Kathiri

Kathiri, also known as the Kathiri sultanate (Arabic: السلطنة الكثيرية, romanized: al-Saltanah al-Kathīrīyah), and officially as the Kathiri State of Seiyun, was a sultanate in the Hadhramaut region of the southern Arabian Peninsula, in what is now part of Yemen and the Dhofar Governorate of Oman. It was established in 1379 and ruled Hadhramaut from Dhofar in the east to Sharura in the Empty Quarter in the north and Ain Bamabd in the south. Throughout its history, the Kathiri state ruled a large area of Hadhramaut, but it lost much of its power in the 19th century in favor of its rival, the Qu'aiti, and lost its eastern regions to the Omani Empire and the Mahra Sultanate, eventually limiting the authority of the Kathiri state to northern Hadhramaut. In 1414, Sultan Ali bin Omar bin Jaafar bin Badr al-Kathiri decided to seize Dhofar, which was supported by all Hadramawt scholars at that time, and seized it. In the mid-1950s, the Kathiri state was forced to join the British Protectorate of South Arabia, and remained in it until 1967, when the 14 October Revolution took place, expelling the colonizers and unifying the rest of the sultanates into one state, the People's Republic of South Yemen.