The historian Clifford Edmund Bosworth also states the Ghassanid ancestry to be concocted and their ancestors to be Oghuz Turks that had participated in the Seljuk invasion of the Middle East.

[9] The historian Irfan Shahid, however, rejects the Oghuz theory by explaining that they've lived amongst the Turkish tribes but were in fact, from Ghassanid Arab origin.

After the foundation of a separate dominion over Egypt, the Ayyubid army was still generally composed of Oghuz and Kipchak troops and mercenaries.

The last of the line, al-Malik al-Mas'ud, left Yemen for Bilad al-Sham in 1229 and entrusted governance to an ambitious member of his own mercenary force.

The regime was in a certain sense a direct continuation of Ayyubid rule, with power based on the control of military forces and Abbasid approval, rather than acquiescence from the local population.

[13] When the news of his death reached the Zaydi imam Al-Mutawakkil al-Mutahhar bin Yahya, he commented:[13] The greatest king of Yemen, the Muawiyah of the time, has died.

While the history of this region has usually been characterized by deep political and religious divisions, the extent of territory that the Rasulids ruled would not be superseded until (briefly) in the seventeenth century.

[17][better source needed] While the Hijaz fell to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, the Rasulids temporarily held control over the holy city of Mecca, accordingly raising their own prestige.

Thus sultan al-Mujahid Ali (r. 1322–1363) based taxes on the average of production over several years, and deduced the grain to be sown as seed from the taxable produce.

In his travel account, Marco Polo mentions the sultan of Aden (Yemen) in the late thirteenth century: "In his kingdom there are many towns and castles, and it has the advantage of an excellent port, frequented by ships from India arriving with spices and drugs...

The sultan of Aden possesses immense treasures, arising from the imposts he lays, as well upon the merchandise that comes from India, as upon that which is shipped in his port as the returning cargo".

[20] King Ahmad bin al-Ashraf of the Rusuild dynasty hosted the Walashama princes and sons of Sultan Sa'ad ad-Din II of Ifat after he was killed by the Ethiopian Empire.

A series of Zaidi imams managed to regain ground in the Yemeni highlands from the end of the thirteenth century, more importantly Zaidi imams managed to convert the Kurds of Dhamar (remnants of the Ayyubid military) into the Zaydi sect & pacified the Kurds of Dhamar,[24] the Rasulid sultans were unable to score a decisive military success against rebels.

In 1350 the Rasulid sultan al-Mujahid Ali was captured by Egyptian Mamluks in Mecca when he went on a pilgrimage, and was held prisoner in Egypt for a year.

Sultan an-Nasir Ahmad (r. 1401–1424) was able to revive the Rasulid dynasty's declining fortunes and even received gifts from distant China.

Merchants from the east tended to bypass Aden due to the exactions and uncertainties there, going directly to Jedda in the Hijaz which was now part of the Egyptian Mamluk sphere of power.

In the same year, the last Rasulid sultan, al-Mas'ud Abu al-Qasim, gave up his throne in favour of az-Zafir Amir bin Tahir and withdrew to Mecca.