and Najrān. Although the Southern population are majority orthodox Sunni, following the Shāfi˓ī school, a Zaydī Shii school eventually became a distinct minority and unique theological movement within the north Yemen originating from the ninth-century CE Zaydī state in Tabaristan.54 The first Zaydī
Imām of the Yemen emerged around the end of the ninth century CE and acceded after mediating between two opposing northern tribes.55 However, despite eventually assuming power over the Yemen, the Zaydīs could not control the whole region and their influence was restricted to their strongholds in the northern highlands. Zaydī beliefs are nearer to the Sunnis than the Shia and their theology is largely devoid of the mysticism and occult beliefs of the Ismā˓īlīs and other Shia who subscribe to ‘semi-divine’ Imāms. Robert Stokey has commented on the theological pragmatism of the Zaydī school, saying,
Its practical bent is reflected in its rejection of the idea of a ‘hidden’ [I]mam, expected to reappear with the prophets on the eve of Judgement Day. Rejected also is the notion of an occult exegesis of the Koran and the tradition accessible only to a few and its corollary, the systemic dissimulation practised by the Isma˓iliya and some other shi˓a.56
Zaydī Imāms, although receptive to Sunni traditions, must be Sayyids, blood descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (also known in the Yemen as al-sādah), who are genealogically linked through ˓Alī, the Prophet’s nephew. The Zaydī Imāms claim both Qaḥṭānī and Sayyid lineage, ensuring genealogical credence through Arab tribal purity and religious nobility. The Imām is freely elected by the Zaydī ˓ulamā’ as both religious and political leader, and Zaydī control over the Sunni majority was often imposed through military prowess with occasional periods of peaceful détente. The later Imām, Yahya Hamid al-Din (c.1904–48), was able to exercise his power and increase his influence by presenting himself as a unifying nationalist leader and religious figurehead.57 However, the Imām could not transform the ancient institution of Imāmate, known for its historical suppression of the majority Shāfi˓ī Sunnis, into a modern manifestation – as a national leader of a unified nation-state. His reign witnessed the demise of Ottoman imperial rule in the northern region and his projected image as a popular nationalist leader was founded on his aggressive attempts to usurp Ottoman hegemony. Ironically, the Turks had found a friend in the Imām by creating a mutual enemy in the British, who occupied Aden and the surrounding areas in the south. The Ottomans confirmed Yahya as the legitimate Imām and conceded to his autonomous rule in the northern highlands. The Ottoman–Zaydī alliance may well have defeated the southern British-backed Idrīsī Amirate forces had it not been for the outbreak of World War One, which precipitated the Turkish withdrawal after massive Ottoman defeats elsewhere.
The Zaydī Imāmate was internationally recognized as the legitimate successor state to the Ottoman province of the Yemen, but its control was still limited to the northern highlands. When the Turks withdrew from the Tihāmah region, control fell into the hands of the Idrīsī Amirate and although the Zaydī State tried to re-establish sovereignty over the region in 1920 by ousting the Idrīsī Amir, the efforts of the latter were curtailed by a war with Saudi Arabia in 1934. The geopolitical boundaries defined as a result of the Zaydī–Saudi war assumed a permanent boundary that later led to the creation of the Yemeni Arab Republic after the revolution in 1962. After the war with the Saudis, the Imām set about consolidating Zaydī control where the Hamid al-Din family exerted most influence. In the process, Hamid al-Din’s style of rule retrogressively transformed from that of a traditional Imām into one of an absolutist monarch.58 This transformation provoked protests from both traditional conservatives and the-emerging nationalist modernists, which resulted in his eventual assassination in 1948. He was soon replaced by his son, Ahmad, after the brief rule of an Imām from another Zaydī family. Ahmad continued in a similar vein to his father, breaking with traditional principles of Imāmate rule in favour of monarchical self-rule, whilst at the same time resisting all efforts aimed at the modernization of the country. When Ahmad died in 1962, he was replaced by his son, Muhammad al-Badr, who survived an assassination attempt after a coup d’état within just one week of his succession. Muhammad fled the country and a protracted civil war broke out between loyal forces of the Imām and the newly-installed revolutionary Republic. In 1970, unification of the Sana’ai state was achieved and in the process the establishment of a genuine nation-state was undertaken in the north. Modern migrations from the Yemen were undertaken firstly by Ḥaḍramīs to the Ottoman-ruled Hijaz, and then by the ‘Adenese’ or southern Yemenis via maritime migrations to Britain and elsewhere. Later, in the mid-twentieth century, North Yemeni migrations to the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia occurred. Paul Dresch has commented on the historical migration of the Yemeni people, stating:
Throughout the country’s history one finds accounts of famine, and in the twentieth century migrant labour funded ordinary people’s lives, as first the Ḥaḍramīs, then Lower Yemenis then Upper Yemenis all worked elsewhere.59
The recurring droughts and famines throughout the history of the Yemen have made rural living and agricultural trade practically untenable. The social, political and economic ‘push factors’ in the modern period transformed rural peasants, reluctantly, into merchant seamen. The circumstances that precipitated the colonized Yemeni emigration experiences mirrored those of their Indian and Malay counterparts.60 In the modern period, the Yemen has been a consistently poor country and according to UN statistics it is considered to be one of the least developed countries in the world.
Despite the creation of two communist states, the former northern socialist Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), and the former southern Marxist Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY),61 moves towards unifying both independent modern states were established almost simultaneously.62 However, genuine attempts at reunification were always a forlorn and half-hearted endeavour as both burgeoning republics vied against each other for the same Soviet economic and military sponsorship.63 Effective civil war in the North between the traditional tribes, who were supported by Islamists and the Saudi government, against the new modernist and secular political elite was a serious distraction.64 In the South, political in-fighting between Marxist purists and pragmatic socialists saw a string of political leaders continuously removed and replaced through a series of assassinations. Externally, Saudi forces were keen to restrain the communist influences streaming from the Yemen and employed both invasion through its regular army and insurrection by financing and arming the anti-communist ex-Sultana faction and other dissident groups in the North. The political precariousness of the PDRY in the South was due not so much to invading anti-communist forces, but largely through economic bankruptcy as a result of British colonial withdrawal and the temporary closure of the Suez Canal. However, despite both internal and external pressures and constant hostilities between the Northern and Southern states, the idea of reunification seemed to be the collective will of the people. In order to court the public mood, politicians and leaders from both the YAR and the PDRY tentatively kept reunification discussions on-going, albeit reduced at times to empty exercises in diplomatic rhetoric. However, two major events changed the political and economic climate of the region and in turn accelerated the reunification process: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the discovery of oil in both North and South Yemen.
Whilst outside influences fuelled the north-south division between the two Yemens, Ali Abdullah Salih, the then president of the YAR, proved a skilful negotiator in adopting a pragmatic approach to re-establishing routes to reunification. Furthermore, when Israel invaded the Lebanon in 1982, both Yemeni leaders, Salih and Ali Nasser, toured the region’s capitals in what Latta describes as a ‘joint Yemeni diplomatic initiative to forge a common Arab position.’65 Simultaneously, as the Soviet Union began to implode politically, its support for dependent states like the Yemen became less of a priority compared to the internal problems that arose after the introduction of Mikail Gorbachev’s perestroika in Soviet Russia. Therefore, Soviet-inspired Marxist states were also forced to undergo their own liberalizing and democratic reforms in which free market economies and political pluralism quickly became the vogue.66 The process of political reform was better accommodated