Yemen, Ottoman eyalet of
Substate | Defunct
1517 CE to 1636 CE
The Yemen Eyalet is an eyalet (province) of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1516, the Mamluks of Egypt annexed Yemen; but in the following year, the Mamluk governor surrendes to the Ottomans, and Turkish armies subsequently overruan the country.
They are challenged by the Zaidi Imam, Qasim the Great (r.1597–1620), and by 1636, the Zaydi tribesmen had driven the Ottomans out of the country completely.
In 1872, most of it becomes Yemen Vilayet after a land reform in the empire.
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The expanding Ottoman Empire had overpowered the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Present-day European Turkey and the Balkans, among the first territories conquered, are used as bases for expansion far to the West during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The Ottoman Turks have by 1517 conquered Persia, Syria, Palestine, the Hejaz and Egypt itself, in the process destroying the Mamluks, who have failed to adopt field artillery as a weapon in any but siege warfare.
The Ottoman Empire is a world power when Suleyman dies in 1566.
Most of the great cities of Islam—Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad— are under the sultan's crescent flag.
The Porte exercises direct control over Anatolia, the sub-Danubian Balkan provinces, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.
Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces are governed under special regulations, as are satellite domains in Arabia and the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars.
In addition, the native rulers of Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) are vassals of the sultan.
The Ottomans suppress a revolt in Yemen between 1569 and 1570.
Al-Mu'ayyad Muhammad, the son of Imam al-Mansur al-Qasim, who had restored the Zaidi imamate and begun the cumbersome process of conquering back Yemen from the Ottoman occupiers, had taken the reins of government from his father in 1620, at which time much of the highland was in Zaidi hands, and an uneasy truce obtained with the Turks.
The population in and around Sa'dah in the north in 1622 had refused to pay taxes to the imam.
Muhammad then sent his brother Saif al-Islam al-Hasan who put down the revolt.
Al-Hasan, however, had found means to win the confidence of the locals through reforms, and was appointed governor on behalf of the imam.
Through this act of delegation of power to a relative, the power of the Qasimid family had been confirmed in the north.
Muhammad decides in 1626, however, to break with them.
The tribes of northern Yemen respond enthusiastically to his call, and the rising scores victories against the Turks.
Most of the lowland area of Tihamah fall to the imam's forces, and San'a is besieged.
The Ottoman difficulties are aggravated by the attacks of Shah Abbas of Persia on Turkish positions in Iraq.
Imam Muhammad proposes a truce with the Ottomans in 1629, as he sees the need to rest his own forces.
The governor Haydar Pasha agrees, and on March 9, he hands over the keys to San'a to the imam's son Ali.
The Turks withdraw to the coast under the imam's protection, and another son, Yahya, is made governor (amil) of San'a.
Ta'izz, another major city, falls to the imam’s forces in the same year.
The Turks take to the offensive with an augmented force in 1635, but are defeated and finally give in, agreeing to surrender the lowland cities Zabid, ...
...Mocha, and ...
...Kamaran.
Thus ends the first period of Ottoman rule in Yemen.