Yemen document photos online

Yemen is the only country on Earth where the value of your banknotes depends on which side of an invisible front line you happen to be standing. Since 2016 two rival central banks - one in Sana'a, one in Aden - have printed and policed competing versions of the same Yemeni rial. Houthi-controlled areas banned the newer notes outright, so by 2024 an 'old' rial from Sana'a traded near 530 to the dollar while an 'identical' new rial from Aden sank toward 1,800. One currency, one name, two prices: a passport may get you across a border, but in Yemen even your cash needs a visa.

• Currency split Yemen runs two rival central banks issuing competing versions of the same rial, and by 2024 a Sana'a note traded near 530 to the dollar while an Aden note sank toward 1,800 - the same currency at two prices.
• Old money Before decimalisation in 1974 the Yemeni rial wasn't split into 100 fils but into 40 buqsha, 80 halala or 160 zalat - units that vanished so completely that fils coins are no longer minted at all.
• Passport power On the 2025 Henley Passport Index the Yemeni passport sits near 100th place with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to roughly 33 destinations, among the weakest travel documents in the world.
• Two independences Modern Yemen has two birthdays: North Yemen broke from the Ottoman Empire in 1918, South Yemen gained independence from Britain in 1967, and the two only merged into one republic on 22 May 1990.
• First skyscrapers The walled city of Shibam - 'the Manhattan of the desert' - packs about 500 mud-brick towers up to 11 storeys high, making it the world's oldest example of vertical urban planning, UNESCO-listed since 1982.
• Living capital Sana'a is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, with over 6,000 decorated tower-houses, 103 mosques and 14 bathhouses, most of them built before the 11th century.
• Coffee monopoly The word 'mocha' comes from Yemen's Red Sea port of al-Mukha, which once held a global coffee monopoly so tightly that beans were roasted before export to stop anyone planting a rival crop.
• Sole survivor Socotra island is the only place on the planet where the umbrella-shaped Dragon's Blood tree grows wild, alongside hundreds of plants found nowhere else - a UNESCO-protected 'Galapagos of the Indian Ocean'.
• Sheba's dam The Great Dam of Marib, heart of the ancient kingdom of Saba ruled by the legendary Queen of Sheba, stretched about 580 metres and irrigated the desert for over a thousand years before its final collapse around 570 CE.