Ali Abdullah Saleh al-Ahmar was a Yemeni politician who served as the first President of the Republic of Yemen, from Yemeni unification on 22 May 1990, to his resignation on 27 February 2012, following the Yemeni revolution. Previously, he had served as the fourth and last President of the Yemen Arab Republic, from July 1978 to 22 May 1990, after the assassination of President Ahmad al-Ghashmi. al-Ghashmi had earlier appointed Saleh as military governor in Taiz.
Qahtan Muhammad al-Shaabi was the first President of the People's Republic of South Yemen. Al-Shaabi's National Liberation Front (NLF) political organisation wrested control of the country from the British and won political supremacy over the opposition Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) in 1967. On 30 November 1967, the Protectorate of South Arabia was declared independent as the People's Republic of South Yemen, with al-Shaabi as President. Al-Shaabi held the presidency until 22 June 1969, when a hard-line Marxist group from within his own NLF seized control. He was replaced by Salim Rubai Ali and jailed, then placed under house arrest until the 1970s, and lived quietly in Aden from his release until his death in 1981.
Elections in Yemen take place within the framework of a presidential system, with both the President and House of Representatives elected by the public. Due to political instability, elections have not been held regularly since the early 2000s.
The Yemeni Socialist Party is a social democratic political party in Yemen. A successor of Yemen's National Liberation Front, it was the ruling party in South Yemen until Yemeni unification in 1990. Originally Marxist–Leninist, the party has gradually evolved into a social democratic opposition party in today's unified Yemen.
Upper Yafa or Upper Yafa'i, officially the State of Upper Yafa, was a military alliance in the British Aden Protectorate and the Protectorate of South Arabia. It was ruled by the Harharah dynasty and its capital was Mahjaba, a small town on a hill located about 50 km northeast of Habilayn. Upper Yafa was one part of Yafa'a, the other part being Lower Yafa.
Wahidi Balhaf, or the Wahidi Sultanate of Balhaf in Hadhramaut, was one of several Wahidi states in the British Aden Protectorate. It was previously part of the Federation of Arab Emirates of the South, and then of its successor, the Federation of South Arabia when it was known simply as Wahidi.
Faisal Othman Bin Shamlan was a Yemeni intellectual, technocrat, political reformist and public figure. He was a Yemeni member of parliament who had held the post of Oil and Mineral Resources Minister in the post-unification government of Yemen. Prior to the reunification of Yemen in 1990, Shamlan was the Minister of Infrastructure and Oil in the socialist government of South Yemen. He was the recognized presidential candidate of the Yemeni opposition coalition, a coalition which consists of the Islamist Islah, the Yemen Socialist Party and several smaller parties, in the 2006 presidential election, but was defeated by incumbent president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Presidential elections were held in Yemen on 20 September 2006, alongside local elections. Incumbent president Ali Abdullah Saleh of the General People's Congress was re-elected to a seven-year term with 77% of the vote, defeating opposition coalition candidate Faisal Bin Shamlan.
The modern history of Yemen began with the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire. In 1839 the British set up a protective area around the southern port of Aden and in 1918 the northern Kingdom of Yemen gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. North Yemen became a republic in 1962, but it was not until 1967 that the British Empire withdrew from what became South Yemen. In 1970, the southern government adopted a communist governmental system. The two countries were officially united as the Republic of Yemen on May 22, 1990.
Najeeb Qahtan al-Shaabi was a Yemeni politician who was a candidate in the 1999 presidential election in Yemen. He ran as an Independent, despite being a member of the General People's Congress, against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. He received 3.8% of the vote.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Husayn bin Nasser al-Ahmar was a Yemeni politician and tribal leader. He was the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Yemen) from 1993 to 2007 and also the Sheikh of the Hashid tribal federation and the Al-Islah party.
Parliamentary elections were held in Yemen on 27 April 1997 to elect all 301 members of the House of Representatives for a six-year term. The governing General People's Congress of President Ali Abdullah Saleh won a landslide victory, taking 187 of the 301 seats, although several opposition parties including the Yemeni Socialist Party boycotted the election alleging that the government had harassed and arrested their party workers. The main opposition party, al-Islah, attacked the government for not carrying out economic reforms and for corruption. Voter turnout was 61.0%.
The Yemeni civil warof 1994, also known as the 1994 Summer War, was a civil war fought between the two Yemeni forces of the pro-union northern and the socialist separatist southern Yemeni states and their supporters. The war resulted in the defeat of the southern separatists and the reunification of Yemen, and the flight into exile of many leaders of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) and other separatists.
The Imams of Yemen, later also titled the Kings of Yemen, were religiously consecrated leaders (imams) belonging to the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam. They established a blend of religious and temporal-political rule in parts of Yemen from 897. Their imamate endured under varying circumstances until the end of the North Yemen civil war in 1970, following the republican revolution in 1962. Zaidi theology differs from Isma'ilism and Twelver Shi'ism by stressing the presence of an active and visible imam as leader. The imam was expected to be knowledgeable in religious scholarship, and to prove himself a worthy headman of the community, even in battle if this was necessary. A claimant of the imamate would proclaim a "call" (dawah), and there were not infrequently more than one claimant.
The Yemeni Congregation for Reform, frequently called al-Islah, is a Yemeni Sunni Islamist movement established in 1990 by Abdullah ibn Husayn al-Ahmar, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, with Ali Saleh's blessing. The first article of Islah basic law defines it as "a popular political organization that seeks reform of all aspects of life on the basis of Islamic principles and teachings".
Islah or Al-Islah is an Arabic word, usually translated as "reform", in the sense of "to improve, to better, to put something into a better position, correction, correcting something and removing vice, reworking, emendation, reparation, restoration, rectitude, probability, reconciliation." It is an important term in Islam. The Islamic concept of "Islah" advocates for moral advancement through a reformation based on the rudimental standards of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Islah is characterised by an attitude of bypassing classical legal works in preference to literature from the early Muslim generations. Islahi ulema oppose taqlid, strongly argue for the necessity of ijtihad and are often referred to as salafis.
Qahtan and Qahtani (Kahtani) or with the definite article al- as Al-Qahtani (Al-Kahtani) meaning coming from Qahtan may refer to:
Member State of the Arab League 
Yemenportal 