Sanaa is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. At an elevation of 2,300 metres, it is also one of world’s highest capital cities. The seat of the Yemeni government moved to Aden in the aftermath of the Houthi occupation in March 2015.
About Sana’a, Yemen in brief
Sanaa is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. At an elevation of 2,300 metres, it is also one of world’s highest capital cities. It has a population of approximately 3,937,500, making it Yemen’s largest city. The Old City of Sanaʽa is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The seat of the Yemeni government moved to Aden in the aftermath of the Houthi occupation in March 2015. The Al Saleh Mosque, the largest in Sana’a, is located in the Old City. It was founded at the base of Jabal Nuqum by Shem, the son of Noah, after the latter’s death. In 1062, the city was taken by the Sulayhi dynasty led by Ali al-Sulayhi and his wife, Asma. The city was also the capital of the Ethiopian viceroys during the reign of Yousef Athar, the last of the Himyarite kings. In the 9th–10th centuries, the Yemeni geographer al-Hamdani took note of the city’s cleanliness, saying \”The least dwelling there has a well or two, a garden and long cesspits separate from each other, empty of ordure, without smell or evil odors, because of the hard concrete and fine pastureland and clean places to walk. \” Later in the 10th-century, the Persian geographer Ibn Rustah wrote of Sana’a: ‘There cannot be found…
a city of greater, more prosperous, or nobler origin or food than it.’ It was known as ‘Azal’ in ancient times, which has been connected to Uzal, a son of Qahtan, a great-grandson of Shem,. in the biblical accounts of Genesis. Its name is related to the Sabaic word for ‘well-fortified’. From the era of Muhammad until the founding of independent sub-states in many parts of the Yemen Islamic Caliphate, Sanaʾa persisted as the governing seat. The Caliph’s deputy ran the affairs of one of Yemen’s three Makhalifs: Mikhlaf Sanaʼa, Miklaf al-Janad, and MikhLaf Hadhramaut. It is located at the crossroad of two major ancient trade routes linking Ma’rib in the east to the Red Sea in the west. The city is not part of the Governorate, but forms the separate administrative district of ‘Amanat Al-Asemah’ Under the Yemeni constitution, Sana is the capital, although Aden was declared as the temporary capital by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in March 2014. It also has a distinctive architectural character, most notably expressed in its multi-storey buildings decorated with geometric patterns. In the conflict that raged in 2015, bombs hit UNESCO sites in the old city.
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This page is based on the article Sana’a, Yemen published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 28, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
