Ghamdan Al-Yousifi
Journalist
The book The Republican Culture in Yemen by the writer and intellectual Dr. Ali Mohammed Zaid is perhaps one of the most significant focused illuminations of Yemen’s reality under Imamate rule, which he describes as a “kingdom of darkness.”
Dr. Zaid concentrates on the terrifying isolation Yemen experienced under the Hamid al-Din dynasty after the Ottoman withdrawal in 1918. In his work, he documents testimonies of contemporaries and historical records from travelers, writers, and politicians who lived through both periods, mapping the stark contrast between two eras: one in which Yemen shut itself off from the world and seemed to live outside of time, and another in which it opened to modern life and unleashed the energies of its people toward the future.
For decades, the Imams ruled Yemen under an absolute system of personal power built on isolation. Imam Yahya, followed by his son Imam Ahmad, rejected any form of openness to the outside world, to the point where the very presence of foreigners in Yemen was considered life-threatening.
Dr. Zaid cites the Lebanese writer and traveler Amin Al-Rihani, who in his book Kings of the Arabs recalls a striking exchange. When asked about the stance toward foreigners entering Yemen, a Yemeni replied bluntly:
‘They are not permitted.’
— ‘And if a foreigner comes?’
— ‘By God, we slaughter him.’
This was no joke. The Imams, haunted by fears of conspiracy and foreign intervention, imposed on Yemen a draconian isolation that virtually severed it from the outside world. Even the few travelers who tried to visit, such as Al-Rihani himself in 1922, were met with stern warnings and heavy restrictions.
The Imam even controlled travel permits personally, both for entering and leaving Yemen, subject to his moods and to complicated arrangements with British colonial authorities in Aden. In the south, Al-Rihani was warned explicitly: ‘There is war in the country today, and the roads are unsafe… your head may be cut off and no one will ask. My advice: do not travel.’
This isolation was not a random policy, but a deliberate doctrine of the Imamate.
Dr. Zaid cites the economist Mohammed Saeed Al-Attar in his book Economic and Social Underdevelopment in Yemen, noting that Imam Yahya deliberately kept the country in poverty under the pretext of safeguarding independence. He preferred Yemen to remain poor and backward ‘out of fear that foreigners might explore natural resources and help develop the country.’ He considered any economic development or openness a threat to independence and a pretext for foreign intervention. Thus he obstructed all modernization efforts. After the Ottoman departure in 1918, he even rolled back many of their reforms. Yemen closed in on itself—no modern roads, no functioning ports—and, as some historians described, it ‘remained in isolation and seclusion, almost resembling Tibet.’
The veteran politician Mohsen Al-Aini—who lived through both eras and later became a leader of the Republic—wrote in his book Battles and Conspiracies Against the Yemen Cause: ‘All of Yemen’s ports before 1962 were unfit for docking any vessel, even fishing boats. All of Yemen’s trade passed through Aden.’
The infamous Hajjah prison became the fate of opponents, with pre-fabricated charges of apostasy and treason.
The image of Sana’a and Yemen’s cities resembled a living museum of the Middle Ages, as visiting observers described. The French doctor Clotilde Vian, who lived in Yemen in the early 1950s and chronicled her experience in I Was a Doctor in Yemen, recorded vivid scenes of that reality.
She wrote in astonishment that she felt as though she were in a land ‘still living in the dark Middle Ages.’ Life was primitive to the extreme: after sunset, the ‘silence of cemeteries’ blanketed Sana’a—no movement, no light—‘only the barking of dogs and the clatter of horse hooves on the ground.’ She recalls being warned in Aden on the eve of her journey to Sana’a: ‘If you were my daughter, I would forbid you from traveling… do not go, you will regret it’—an ominous signal of the hardships ahead.
There were no hospitals in the modern sense—only a single modest facility inherited from the Ottomans, which the Imam later converted into his palace. There were hardly any Yemeni doctors, and not even trained nurses.
Dr. Zaid also cites Vian’s observations of blatant social hypocrisy: some princes who were outwardly rigid in their religiosity indulged secretly in moral corruption. Meanwhile, Yemeni women were entirely absent from the public scene—their role extremely limited, their education virtually nonexistent.
In terms of education, Yemen languished in near-total intellectual darkness. Al-Rihani noted during his travels across the country that he ‘did not see a school anywhere,’ concluding that the Imam discouraged education for the general public and had no interest in spreading knowledge.
The Imam inherited a single school from the Ottomans in Sana’a, the “Orphans’ School,” which he allowed to function reluctantly. But it was extremely limited, reserved for a few orphans and poor children. Enrollment for any child was a distant dream.
In his memoir Emerging from the Dark Tunnel, Ahmad Al-Marouni recounts how he struggled to persuade his father and officials to let him enroll. He found a rudimentary class of about thirty students sitting on the floor without desks, lacking books or notebooks except for what was written on the blackboard. Students suffered from diseases (smallpox, whooping cough, lice) in a suffocating room with poor ventilation. Remarkably, despite these miserable conditions, that modest school produced an elite of educated Yemenis who later became pioneers of enlightenment and leaders of the revolution.
This educational stagnation reflected the broader cultural and intellectual life. Under Imamate rule, Yemen saw no literary or intellectual movement; its culture remained shackled to the past.
The great Yemeni poet, critic, and thinker Abdullah Al-Bardouni published his critical work The Republican Yemen, in which he analyzed the country’s new reality and coined the phrase ‘The Republican Yemen’—borrowing from French political thought to characterize the era. Around the same time, previously banned historical books were published, such as Yemen: Man and Civilization by Abdullah Muhsin Al-Shamahi (printed in 1963), who had been an opponent during the Imamate era.
Some figures of the old regime also found an unfamiliar freedom of expression. Abdulkarim Mutahhar, former editor-in-chief of the Imam’s newspaper, authored after the revolution a book criticizing Imam Yahya titled Biography of the Tyrant (published in 1965 with a foreword by a member of the Imam’s own family). Dr. Ali Mohammed Zaid observes: ‘The revolution was a liberation for everyone—even for those who fought against it.’
In 1970, Sana’a University was established as the first university in the country under the leadership of the pioneering educator Ahmed Jaber Afif. For the first time, free public schools for girls were opened in Sana’a and Taiz in the late 1960s, marking a slow but significant path toward female education. Modern curricula replaced reliance on traditional Qur’anic schools.
Socially, too, the revolution was a major turning point. The system of slavery, which had survived in limited forms under the Imamate, was officially abolished, and a law criminalizing the buying and selling of human beings was passed, ending that ‘abhorrent legacy’ (though some practices continued secretly for a time). The new state also sought to restructure the class system, ending the privileges of the ruling Hashemite elite and declaring all Yemenis equal citizens. Social disparities did not vanish overnight, but simply advancing the discourse of equality and social justice was a remarkable shift.
The wheel of development began to turn after 1962 with help from friends in both the Eastern and Western blocs. The Chinese built a modern road linking Sana’a to Hodeida, stretching some 260 km. The Soviets completed and expanded the Hodeida port to accommodate large vessels. The Egyptians helped establish and arm the nucleus of the Republican army and built Radio Sana’a and a television station in 1964.
The first local banks were established, such as the Yemen Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1963). Branches of foreign banks opened for the first time in North Yemen’s history. The state began paying salaries to employees and the army from a public treasury instead of the old system of miri and traditional levies.
Dr. Zaid quotes the late President Ibrahim Al-Hamdi as saying that the Republican youth of the 1960s felt they were ‘starting from zero in building their country.’ Almost everything was lacking, but they had the determination to make up for centuries of lost time with rapid strides.
Dr. Zaid’s book cannot be summarized in these lines. It is rich and abundant with events, transformations, and sources. What has been presented here are merely hurried glimpses, tracing some contours of what Yemen once was—and what it has since become.
