Armies of Liberation

In a most bizarre twist, Haaretz claims former Yemeni president al-Iryiani was Jewish, and the Yemeni media counters that the article was planted by the Mossad as revenge for its collusion with Islamic jihad being uncovered by President Saleh.

Haaretz
n advance of the period of the Jewish holidays, Dorit Mizrahi, a journalist at the ultra-Orthodox weekly Mishpaha, was asked to come up with a creative idea for an article. She decided that the time had come to write about her relative, Zekharia Hadad, the brother of Grandma Levana (”Kamar,” in Yemenite), who was kidnapped as a young boy, forced to convert to Islam, and given the name Abdul Rahman Yahya al-Iryani before being appointed the president of the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen), in 1967….The new rebels deposed Sallal and in November 1967, Iryani was elected the second present of the Yemen Arab Republic.

During his term, the civil war came to an end. The Egyptian army left Yemen and the new president tried to mend the rifts and heal the scars of war. His term lasted for six and a half years, during which he participated in Arab summit conferences (in photographs, he is seen beside his colleagues among the Arab leaders). In June 1974, another military coup took place in Yemen. Iryani was deposed and found refuge in Syria, where he died in 1998 at the age of 88. His body was flown to Yemen, where he was buried.

Yemen Online notes the rumor started in 1967.

Numismaster

Yemen has the distinction of being the last sizable nation in the world to issue its own paper money, the first issues of this nation of at least 21 million persons not appearing until 1964. Until fairly recently paper money did not circulate and was not accepted over most of the Arabian Peninsula, and not only Yemen but also Saudi Arabia were very late in issuing their own paper money, the first Saudi notes appearing only in 1953. Well into the 1950s two different trade coins dominated the currency in these countries. One was the gold sovereign weighing 7.98 grams and minted in 22 karat (0.9167 fine) gold. Most of these were minted in Great Britain or in South Africa, but in 1951 Saudi Arabia issued a large number of gold “guineas” that were at par with the British sovereign. The other coin that saw even greater circulation was the Maria Theresa thaler, which had been struck for many years in Austria, always with a frozen date of 1780. These coins each weigh 28.07 grams (about 5 percent more than an American silver dollar) and are struck in 0.833 fine silver. Demand for these coins has sometimes been so great that strikings were occasionally made in mints situated well away from Austria. Typically about a dozen Maria Theresa thalers would have been worth a gold sovereign, but this rate varied a bit depending upon the relative values of gold and silver. In Arabic the thaler is referred to as a riyal or rial, and this is the name used by both Yemen and Saudi Arabia for their currency units.

(Read on …)

Letter to the Editor

Dear Jane,
Please ask Senator Trent Franks to issue an addendum:

Dear Ambassador:
(ed: Abdulwahab A. Al-Hajjri, the Yemeni ambassador to the US, is an in-law of President Saleh, as is the Yemeni ambassador to the UN. Saleh has many in-laws because he has four wives. )

When your father al-Qadi al-Hajri (the Deputy President) in 1973 ordered the crucifixion of 3 saboteurs in Sanaa and was as a consequence assassinated by Carlos (who lived in Aden) in 1976 near the Lancaster Gate Hotel in London, have you felt then or now that was fair play?

As you are an in-law of the President, you are under pressure but you are second generation political judge or judicial politician, so search your conscience the way you did when your father was shot dead.

Remember that your father was accused of selling (provisionally) Asir to Saudi Arabia in 1973 when the then President (Qadi Iryani) ran away to Damascus because he was too afraid to sign or say no to Saudi Arabia.

Khaiwani is refusing to sell his conscience no more than over points of view. Surely you can empathize. When you pray for the soul of your father as a man who made a stand (which was highly controversial), remember to add a prayer for Khaiwani.

(ed: Yemen has a very interesting history. Saleh himself has an interesting history. Asir is on the Yemeni/Saudi border. )

Yemen on Line

Ransack & Destruction of the Archeological Site, a Great Loss of Yemen History ?

January18,2008-The archeologist team in Al Osaibah site was surprised to realize that the discovered archeological grave was free of all its contents which were under police protection.

Official sources said that a number of armed men attacked the site late at night after all police security personnel left the site except for one car with 6 policemen. The armed men surrounded grave, broke the two coffins and ransacked their contents.

The archeologists said that the crime committed yesterday made Yemen lose evidence of great ancient civilization that traces back to the Sheba era , 2000 years ago.

The grave included coffins containing gold, metal and bronze materials of two or three corpses which are likely to trace back to the family that ruled Sheba and Thi Raidan in the first three centuries.