Religion and History in Yemen

Yemen was a centre of civilisation and of religion long before Islam. The Sabaean kingdom around Marib, with its great dam, worshipped Almaqah and other South Arabian deities; Judaism took hold to the point where the Himyarite kingdom converted in the fourth century and its last king, Dhu Nuwas, persecuted the Christians of Najran, prompting an Aksumite invasion; and Christian communities existed in Najran and Sanaa before Islam. Islam came in the Prophet's own lifetime through emissaries, and Yemen contributed heavily to the early conquests. Two traditions then developed side by side.

In the northern highlands the Zaydi branch of Shiism, founded on the imamate of al Hadi ila al Haqq who arrived at Saada in 897, established a state that lasted with interruptions until 1962; Zaydi doctrine is markedly close to Sunni positions in law and rejects the idea of a hidden imam, holding instead that the imam must be a qualified descendant of Ali who claims the office and can be deposed. In the south and the coastal plain, Shafii Sunnism prevailed, and in Hadhramawt the Ba Alawi Sufi tradition produced scholars whose networks carried Islam along the Indian Ocean to Malabar, East Africa and the Indonesian archipelago.