% in 2006; a 2011 plan for his son to inherit the presidency helped spark the uprising against him.

In which Gulf capital did Yemen's outgoing president sign the 2011 deal handing power to his deputy?

He flew to Riyadh on 23 November 2011 to sign the Gulf Co-operation Council plan; Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi took over in an uncontested vote.

Which was Yemen's largest export market in 2013, taking 41% of its exports?

Crude oil, coffee and salted fish led the exports; the economy has since halved in the war.

If 'Yemen' derives from an Arabic root meaning 'right' (facing east), the name would mean what?

A rival theory links it to yumn, 'blessed', because the highlands are so much more fertile than the rest of Arabia.

Roughly how many people live in Yemen?

That makes it the second most populous country on the Arabian Peninsula after its northern neighbour.

Coffee's spread from Ethiopia to Yemen is credited to which Yemeni dynasty's ties with the Adal Sultanate?

By the late 15th century coffee drinking was well established among Yemen's Sufis, and until about 1700 most of the world's coffee came from Yemen.

Which Yemeni human rights activist won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2011?

Her award came amid the street protests against President Saleh that the UN Security Council responded to by calling for a transfer of power.

Into how many governorates is Yemen divided, in addition to the capital municipality?

The governorates split into 333 districts and, as of 2001, 38,284 villages; Sanaa sits in the separate municipality of Amanat Al-Asemah.

Alongside Saba, which three other major kingdoms ruled ancient South Arabia?

By the third century BC all three had become independent of Saba, which is thought to be the biblical Sheba.

Which empire annexed Yemen after the death of the Aksumite viceroy Abraha around 570?

Persian rule ended after the coming of Islam; the last Persians were expelled by a self-proclaimed prophet, Abhala ibn Ka'ab Al-Ansi.

To which small town near Ibb did Queen Arwa move the Sulayhid seat of power from Sanaa?

She ruled until her death in 1138 and sent Ismaili missionaries to India, where a community persists to this day.

The Ottomans' 1911 treaty recognised Imam Yahya as autonomous ruler of which part of Yemen?

The Ottomans kept ruling the Shafi'i areas of the mid-south until they left in 1918, after which Yahya began conquering the rest of Yemen.