Ta’izz, Yemen
Taizz, Yemen’s third largest city, sits on an elevated plateau surrounded by fertile, green terraced hills and is best viewed from the 3200 meter Jabel Saber which dominates it. Atop this mountain is one of the country’s oldest mosques, the Ahl al Kahf, meaning ‘cave of the people’. This refers to a story in the Koran when several young men who tried to devote themselves to God were made to worship the pagan gods of the time. This forced them to flee to the top of the mountain where they slept for 309 years. Two buildings make up the mosque and obviously the site dates to pre-Islamic times. After my visit I was informed that it has 2 qiblas as it was built when Muslims still prayed towards Jerusalem. If this is true, the mosque would have to date back to 624 or before which is when the Prophet Mohammed changed the direction of prayers to face Mecca. This would be remarkable, as although some parts of Yemen indeed accepted Islam during the lifetime of the Prophet who died in 632, Muad ibn Jabal, the first missionary sent by Mohmammed to Yemen, did not arrive until 631.
The charming little mosque al-Kahf set atop terraced hills.
In the late 12th century, the anti-Crusader warrior hero, Saladin, who founded the Ayyubid dynasty in Cairo, sent his brother, Turanshah, to Yemen in a bid to stem the spread of the Ismaili or Fatimid doctrine, and to take control of the lucrative Red Sea trading routes. Queen Arwad who was a Fatimid may have been beloved by her people, but only a few years after her death Jiblah, along with Taizz and Aden, came under Sunni Ayyubid control. Their dynasty did not last long, and in 1229 when the last ruler left to Mecca leaving Nur ad-Din Umar of the Rasul tribe in charge, he wasted no time in proclaiming himself Sultan of Yemen. He was widely accepted as he was descended from Qahtan, father of all southern Arabians, whereas the Ayyubids could only manage descent from Adnan, a father of the northern Arabians. Yemen under the Rasulids, who were poets, scientists and scholars, saw a Golden Age that lasted until 1454. Ibn Battuta was aware of their antecedents;
“His ancestor became widely known by the appelation of Rasul (envoy) because one of the Abbasid caliphs sent him to al-Yaman to be a governor there, and later on his sons gained the royal power for themselves.”
Under their tutelage, Ta’izz was graced with mosques, madrasas, convents and palaces, little of which remains. The 13th century Al-Mozaffariyyah, named for its builder, is the oldest and most visually striking of the city’s mosques, with 20 white domes and a tall white minaret (added centuries later), but it is the nearby al-Ashrafiyyah with its Yemeni flourishes in the form of corbelling, highly ornate plaster and stuccowork, and painted interior shutters, ceilings, windows and domes which enchants - its central dome is particularly exquisite. 
The beautiful but unrestored interior dome of al-Ashrafiyyah.
The whole structure is under renovation which will take many years to complete as specialists undertake the delicate work of bringing back to life the vivid colors and patterns produced by masters 700 years ago, and which in some cases have been marred by earlier restoration work.
One minaret - the other is encased in scaffolding - and domes of al-Ashraffiyah.
As we left the mosque we heard riotous strains of wedding music from the upper floors of one of the nearby houses, and got ourselves invited in. At the all-female gathering, two older women were sitting back smoking the water pipe and chewing qat. Qat, catha edulis, is a leaf with mildly amphetamine qualities which is banned everywhere except Yemen and the UK. Every day a plane-load of qat arrives at Heathrow airport in London to be transferred by bus to the large Yemeni community in Cardiff, Wales. It is known as the ‘Qat Express’.
Qat lies at the heart of social life in Yemen, especially for men many of whom organize their entire lives around it. Grown on the terraced hills of the highlands and trucked daily all over the country, great energy is devoted to growing it and chewing it, probably to the detriment of the country’s economic and productivity level. On the plus side, other more nefarious drugs are virtually unknown - after all when you have a perfectly legal ‘drug’ in your midst why risk life's tranquility for anything else?
Men buy their leaf in the morning from favored dealers in the souk, and after lunch set off for the mafraj, a reception room usually on the top floor of Yemen’s tall houses, for an afternoon’s chew in all-male company. The aim is to achieve a state of kayf which is a word not easily translated, but is akin to a state of contented well-being, which makes it sound like something most of us should be doing. Different types of qat seemingly produce quite opposing effects or perhaps it is the neurological make-up of the chewer; our guide told us that he had had to stop chewing qat as he could not keep his hands off his wife, and when he was on tour he would always have to make sure his door was locked if any young female clients had been chewing, since they would come banging on his door late at night....
We wondered if qat perhaps also induced dreams or visions, as many a long-suffering wife will tell you qat renders their men quite impotent.......Some vow it stimulates the intellect, clears the mind and induces highs, others that it reduces the chewer to a state of somnolence, fatigue, irritability and insomnia. I cannot answer to any of it as I have never mastered the art of keeping the masticated leaves in my cheek and usually end up swallowing the cud which does not remotely produce the desired effect. It merely makes you sick. But I have not tried very hard to like it as the leaves are at first very bitter to the taste, and I have never been much inclined to continue.
Whatever the effects, for good or for ill every afternoon groups of men can be found lounging on cushions, their bundles of qat laid out in front of them, happily chewing the leaves until all the juice is extracted at which point the wad is spat out. Discussion takes place followed by a period of introspection at the end of the day as the session winds down. Copious amounts of water are drunk to keep the wad damp and the streets of Yemen, in the afternoon, are full of men wandering around with tennis-ball sized growths sticking out of their left cheek. Things are further enlivened when they speak, as a thin trail of bright green spittle frequently oozes silently down one side of their mouth. Years ago this used to happen to our guide when he was giving lectures in the afternoon, much to the dismay of clients who thought he was disintegrating in front of them - mercifully he gave up guiding some time ago.
All drivers will tell you that qat helps keep them alert.... and they all have their sources all over the country. Sailing through Yemen’s spectacular scenery of a morning would suddenly see Abdullah, our lead driver and qat chewer par excellence, come to a grinding halt as he leapt out to get his bag of qat for the afternoon. Driving along behind him was to see bits of vegetation regularly fly out the side window as choice leaves were ingested and the remains tossed. The driving speed noticeably slowed in the afternoon - alert or not - and one often had to assure uninitiated foreigners that it would be much more dangerous to try and stop drivers from chewing qat than it was to have them drive chewing it. The roads in Yemen are uniformly excellent but the driving is something else again and I doubt it has much to do with qat.
Our dapper lead driver Abdullah, minus qat, but with ubiquitous janbiyyah. Once purchased, men hang the pink plastic bags of qat from the hilt of their janbiyyas - a whole new take on the Scottish sporran!
Women do chew although it is much rarer. Most women do not like the habit as their men spend a large part of the family budget on the weed. The poorer the family, the higher the proportion of income spent on qat. There have been periodic attempts to ban it or reduce consumption, but they have all come to naught and the President himself is a chewer of the stuff.
I must now, several months later, make an addendum to the subject of qat. Having just spend over two months in Sana'a and mingled with more qat chewers then ever before I have had several different experiences. I attended several qat chews where the hostess picked out the choicest leaves and fed them to me and made sure I had enough of a wad, moistened with enough water to get the 'effect'. A common reaction of first-time chewers is they are unable to sleep but this was not my experience. However having now had in-depth discussions with both men and women about its effects, I find they are very different. Some men and women say qat is an aphrodisiac and does not hinder performance (Yemen's birthrate is the highest in the world so something works....) while others say definitely the type of qat chewed makes a difference as does the mental state to begin with. In any event, I suspect even the so-called experts may not have it all right and I am not an expert but in seeing and learning more, it is evident that the effect of qat chewing is much more nuanced than it appears at first glance.
But back back to the wedding....the older ladies chewed quietly, the music was at a million decibels and the bride wore a skimpy top and tight jeans amid a sea of clothing which ranged from full hijab and abaya to Western-style jeans and dresses. It is extremely rare to see Yemeni women in Western clothing on the streets - most women in the cities are covered from head to foot in black with a narrow slit for the eyes, in the countryside they wear a colored garment called a sitarah while in the Tihama with its African influence, the women wear brightly colored clothing but almost never veil their faces. 
'New York black'...this black garment is considered more chic than the colored less restrictive garments of country women.
The family were very kind and invited us to the wedding ceremony which was to be held in 2 days time. The celebrations which continue for a whole week in some parts of Yemen, are completely separate between the sexes. Some marriages are still arranged, but more and more young people meet at school and university and in the cities, arranged marriages are now not so common. In general a dowry is still paid by the groom’s father, of which a quarter is used to pay for the wedding celebrations, another quarter goes to furnish the home, while half goes to the bride to buy jewelry and personal clothing and this portion remains hers. Nowadays weddings are so expensive that the dowry may not all be paid but kept in a kind of “escrow". Should there be a divorce, the groom will have to pay his wife what should have been rightfully hers from the beginning - perhaps one reason why divorce is not so common here, although second and even third, wives are. It is not however unheard of and even in the countryside, no shame is attached to divorce although it may be more difficult to marry again. Divorced women cannot become another man’s first wife though they may marry widowers or divorced men.
