Sanaa

• 1. Introduction

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  Sanaa sits at an elevation of 2300 metres, making it the seventh highest capital city in the world. To the west rises Jabal An-Nabi Shu'ayb, Yemen's tallest mountain, and to the east stands Jabal Nuqum. Between them, the capital and largest city of Yemen holds a population of roughly 3,300,000 as of 2023. Yet according to the country's constitution, Sanaa is the capital while the seat of government sits elsewhere. In March 2015, then-president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi declared Aden the temporary capital. How does a city stay the legal capital while its government rules from somewhere else? Why do its tower houses rise eight stories from stone and fired brick, decorated with geometric patterns recognised by the world? And why might this ancient place become the first national capital on earth to run completely out of water? The answers begin with a fortress, a folk tale about the son of Noah, and a thirst that no rainfall can quench.

• 2. A Name Carved In Stone

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  The first known text in the Musnad script that mentions Sanaa dates to the 5th century BCE, derived from the Sabaic word mascna'a, meaning fortress. The name itself probably comes from the Sabaic root sncc, meaning well-fortified, and appears in old Sabaean inscriptions mostly from the 3rd century CE as sncw. A popular folk etymology connects the name instead to the excellence of the city's trades and crafts.

  The Kingdom of Saba founded the city in the 1st century CE as a secondary capital, while its primary capital stayed at the oasis of Marib. Sanaa became an important military center for the Sabaeans, who used it as a base for expeditions against the kingdom of Himyar to the south. Several inscriptions announce a triumphant return to Sanaa from the wars. The same inscriptions name the Ghumdan Palace and describe the place as both a town and a maram, a term the scholar A. F. L. Beeston read as a place to which access is prohibited or restricted.

  Islamic sources tell a different origin story. They hold that Shem, the son of Noah, founded Sanaa at the base of the mountains of Jabal Nuqum after his father's death. The 10th-century Arab historian al-Hamdani wrote that the city's ancient name was Azal, a name linked to Uzal, a son of Qahtan and a great-grandson of Shem in the Book of Genesis. Al-Hamdani also recorded that the Sabaeans walled the city under their ruler Sha'r Awtar, who arguably built the Ghumdan Palace. That palace would outlast the kingdoms that followed, becoming the oldest partially standing structure in the old city.

• 3. Dynasties And Empires

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  Imam Al-Shafi'i, the 8th-century jurist who founded the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence, visited Sanaa several times and praised it with the line La budda min Sancac, or Sanaa must be seen. The Persian geographer Ibn Rustah, writing in the 10th century, declared there could not be found a city greater, more populous or more prosperous, of nobler origin or with more delicious food. From the era of Muhammad around 622 CE, the city served as a governing seat, with the Caliph's deputy running one of Yemen's three Makhalif.

  In 1062, the Sulayhid dynasty led by Ali al-Sulayhi and his wife, the popular Queen Asma, took the city and made it capital of a small kingdom aligned with the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. Al-Sulayhi ruled for about 20 years before his rivals, the Zabid-based Najahids, assassinated him. His daughter Arwa al-Sulayhi inherited the throne, withdrew from the city, and ruled much of Yemen from Jibla between 1067 and 1138. The Hamdanid dynasty then took control.

  Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, sent his brother Turan-Shah to conquer Yemen in 1173, and the Ayyubids gained the city in 1175. They switched the country's religious allegiance to the Sunni Abbasids, yet their grip was inconsistent. They chose Taiz as their capital and treated Aden as their principal income-producing city. The emir Tughtekin ibn Ayyub incorporated the garden lands on the western bank of the Sa'ilah, known as Bustan al-Sultan, where the Ayyubids built a palace. From 1323 to 1454, the city stayed in the political orbit of the Zaydi imams, outside the rule of the Rasulids and Tahirids who held most of Yemen.

• 4. Ottomans And Imams

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  The Ottoman Empire entered Yemen in 1538 under Suleiman the Magnificent, and under the military leadership of Ozdemir Pasha conquered the city in 1547. European captains based at the ports of Aden and Mocha then visited to maintain trade privileges. In 1602, local Zaydi imams led by Imam al-Mu'ayyad reasserted control and forced out Ottoman troops by 1629, after his predecessor al-Mansur al-Qasim had already weakened the Ottoman army.

  The Zaydi imams held the city until the mid-19th century, when the Ottomans relaunched their campaign. Their troops led by Ahmed Muhtar Pasha entered the city in 1872. With them came the Tanzimat reforms. City planning began for the first time, new roads were built, and schools and hospitals were established. The Ottomans rushed these changes to compete with an expanding Egypt, British influence in Aden, and Italian and French influence along the coast of Somalia.

  In 1904, as Ottoman influence waned, Imam Yahya of the Zaydi imams took power and chose isolation. He avoided Arab world politics, cracked down on liberal movements, neglected infrastructure, and closed the Ottoman girls' school. His measures turned the city into a hub of anti-government organisation. In the 1930s, groups such as Fatat al-Fulayhi and Hait al-Nidal, the Committee of the Struggle, sprang up. By 1936 most of their leaders were imprisoned. In 1941 the Shabab al-Amr bil-Maruf called for a nahda, a renaissance, and the establishment of a parliament. Most of its leaders were executed after Imam Ahmad inherited power in 1948.

• 5. Revolution And Sprawl

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  In 1948, Taiz replaced Sanaa as capital when Imam Ahmad moved his residence there, and most government offices followed. A few years later most of the city's Jewish population emigrated to Israel. By 1961 the city saw major demonstrations and riots demanding faster reform. Pro-republican officers sympathetic to Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt staged a coup in September 1962, a week after Ahmad's death, and the city's role as capital was restored. Saudi Arabia opposed this and backed the rural tribes against the largely pro-republican city.

  The North Yemen Civil War destroyed parts of the city's ancient heritage and lasted until 1968, when a deal between republicans and royalists established a presidential system. New modernisation projects reshaped the city. Tahrir Square was built on the former imam's palace grounds, and several of the old city's gates were destroyed along with sections of its wall. After the civil war ended in 1970, the city began to expand outward during a period of prosperity fed by Yemeni workers migrating to the Gulf states and sending money home.

  Growth first concentrated around al-Tahrir, the Ottoman quarter of Bi'r al-Azab, and the old southern gate Bab al-Yaman, then shifted to the outskirts. Returning migrants brought Western and Egyptian construction techniques, building concrete houses with multi-lite windows in grid patterns. A new ring road, built in the 1970s on the recommendation of the United Nations Development Programme, encouraged land speculation. Disaster struck in the late 1970s. Water pipes were laid to bring water into the old city, but there was no way to pipe it out. Groundwater built up, destabilised foundations, and led to many houses collapsing.

• 6. A Capital At War

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  In 2004, the Arab League chose Sanaa as the Arab Cultural Capital. The Al Saleh Mosque, the largest in the country, was completed in 2008 and holds over 40,000 worshippers in the southern outskirts. Three years later, in 2011, the city became the centre of the Yemeni Revolution, in which President Ali Abdullah Saleh was ousted, and between May and November it was a battleground in the 2011 Battle of Sanaa. On the 21st of May 2012, a suicide bomber killed at least 96 soldiers.

  On the 21st of September 2014, during the Houthi insurgency, the Houthis seized control of the city. Saudi-led airstrikes on the 12th of June 2015 destroyed historic houses in the middle of the capital and severely damaged a World Heritage Site. On the 8th of October 2016, Saudi-led airstrikes hit a hall where a funeral was taking place, killing at least 140 people and wounding about 600. After initially denying the attack, the Coalition's Joint Incidents Assessment Team admitted it had bombed the hall but called it a mistake caused by bad information.

  In May 2017, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported a cholera outbreak that killed 115 people and left 8,500 ill. Late that year, another Battle of Sanaa broke out between the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Saleh, who was killed. On the 17th of May 2022, the first commercial flight in six years took off from Sanaa International Airport as part of a UN-brokered 60-day truce. UNESCO is now carrying out a cash for work project to restore the historic city, with efforts led by engineer Harbia Al Himiary.

• 7. The Tower Houses

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  The Old City of Sanaa has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1986. Surrounded by ancient clay walls that stand 9 to 14 metres high, it contains more than 100 mosques, 12 hammams, and 6,500 houses. The 7th-century Jamic al-Kabir, the Great Mosque, is one of the oldest mosques in the world, and the Bab al-Yaman, the Gate of the Yemen, is more than 1,000 years old. At Suq al-Milh, the Salt Market, shoppers buy salt along with bread, spices, raisins, cotton, copper, pottery, silverware, and antiques.

  The tower houses are typically built from stone and fired brick and can reach up to 8 stories in height, with doors and windows decorated by plaster openings. They traditionally housed a single extended patrilineal family, with new floors added as sons married and had children. The ground floor stored grain and housed animals, though most families now set up shops there instead, often clashing with building inspectors. The uppermost story, called the mafraj, serves as a second reception room and hosts afternoon qat chewing sessions.

  Each traditional quarter, or hara, centred on a complex with a mosque, a bathhouse, and an agricultural garden called a maqshama. Human waste from households was disposed of via chutes, and in the mountain air it dried quickly to fuel the bathhouse. The gardens were watered using gray water from the mosque's ablution pool. Newer construction takes other forms, including neo-traditional tower houses of concrete block with brick and stone veneers, low-rise new villas with fenced yards, and smaller Egyptian-style houses of reinforced concrete.

• 8. The Vanishing Water

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  Sanaa could be the first national capital in the world to completely exhaust its water supply. The city sits on the Tawilah aquifer, first identified in 1972, which has a natural recharge rate of 42 cubic megametres a year. In 1995, water extraction exceeded that recharge rate by around 300 percent, and more recent estimates suggest 400 to 500 percent. Groundwater levels have dropped by 6 to 8 metres annually, forcing some wells to be drilled as far down as 2,600 to 3,900 feet. With a slightly lower rate of depletion, the aquifer is estimated to run dry by around 2030.

  As much as 90 percent of Yemen's water use is in agriculture, with irrigated farmland rising from 37,000 hectares in 1970 to 407,000 in 2004. Before the 1970s, traditional practices kept a sustainable balance, with rural farms watered by rainfall and terracing. After deep tube wells arrived, agriculture exploded. By 1995 there were over 5,000 wells in the Sanaa area, and by 2010 about 13,500. Drought-resistant crops gave way to water-intensive cash crops, especially qat, which by 2010 accounted for 6 percent of Yemen's entire GDP and took up around 50 percent of the area's farmland.

  Inside the city, the public water supply served only 40 to 50 percent of residents by 2000, falling to 43 percent by 2018. Most households have access to water for less than one full day per week, and pipe leakage loses an estimated 40 to 60 percent of the supply. A 2018 study found the water exceeded limits for dissolved solids and coliform bacteria, including E. coli. As of 2009, average domestic consumption was just 30 to 50 litres per day, far below the usual amount for Middle Eastern city dwellers. For most of its history, the city drew on irrigation channels called ghayls, which ran from peripheral towns to carry water into Sanaa.