Yemenite Coast

The Yemeni coast faces the southern Red Sea, where a low plain lies below the mountains of the interior. Its ports joined caravan routes to ships sailing toward Arabia, Africa and India. Mocha became an important centre of this trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, handling textiles, spices, metals and coffee grown in the Yemeni highlands. Merchants and sailors gathered there before continuing through the Red Sea or the Bab el-Mandeb.