Yemen

The Romans called southern Arabia Arabia Felix — fortunate Arabia — because of the wealth it drew from frankincense and myrrh. The kingdoms of Saba, Ma'in, Qataban, Hadhramaut and Himyar controlled the caravan routes that carried these resins north to the Mediterranean.

The Marib Dam, built more than two and a half thousand years ago, irrigated a plain large enough to sustain a civilisation, and its eventual collapse became one of the founding stories of Arabian history.

Islam arrived in Yemen during the Prophet's lifetime, and Yemeni scholars, sailors and migrants went on to shape communities from East Africa to Southeast Asia. Coffee took its European name from the port of Mocha.

The Old City of Sana'a has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years. Its tower houses, built of rammed earth and fired brick and decorated with white gypsum tracery around the windows, rise several storeys above narrow streets and green garden plots.

Shibam, in Wadi Hadhramaut, is a walled town of mud-brick towers up to eight storeys tall — often described as the oldest example of vertical urban planning. Zabid was a centre of Islamic learning and the home of the scholar who systematised algebra's teaching in the region, while the Landmarks of the Ancient Kingdom of Saba at Marib were inscribed in 2023.

Socotra, four hundred kilometres off the coast, has been separated from the mainland for so long that a third of its plant life exists nowhere else on earth. The dragon's blood tree, the desert rose and the frankincense trees of its limestone plateaus make it one of the most distinctive landscapes in the world.

On the mainland, the western highlands rise above three thousand metres and are cut into stone terraces that have been farmed for coffee, qat, sorghum and fruit for well over a thousand years.

Yemeni building is a craft tradition in itself: rammed earth in Sana'a, mud brick in Hadhramaut, dressed stone in the highlands, each with its own decorative language of window arches, plaster and coloured glass.

Silverwork, the jambiya dagger, weaving and honey from the Hadhramaut are all part of daily culture, and the coffee that first reached the world through Yemeni ports is still grown on the same terraces.