Sanaa, officially the Sanaa Municipality, is the capital and largest city of Yemen. The city is the capital of the Sanaa Governorate, but is not part of the governorate, as it forms a separate administrative unit. At an elevation of 2,300 metres (7,500 ft), Sanaa is the seventh highest capital city in the world and is situated between the Sarawat Mountains of Jabal An-Nabi Shu'ayb and Jabal Tiyal, considered the highest mountains in the Arabian Peninsula and one of the highest in the Middle East.
Sanaa has a population of approximately 3,300,000 (2023), making it Yemen's largest city. As of 2020, the greater Sanaa urban area makes up about 10% of Yemen's total population. The Old City of Sanaa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a distinctive architectural character, most notably expressed in its multi-story buildings decorated with geometric patterns. Al-Saleh Mosque, the largest in the country, is located in the southern outskirts of the city.
In September 2014, the Houthis captured Sanaa from the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. Since then, the internationally recognized Yemeni government has moved the seat to Aden, the former capital of South Yemen. Aden was declared the temporary capital by then-president Hadi in March 2015.
Toponymy
The first known text in the Musnad script that mentions Sanaa dates back to the 5th century BCE and it is mentioned as ṣnʿw, which is derived from the Sabaic word maṣna'a "fortress."
History
Ancient period
The city of Sanaa was founded by the Kingdom of Saba in the 1st century CE as a secondary capital, with the primary capital since the origins of the civilisation being at the oasis of Marib. The name Sanaa is probably derived from the Sabaic root ṣnʿ, meaning "well-fortified". The name is attested in old Sabaean inscriptions, mostly from the 3rd century CE, as ṣnʿw. In the present day, a popular folk etymology says that the name Sanaa refers to "the excellence of its trades and crafts (perhaps the feminine form of the Arabic adjective aṣnaʿ)".
Sanaa appears to have been an important military centre under the Sabaeans. They used it as a base for their expeditions against the kingdom of Himyar further south, and several inscriptions "announce a triumphant return to Sanaa from the wars." Sanaa is referred to in these inscriptions both as a town (hgr) and as a maram (mrm), which, according to A. F. L. Beeston, indicates "a place to which access is prohibited or restricted, no matter whether for religious or for other reasons". The Sabaean inscriptions also mention the Ghumdan Palace by name.
When King Yousef Athar (or Dhu Nuwas), the last of the Himyarite kings, was in power, Sanaa was also the capital of the Axumite viceroys. Later tradition also holds that the Abyssinian conqueror Abrahah built a Christian church in Sanaa.
According to Islamic sources, Sanaa was founded at the base of the mountains of Jabal Nuqum by Shem, the son of Noah, after the latter's death. The 10th-century Arab historian al-Hamdani wrote that Sanaa's ancient name was Azāl, which is not recorded in any contemporary Sabaean inscriptions. The name Azāl has been connected to Uzal, a son of Qahtan, a great-grandson of Shem, in the biblical accounts of the Book of Genesis.
Al-Hamdani wrote that Sanaa was walled by the Sabaeans under their ruler Sha'r Awtar, who also arguably built the Ghumdan Palace in the city. Because of its location, Sanaa has served as an urban hub for the surrounding tribes of the region and as a nucleus of regional trade in southern Arabia. It was positioned at the crossroad of two major ancient trade routes linking Ma'rib in the east to the Red Sea in the west.
Islamic era
From the era of Muhammad (c. 622 CE) until the founding of independent sub-states in many parts of the Yemen Islamic Caliphate, Sanaa persisted as the governing seat. The Caliph's deputy ran the affairs of one of Yemen's three Makhalif: Mikhlaf Sanaʽa, Mikhlaf al-Janad, and Mikhlaf Hadhramaut. The city of Sanaa regularly regained an important status, and all Yemenite States competed to control it.
Imam Al-Shafi'i, the 8th-century Islamic jurist and founder of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence, visited Sanaa several times. He praised the city, writing La budda min Ṣanʻāʼ, or "Sanaa must be seen." In the 9th–10th centuries, it was written of the city that "the Yem separate from each other, empty of ordure, without smell or evil smells, because of the hard concrete [adobe and cob, probably] and fine pastureland and clean places to walk." Later in the 10th century, the Persian geographer Ibn Rustah wrote of Sanaa, "It is the city of Yemen; there cannot be found ... a city greater, more populous or more prosperous, of nobler origin or with more delicious food than it."
In 1062, Sanaa was taken over by the Sulayhid dynasty led by Ali al-Sulayhi and his wife, the popular Queen Asma. He made the city capital of his relatively small kingdom, which also included the Haraz Mountains. The Sulayhids were aligned with the Ismaili Muslim-leaning Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, rather than the Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate that most of Arabia followed. Al-Sulayhi ruled for about 20 years but he was assassinated by his principal local rivals, the Zabid-based Najahids. Following his death, al-Sulayhi's daughter, Arwa al-Sulayhi, inherited the throne. She withdrew from Sanaa, transferring the Sulayhid capital to Jibla, where she ruled much of Yemen from 1067 to 1138. As a result of the Sulayhid departure, the Hamdanid dynasty took control of Sanaa. Like the Sulayhids, the Hamdanids were Isma'ilis.
In 1173, Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, sent his brother Turan-Shah on an expedition to conquer Yemen. The Ayyubids gained control of Sanaa in 1175 and united the various Yemeni tribal states, except for the northern mountains controlled by the Zaydi imams, into one entity. The Ayyubids switched the country's official religious allegiance to the Sunni Muslim Abbasids. During the reign of the Ayyubid emir Tughtekin ibn Ayyub, the city underwent significant improvements. These included the incorporation of the garden lands on the western bank of the Sa'ilah, known as Bustan al-Sultan, where the Ayyubids built one of their palaces. However, Ayyubid control of Sanaa was never very consistent, and they only occasionally exercised direct authority over the city. Instead, they chose Taiz as their capital, while Aden was their principal income-producing city.
While the Rasulids controlled most of Yemen, followed by their successors, the Tahirids, Sanaa largely remained in the political orbit of the Zaydi imams from 1323 to 1454 and outside the former two dynasties' rule. The Mamelukes arrived in Yemen in 1517.
Ottoman era
The Ottoman Empire entered Yemen in 1538, when Suleiman the Magnificent was Sultan. Under the military leadership of Özdemir Pasha, the Ottomans conquered Sanaa in 1547. With Ottoman approval, European captains based in the Yemeni port towns of Aden and Mocha frequented Sanaa to maintain special privileges and capitulations for their trade. In 1602, the local Zaydi imams led by Imam al-Mu'ayyad reasserted their control over the area, and forced out Ottoman troops in 1629. Although the Ottomans fled during al-Mu'ayyad's reign, his predecessor al-Mansur al-Qasim had already vastly weakened the Ottoman army in Sanaa and Yemen. Consequently, European traders were stripped of their previous privileges.
The Zaydi imams maintained their rule over Sanaa until the mid-19th century when the Ottomans relaunched their campaign to control the region. In 1835, Ottoman troops arrived on the Yemeni coast under the guise of Muhammad Ali of Egypt's troops. They did not capture Sanaa until 1872, when their troops led by Ahmed Muhtar Pasha entered the city. The Ottoman Empire instituted the Tanzimat reforms throughout the lands they governed.
In Sanaa, city planning was initiated for the first time, new roads were built, and schools and hospitals were established. The reforms were rushed by the Ottomans to solidify their control of Sanaa to compete with an expanding Egypt, British influence in Aden, and imperial Italian and French influence along the coast of Somalia, particularly in the towns of Djibouti and Berbera. The modernisation reforms in Sanaa were still very limited, however.
North Yemen period
In 1904, as Ottoman influence was waning in Yemen, Imam Yahya of the Zaydi Imams took power in Sanaa. In a bid to secure North Yemen's independence, Yahya embarked on a policy of isolationism, avoiding international and Arab world politics, cracking down on embryonic liberal movements, not contributing to the development of infrastructure in Sanaa and elsewhere and closing down the Ottoman girls' school. As a consequence of Yahya's measures, Sanaa increasingly became a hub of anti-government organisation and intellectual revolt.
In the 1930s, several organisations opposing or demanding reform of the Zaydi imamate sprung up in the city, particularly Fatat al-Fulayhi, a group of various Yemeni Muslim scholars based in Sanaa's Fulayhi Madrasa, and Hait al-Nidal ("Committee of the Struggle.") By 1936, most of the leaders of these movements were imprisoned. In 1941, another group based in the city, the Shabab al-Amr bil-Maruf wal-Nahian al-Munkar, called for a nahda ("renaissance") in the country as well as the establishment of a parliament with Islam as the instrument of Yemeni revival. Yahya largely repressed the Shabab and most of its leaders were executed following his son Imam Ahmad's inheritance of power in 1948. That year, Sanaa was replaced with Taiz as capital following Ahmad's new residence there. Most government offices followed suit. A few years later, most of the city's Jewish population emigrated to Israel.
Ahmad began a process of gradual economic and political liberalisation, but by 1961, Sanaa was witnessing major demonstrations and riots demanding quicker reform and change. Pro-republican officers in the North Yemeni military sympathetic of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt's government and pan-Arabist policies staged a coup overthrowing the Imamate government in September 1962, a week after Ahmad's death. Sanaa's role as a capital was restored afterward. Neighbouring Saudi Arabia opposed this development and actively supported North Yemen's rural tribes, pitting large parts of the country against the urban and largely pro-republican inhabitants of Sanaa. The North Yemen Civil War resulted in the destruction of some parts of the city's ancient heritage and continued until 1968, when a deal between the republicans and the royalists was reached, establishing a presidential system. Instability in Sanaa continued due to continuing coups and political assassinations until the situation in the country stabilised in the late 1970s.
The new government's modernisation projects changed the face of Sanaa: the new Tahrir Square was built on what had formerly been the former imam's palace grounds, and new buildings were constructed on the north and northwest of the city. This was accompanied by the destruction of several of the old city's gates, as well as sections of the wall around it.
After the end of the civil war in 1970, Sanaa began to expand outward. This was a period of prosperity in Yemen, partly due to the massive migration of Yemeni workers to the Gulf states and their subsequent sending of money back home. At first, most of the new development was concentrated around central areas like al-Tahrir, the modern centre; Bi'r al-Azab, the Ottoman quarter; and Bab al-Yaman, the old southern gate. However, this soon shifted to the city's outskirts, where an influx of immigrants from the countryside established new neighbourhoods. Two areas in particular experienced major growth during this period: first, the area along Taizz Road in the south, and second, a broader area on the west side of the city, between Bi'r al-Azab and the new avenue called Sittin. A new ring road, built in the 1970s on the recommendation of the United Nations Development Programme, encouraged land speculation and further contributed to the rapid expansion of Sanaa.