Zaid bin Ali al-Wazir is a scholar, poet, politician, historian, former diplomat, and editor who from a young age was tutored by leading Yemeni men of literature and Islamic sciences (ʿulamāʾ). He has published many books, including Autocracy: Political Jurisprudence Crisis among Muslims (al-Fardiyya: Baḥth fī azmat al-fiqh al-siyāsī ʿindā l-Muslimīn), An Attempt to Correct the Path (Muḥāwala li-taṣḥīḥ al-masār), and An Attempt to Comprehend the Yemeni Problem (Muḥāwala li-fahm al-mushkila al-yamaniyya), as well as numerous scholarly articles. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he was a founding member of the so-called Third Force and the Union of Popular Forces party (Ittiḥād al-Quwā al-Shaʿbiyya). He was one of the founders and main contributors to al-Shoura newspaper. In 1999 he established the Yemen Heritage and Research Center (Markaz al-Turāth wa-l-Buḥūth al-Yamanī), which publishes the journal al-Masār, focusing on Yemeni issues.
The most significant and by far largest collections of Zaydi manuscripts are housed by the many public and private libraries of Yemen, an endangered cultural heritage tradition, currently at risk due to the conflict and warfare in Yemen. The contributions brought together in this volume address a wide spectrum of aspects concerning Yemeni manuscript cultures, with some focusing on their history and present state within Yemen and others discussing the collections of manuscripts of Yemeni provenance in Europe and elsewhere.
