After ousting the Ottomans in the early seventeenth century, the Qasimi imams of Yemen expanded their territory to include the coastal lowlands of Yemen and the eastern stretch of Hadramawt. Whereas the previous Zaydi imamates of Yemen had been limited in their geographic purview, the seventeenth-century Qasimis engaged in territorial expansion and located themselves in competition with other early modern states. Letters exchanged during the era provide evidence that the Qasimis saw themselves as participants on a wider political stage. For instance, Imam al-Mu'ayyad Muhammad communicated with, and then sent embassies to, the Ethiopian king Fasiladas, as recorded in Ahmad al-Haymi's Sirat al-Habasha. His successor Imam al-Mutawakkil Isma'il exchanged a series of letters with the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb. These letters and exchanges, which have been explored and published by E. van Donzel and Francois Blukacz, represent the desire for political and religious legitimacy and illustrate a worldview that reached outside of the limits of the southern Arabian Peninsula. By the eighteenth century, the later Qasimis lost the territory and political stability gained by their predecessors. However, they remained in active communication with foreign states and merchants, as evidenced through commercial documents as well as local chronicles. For instance, in the early eighteenth century, Imam al-Mahdi Muhammad, also known as Sahib al-Mawahib, welcomed both French and Dutch merchants to his court near Dhamar, as well as an embassy from the Safavid Shah Sultan Husayn. His successor, Imam al-Mutawakkil al-Qasim, received an Ottoman embassy from Jidda who tried to discourage him from allowing European merchants to purchase coffee in Yemen. Relying upon Yemeni chronicles, European travel writing, and the archival documents of the Dutch East India Company, this paper explores the tone and investments of these later and less-known foreign encounters, which unlike their earlier counterparts, present a view into the economic interests of the imamate, as well as a few cases of medical diplomacy.