The 1963 Qat Ban: Yemen's Leaf and the Imam's Impossible Law

In 1963, the Zaydi Imam of North Yemen, Muhammad al-Badr, issued a sweeping ban on qat — the stimulant leaf chewed daily by a large part of the population. He called it a moral and economic drain. The ban was unprecedented, fiercely enforced, and deeply unpopular. This episode traces the short, turbulent life of that law: the smuggling networks that sprang up, the secret mafraj sessions in Ta'izz and Sana'a, the role of the military in enforcement, and the quiet resistance that eventually outlasted the Imamate itself. We also look at how the 1962 revolution that overthrew al-Badr's father, Imam Ahmad, had already loosened the state's grip, and why the ban collapsed within months of the republican coup. Featuring details from the diaries of British diplomat Harold Ingrams, oral histories from qat traders in Wadi Dhana, and the strange irony that today qat is more entrenched in Yemen than ever. A forgotten policy moment that tells us a lot about authority, everyday life, and the limits of top-down reform in 20th-century Yemen.

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