1909 - 1998
Second president of the Yemen Arab Republic.
Abd al-Rahman al-Iryani served as head of state of the Yemen Arab Republic from the overthrow of President Abdullah al-Sallal in late 1967 until the bloodless coup led by Ibrahim al-Hamdi in mid-1974. Born in 1909 in the Iryan region of North Yemen, al-Iryani hailed from a famous family of Sunni jurists and teachers; he was the head of that family for five decades. His pre-1962 political activities qualify him as a father of the modern Yemeni republic, and his tenure as head of state was most notable for the republican-royalist reconciliation that ended the Yemen Civil War, for the drafting and adoption of the 1970 constitution, and for holding Yemen's first parliamentary elections in 1971. A traditionally trained qadi (judge) who held to some modern ideas, he bridged the gap between the ima-mate of the past and the new republic. Indeed, some called him the "republican imam," and claimed that this was the key to the successful transitional role he played; many Yemenis referred to him simply as "the Qadi." After 1974 he spent most of his exile in Damascus, was invited by the regime to return to Yemen in 1982, and made almost annual visits to his native land thereafter. Upon his death in 1998, he was returned to Yemen for a hero's burial.
Bibliography
Burrowes, Robert D. The Yemen Arab Republic: The Politics ofDevelopment, 1962 - 1986. Boulder, CO: Westview; London: Croom Helm, 1987.
Dresch, Paul. A History of Modern Yemen. New York and Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Stookey, Robert W. Yemen: The Politics of the Yemen Arab Republic. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978.
— ROBERT D. BURROWES
