here. It will be noted that the affinity of the second to the last king is uncertain., and that last one, al-Mas'ud, is a son of the Sult.an of Egypt, al-Kamil I -- his own son would be the last Ayyubid Sult.an of Egypt.RASULIDS, at Ta'izzal-Mans.ur 'Umar I Nur adDin1229-1250al-Muz.affar Shams adDin Yusuf I1250-1295al-Ashraf Mumahhid adDin 'Umar II1295-1296al-Mu'ayyad H.izabr adDin Dawud1296-1322al-Mujahid Sayf ad-Din 'Ali1322-1363al-Afd.al D.irgham adDin al-'Abbas1363-1377al-Ashraf Isma'il I1377-1400an-Nas.ir Salah. adDin Ah.mad1400-1424al-Mans.ur 'Abdallah1424-1427al-Ashraf Isma'il II1427-1428az-Z.ahir Yah.ya1428-1439al-Ashraf Isma'il III1439-1442al-Muz.affar Yusuf II1442-1450/1al-Afd.al Muh.ammad1442an-Nas.ir Ah.mad1442al-Mas'ud Salah. adDin1443-1454al-Mu'ayyad al-H.usayn1451-1454Well before the fall of the Ayyubids in Egypt (1252), they are replaced in Yemen. This is not done by a local dynasty, but by a Turkish deputy left in charge by al-Mas'ud, who left for Syria. A genealogy was manufactured for al-Mans.ur from the pre-Islamic Ghassanids, but his family had already come to notice as Seljuk envoys (rasul) of the Abbasid Caliphs.Although, like the Ayyubids, the Rasulids were Sunnis, and we might expect local opposition of a religious nature, they nevertheless endured more than two centuries with a prosperous and culturally productive realm. From the port of Aden trade extended as far as East Africa, India, and China. Indeed, we arrive at the era in which Chinese fleets sailed in the Indian Ocean (1405-1433), and a Rasulid embassy to China itself is recorded. Chinese ships undoubtedly called at Aden. But the Chinese disappeared, soon to be followed by an equally unexpected power.The chronology of the Rassids is from Clifford Edmund Bosworth's The New Islamic Dynasties [Edinburgh University Press, 1996, p.96]. The subsequent Islamic dynasties are given by Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies, which were initially transcribed but are here corrected and supplemented (as with diacritics) from Bosworth. The New Islamic Dynasties gives many other local dynasties, but here I have tried to confine things to a central succession.T.AHIRIDS, at al-Miqrana and Jubanaz-Z.afir 'Amir I Salah. adDin1454-1460al-Mujahid 'Ali Shams adDin1454-1478al-Mans.ur 'Abd al-Wahhab Taj adDin1478-1489az-Z.afir 'Amir II Salah. adDin1489-1517to Mamluks, 1517, then Ottomans, 1517-1635The Rasulids are ultimately overthrown by a local, but still Sunni, family, the T.ahirids, a name that recalls an important family of the early days of the Abbasids. The T.ahirids now witness the epic arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean (1498). Afonso d'Albuquerque sieged Aden in 1513. This alarmed the Mamluks, who realized that their trade monopoly from the Mediterranean to India had been bypassed. They began moving against Yemen in 1515 and had occupied most of the country by 1517. Some T.ahirid princes survived in fortresses until 1538. However, it was not to be the Mamluks who eliminated the holdouts. Just as the Mamluks completed their conquest in South Arabia, Egypt itself was conquered by the Ottoman Sult.an Selim I, "the Grim." Equally alert to the Portuguese threat, the Ottomans inherited the Mamluk position in Yemen and, for a while, vigorously enlarged it. This also included intervention in the Horn of Africa, where the Portuguese had made contact with the long isolated Christian Emperors of Ethiopia. Portuguese firearms, delivered after an appeal for help by the Emperor Lebna Dengel in 1535, enabled the