01/08/2025
Yemen is on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and sharing borders with Saudi Arabia
and Oman. It is the second-largest country in the peninsula. Yemen was the home of the
Sabaeans (biblical Sheba), a trading state that flourished for over a thousand years and probably
also included parts of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Among Yemen's natural and cultural attractions are four World Heritage sites. The Old Walled
City of Shibam in Wadi Hadhramaut, inscribed by UNESCO in 1982, two years after Yemen joined
the World Heritage Committee, is nicknamed "Manhattan of the Desert" because of its
"skyscrapers." Surrounded by a fortified wall made of mud and straw, the 16th-century city is
one of the oldest examples of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction.
