Al-Ḥudayda

Al-Hudaydah lies on Yemen's Tihama coast, facing the Red Sea and the island of Kamaran. Its name was recorded for the coast in 1393, and by the middle of the fifteenth century it appeared as a settlement under the Tahirid rulers. The navigator Ahmad ibn Majid counted it among Yemen's important ports in a work completed around 1490.

In 1515 Mamluk forces landed and took the town, which suffered heavy damage and lost trade to Mocha farther south. Ottoman forces subsequently brought the Red Sea ports under their authority. When the Zaydi imam al-Mu'ayyad Muhammad advanced on Hudaydah in 1625, the Ottoman garrison withdrew to Kamaran. Mocha's coffee trade later overshadowed the town, but in the late seventeenth century attacks on shipping near Bab al-Mandab encouraged merchants to favour Hudaydah's position farther up the Red Sea. Its coffee commerce revived, and the port enjoyed a period of prosperity during the eighteenth century.