Khamir ( ar, خمر, Khamir) is a small city in the

'Amran Governorate ʽAmran ( ar, عمران, ʽAmrān) is one of the governorates of Yemen. Districts 'Amran Governorate is divided into the following 20 districts. These districts are further divided into sub-districts, and then further subdivided into villag ...

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...

. It is the seat of

Khamir District Khamir ( ar, مديرية خمر) is a district of the 'Amran Governorate, Yemen. As of 2003, the district had a population of 73,225 inhabitants. The center of the district is Khamir Khamir may refer to: *Khamir, sometimes called Bandar Khamir, ...

. It is now closely associated with the tribal confederation of

Hashid The Hashid ( ar, حاشد; Musnad: 𐩢𐩦𐩵𐩣) is a tribal confederation in Yemen. It is the second or third largest – after Bakil and, depending on sources, Madh'hij

, although it is named after a member of the

Bakil The Bakil ( ar, بكيل, Musnad: 𐩨𐩫𐩺𐩡) federation is the largest tribal federation in Yemen. The tribe consists of more than 10 million men and women they are the sister tribe of Hashid(4 million) whose leader was Abdullah Bin Hussein ...

tribe and was historically mainly a Bakil town.

Name and history

According to the 10th-century writer al-Hamdani, Khamir was named after one Khamir ibn Dawman ibn Bakil, of the

tribe, who Hamdani described as "a king who built palaces in the Zahir of Hamdan." Hamdani specified that the city's name referred to the fact that it was inhabited by "the sons of Khamir"; he wrote that, during his lifetime, the town was mostly inhabited by members of Bakil. He described its pre-Islamic ruins and wrote that the king As'ad al-Kamil was born here. During the Middle Ages, the main north–south highway in the area bypassed Khamir to the east, so the city is absent from most historical accounts of the period. Its first mention in the '' Ghayat al-amani'' of

Yahya ibn al-Husayn Yahya may refer to: * Yahya (name), a common Arabic male given name * Yahya (Zaragoza), 11th-century ruler of Zaragoza * John the Baptist in Islam, also known as Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīyā See also * Tepe Yahya Tapeh Yahya () is an archaeological ...

is in the year 1398 (800 AH); the text mentions that some of its houses had

Himyarite The Himyarite Kingdom ( ar, مملكة حِمْيَر, Mamlakat Ḥimyar, he, ממלכת חִמְיָר), or Himyar ( ar, حِمْيَر, ''Ḥimyar'', / 𐩹𐩧𐩺𐩵𐩬) ( fl. 110 BCE–520s CE), historically referred to as the Homerit ...

foundations that could not be destroyed. Khamir is mentioned more frequently from the late 16th century onward, when it was frequently used as a base by armies in the region.

References

Populated places in 'Amran Governorate {{Yemen-geo-stub