[1] The last sultan, al-Mas'ud Abu al-Qasim, gave up any hope of maintaining his throne and withdrew to Mecca in the same year.

The sultans used to spend the summers in Juban and al-Miqranah, with good access to the southern highlands, using Zabid in the lowland as their winter capital.

Thus they built schools, mosques and irrigation channels as well as water cisterns and bridges in Zabid and Aden, Yafrus, Rada'a, Juban, etc.

[4] In the early sixteenth century sultan az-Zafir Amir II (1489–1517) resumed expansion to the north into Zaydiyya territory and managed to take San'a again in 1504.

The Mamluk regime in Egypt, realizing the danger, sent a fleet under Husain al-Kurdi to the south in 1505 with the intention to fight the Christian intruders in the Indian Ocean.

This time, az-Zafir Amir II, who had recently beaten off a Portuguese attack on Aden, refused to provide resources to the Mamluks.

After having laid at anchor at Zaila on the African coast, he attacked the Tahirid sultan with muskets and artillery, hitherto not used in warfare in Yemen.

The Zabid Mamluks then offered prayers in the name of the Ottoman sultan while defending themselves as well as they could against Zaydiyya and remaining Tahirid forces as well as Arab tribesmen.

In Yemen, Prince Amir bin Da'ud sent calls for help from the commander of the fleet, Sulaiman Pasha al-Khadim, since he was cornered at Aden by the Zaydiyya imam al-Mutawakkil Yahya Sharaf ad-Din.

However, he sent his men ashore, arrested Amir bin Da'ud and his principal grandees, and hanged them from the yardarms of the ships on 3 August 1538.