Muhammad Ali Uthman

c. 1908 - 1973

North Yemen political leader.

Muhammad Ali Uthman was a Yemeni nationalist and republican, a strong supporter of both the 1962 revolution that resulted in the Yemen Arab Republic (YAP) and the 1967 coup that replaced the alSallal regime with that of Qadi Abd al-Rahman al-Iryani. He was a member of the Republican Council, the plural executive created by the al-Iryani regime, from 1967 until his assassination in 1973. His murder, the result of a local dispute, was at the time attributed wrongly to leftist dissidents supported by the revolutionary regime in South Yemen; it was seized upon by the government as an excuse to crack down on leftists. Uthman was a traditional local notable and landowner, and a Sunni Muslim of the Shafiʿi sect, with much influence in part of the Hujariyya, Jabal Sabr, and the lower elevations south of Taʿiz City. He is memorialized in a very good English-language school in Taʿiz (grades 1 through 12), which was named after him shortly after his death.

Bibliography

Bidwell, Robin. The Two Yemens. Boulder, CO: Westview; Harlow, U.K.: Longman, 1983.

— ROBERT D. BURROWES