Yemen is a country at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, where the Red Sea meets the Arabian Sea. In ancient times its fertile, well-watered highlands made it so prosperous that the Romans called it Arabia Felix, or Fortunate Arabia, and it grew rich on the trade in frankincense and myrrh. Today, by tragic contrast, it is one of the poorest countries in the region, devastated by a prolonged civil war.
Yemen was home to some of the great kingdoms of antiquity, including Saba, the biblical land of Sheba, whose queen is famed in tradition, and whose people built the remarkable Great Dam of Marib to water their fields. Later the Himyarite kingdom ruled, and Yemen was among the first regions to embrace Islam in the seventh century. Over the centuries it saw a succession of imams, Ottoman rule, and a division into North and South Yemen, which united into a single country only in 1990.
Yemen rises from hot coastal plains along the Red and Arabian Seas to a high, rugged interior of mountains and plateaus, where centuries of farmers have carved spectacular terraces into the steep slopes. These highlands, catching seasonal rains, were the source of the country's ancient prosperity, while the east fades into the vast sands of the Empty Quarter. Off the coast lies the remote island of Socotra, famous for plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth.
The flag of Yemen has three horizontal bands of red, white, and black, the pan-Arab colours shared with several neighbouring nations. The red is commonly said to represent the blood of martyrs and the struggle for unity, the white a bright future, and the black the dark days of the past. The simple tricolour was adopted in 1990, when North and South Yemen joined to form a single republic.
Yemen is an entirely Muslim country, and Islam is central to its identity, law, and daily life. Its population is divided between followers of the Sunni Shafi'i school, common in the south and along the coast, and the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam, long influential in the northern highlands, where Zaidi imams ruled for many centuries. This religious geography has played a significant role in the country's modern conflicts, even as faith remains the foundation of Yemeni society.
Yemeni cuisine is hearty and aromatic, regarded as among the most flavourful in the Arabian Peninsula. A national dish is saltah, a bubbling stew of meat and vegetables topped with a frothy fenugreek relish, eaten with flatbread. Mandi, meat and rice slow-cooked in an underground oven, is a celebrated feast dish, and the distinctive spice blend hawaij flavours many foods. The food reflects Yemen's old role as a crossroads of the spice and coffee trades.
Yemen's ancient wealth grew from agriculture made possible by its highland terraces and ingenious irrigation. The country is historically important as a home of coffee: the port of Mocha gave its name to the drink, and Yemeni coffee was among the first to be traded to the wider world. Grains, fruits, and vegetables are grown on the terraces, but much scarce water and farmland is now given over to qat, a mild stimulant leaf chewed across the country.
The kingdom of Saba and the legend of the Queen of Sheba, the Great Dam of Marib, and Yemen's role in spreading coffee to the world are sources of deep pride. In modern times the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990 created the present state. Since 2014, however, the country has been engulfed in a devastating civil war involving regional powers, which has caused one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with widespread hunger and suffering.
Yemen has a population of around 34 million people, predominantly Arab and entirely Muslim, with a young and fast-growing population. Most people live in the fertile highlands and along the coast, and the historic capital, Sanaa, with its distinctive tower houses, is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Years of war have displaced millions within the country and pushed much of the population into deep poverty and dependence on aid.
