above sea-level and 4000 ft. above the Kataba valley, an isolated plateau some 6 m. long, containing thirty or forty villages.
The principal town of the Jibal is Ta‘iz, the seat of a Turkish mutassarif; its present population docs not exceed 4000, but it was formerly a large city, and from its position in the centre of a comparatively fertile district at the junction of several trade routes it must always be important. It contains five mosques and the Turkish government offices and barracks, and in the business quarter several cafes and shops kept by Greeks. The climate is unhealthy, perhaps owing to its position in a low valley, 4400 ft. above sea-level, at the foot of the lofty Jebel Sabur (9900 ft.), and even in Niebuhr's time many of the houses in the city were in ruins. Thirty miles further N. are the small towns of Ibb (6700 ft.) and Jibia, about 5 m. apart, typical hill towns with their high stone-built houses and paved streets. To the E. on the main road to the coast via Zubed is Udēn, the centre of a coffee-growing district; 80 m. to the N. is Manakha, a Turkish post on the main road from Hodeda to the capital, and the chief place of Jebel Haraz, which produces the best coffee in Yemen. Another group of hill towns lies still further N. in the mountain mass between the Wadi Maur and Wadi La‘a, where the strongholds of Dhafir, Afār, Haja and Kaurkabān held out for long against the Turkish advance; the last-named town, now almost deserted, was once a city of 20,000 inhabitants, and the capital of a small principality which preserved its independence during the earlier Turkish occupation between 1536 and 1630.
The inner or plateau zone of Yemen stretches along the whole length of the province, with an average width of 120 m.; it lies entirely to the E. of the high range, and has therefore a smaller rainfall than the Jibal; its general character is that of a steppe increasing in aridity towards the E. where it merges in the desert, but broken in places by rocky ranges, some of which rise 2000 ft. above the general level, and which in the Hamdan district N. of Sana show evidence of volcanic action. It is intersected by several wadi systems, of which the principal are those in the N. uniting to form the Wadi Nejrān, in the centre the Wadi Khārid and Shibwān running to the Jauf, and in the S. the Wadi Bana and its affluents draining to the Gulf of Aden. The plateau has a gradual fall from the watershed near Yarim, 8500 ft. above sea-level, to less than 4000 ft. at the edge of the desert.
The northern part nearly down to the latitude of Sana, is the territory of the warlike Hāshid and Bakīl tribes, which have never submitted to the Turks, and in 1892 and again in 1904–5 drove the Turkish troops from almost every garrison in the province, and for a time held the capital Sana itself for the Imam Muhammad Yahiya, the representative of the old dynasty that ruled in Yemen from the expulsion of the Turks in 1630 till its reconquest in 1871. The principal places are Sa‘da, the residence of the Imām, an important town on the old pilgrim road 120 m. N. of Sana, Khaiwān and Khamr. In the N.E., bordering on the desert, is the district of Nejrān, a mountainous country with several fertile valleys including the Wadi Nejrān, Bedr and Habuna, all probably draining N.E. to the Wadi Dawasir. Further S. is the oasis of Jauf, a hollow or depression, as its name signifies, containing many villages, and of great antiquarian interest as the central point of the old Minaean and Sabaean kingdoms, known to the ancients from the earliest historical times through their control of the frankincense trade of S. Arabia. Ma‘in, identified by Halevy as the seat of the former, is on a hilltop surrounded by walls still well preserved. Numerous other ruins were found by him in the neighbourhood, together with inscriptions supporting the identification. Mārib, the Sabaean capital, was celebrated for its great dam, built according to tradition by the Queen of Sheba, and the bursting of which in A.D. 120 is said to have led to the abandonment of the city. This was, however, more probably due to the deterioration of the country through desiccation, which has forced the settled population farther westward, where Sana became the centre of the later Himyaritic kingdom. The Arhab district drained by the Wadi Kharid and Shibwan between Sana and the Jauf is covered with Himyaritic ruins, showing that the land formerly supported a large settled population where owing to the want of water cultivation is now impossible.
South of this independent tribal territory the principal places are Amran and Shibām on the road leading N. from the capital Sana; Dhamar (a town of 4000 inhabitants, the residence of a kaimakām, and the seat of an ancient university) and Yarim are on the road leading S. to Aden; and two days' journey to the E. is Rada in the extreme S.E. of Turkish Yemen, formerly a large town, but now much decayed. From near Rada the boundary runs S.W. to the small town of Kataba through which the direct road passes from Aden to Sana. The territory to the S. and E. is occupied by independent tribes under British protection, of which the principal are the Yafa‘, the Haushabi and the Abdali.
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. As in the adjoining province of Hadramut, with which Yemen has always been closely related, the people are divided into four classes:— (1) The Seyyids or Ashrāf, descendants of the prophet, forming a religious aristocracy; (2) the Kabail, or tribesmen, belonging to the Kahtanic or original S. Arabian stock, who form the bulk of the population, and are the only class habitually carrying arms; (3) the trading class; (4) the servile class, mostly of mixed African descent, and including a number of Jews. These latter wear a distinctive garb and occupy separate villages, or quarters in the towns. Owing to the hardships to which they have been exposed through the disturbed state of the country, many are emigrating to Jerusalem.
YENISEI, a river of Asia, which rises in two principal head streams, the Bei-kem and the Khua-kem, on the plateau of N.W. Mongolia—the former on the S. flank of the Sayan Mountains in 97° 30′ E. and 52° 20′ N., and the latter in marshes a few miles W. of Lake Kosso-gol. They have a westerly course, but after uniting they turn N., through the Sayan Mountains in the wild gorge of Kemchik, in 92° E. Thence the river makes its way across the Alpine region that borders the Sayan Mountains on the N. until it emerges upon the steppes at Sayansk (53° 10′ N.). Augmented by the Abakan on the left and the Tuba on the right, it traverses the mining region of Minusinsk, approaches within 6 m. of the Chulym, a tributary of the Ob, intersects the Siberian railway at Krasnoyarsk, and is joined first by the Kan and then by the Upper (Verkhnyaya), the Stony (Podkamennaya), and the Lower (Nizhnyaya) Tunguzka, all from the right. The Upper Tunguzka, known also as the Angara, drains Lake Baikal, and is navigable from Irkutsk. The Yenisei continues N. to the Arctic Ocean, joined on the left by the Zym, Turukhan and Ingarevka, and on the right by the Kureika and Daneshkina. After the confluence of the Angara, the stream continues to widen out to 30 m., its bed being littered with islands until it breaks into its delta (240 m. long). The length of the river is nearly 3000 m., and the area of its drainage basin 970,000 sq. m. It is navigable as far up as Minusinsk, a distance of 1840 m., and is free from ice on the average for 155 days at Turukhansk and for 196 days at Krasnoyarsk. A canal connects the Great Kaz, a tributary of the Yenisei, with the Ket, an affluent of the Ob.
YENISEISK, a government of E. Siberia, extending from the Chinese frontier to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, with an area of 986,908 sq. m. It has the governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk on the W., Yakutsk and Irkutsk on the E., N.W. Mongolia on the S. and the Arctic Ocean on the N. Its southern extremity being in 51° 45′ N. and its northern (Cape Chelyuskin) in 77° 38′, it combines a great variety of orographical types, from the Sayan alpine regions in the S. to the tundras of the Arctic littoral.
The border-ridge of the high plateau of N.W. Mongolia, which is known under the general name of the Western Sayans, and reaches altitudes of 7000 to 8000 ft., limits it on the S. This is flanked on the north-western slope by a zone, nearly 100 m. wide, characterized by narrow valleys separating parallel chains of mountains, which are built up of crystalline slates, 6600 to 7000 ft. high. Here in the impenetrable forests a few Tungus families live by hunting. Towards the S., in the basins of the Tuba, Sisim, Yus, Kan, Agul and Biryusa, the valleys of the alpine tracts contain rich auriferous deposits, and numerous gold-washings have been established along the taiga. A flattened range of mountains, hardly attaining more than 3000 to 3500 ft., shoots N.E. from the Kuznetskiy Ala-tau, and separates the dry steppes of Minusinsk and Abakan from the next terrace of plains, 1200 to 1700 ft. in altitude, which also stretch N.E. from Barnaul in the government of Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk, and into the upper basin of the Vilui. Another system of mountains, known as the Yeniseisk Taiga, rises on the outer border of this terrace, in the space between the upper Tunguzka, or Angara, and the Podkamennaya Tunguzka. This system consists of several parallel chains running S.W. to N.E., and reaching 2500 to 3500 ft. in altitude, though they are much lower on the left bank of the Yenisei. For many years past the Yeniseisk Taiga has been one of the most productive auriferous regions of Siberia, on account not so much of the percentage of gold in its alluvial deposits (which are poor in comparison with those of Olekminsk) as of the facilities for supplying the gold-fields with food produced in the steppes of Minusinsk.
