North Yemen, which was the last country in the Muslim world to overthrow its traditional Imamate, had, in fact, seen the first coup to occur in the Arab world after the Second World War. It was engineered, in 1948, by the Free Yemeni Movement (al-Ahrdr alYamaniyyin) which managed to seize power for twenty six days. The Zaydi Imamate had survived in the Yemen for eleven hundred years (A.D. 897-1962), mostly in the area north of San'a'. Traditionally the opposition to Zaydi Imams came from other claimants of the throne or from tribes revolting in order to assert their own independence. During his long reign (1904-48), Imam Yahya HamId al-Din faced both types of opposition but the one which led to his assassination was of a different nature. Although it allied itself, at times, with aspirants to the Imamate and with some discontented tribal shaykhs, the Free Yemeni Movement remained basically a political opposition seeking certain social and political reforms. The movement began with young men who studied in Cairo or Baghdad or had some knowledge about the outside world. They resented the backwardness of their country, its isolation from the rest of the world and the autocratic rule of the Hamid al-Din family. After his long and successful struggle against the Turks, Imam Yahya extended his authority over the whole of Yemen with the exception of the Aden Protectorates. He built his army from the, Zaydi tribes of Hashid, Bakfl and Khawlan, and depended in the administration of the country on Sayyids (Hashimites) and the Zaydi qddf class. Fearing that a Sayyid wielding too much power might threaten the rule of his family, Yahya gradually transferred senior posts of the Government from former aides to his own sons.' Imam Yahya was highly suspicious of foreigners, especially Europeans, coming to the Yemen. The colonization of Arab countries by Britain and France and of Abyssinia by Italy was a lesson fresh in Yahya's mind. Thus, he jealously guarded the sovereignty of his country and its traditional religious way of life by isolating it from foreign influence. He refused to allow in the country diplomatic missions or Western commercial companies or to encourage any form of contact with the outside world. He answered a critic, who pointed out the economic benefits that foreign firms would bring to the country, by saying that they did not help India to avert repeated famines; and that he and his people would rather eat straw than allow foreigners into the Yemen.2 Imam Yahya, who never travelled outside Yemen, did not appreciate modern conveniences of life which were enjoyed by other Arab countries. But the Yemenis who visited those countries were impressed by them. The Saudi war of 1934 which resulted in the defeat of Imam Yahya and his loss of 'Asir province triggered off the opposition to the Imamate. The early criticism of the state of affairs in the country took the indirect form of a new approach to literature. Young writers, who read Arabic books and magazines infiltrating through Aden and Mecca at the time of the pilgrimage, were