[^12] During the caliphate of ‘Ali ( ‘a )...

[^12] During the caliphate of ‘Ali ( ‘a ), in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Yemenis who were residing in Iraq[^13] and thousands of whom were considered part of the Imam’s army, most of the people of Yemen were also Shi‘ah.

The ‘Uthmanis and sympathizers of the Umayyads living there were very small in number and the evidence of it is the treatment of Busr ibn Artat, as per instruction of Mu‘awiyah, toward them.[^14] While Busr was with the people of the regions sympathetic to the Quraysh and the Umayyads, he did nothing. For example, he passed by Mecca and Ta’if, he did nothing against these two cities. ^15 But when he arrived in the cities of Yemen such as Arhab, San‘a and Hadhramawt, he engaged in mass murder.

In San‘a he beheaded a hundred Iranian nobles. He had no mercy toward the representatives of Ma’rab who had come to conquer Oman as he killed them…