| Summary: | This paper addresses the foundation of the Yemeni student scholarships to Egypt in the 1930s. These constitute the first cases of Yemenis travelling abroad to study modern secular sciences, which were anathema to the Yemeni authorities. Three Yemeni thinkers from both the north and the south sought to resist these policies that impeded development by looking for scholarships abroad. These were Muḥammad ʿAlī Luqmān, Aḥmad al-Aṣnaj, and Aḥmad Muḥammad al-Nuʿmān. State officials in a number of Arab states, including Egypt, sympathized with them. The paper showcases the role of al-Nuʿmān and al-Aṣnaj in securing scholarships for three groups of Yemeni students to study in Cairo before the year 1940, after which the number of such scholarships increased until they reached the thousands. Upon returning to Yemen, the graduates of these scholarships played a large role in fostering cultural, social, and political awareness, and introducing and improving modern education. This can be primarily credited to Aḥmad al-Nuʿmān and Muḥammad b. Sālim al-Bayḥānī, the respective founders of the two educational systems in Yemen: the modern schools and the religious academies, whose educational, cultural, and political impact persists to this day in Yemen. The paper also concludes that these scholarships from the onset played a role in shaping Yemeni-Egyptian relations on the official and popular levels.
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