Taiz.. the heart and artery of the country

From Taiz came the Banu Rasul, the Azdi Ghassanids, to create one of the glories of the prosperous national states and an experience and influence that extended as far as China.

Before that came the proud Al-Maafiris who established a great and pioneering kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula in Andalusia, where the chamberlain and king Al-Mansur Muhammad bin Abi Aamer Al-Maafiri built the pillars of his prosperous city and his lofty kingdom and his conquests in the heart of Europe and the Amirid state that continued after him for generations, and here the Sulayhids settled down as one of the most important stations of their rule and the starting points of their strong state.

The leaders, fathers and teachers of the contemporary national movement headed towards it: Al-Zubairi, Abdul Rahman Al-Iryani, Mut’i’ Damaj, Hassan Al-Da’is, Abdullah Abdul Razzaq Badhib, Qahtan Muhammad Al-Sha’bi, Ahmed Abdul Rabbo Al-Awadhi, Zaid Al-Mushki and Hussein Othman Ashal.

In it, the first regular national army was established in the history of modern Yemen, in the fifties of the last century. In it, the army commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed bin Yahya Al-Thulaia, accomplished his fedayeen army movement, accompanied by the deputy commander of the 1955 movement, the hero Major General Mohammed Qaid Saif.

On its pure soil, the blood of the martyred hero Ahmed Al-Thulaia flowed by the sword of the tyrant Ahmed Hamid Al-Din, along with a group of his officers and distinguished men in the army, including Al-Saar, Al-Gholi, and Bakr. Al-Thulaia was the highest-ranking Yemeni army commander to be martyred in the field of revolutionary struggle, and Taiz remained the city in which the first nucleus of the glorious September Army and October Revolution was established.

Here the Yemeni political movement, both left and right, was founded, and here the Yemeni party experience was formed. From there came Sheikh Abdul Wahhab Numan, the martyr of 1948, and Professor Numan, and the exceptional Yemeni Qayyil, the brilliant and eloquent young man Muhammad Ahmad Numan (the son), the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs who was assassinated in Beirut, and Abdullah Abdul Wahhab Numan (Al-Fudul), Abdul Fattah Ismail, Abdo Muhammad Al-Mikhlafi, Abdul Raqib Abdul Wahhab, Yassin Abdul Aziz Al-Ghassani Al-Qabati, Issa Muhammad Saif, Qasim Salam, Mahmoud Abdul Hamid, Hael Saeed Anam, Abdul Ghani Mutahhar, Abdul Aziz Abdul Ghani, Jazem Al-Harwi, Muhammad Ali Othman, Muhammad Muhammad Qahtan, Abdul Malik Abdul Jalil Al-Mikhlafi, Rashad Muhammad Al-Alimi, and here was born the Chief of Staff of the September War, the fighter Abdullah Qaid Jazilan.

This is Taiz, the geography and the population, there is hardly a village in Yemen that does not have a citizen from Taiz, a diligent worker in the private or public sector and a model of struggle and overcoming restrictions and obstacles. Which gave birth to the most important and largest Yemeni commercial families that own the largest share of the national commercial and industrial capital.

In Taiz, the rings and chapters of planning for the glorious September Revolution were completed, and from there the Free Officers Organization drew up the details of the greatest Yemeni epic and the noblest revolution in the history of humanity. Sana'a was illuminated and the darkness of Yemen was dispelled one blessed night by the fire of the tank of Abdullah Abdul Salam Sabra and his colleague Al-Shara'i. Taiz was its support, its back and its incubator.

From there, the first issues of the official newspaper Al-Thawra were published, as well as Al-Jumhuriya newspaper. The Arab leader Gamal Abdel Nasser came to it, and in it the founding father and inspiration, Field Marshal Abdullah bin Yahya Al-Sallal, preferred to spend the rest of his life after leaving power. In Taiz, most of the chapters of the agreement to establish the Yemeni Republic were completed, and it is the city that fought and is fighting today an epic and immortal battle in order to restore the republic. It is the city that fought for successive years, and the specter of death besieged it from all outlets and cut off all lines and outlets leading to it, perhaps to isolate it from supplies, light, and even air.

Taiz.. Yemen with all its diversity, mountain, plain, countryside, city, coast, sea, island and valley, it is the center of the country but the north ends there and the south reaches its depths and the west begins from there and the eastern winds reach it, Tihami and mountainous at the same time, from it coffee, basil, figs, mahjal, malala, song, school, mosque, university, worker, capital.. and the love story that has not yet been completed...!

*Quoted from Al-Kant's account on the X platform