Saudi–Yemeni War | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Saudi Arabia | Yemen | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Ibn Sa'ud | Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
2,100 soldiers and civilians killed. |
The Saudi–Yemeni War was a war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1934.
Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, had named himself King of the Nejd, following the collapse of Ottoman Empire power during the Great War. In 1925 he took control of Hejaz from the Hashemites. In 1932, he proclaimed the merger of the Nejd and Hejaz Kingdoms, establishing the Saudi Arabian Kingdom. Most of the boundaries remained unmapped, unmarked, and undemarcated by treaty. He was described as "a modern Solomon", as "Cromwell of the Desert", and as both the Napoleon and the Bismarck of Arabia.
By 1932, Ibn Saud controlled almost all of Arabia, except for Yemen, and the smaller coastal states which were then British protectorates (Oman, Kuwait, Bahrein, Aden, etc.). Between Hejaz and Yemen were several tribal regions over which the Ottomans had previously held weak suzerainty, and which both Ibn Saud and the Imam of Yemen now aspired to control.
In 1923, Emir Idrissi, the ruler of the Emirate of Asir, maintained an uneasy independence between Nejd, Hejaz and Yemen. He was at peace with his traditional rivals in Hejaz, but in dispute with Imam Yahya of Yemen, to the south of Asir. The area controlled by the independent Idrisid emirate fluctuated during the ten years of its independent existence.
In 1926, the tribal ruler of Asir assented to Saudi suzerainty, and in 1930 it was incorporated into the Nejd and Hejaz Kingdom.
The war started when the new Saudi kingdom started growing at the cost of Yemeni-controlled areas, also known as Greater Yemen (Yemen proper and its three self-ruled Yemeni provinces: Al-Baha, Asir, Jazan and Najran).