Readings

Further suggested readings on Yemen, its culture and social life, and your place in it as a foreigner, are listed below with brief descriptions.  It is recommended for all students to read these titles to their interest, as more prior knowledge of Yemen will broaden the overall experience and understanding of your time abroad.

For correct social interactions, you may wish to refer to Dr. Margaret Nydell’s Understanding Arabs, a short but very useful introduction to cultural expectations Arabs and foreigners have of each other, and strategies for approaching these effectively.  This book can be found in most major libraries or bookstores.  For a brief primer on Islam, Frederick Denny’s Islam is recommended.  Students with little or no background in Islamic, Arab, or Middle Eastern studies will profit from Albert Hourani’s definitive A History of the Arab Peoples, which provides a concise, if sometimes superficial summary of many scholars’ work.  Students will note that the photograph of Sana’a that appears in this text was taken close to our Bab Al-Sabah house. 

More detailed information, specifically on Sana’ni Yemeni customs can be found in the encyclopedic Sana’a: An Arabian Islamic City, published by the World of Islam Festival Trust.  This is a rare book, of which only 2,000 copies exist, so it will likely be found only in large university libraries.   Perhaps more generally accessible is the probing examination of northern Yemeni tribal society, Tribes, Government, and History in Yemen by Paul Dresch or A Tribal Order by Shelagh Weir. Also by Paul Dresch, A History of Modern Yemen, details the 20^th Century, complete with illustrations, maps, and a chronology. Those with a taste for literary theory will enjoy Brinkley Messick’s The Calligraphic State, an examination of textual authority in the Ibb province, particularly worthwhile for the emphasis on the changes in Yemen in the past century.  For a more contemporary publication, look at Yemen into the Twenty-First Century: Continuity and Change, by Kamil Mahdi, Anna Wuerth, and Helen Lackner.

Steven Caton’s work on poetry as a political act in Yemen, Peaks of Yemen I Summon and his most recent work The Yemen Chronicle provide an alternative vision of conflict resolution in the Arab world.  The Graves of Tarim by Engseng Ho highlights Yemen (predominantly Hadhramout’s) movement and diaspora across the Indian Ocean over the past 500 years.

The most well known and popular writer on Yemen, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, has lived in the Old City of Sana’a for over 20 years. His books Yemen: Travels in Dictionaryland (1997, his most famous work), Yemen: The Unknown Arabia (2001),  and more recently the first two volumes of his journeys in "the footnotes" of Ibn Batutah; Travels with A Tangerine (2001) and The Hall of a Thousand Columns (2005) are all worth reading.

Travel guides are harder to come by for Yemen.  Yemen (Bradt Travel Guide) by Daniel McLaughlin has a publish date of January 2008 (not released at the time of writing), but is expected to offer the most up-to-date information on traveling in Yemen.  The intellectually lighter but more practical Lonely Planet guide to Yemen contains useful, if sometimes incomplete, travel and health information.  The current edition is widely available in bookstores in North America and Europe, though it is out-of-date.  German speakers may also wish to consult the more thorough Reise know-how Jemen Reisehandbuch.  If you plan to do much trekking in Yemen, the Reise know-how guide provides significantly more information on trails that the Lonely Planet guide, and non-German speakers may find translations of particular passages useful.  Finally, for a lighter and amusing account of a former traveler in Yemen, Motoring with Mohammed by Eric Hansen is a great way to prepare yourself for the quirks of Yemeni society and culture.

Reading Yemeni newspapers before traveling will also introduce students to current events and happenings in the area.  There are two main English papers in Sana’a, the Yemen Times and the Yemen Observer. The Arabic Felix magazine, published in Yemen, also offers readers an in-depth view to travel and society of Yemen and the greater Middle East.

Centers of Study in Yemen

American Institute for Yemeni Studies

Das Deutsche Haus Jemen

Centre Français d'Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales de Sanaa

Yemen-America Language Institute

The British Council - Yemen