In Yemen, Sufism has never developed the elaborate hierarchical organizations and economic assets that we find in the rest of the Muslim world, especially in Egypt, Anatolia, Africa, Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, and India. This characteristic of Yemeni Sufism springs from the scarce economic resources and the resultant poverty of the population (including the ruling elites), tribal anarchy, and the lack of centralized state authorities that would support Sufi institutions to legitimize themselves. Another characteristic feature of Yemeni Sufism is the presence in the highlands of North Yemen of a politically active Zaydî community, whose scholars and rulers (the Zaydî imâms) have opposed and occasionally persecuted Sunni Sufis on doctrinal grounds (as a consequence of the Shî‘î rejection of the spiritual authority and guidance of Sufi “friends of God” (awliyâ’) in favor of the people of the Prophet’s house (ahl al-bayt). To these distinctive features of Yemeni Islam, one may add the menacing presence along the country’s northern borders of anti-Sufi Wahhâbî tribes (starting in the second half of the 18th century), and, later on, the rise of the powerful Wahhâbî-Saudi state that was eager to impose (for the most part, unsuccessfully) its puritan (anti-saint and anti-Sufi) version of Islam (Wahhâbî Salafism) on its Yemeni neighbors. In the recent past and until today, at stake in the Salafi-Sufi polemic and occasionally physical confrontation around Sufi shrines has been the issue of not only theological orthodoxy, but also of authenticity. Each party has claimed to be indigenous and authentic, while dismissing the opponent as a foreign implant, a poacher intruding onto Yemen’s religious field without license, as it were. For the Sufis, the Salafi rejection of worship at local shrines and of Sufi rituals is alien to the beliefs and practices of the local Yemeni community. For the Salafis, on the contrary, Sufism is a heretical implant surreptitiously grafted by its promoters onto the pristine Islam of the pious ancestors (al-salaf al-sâlih). The paper examines how the two rival communities, which have extensive transnational connections and coteries of followers, have sought to position themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of the authentic Yemeni religiosity and, by extension, also of Yemeni nationhood.