Yemen in 1911


A century ago Yemen was still very much a terra incognita for Europeans and Americans. The British controlled the port of Aden, but few individuals were allowed to travel up through the highlands to visit the realm of the Zaydi imam. One of the few was Samuel Zwemer, an American missionary who spent several years in Yemen and other parts of Arabia. His desire to convert Arabs to Christianity seeps through his description, but the photographs published in his Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country, written with his daughter Amy, are valuable documentation. I attach below a chapter on a trip he made up to Sanaa a century ago. The photographs will follow in a future post. For an earlier post on Zwemer, click here.