The monsoonwinds that comes from India cause the rainfall in these area.The first known cultivation of coffee was at these highlands, in the 13nt century. From banks of the Red Sea in Tihama, coffee traveled to the world. Read the Coffee story at the end of the page The Red Sea Highlands
The Yemen’s Highlands resulted from the formation of the Great Rift Valley system, millions of years ago.
 
The region benefits from the rains and clouds coming from the Red Sea.
Mahawiet
The area has excellent soil fertility and perfect climite for growing Coffee. Were rainfull is aboundant during spring and summer. The monsoonwinds that comes from India cause the rainfall in these area.
Manakha has always been an important town, owing to its strategic position at 2,250 metres in the centre of the Heraz Mountains.
Coffee cherries ripen eight months after flowering. When the coffee cherries has changed its color to a lucious red the beans inside are ready to be harvested.
 
Ripen Coffee cherries.
A man from al Hajjarah decorated with coffee tree branches during a wedding
 
Al-Hajjarah. Religious opposition to coffee resulted in political proscription a number of times during the 16nt century. Central to the debate was whether drinking coffee fell under the same prohibition against intoxication as wine. Quahweh, coffee, was also a poetical word for wine. In 1511 the governor of Mecca prohibited coffee drinking, with severe punishment for any transgressor, and ordered all the stores of beans destroyed.
Talouk. Gimmeiz, Sycamore fig (Ficus Sycomorus L.). The Sycamore tree grows in the warm climates of the sloops to Tihamah along the Red sea. The tree can grow up to 20 meters height and 2 meters in diameter. it grows in wadi beds on fill deposit and in places where water is not far from the surface.
Al Talouk as called in Yemen, Gimmeiz, Sycamore fig. The fruits are not eaten by the locals
It is native to this region, and it seems to extends to tropical east Africa according to some sources.
The timber of this tree was much used in general woodwork for its resistant to decay, and for its lightness
Its milky sap (Latex) was used as a remedy for snake and scorpion bites, and for skin diseases. The white wood of is used very much like sandalwood.
The Sycamore tree grows in the same warm climates as the Coffeee tree and its often used as a shade to the Coffee plantations as seen in the photo, along with another tree called Tounob.
Coffee plantation under a giant Talouk tree in Hajja
 
 
Through all of the time the coffee growers kept a complete control on the coffee plants and viable seeds. Foreigners were not allowed access to the Red Sea highlands plantations, and no viable seeds were allowed to leave the country. But around 1600 an indian pilgrim was able to smuggle seven beans back to Mysore by strapping them on his belly. In 1690 a group of Dutch mariners managed to steal several live coffee plants and smuggle them out of the port of Mocha. they planted some of the saplings i java, a Dutch colony already supplying Europe with pepper, nutmeg, and other spices. At least one coffee plant was sent to the botanical garden in Amsterdam. A shoot of this plant was presented as a gift to king Louis XIV of France in 1713. Ten years an enterprising Fresh officer, Gabriel-Mathieu de Clieu, the Captain of infantry in Martinique, broke into the Jardin Royale and stole the plant. De Clieu immediately set sail with his plant for the west Indies. In Martinique, de Clieu planted his treasure and protected it with guards and thorn bushes. the plant survived, and most of the coffee trees alive in the Western Hemisphere today are its descendants. Brazil’s immense coffee industry got its start from one of the de Clieu’s trees that has been transplanted in Guiana. The Brazilians obtained the tree when France and Holland were having a dispute over the border between their colonies in Guiana, Brazil, in an act of friendship, sent an off icial envoy tp help mediate the conflict. During the deliberations, Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de melo Palheta stayed in Guiana with the French Governor and his wife. When he left, the governor’s wife, as an appreciative token of parting, gave him a bouquet of flowers. Hidden within the bouguet was a live cutting from a coffee tree.