The northern part dearly down to the latitude of Sana, is the territory of the Hashid and Bakil tribes, which never submitted to the Turks. Sa'da is an important town on the old pilgrim road 120 m. N. of Sana, Khaiwan and Khamr. In the north-east, bordering on the desert, is the district of Nejran, a mountainous country with several fertile valleys including the Wadi Nejran, Bedr and Habuna, all probably draining north-east to the Wadi Dawasir. Further south is the oasis of Jauf, a hollow or depres sion, as its name signifies, containing many villages. It was the focus of the old Minaean and Sabaean kingdoms, known to the ancients through their control of the frankincense trade of south Arabia. Ma'in, identified by Halevy as the seat of the former, is on a hilltop surrounded by walls still well preserved. Marib, the Sabaean capital, was celebrated for its great dam. The city was abandoned, probably owing to the deterioration of the country through desiccation, which has forced the settled population farther westward, where Sana became the centre of the later Him yaritic kingdom. The Arhab district drained by the Wadi kharid and Shibwan between Sana and the Jauf is covered with Him yaritic ruins, showing that the land formerly supported a large settled population where, owing to the want of water, cultivation is now impossible. Throughout the whole of Yemen is found the cemented well for the storing of water. These wells have associations with Persian influence in the 6th century A.D.
South of the territory described above are Amran and Shiban on the road leading north from the capital Sana; Dhamar (the seat of an ancient university) and Yarim are on the road leading south to Aden; and two days' journey to the east is Rada.
The inhabitants of Yemen are settled, and for the most part occupied in agriculture and trade, the conditions which favour the pastoral or Bedouin type found in Hejaz and Nejd hardly existing. The people may be considered under four groups : (I) The Sey yids or Ashrif, descendants of the prophet, forming a religious aristocracy; (2) the Kabail, or tribesmen, belonging to the Kahtanic or original south Arabian stock, who form the bulk of the population; (3) the trading class, and (4) a mixed group mostly of African descent and including a number of Jews.
In September 1934, in the Treaty between Britain with India, and the Yemen, The Zaidi Imam Yahya ben Muhammed ben Hamid ed Din was acknowledged "King." During the Abyssinian War (1936) Britain made it clear that the Yemen was within the British sphere.
See C. Niebuhr, Travels and Description of Arabia (Amsterdam, 1774) ; D. G. Hogarth, Penetration of Arabia (London, 1904) ; E. Glaser, Geschichte and Geographie Arabiens (Berlin, 189o), and in Petermann's Mitt. (1886) ; R. Manzoni, ll Yemen (Rome, 2884) ; A.
Defiers, Voyage en Yemen (Paris, 1889) ; S. M. Zwemer, Arabia (Edinburgh, 190o) ; W. B. Harris, A Journey through Yemen (London, 1893) ; H. Burchardt, Z. d. Ges. fur Erdkunde (Berlin, 1902), No. 7.
The following table shows, during the post-war period, the changes in the internal purchasing power of the yen, and also its rate of exchange upon New York, this last figure being a measure ment of the yen in terms of American cents.
During the World War, the yen was maintained at or above parity with the dollar, and at the armistice was consequently in a strong position. Nevertheless, Japan was affected by the world wide trade boom and currency depreciation, rampant in 1919 and early 192o, and the yen depreciated both internally and against the dollar. It was in Japan that the boom first broke, right at the beginning of 192o, and as for a time the fall in prices (i.e., the recovery in internal purchasing power) in Japan preceded similar movements elsewhere, the strength of the yen on the foreign ex change markets was well maintained. On the other hand the trade depression of 1921 was particularly severe in Japan.
The slow progress towards recovery was interrupted by the earthquake in 1923. The gold standard had to be temporarily abandoned in order to ease the strain on the exchange occasioned by the heavy demands for imports. Prodigious efforts to re habilitate the yen were checked in 1927 by a series of bank fail ures. The government, and the Bank of Japan, in undertaking their rescue, were persuaded to postpone the effort to restore the yen to parity. Faced with the necessity of maintaining its foreign trade during world depression the government finally abandoned the gold standard in Dec. 1931 and proceeded in the next two years to reap the profits from yen depreciation. Although the yen was pegged at its reduced value late in 1932 the subsequent decline of sterling brought the yen still lower so that by March 1934 it had lost 64% of its old gold parity. In Dec. 1935 it stood at 28.8o in U.S.A. cents. The high centralization of the banking system in Japan has enabled the government to intercept the profits of cur rency depreciation by means of its borrowing programme, largely engineered by the Bank of Japan and the Treasury Deposit Bureau. (N. E. C.)