South Arabia

Yemen and the incense country: highland kingdoms that grew rich carrying frankincense north, and the confessional states that later held the same mountains. Ground where a caravan route, a monsoon port and a terrace wall each supported a polity, and where the imperial armies that came for them — Aksumite, Ayyubid, Ottoman — could take the coast and not the highlands.

The line below is a time axis. Position on it is date, so concurrency is visible: concurrent polities sit side by side rather than in sequence.

8 sourced edges run between this region and another, to Ethiopian Empire, Hujrid Dynasty, Kingdom of Aksum, Ayyubid Sultanate, Fatimid Caliphate, Abbasid Caliphate and Mamluk Sultanate. Those are not drawn on this line — a thread that crossed regions would assert a sequence nobody cited — but they are on each polity’s own page.

800 BC600 BC400 BC200 BC20040060080010001200140016001800Saba' 800–600 BC to 275Himyar 110 BC to 525–570Ziyadid Dynasty 8191018Zaydi Imamate of Yemen 8971962Najahid Dynasty 10221158Sulayhid Dynasty 10471138Zurayid Dynasty 10801173Rasulid Sultanate 12291454Tahirid Sultanate of Yemen 14541517275 Himyar absorbed remnants of Saba'1022 Najahid Dynasty slave-general of Ziyadid Dynasty1080 Zurayid Dynasty partitioned from Sulayhid Dynasty1454 Tahirid Sultanate of Yemen absorbed remnants of Rasulid Sultanate