Yemen in Brief
Yemen or (officially: the Republic of Yemen), is an Arab country located in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It covers an area of about 555,000 square kilometers, and a population of 30,411,000 people ,according to the population projection for the year 2020.
Yemen is bordered by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the north and to the east by the Sultanate of Oman, and it has a southern coast on the Arabian Sea and a western coast on the Red Sea.
Yemen has more than two hundred islands in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, the largest of which are Socotra and Hanish. The Yemeni constitution stipulates the state’s democracy, its adoption of political and partisan pluralism, its adoption of a free economic system, its commitment to international covenants and covenants stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that Islamic Sharia is the primary source of legislation. Yemen is a member of the Arab League, the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the World Trade Organization.
Yemen is considered one of the oldest centers of civilization in the ancient world and is the birthplace of Semitic languages. It is not known exactly when the history of ancient Yemen began, but some inscriptions of the civilization of Mesopotamia depict that it began a long time ago. For example, Sheba was mentioned in a Sumerian text dating back to about 2500 BC, that is, since the middle of the third millennium BC. What was found of the inscriptions in Yemen revealed the history of ancient Yemen dating back to the late second millennium BC. One of the most important and famous kingdoms in ancient Yemen is the Kingdom of Sheba, Ma’in, Qataban, Hadramawt and Himyar, and they are credited with developing one of the oldest alphabets in the world known as the Musnad script. The number of texts, writings, and archaeological evidence in Yemen is countless, and a large part is still unexplored until now. The Romans called it Happy Arabia. Several states were established in the Middle Ages, such as the Ziyad state, the Ya`fari state, the Sulayhid state, and the Tahiriyya, and the most powerful of them was the Rasulid state. What was known as northern Yemen gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1918 with the establishment of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, which overthrew it in 1962 and the establishment of the Yemen Arab Republic, while southern Yemen remained a British protectorate until 1967 and the establishment of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. Yemeni unity was achieved on May 22, 1990.
Yemen’s economy depends on limited and underutilized oil and gas resources, and this sector, although it constitutes a large proportion of GDP, is still undeveloped. Historically, Yemen is an agro-commercial country, but it depends on the incomes of its sea lanes and ports as well as its fish and marine wealth and tourism
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Geography
Yemen is located in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula between Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman. It overlooks the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. The length of the border strip between Yemen and Saudi Arabia is approximately 1,458 km and 288 km with Oman to the east. Yemen overlooks the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, and the length of the coastline of Yemen is 2500 km
Administrative Divisions
The Republic of Yemen is divided administratively within the framework of the local authority system into (22) governorates, including the capital secretariat. The governorates are divided into: (333) districts, of which (2200) are subdivided, in addition to (36,986) villages and (91489) localities and neighborhoods. The number of local districts is also (5620) local districts (electoral center).
Culture
The culture of Yemen is abundant and rich in various folk arts, such as dances, songs, dress, and women’s and “Janabiya” or naments. Its origins go back to very ancient times, and it has a role in defining the features of Yemeni identity and nationalism. The most popular folk dance in Yemen is the "Al-Bara" dance. The word “bara” is derived from “wit” or “ingenuity” in controlling the dagger. The styles of the dance differ in different regions and tribes, and all of them are distinguished from the other by the accompanying music and speed of movement and their differences, except that all of them are ancient war and fighting dances, and the most important meaning of skill is to teach the people of the tribe to work As an interconnected group in difficult circumstances, the dance often consists of three to four paragraphs, and the number of participants may reach fifty. They perform miniature movements. The speed of the rhythm and the difficulty of the movements increase with the progress in the paragraphs. The worst performing dancers come out of the dance. Among the famous folk dances are Sharh and Shabwani, and Zamil for Hadramis is a dance. The Jews in Yemen have a famous dance called the Yemeni Step (Hebrew: צעד תימני) Tsaad Timani) in which both sexes participate and no weapons are used in it, but it is similar to other dances in Yemen and is often performed at weddings.
