Yemen

Yemen was the Sunni kingdom of the Rasulids, ruled from Zabid and Taiz. In 1337 Sultan al-Mujahid Ali held the Tihamah and southern highlands against the Zaydi imams of the north.

In 1350 Egyptian Mamluks seized al-Mujahid on pilgrimage to Mecca and held him for a year. The Rasulids fell to the Tahirids in 1454; the Mamluks overran their successors in 1517. The Ottomans took Aden in 1538, but Qasimid imams expelled them from the highlands by the mid-seventeenth century and profited from Mokha coffee.