"كُتيّب اليمن" [و‎‎٨] (١٩٠/٢٠)

ground-water and receive more surface flow down its
wddis. Consequently it supports, not only far more village
life than the Asir and Hejaz littorals, but also considerable
urban communities, beside port-towns. There is nothing
in Asir (still less in Hejaz) to correspond to the inland
towns of the Yemen Tihamah, Beit el-Faqih, Zebid,
and Hais, besides several large villages like Zeidiyah,
Marawah, Mansuriyah, etc., which are all but towns. Some
islands lie off this coast; but, except the Kamaran group,
about ten miles south of Loheiah, and Perim, off Sheikh
Sa'id, no one island of any importance is near enough to
the mainland to be reckoned to Yemen. The Yemen Tiha
mah varies in breadth from some thirty miles in the
north, about Hodeidah, to a few hundred yards in the
south, near Sheikh Sa'id.
(2) The Maritime Range again is a feature which Yemen
has in common with the rest of the West Arabian littoral.
It once more attains the elevation it reached in Midian,
Mount Shibam, above Menakhah, being nearly, if not quite,
9,000 feet high. But it is a more complicated and extensive
system in Yemen than in Hejaz, and betrays more clearly
its derivation from the wasted western edge of the main
shelf. It throws out long spurs into the Tihamah, and
encloses long wddis, the greater of which originate behind
it, and give access by their valleys to the Main Ridge. Such,
ior example, is the Wadi Siham, which debouches south of
Hodeidah. The Maritime Range is extensively cultivated
in terraces.
(3) The Intramontane Uplands lie at an average eleva
tion of some 4,000 feet. They have a valley, rather than
plateau, character, and are intersected by foothills and
ridges and studded with solitary hillocks.
(4) The Main Ridge varies in altitude from 7,000 to
9,000 feet, and occasional swells (rather than peaks) rise
yet another 1,000 feet or more. It is seamed with deep
ravines and valleys which often are lined with cultivation
and dotted with villages, especially in the southern part
near the Aden border.