Yemen officially the Republic of Yemen is a country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. It has an estimated population of more than 23 million people and is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden to the south, and Oman to the east.Yemen is just under 530,000 km2 in land area. Its territory includes over 200 islands, the largest of which is Socotra, about 415 km to the south of mainland Yemen, off the coast of Somalia. Yemen is the only state in the Arabian Peninsula to have a purely  republican  form  of  government.    Its capital is Sana'a.Before

British rule, Aden was occupied by the Portuguese between 1513–1538 and 1547–1548. It was ruled by the Ottoman Empire between 1538–1547 and 1548–1645. After Ottoman rule, it was ruled by the Sultanate of Lahej, under suzerainty of the Zaidi Iimams of Yemen. In 1838, Sultan Muhsin bin Fadl of the nearby state of Lahej ceded 194 km2 including Aden to the British.

The geography and ruling Imams of North Yemen kept the country isolated from foreign influence before 1962. The country's relations with Saudi Arabia were defined by the Taif Agreement of 1934, which delineated the northernmost part of the border between the two kingdoms and set the framework for commercial and other intercourse. The Taif Agreement has been renewed periodically in   20-year   increments,    and    its   validity   was

reaffirmed in 1995. Relations with the British colonial authorities in Aden and the south were usually tense.The Soviet and Chinese Aid Missions established in 1958 and 1959 were the first important non-Muslim presence in North Yemen. Following the September 1962 revolution, the Yemen Arab Republic became closely allied with and heavily dependent upon Egypt. Saudi Arabia aided the royalists in their attempt to defeat the Republicans and did not recognize the Yemen Arab Republic until 1970. At the same time, Saudi Arabia maintained direct contact with Yemeni tribes, which sometimes strained its official relations with the Yemeni Government. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis found employment in Saudi Arabia during the late 1970s and 1980s.