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Y is for Yemen

And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart. And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not. And King Solomon gave unto the Queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever she asked, beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty. So she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants.

(I Kings 10 v.1-13)
Yemeni/Saban woman holding a sheaf of wheat. Tombstone carving. Wikimedia

She came up out of the desert, perfumed and oiled with the spices of her land, draped in pearls and precious gems, carried by a dozen muscular men who put her down gently as a feather. Although she bowed to grant him his due, in his kingdom, he took her hand and bowed his head in return, as she was also a great ruler, not just of a fine city but also of the whole of the legendary Saba to the south, spanning desert, water, and vast fields. They say the gardens flourished there, behind great walls with strange carvings that spoke of the reign of even older, mightier kings, of plagues, and of uprisings crushed like the flower of their incense trees.

Fast Facts

  • Named for: Arabic, either yamn, “blessed” or ymn, “to the right of Mecca.
  • Capital: Sanaa
  • Long/Lat: 15.2 N/44.1 E, 8900 miles or 19 hours east of Castro Valley
  • Population: 32.7 million or 48 CVs
  • Size: 176,000 sq mi or 1000 CVs
  • Avg temp in April: 79 F/26 C
  • Median household income: $12-15,000
  • Ethnicity: 93% Arab/2% Somali
  • Main industries: Oil, sorghum, qat. The region is too unstable to harvest much frankincense or myrrh, though Yemen remains a key source.

Yemen is another “only” country in Arabia–the only “Y”–just as Oman and Qatar were the only “O” and “Q.” Is there something about this place that gives rise to unique names, or is it just the language?

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X is for Xinjiang

Not a sovereign state (country), Xinjiang is still huge, bigger than Texas, California, Nevada, and Minnesota combined. Wikipedia photo.

Fast Facts

  • Named for: The full name is the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR)
  • Capital: Ürümqi
  • Long/Lat: 41 N/85 E, about 13 hours or 7000 mi from CV to the Taklmakan Desert, going west.
  • Population: 25,890,000 or 1.3 million CVs
  • Size: 642,000 sq mi or 10x CVs
  • Avg temp in April: 55 F/15 C (mountainous)
  • Median household income: $10,000 GDP/per capita but income???
  • Ethnicity: 44% Uygur/42% Han
  • Main industries: Agriculture, mining for natural resources

At the end of the alphabet, there seem to be a lot of wiggling and hedging. I am chagrined that I had to include non-UN members, countries not really independent, and now this X. Xinjiang is not a country–not even disputed as a country–but simply a region within China. There is a dispute, but we’ll get to that. It’s simply that there are no countries beginning with an “X,” so either it was live with this region, skip the letter, spell names in Catalan (which uses X), or choose a different theme. I’ll take the penalty point and move on.

At over 640,000 sq mi, Xinjiang would be the 16th largest country in the world. It’s bigger than Texas, California, Nevada, and Minnesota combined. At nearly 26 million people, it’s the 60th largest in population, which is more people than Florida. If it were a country, it would dwarf the rest of the Small Countries on my list. (I wonder if it would be bigger than all combined–let’s see, if I put them all in a spreadsheet to add their populations and …nahhh.)

However, Xinjiang has an interesting status. It was designated as the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) back in 1955. A brisk walk through the history before and after that will remind us of what boundary states are about, even those giant regions within a giant country.

Historically, Xinjiang spread across a wide basin–the Tarim basin–ringed by a series of mountains, Tian Shan to the north and Kunlun to the south. Scholars are careful to note that Xinjiang was not simply a partial stop on the Silk Road, but the road passed through it, which was its claim to worldwide fame.

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W is for Western Sahara

Fast Facts

  • Named for: Part of the Sahara. The Western part.
  • Capital: hard to say
  • Long/Lat: 25 N/13 W, 6000 miles and 13 hours east of Castro Valley
  • Population: 565,000 or 8.5 CVs
  • Size: 105,000 sq mi or 5800 CVs (sparsely populated)
  • Avg temp in April: 77 F/25 C
  • Median household income: GDP per capita is $2,500 but doesn’t necessarily go to the locals.
  • Ethnicity: Berbers
  • Main industries: Fishing. Phosphates. Sustainable energy if Morocco could get in there and build the wind farms.

Western Sahara thinks itself a country. Morocco doesn’t. The border is disputed, as in is there even a border? The indigenous people, the Sahrawis of Western Sahara, think so. The Moroccan don’t, which is why they’ve laid berms–land mines–along one section. We’re in “W” and the world is still cray cray.

Today, technically, Western Sahara is not a country, although it was once. When I was in the 6th grade and memorizing the countries of Africa (see my A-Z inaugural post), it was called Spanish Sahara. Very colonizer-forward. That’s the legacy, of Africa being carved up by the Europeans, after the Islamic Empire carved up Europe and North Africa, and after the Romans carved up Europe, Africa, and Asia, and after Alexander carved up… A country’s borders have always been about the weaponry and the exploitable resources within.

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