Hamid al-Din Family

A ruling dynasty of North Yemen.

This Sayyid family provided the last dynasty of Zaydi imams in North Yemen and produced a late, brilliant flowering of the traditional authoritarian political system that had been an important part of Yemeni politics for over one thousand years. Founded by Imam Muhammad ibn Yahya Hamid al-Din in 1891, the dynasty was consolidated and reached its zenith during the long reign of his son, Imam Yahya ibn Muhammad Hamid al-Din (1867 - 1948), a reign that began in 1904 and ended with his assassination in 1948. Imam Yahya's son, Imam Ahmad ibn Yahya, long the crown prince, quickly overturned the 1948 revolution and went on to restore and develop further the institutions and practices of his father until his death in 1962. Imam Ahmad, however, was less successful than his father in insulating traditional Yemen from the outside world and modernity. Imam Muhammad al-Badr succeeded his father, only to be overthrown a week later by the 1962 revolution that created the Yemen Arab Republic. More than a generation later, the Hamid al-Din family remains officially banned from Yemen.

Bibliography

Dresch, Paul. A History of Modern Yemen. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

— ROBERT D. BURROWES