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The Zaydī Imāms of Yemen

284–1382/897–1962

Generally in Highland Yemen, with seats in Ṣa‘da or Ṣan‘ā‘; in the twentieth century uniting all Yemen

1. The early period: the Rassid line

2. The more recent period: the Qāsimid line

The Zaydīs are a moderate branch of the Shī‘a, and they held that the caliph ‘Alī had been designated by the Prophet Muḥammad as Imām of the Community of the Faithful through his personal merits rather than through a divine ordinance or nass, and also that the Fifth Imām of the Shī‘a should rightfully have been not Muḥammad al-Bāqir but his brother Zayd, martyred during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Hishām (see above, no. 2). The descendants and partisans of Zayd later won over by their propaganda the Persian peoples of Daylam and the south-western coastlands of the Caspian Sea, a region sufficiently inaccessible (and, indeed, hardly at that time Islamised) for this work to be carried out without impediment.

The region of Yemen in the south-western corner of the Arabian peninsula was likewise remote from control by the ‘Abbāsid caliphs, and here Tarjumān al-Din al-Qasim b. Ibrahim Ṭabāṭabā, a descendant of the Second ‘Alid Imām al-Hasan, came from Medina and established himself during al-Ma’mūn’s caliphate; it was he who founded the legal and theological school of the Zaydiyya. The name ‘Rassids’, conveniently used by Western scholars to designate the ensuing line of Imāms, is geographical in origin and derived from al-Rass, a place in the Hijāz,; the term is not commonly used by indigenous Yemeni historians.

The Rassids thus settled at Ṣa’da in northern Yemen, and maintained themselves there against the local Khārījis, Qarmaṭīs and other opponents of their rule. As well as possessing Ṣa’da, they frequently held Ṣan‘ā’ also. Over the next century, Yemen remained the centre of the Zaydi da’wa, with missionaries going to the Caspian provinces and to other parts of the Islamic world. Ṣan‘ā’ was taken by the Ṣulayhids (see below, no. 45) in the second half of the eleventh century, and in the next century it was held by Arab chiefs of the Banū Hamdān (see below, no. 47) for fifty years; only briefly were Zaydī fortunes restored under Aḥmad b. Sulaymān, al-Mutawakkil, a descendant of the tenth-century Imām Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā, al-Nāsir. The Ayyūbid conquest of Yemen in 569/1174 and their domination there for over half a century (see above, no. 30, 8) considerably restricted the authority of the Imāms; they revived somewhat under the first Rasūlid rulers of Yemen (see below, no. 49), until internal disputes and civil strife brought about the eclipse of their power in Yemen.

After this time, the names of various Imāms are known, but the succession seems to have been interrupted by the intrusion of several Imāms from other Ḥasanid lines and of various claimants and counter-Imāms. A more definitely-known sequence appears after around 1000/1592 with the line of al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad. Before this, Yemen had been conquered by the Turks, with Özdemir Pasha entering San‘ā’ in 954/1547, after which Yemen became a province of the Ottoman empire, with the Zaydī Imāms recognising Ottoman suzerainty and left with considerable internal freedom of action. But the Turkish yoke was thrown off by 1045/1635, the Imāms having been reinstalled at San‘ā’ after 1038/1629. The internal history of Yemen over the next two and a half centuries continued to be confused until the Ottomans returned in the later nineteenth century to ‘Asīr, the region immediately to the north of Yemen, and then in 1288/1871 took San‘ā’. The hold of the Zaydī Imāms on the countryside of highland Yemen remained, however, firm, and on occasion they occupied San‘ā’ temporarily. The Turks left Yemen at the end of the First World War, and the Imāms were able to impose their authority over the whole country and enjoy an internationally-recognised independence. But a closed society and a traditional type of autocratic rule became increasingly difficult to maintain after the Second World War, and in 1962 a military coup brought with it the proclamation of a republic. A protracted and bloody civil war followed, until in 1970 the rule of the Hamid al-Dīn family was replaced by a coalition republican régime.

Sachau, 22 no. 45; Zambaur, 122–4 and Table B.

EL¹ ‘Zaidīya’ (R. Strothmann); EL² ‘Ṣan‘ā’’ (G. R. Smith).

H. C. Kay, Y aman: Its Early Mediaeval History, London 1892, with a detailed genealogical table at p. 302.

‘Abd al-Wāsi‘ b. Yaḥyā al-Wās‘ī Furjat al-humūm wa ‘1-huzn flhawddith wa-ta’rlkh al-Yaman, Cairo 1346/1927–8.

Ramzi J. Bikhazi, ‘Coins of al-Yaman 139–569 AH.’, al-Abhāth, 23 (1970), 17–127.

G. R. Smith, The Ayyūbids and Early Rasūlids in the Yemen (567–694/1173–1295), London 1974–8, II, 76–81, with a list of Imāms and a genealogical table at pp. 76–7, 81.