In the last decades, Yemen has been increasingly drawing public attention. Part of this attention comes from the complex situation in the region, with a civil (and proxy) war and a humanitarian crisis raging in the country. However, the history of this region is much deeper than current news reports suggest.

The Dutch connection to Yemen has a long history. Dutch merchants had been present in the Yemeni port of Mocha since the early seventeenth century to buy coffee, an increasingly popular commodity. When Dutch merchants first reached Yemen, it was a province of the Ottoman Empire. However, within a few years after their arrival, it became an independent state again, as it had been before the Ottoman conquests of the sixteenth century.  This dramatic transformation, a small country ousting a major early modern empire, was possible due to the strength of local political traditions. Dutch observers of the time were keenly aware of this. However, over the following centuries, Yemen became increasingly difficult to access.

In the 1930s, after three centuries of near-full isolation, Yemen opened to Western visitors. Among the many visitors who flocked to the land of the Queen of Sheba were the Dutch charge d’affaires in Jedda Cornelis Adriaanse and the Dutch engineer Gellius Flieringa. After the Dutch-Yemeni treaty was signed in 1933, they traveled to Yemen on the

invitation of the local ruler, Imam Yaḥyā Ḥamīd al-Dīn (1869-1948). The Imam was looking for a path forward for his country: how to take the most from the things that modernity and Western know-how were offering while keeping the traditional state, headed by descendants of the Prophet? Gellius Flieringa was invited to visit Yemen twice to answer some specific questions about Yemen's infrastructure and oil potential. He compiled a report for the Dutch government about his discoveries and wrote a diary about his travels. This report, with the associated photographic materials and comments from Adriaanse, provides a rare window into Yemen on the cusp of transformation while preserving much of its premodern features. During these trips, the consul acquired the manuscripts that are now the pride of the Leiden collection. These manuscripts are now available in digital form thanks to support from the Zaydi Manuscript Project led by Sabine Schmidtke (Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton).

Leiden University Library preserves many traces of contacts between the Netherlands and Yemen. It holds a rich collection of materials relating to the history of Yemen, from the pre-Islamic to the modern period. In this exhibition, you will learn about the highlands of Yemen, the states that dominated it and their rulers, and the traditions of Muslim scholarship that these regions fostered. You will see Yemen as Flieringa and Adriaanse saw it, changing but keeping its traditions.