The high Middle Ages in South Arabia is mainly shaped by two important dynasties ruling between 1173 and 1454: the Ayyubids and the Rasulids. The Kurdish family of the Ayyubids ruled in Syria and Egypt, and in their time, connections between South Arabia and the other family holdings were close. The successive rule of the Rasulids, whose ancestor came to South Arabia as Emir of the Ayyubids, is characterized by the historians of that period as a time of prosperity. Consequently, long range connections and exchange of envoys across the Indian Ocean prevailed. A number of South Arabian historians wrote about this period inside the realm of the Ayyubids and Rasulids (Ibn Hatim, Ibn Abd al-Majid, al-Khazraji, Ibn al-Dayba‘, to name just a few), as well as biographers of Imams in the northern regions of South Arabia, who remained at least temporarily independent of the central rulers (e.g. al-Abbasi al-Alawi). The works of the South Arabian historians will be scrutinized for indications of interdependencies between South Arabia and other regions. References to representatives of ethnic groups (e.g. Akrad for Kurds) obviously are frequent in those narratives about long distance encounters or new ‘foreign’ rulers, and they will be scrutinized in proper contexts as examples of hierarchized ethnic diversity in times of religious and commercial prosperity.