In 1037 ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣulayḥī of Yemen proclaimed the Fāṭimid caliph al-Mustanṣir but set up a dynasty in Sanaa. The Ṣulayḥid dynasty ruled most of upper Yemen, warred with the pro-ʿAbbāsid Najāḥids, and gained control of Aden. Oman
In the last decades of the 7th century, the Ibāḍites (Ibāḍiyyah), regarded as a moderate Khārijite sect, conquered southern Arabia, established a Kindite imam in Hadhramaut, occupied Sanaa, and took Mecca and Medina, before the Umayyads drove them back to Hadhramaut. Oman had early become Khārijite; the first Ibāḍite imam, al-Julandā ibn Masʿūd, was elected at about the beginning of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. After the Ibāḍite invasion of southern Arabia in 893, Oman wavered between independence and subjection to the ʿAbbāsids and their Būyid or Seljuq supporters. By the 12th century the Seljuq hold had become rather precarious and local imams existed. During periods when the Indian trade used the Persian Gulf, Omani ports flourished; however, revenues diminished wherever trade was switched to the Red Sea. From the mid-12th century until 1406, the Nabhānid dynasty controlled the interior of Oman, but Turkic Oğuz (Ghuzz), Persians, and others variously possessed the coastal flank of the mountains. The Zaydīs and ʿAlawīs
In Yemen lasting movements were being shaped by the close of the 9th century; the imam al-Hādī, a theocratic arbiter-ruler of traditional type, founded the ʿAlīd Zaydī dynasty in Ṣaʿdah of northern Yemen. About the mid-12th century a Zaydī imam extended his rule northward to Khaybar and Yanbuʿ (Yenbo) and southward to Zabīd.
In the mid-10th century a refugee from disturbances in Iraq, Aḥmad ibn ʿĪsā al-Muhājir, arrived in Hadhramaut, then under Ibāḍite domination, and founded the ʿAlawite (ʿAlawī) Sayyid house, which was instrumental in spreading the Shāfiʿite (Shāfiʿī) school of Islamic law to India, Indonesia, and East Africa. The Ayyūbids and Rasūlids
The Ayyūbids of Egypt, when they invaded Yemen in 1173, found it parceled out among several dynasties. Ayyūbid objectives were probably part political, to find themselves a haven and destroy the Ismāʿīlites, and part economic, to control the India trade route. They remained in power until about 1229, generally controlling Aden, Hadhramaut, the Tihāmah, and the districts south of Sanaa. They introduced an administrative centralization apparently adapted from Syro-Egyptian organization.
With the Ayyūbids arrived the emir ʿAlī ibn Rasūl, probably of Oğuz origin, whose descendants, at first Ayyūbid governors, grasped independence (c. 1229). The Rasūlid period is the most brilliant era of Islamic history in Yemen. These monarchs embellished their capital, Taʿizz, and other cities with fine buildings; several kings had a literary bent and, besides belles lettres, wrote treatises of some originality on various subjects. A fiscal survey still surviving provides an account of the trade through Al-Shiḥr, Aden, and the Tihāmah ports, with budgets for maintaining castles, troops, and hostages kept as surety of good tribal conduct. Aden served as an important trade centre in a flourishing period of Arab and Jewish commercial enterprise. The Rasūlids kept the southern coast under loose control up to Dhofar, even holding Hadhramaut to some extent and maintaining a squadron against pirates. The sharifs of the Holy Cities
At Mecca in the mid-10th century commenced the 1,000-year ascendancy of the ʿAlīd sharifian families. Mecca now became capital of the Hejaz, replacing Medina, the centre from which it had been ruled since the Prophet’s days. The sharifs, though at times subject to such foreign overlords as the rulers of Egypt and of other parts of Arabia, exercised virtual independence. Throughout the ʿAbbāsid-Fāṭimid struggle, however, the sharifs took the opportunist line of supporting the side in ascendancy. When the Ayyūbid Saladin, after deposing the Fāṭimids in 1171, brought back orthodoxy, the sharifs again recognized the ʿAbbāsids and Ayyūbids and, from being Zaydīs, turned Sunni Shāfiʿī.
In 1181 the French Crusader knight Reynaud de Châtillon raided Arabia. He intended to attack Medina but, switching his plan, raided in 1182 the Red Sea ports as far south as Bab El-Mandeb; Saladin destroyed Reynaud’s vessels and so ended the threat to Mecca.
By the early 13th century the sharifs had conquered the Hejaz, extending their power southward to Ḥalī, but, when they sought support from Egypt, Syria, or Yemen, the Rasūlids managed temporarily to dispute the overlordship of Mecca with the Egyptians.
After Baghdad fell to the Mongols in 1258, the pilgrim caravan from Iraq lost all political significance for the Hejaz. As Iraq declined, Egyptian influence increased and the sharifs became steadily more dependent on the Mamlūks of Egypt. Mamlūk and Ottoman influence
Although the Yemeni Rasūlids sometimes disputed with the Mamlūks the overlordship of the Holy Cities, the Mamlūks generally prevailed. Egyptians and Meccans attacked al-Mujāhid the Rasūlid on a pilgrimage in 1350, and he was held prisoner in Egypt though released later. The Mamlūks
During the 14th and 15th centuries the Mamlūks became the dominant power, maintaining a political agent in the Hejaz and a body of cavalry in Mecca. Eventually they made or unmade the sharifian rulers, though the local Egyptian commander’s policy sometimes ran counter to that of Cairo. From the mid-15th century the Mamlūks took charge of the customs at Jiddah, Mecca’s port, allotting a portion of the revenue to the pasha of that port. Sharif Muḥammad ibn Barakāt (ruled 1425–53), however, received one-quarter of the value of all wrecked ships, one-quarter of all gifts arriving from abroad for the Meccans, and one-tenth of all imported goods. About half his income was distributed among the leading sharifian families.
By the mid-15th century the foundering of the Rasūlid dynasty in Yemen made way for the Ṭāhirids; about the same time the Kathīrī tribe of southeastern Arabia controlled Hadhramaut on behalf of the new dynasty.
The beginning of the 16th century witnessed Portuguese penetration of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Though they failed to capture Aden, the Portuguese blockaded the Indian trade routes to Europe via the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, eventually causing severe, lasting damage to the economy of Muslim Middle Eastern countries. The Ottomans
In 1517 the Ottoman sultan Selim I conquered Egypt and proclaimed the Hejaz part of the Ottoman dominions. Sharif Barakāt II of Mecca sent his son to negotiate at the Ottoman court and was confirmed as lord of the Holy Cities and Jiddah, subject to recognizing the Ottoman sultan as overlord. Selim’s successor, Süleyman I the Magnificent, at the zenith of Ottoman power, munificently subsidized the Holy Cities, devoting large sums to new building.
In Yemen the Mamlūks of Zabīd and Taʿizz acknowledged Ottoman authority, and Ottomans took over naval operations against the Portuguese in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. They seized Aden and forced the Yemenis into the mountains, capturing Sanaa and Shahārah. Ultimately, however, the Yemenis drove them back into the Tihāmah. The Ottomans adopted Mocha (Al-Mukhā) in southern Yemen as their base, and Aden declined in importance. After conquering Iraq in 1534–36, the Ottomans could operate in the Persian Gulf against the Portuguese, who had taken Hormuz and Muscat in 1507 and Bahrain in 1521 and freely harried the Arabian coasts.
The Ottomans reached as far as Al-Ḥasā by 1550 as they sought to curb Portuguese expansion. With Ottoman help, local merchants partially revived the spice trade, especially in pepper, but the Sunni Banū Khālid expelled Ottoman forces in 1670. The Portuguese maintained themselves in Muscat until 1649, although they could hold Bahrain only until 1602, when they were expelled by Ṣafavid Iran, which ruled there until 1717. Many Bahraini Shīʿite scholars in the 17th century moved to Iran, where they led in the development of Shīʿite theology.