Qualla: Emirate of Asir https://qualla.com/emirate-of-asir en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/n/3/emirate-of-asir-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Emirate of Asir https://qualla.com/emirate-of-asir Emirate of Asir: Introduction https://qualla.com/emirate-of-asir/ Photo credit Irshadpp, CC BY-SA 4.0. Coffeehouses, dancing, and smoking were all forbidden. That detail, buried in an administrative footnote, says a great deal about the Emirate of Asir - a short-lived state that flickered on the eastern shore of the Red Sea from 1907 until 1934, carved out by a Sufi scholar-turned-warrior named Muhammad ibn Ali al-Idrisi. Look down from cruising altitude today and you see the Tihamah coastal strip of southwestern Saudi Arabia, blurring into northern Yemen. A century ago this 80-mile sliver, reaching perhaps 40 miles inland to the Asir escarpment, was its own country. Sabya was its capital. The Imam held absolute power. A police force drawn from Sudanese families walked the souks inspecting prayer times and public morals. And for a moment, the great empires of the age - Ottoman, British, Italian, Hashemite, Saudi - all had to reckon with it.

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Image: Irshadpp | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/n/3/emirate-of-asir-wp/sgn3-emirate-of-asir-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Emirate of Asir: A Scholar from Morocco's Long Shadow https://qualla.com/emirate-of-asir/ Photo credit User:abodahmaj, CC BY-SA 3.0. The story begins not in Arabia but in Morocco, with Ahmad ibn Idris al-Fasi (1760-1837), a religious scholar and Sufi of the Idrisiyya order who eventually settled in Sabya, in the Tihamah region of Yemen, in 1828 at the invitation of his students. His descendants mediated tribal...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/n/3/emirate-of-asir-wp/sgn3-emirate-of-asir-a-scholar-from-moroccos-long-shadow.mp3 0:06 2 full Emirate of Asir: The War of Seven Years https://qualla.com/emirate-of-asir/ Photo credit عمر العلياني, CC BY-SA 4.0. What followed was a guerrilla war against the Ottoman Empire that would last, with pauses, from 1909 until the 1914 truce. Idrisi fighters took Az Zaydiyah and Al Luhayyah. A treaty in January 1910 briefly made al-Idrisi Kaymakam of Asir under Ottoman suzerainty - a face-saving f...

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Image: عمر العلياني | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/n/3/emirate-of-asir-wp/sgn3-emirate-of-asir-the-war-of-seven-years.mp3 0:06 3 full Emirate of Asir: Britain's First Arab Ally https://qualla.com/emirate-of-asir/ Photo credit عمر العلياني, CC BY-SA 4.0. In April 1915, British political resident D. G. L. Shaw signed a "Treaty of Friendship and Goodwill" with al-Idrisi at Aden. It is an easily forgotten fact: the Emirate of Asir, not the more famous Hashemite revolt in Mecca, produced the first Arab leader to join the British agai...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/n/3/emirate-of-asir-wp/sgn3-emirate-of-asir-britains-first-arab-ally.mp3 0:06 4 full Emirate of Asir: The Bargain in the Highlands https://qualla.com/emirate-of-asir/ Photo credit Ameen Rihani (1876-1940), Public domain. In 1920 Ibn Saud sent his son Faisal and his cousin Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa'id into Asir al-Sarah to back mountain tribes unhappy with the al-A'id family. Saudi troops defeated Hasan ibn A'id near Abha. That summer, envoys from Najd arrived at al-Idrisi's court. In the fall the two ...

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Image: Ameen Rihani (1876-1940) | Public domain

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/n/3/emirate-of-asir-wp/sgn3-emirate-of-asir-the-bargain-in-the-highlands.mp3 0:06 5 full Emirate of Asir: What Sabya Remembers https://qualla.com/emirate-of-asir/ Photo credit Irshadpp, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fly over Sabya today at 17.15 degrees north, and you see a modest Saudi city in the Jazan Region, unremarkable from altitude. On the ground, Idrisid-era houses still stand, their mud-brick walls studied by architects. The Farasan Islands, lifted from Ottoman control by al-Idrisi'...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/n/3/emirate-of-asir-wp/sgn3-emirate-of-asir-what-sabya-remembers.mp3 0:06 6 full