Book Description
Yemen's modern history is unique and deserves to be better understood. While the borders of most Middle East states were defined by colonial powers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a single Yemeni state was not formed until 1990. In fact, much of Yemen's twentieth-century history was taken up constructing such a state, forged after years of civil war. The book is augmented by illustrations, maps and a detailed chronology.Download Description
Yemen's modern history is unique and deserves to be better understood. While the borders of most Middle East states were defined by colonial powers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a single Yemeni state was not formed until 1990. In fact, much of Yemen's twentieth-century history was taken up constructing such a state, forged after years of civil war. The book is augmented by illustrations, maps and a detailed chronology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent Overview
I spent three months in Yemen last year and bought this book before I went. I'm glad I did, because it turned out to be the perfect primer. A HISTORY OF MODERN YEMEN gives a clear, accessible account of the civil wars throughout the twentieth century that preceded the union of the two Yemens in 1990; and towards the end it offers penetrating insights into the way a new upper class has emerged along with a new desperate underclass. Paul Dresch is also good at highlighting how, despite unification, a north-south divide continues to plague a drive for a true national identity. This book struck me as unusally accessible for the general reader/traveller considering it is principally aimed at academics.

Rich with details
I first picked up this book to validate its' authenticity, being from Yemen myself. To be honest, I learned a few facts that I was able to impress my colleagues with. Thanks! ... Read more

Book Description
Professor Dresch combines ethnography with history to describe the tribal system over the last thousand years, and examines the values the tribal people themselves bring to the contemporary world of nation states.Drawing heavily on local histories and unpublished documents, as well as on three years' field work, he discusses the place of these tribes in the world around them from the tenth century to the twentieth.Beginning and ending with the means by which tribesmen define themselves, he discusses the relation of the major tribes to the area as a whole, to pre-modern Islamic learning, the Zaydi Imamate, and ideas of contemporary statehood.This book will be of interest to readers concerned with the relation of anthropology to history and also to those from other disciplines who are concerned with Arabia past and present.It offers a fresh approach to issues which arise throughout the Middle East. ... Read more

Book Description
Yemen's inhospitable mountain ranges and fiercely independent people have kept all but the most determined invader at bay; and even the Ottomans, when they entered the region in the 16th century, were hard put to achieve more than a tenuous occupation of its highlands. Their military campaign was chronicled by Qutb al-Din al-Nahrawali, a scholar charged by an Ottoman general to document his army's progress. Lightning Over Yemen makes an invaluable 16th century Ottoman source document available in English for the first time. Al-Nahrawali's work vividly brings to life a vital period in the history of this far-flung province of the Ottoman empire, which Clive Smith's exemplary translation fully conveys. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume of al-T'abari's History has a particularly wide sweep and interest. It provides the most complete and detailed historical source for the Persian empire of the Sasanids, whose four centuries of rule were one of the most glorious periods in Persia's long history. It also gives information on the history of pre-Islamic Arabs of the Mesopotamian desert fringes and eastern Arabia (in al-Hira and the Ghassanid kingdom), and on the quite separate civilization of South Arabia, the Yemen, otherwise known mainly by inscriptions. It furnishes details of the centuries'-long warfare of the two great empires of Western Asia, the Sasanids and the Byzantine Greeks, a titanic struggle which paved the way for the subsequent rise of the new faith of Islam. The volume is thus of great value for scholars, from Byzantinists to Semitists and Iranists. It provides the first English translation of this key section of al-T'abari's work, one for which non-Arabists have hitherto relied on a partial German translation, meritorious for its time but now 120 years old. This new translation is enriched by a detailed commentary which takes into account up-to-date scholarship. ... Read more

Book Description
The history, poetry, and genealogy of the Yemen is the earliest known history of pre-Islamic Yemen. Attributed to the South Arabian historian 'Abid b. Sharya al-Jurhumi d. 680 A.D.), it recounts in prose and poetry six saga cycles of ancient personages and events of the Yemen. Here, two sagas, the dispersion of Sam's descendants from Babel to the Yemen, and the destruction of the tribes of 'Ad and Thamud, are translated with complete annotation. The tales of Luqman b. 'Ad and his seven vultures, Sulayman and Bilqis, the Himyarite kings, and Tasm and Jadis are given in full synopses. ... Read more

Product Description
This Elibron Classics edition is a facsimile reprint of a 1892 edition by Edward Arnold, London. Yaman, its early mediaeval history, by Najm ad-Din `Omarah al-Hakami. Also the abridged history of its dynasties by Ibn KhaldЇun. And an account of the Karmathians of Yaman by Abu `Abd Allah Baha ad-Din al-Janadi. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Canadian Chemical News, published by Chemical Institute of Canada on July 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1338 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Shards of history. (Article).(Yemen gold mine dates from about 3,000; archeology)
Author: John Greenough
Publication: Canadian Chemical News (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2002
Publisher: Chemical Institute of Canada
Volume: 54Issue: 7Page: 24(2)

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2007. The length of the article is 946 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Madawi al-Rasheed and Robert Vitalis (editors). Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society, and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.(Book review)
Author: Eleanor A. Doumato
Publication: Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ) (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 29Issue: 2Page: 61(3)

Article Type: Book review

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Amazon.com
Englishman Tim Mackintosh-Smith was studying Arabic at Oxford when he visited Yemen, a forgotten country at the heel of the Arabian peninsula, and became obsessed with the place and its language. He's lived there since 1982, and this book--marketed as travel writing but more a blend of personal memoir and national history--is the result. There are certainly travel episodes, such as a trip to the remote island of Susqatra where the Gulf of Aden meets the Indian Ocean. Yet Yemen is more the product of a man gone native than a visitor with an itinerary. Indeed, Mackintosh-Smith offers a forthright defense of the country's lotus-like drug culture, which centers on qat, a leaf that produces a narcotic effect when chewed. "We qat chewers, if we are to believe everything that is said about us, are at best profligates, at worst irretrievable sinners," he writes. Although international health officials have warned against the drug, Mackintosh-Smith assures us this is all "quasi-scientific poppycock." The leaf, he says, helps its users to "think, work, and study." Yemen is surely an exotic land, and one of its charms--fully revealed in Mackintosh-Smith's digressive prose--is the way it has remained quaintly Arabic and seemingly immune to the modern forces transforming its neighbors. Well-received upon its initial publication in the United Kingdom, Yemen may come to be recognized as a small classic. --John J. Miller Book Description
Yemen is arguably the most fascinating and least known country in the Arab world. Classical geography described it as a fabulous land where flying serpents guarded incense groves. Medieval Arab visitors told of disappearing islands and menstruating mountains. Our current ideas of this country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula have been overrun by images of the desert, by oil, by the Gulf War-but there is another Arabia. Writing with an intimacy and a depth of knowledge gained through thirteen years among the Yemenis, Mackintosh-Smith is a traveling companion of the best sort-erudite, witty, and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean, and three millennia of history, he reveals a land that, in the words of a contemporary poet, has become the dictionary of its people. In Yemen: The Unknown Arabia we witness the extraordinary in the ordinary. Yemen is a part of Arabia, but it is like no place on earth, and Yemen is a book in which every page is filled-like the land it describes-with the marvelous. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

eh
I suppose I expected a bit more with this book, I mean, it was okay...the author provided a concise conveyance of the history and culture, but I have a hard time believing that the Yemenis are steeped in such ridiculous superstition (mostly because I'm of Yemenite descent myself.)I further was deeply annoyed by his generalist comments not only concerning the Yemeni people, but particularly the Hadramis; for me it bordered on rascist.I also which he spoke more about the people and customs of Socotra, and what the indigenous Socotri language sounded like as opposed to Arabic.But obviously the author loves his adopted homeland or he would've left it a long time ago.

Entertaining travelogue about Yemen
This is a travelogue of a Brit's visit to and exploration of Yemen.The author paints a beautiful and romantic picture of Yemen with text that is both easy and enjoyable to read.I knew virtually nothing about Yemen before reading this book, and I purchased it from Amazon on a whim.I was not disappointed.Although there is some discussion of history and politics in this book, the author's primary emphasis is describing the scenery, the people, and the culture that he has experienced on his travels.If the author's goal was to convey a bit of the complexity of Yemeni culture, some of the natural beauty of the Yemeni landscape to a Western audience, and a part of the rich history of Yemen, he has succeeded.I found the author's description of a sailing trip to Suqutra, an island off the coast of Yemen, to be particularly evocative.The `ritual' of qat was also surprising and interesting.I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about Yemen from a Westerner's viewpoint, particularly if one looking for an entertaining, not scholarly, account.Some of the less enthusiastic reviews of this book state that the account is too idealistic.This is probably a fair criticism, but I do not view this as a drawback in this type of book.

decent book at best
Apparently a reprinted version of Travels in Dictionary Land (if it was different i didn't notice) it gives a good historical and social look at Yemen but mostly in an overly exotic manner. The book and its many anecdotes, however, are very useful as a basis for further research.The chapter on traveling to Socotra is fascinating as well.At times, the reading seemed difficult to an American who is not accustomed to British humor or idioms, but rarely is the meaning lost.While this book is good for light reading or to get an idea of some of the historical, geographical and social aspects of Yemen, the idealistic vision of traditionalism grows tiring.If you're looking for serious commentary on what it is like to live and work as a foreigner in modern day Yemen, look elsewhere.

excellent travel book on a truly unknown part of Arabia
Often times reviled throughout history as a backwater, often backward, author Tim Mackintosh-Smith does a wonderful job in showing Yemen as an intriguing land, an unknown section of Arabia, bringing to the reader some of the history, culture, people, and geography of this much neglected corner of the Middle East.

Mackintosh-Smith provides an excellent primer of Yemni history. Yemen we find out once hosted powerful pre-Islamic civilizations, South Arabian states like Saba, Ma'in (whose massive and expertly produced stone works later overawed the Romans), Qaban, and Hadramawt, wealthy merchant kingdoms that grew rich on their tight control of aromatic gums - particularly frankincense and myrrh as well as cinnamon brought from India - in great demand among the Pharaonic Egyptians for medicine and for the process of mummification, by the Assyrians, by the Greeks, the Romans, the ancient kingdoms growing rich on spices rather than oil. Many of the lands were cultivated thanks to the Marib Dam - a massive structure that finally collapsed in the sixth century, that according to legend was destroyed by a rat with iron teeth - or to very impressive irrigation works, via stone tunnels cut into the living rocks of the mountains, some tunnels 150 yards long and big enough to drive a car through and still used to supply water to highland villages over 2000 years after they were built.With the collapse of this civilization - linked by many to the collapse of the Marib Dam - there was a Yemeni diaspora of sorts, as many Yemenis were in the vanguard of the early conquering armies of Islam, spreading throughout the Arab world as far as East Africa, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, and even Spain. Later on the Rasulid sultans ruled southern Yemen between the 13th and 15th centuries, making their capital of Ta'izz a wealthy and cosmopolitan capital, its rulers patrons of many of the sciences, producing astrolabes and magnetic compasses while the rest of the Islamic world was in ruins thanks to the Mongols.Modern Yemeni history is also well covered though I found it at times confusing.

The author visited many areas of Yemen. He hiked down canyons and dry wadi (seasonally dry river beds), warned by the locals of the tahish, a cow-sized, hyena like Yemeni bogeyman, though more likely in danger of the sayl, a roaring chest-high wall of water that can suddenly fill canyons thanks to distant highland rains. He viewed many mountain villages and homes perched precariously over such wadi, its citizens living on centuries-old terraces carved into the mountain, designed to catch and slow the descent of every bit of precious water that rains upon the mountains.He sampled a great variety of Yemeni foods, such as saltah (stew based on vegetables and broth topped by hulbah,fenugreek flour whisked to a froth with water), rawbah (soured milk from which the fat has been removed to make butter, popular on the island of Suqutra), qishr (a drink made from the husks of coffee beans, the bean of which have long been a major Yemeni export), and baghiyyah honey, said to the finest in the world and produced only in Yemen by bees pasturing only on ilb trees. He encountered a few of the Jews of Yemen, only a few thousand of which are left, identified by their corkscrew curl side locks. He viewed a bara', an Islamic tribal festival still practiced in the mountains, looking like a dance but more akin to a medieval tournament, a place to display skill with weapons and with heavy connotations of honor and tribal solidarity. He wrote of the qabili - the mountain tribesmen - who are regarded by city dwellers as yokels but also regarded with pride as part of their ancestry, regarding them as honorable people, ones practicing great hospitality to strangers, with many symbolically becoming a tribesmen by adoption of the asib, the tribesman's upright dagger. He visited those who were sayyid, male descendents of the Prophet, often whom devote their lives to Qur'anic knowledge, forming a class that has long had a critical role in Yemeni politics and religion. He visited Aden, one of the greatest ports in the world, its "craggy profile" formed by volcanic activity, a weird city thanks to local topography, not "one city but a series of settlements separated by outriders of the central peak, Jabal Shamsan," many of those settlements quite distinct in character, a city once contested by the Ottomans, the French, and held by the British for the better part of two centuries. He visited two sub-cultures within Yemen that don't always Arabic; the Mahris, located east of Hud along al-Masilah, racially distinct and following the very un-Arabic matrilineal descent system, and the native peoples of Suqutra, who until relatively recently many did not speak Arabic at all but rather Suqutri. Indeed the Island of Suqutra, once called the Island of Dragon's Blood thanks to one of its most famous exports, a blood red resin from the dragon's blood tree (_Dracaena cinnabari_, actually a member of the Lily family), is the subject of the last chapter, an island 260 miles from the Yemeni mainland, closer to Somalia than to Yemen, a country that once practiced very un-Islamic adult public circumcisions and witch trails into the late 1960s.

Well covered is one of the most famous and unique aspects of Yemeni culture, the chewing of qat. A dicotyledon known to science as _Catha edulis_, it is chewed by groups of men socially, the qat chews often important arenas for the transaction of business, discussions of politics and religion, to accompany weddings and funerals, or simply to unwind with friends. Qat is recognized to have a huge variety of sub-types by many Yemeni connoisseurs, with many esoteric rules; qat from a tree over a grave is to be avoided, and qat from lower branches (qatal) is the least prized of qat.

I really enjoyed this book, which boasted some interesting sketch book type illustrations, a glossary, and a good bibliography.

Gemillee- Beautiful al Yemeen
I enjoyed this work. The author spends time focusing on most areas of Yemen- the Hawdramat, Sana'a, Aden, the mountains, and Suqutra. It would have been nice to have more detail on the coastal areas and the writing at times isn't excellent, but it is a very serviceable text. MacKintosh-Smith writes from the perspective of someone who really got inside the culture- as much as a traveler can get. He retains an etic perspective, and does not live, grow, and die with the Yemeni. But this is one of the few travelogues where one can find information on qat, and even the author using it on a regular basis (though it remains classified as a drug at the same level as cocaine by the U.S. government).

It is also one of the few places where you can find a modern description of travels in Suqutra, which is worth getting the book by itself. The chapter on Suqutra describes a land isolated biologically for millions of years, displaying evidence of gigantisism as you find in Hawaii, where few predators have controlled the growth of fauna and especially flora. There are cucumber trees there, and others that look like upside-down umbrellas. Much of the flora and fauna are unique to the island. Further, severe storms six months of the year prevent access to the island. So, while over the years there have been invasions on the coast of the island by different parties, it has largely grown up unscathed into modern times. The language diverged from South Arabian in about 750 BC, and the people seem to be a mixture of Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, and Indian- but no one knows for sure. While they do now have cars (301 of them), the cigarette lighter is still an unknown machine. And since the government severely limits non-Yemeni visitors to the island, this is a rare and exciting bit of a story of what the people are like. I only wish there was more about the island. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Midstream, published by Theodor Herzl Foundation on May 1, 2000. The length of the article is 3837 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Jewish Kingdom of Himyar (Yemen): Its Rise and Fall.
Author: Joseph Adler
Publication: Midstream (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2000
Publisher: Theodor Herzl Foundation
Volume: 46Issue: 4Page: 28

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from APS Diplomat Fate of the Arabian Peninsula, published by Thomson Gale on June 26, 2006. The length of the article is 721 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: YEMEN - The North-South Merger & Challenges.(Yemeni Unification, 1990)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: APS Diplomat Fate of the Arabian Peninsula (Newsletter)
Date: June 26, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 51Issue: 6

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Book Description
Yemen has recently come to the attention to global strategic planners.This report puts these executives on the fast track.Ten chapters provide: an overview of how to strategically access this important market, a discussion on economic fundamentals, marketing & distribution options, export and direct investment options, and full risk assessments (political, cultural, legal, human resources).Ample statistical benchmarks and comparative graphs are given. ... Read more