Dhamar Governorate - Traditions and Customs

Traditions and Customs

The governorate’s people still maintain their noble traditions and customs for occasions such as weddings and religious festivals. On these occasions, people eager to perform traditional actions such as public dances, while garbed in traditionally appropriate clothing according customs inherited through generations. The dances, dress and verbal expressions at weddings differ in detail from district to district. Neighboring districts have the same names for the dances and a similar way of performing them, but these change toward the west so that in lower Wusab near the Tihamah plain the dances are completely different from those in eastern Dhamar.

Dhamar is the most consistently elevated governorate in Yemen, with most of the land lying at over 2,500 metres (8,200 ft). The climate, though, remains hot during the day, with typical maxima of between 25 and 30 °C (77 and 86 °F), but frosts are very common at night during the winter months. During January 1986, temperatures are believed to have fallen as low as −12 °C (10 °F). Although no reliable rain gauge exists within the governorate, it is estimates that annual rainfall would range between 400 and 500 millimetres (16 and 20 in) concentrated exclusively in the summer months, especially in July and August but also in March and April. Occasionally, floods can prove disastrous though causing extensive erosion, notably in early April 2006.

Dhamar is a major agricultural region, being located midway between two of Yemen's three largest cities (Sana'a and Ta'izz). It produces to some degree almost all the crops grown in the Yemeni highlands. Dhamar town itself is notable as the only town in the former Yemen Arab Republic not to be walled: rather it is merely a town on open plains.

Dhamar Governorate is the important seat for the Zaydi religious sect which has long had a major influence in Yemen. The pre-Islamic kingdoms of Saba’, Qataban and Himyar had their capitals within the present area of Dhamar, and the Himyarite kingdom with its capital at Yarim set up the numerous terraces that allow for highly intensive agriculture throughout the region.

Coordinates: 15°40′N 43°56′E / 15.667°N 43.933°E / 15.667; 43.933