Shibam, the medieval city with buildings

shibam

Does photography intrigue you? It does not belong to a great western city designed by modern architectural firms. It is not in Europe, it is not in America. It is in an Arab country called Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula.

The city is called shibam and precisely because of these high constructions is that it has entered the list of World Heritage last year. It is an ancient city, with several centuries of existence, but it is distinguished from other medieval cities precisely by the vertical principle of its construction. It looks like a modern city but it was built in the XNUMXth century.

The Old Walled City of Shibam

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This city is also called Shibam Hadramawt And although we say that it is medieval, in reality its origins are even older because the first time that its name appears in an inscription is in the third century BC. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Hadramawt, which formerly occupied the southern region of the Arabian peninsula and which used to be a British protectorate until the decolonization of Asia in the mid-XNUMXth century.

The ancient city is located in the west central area, near the Ramlat al-Sab`tayn desert, in a valley. The desert has an area of ​​about 26 thousand square kilometers of untidy dunes that are crossed by a highway that connects some cities in this part of the country. Shibam city rises from the edge of a cliff and it is located in an important point of the route of caravans of incense and spices that crossed the Arab plains of the south.

Shibam in the distance

The truth is that UNESCO has highlighted it last year among its World Heritage Sites because it has a truly unique architecture. After all, they are buildings built with mud bricks and it is not that there are one or two, but that they are counted today around 500 and they have a height between five and eleven stories, and on each floor there are one or two rooms. Not bad for Middle Ages Asia, isn't it?

But why did people build these kinds of houses so long ago? Historians say that this type of architecture served to protect the inhabitants from the attacks of the Bedouin, kings of the desert. A tight, tall, lean city seems more difficult to attack, occupy, and plunder than one that is more open and wide. Although to this day these are its characteristics, it seems that at some point it had buildings of about 30 meters in height.

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Thus, with good reason it is usually known as "the oldest skyscraper city in the world" or the "Manhattan of the desert". A strange and curious beauty that, to be maintained and protected from erosion (remember the mud bricks and their location in the middle of a desert), must be touched up all the time with fresh mud. Lots of layers so it's constant work.

In the XNUMXth century merchants came to the city from Asia and renovated it and since then it has been expanding on the southern side until almost forming a new suburb called al-Sahil. But the abandonment of the old flood control used by farmers and the overload of traditional sanitation systems, when the more modern water supply systems arrived, ended up introducing many changes and not all were good.

Even less than ten years ago I had more buildings than now. It happens that in 2008 the valley suffered a flood and some structures ended up collapsing due to the effect of the water. And a year later Al Qaeda attacked the city adding problems. But its wonderful architecture has reached the XNUMXst century with all its magic: it is a rectangular urban layout with buildings, streets and squares.

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By supuesto has a mosque, old since it is from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century, and a castle built in the XNUMXth century, although it is known that the area was inhabited before the arrival of Islam. Although the city is not what it used to be, the landscape remains almost the same as centuries ago: a city of very tall buildings on the edge of the desert, surrounded by land dedicated to agriculture. An economic system that has endured over time and that includes the continuous manufacture of bricks, an ancient tradition of which no traces remain in other parts of the region.

What criteria has been taken into account by UNESCO to honor the old city of Shibam as a World Heritage Site? Well, fortified cities there are many but Shibam there is only one: is best and oldest example of a planned urban settlement and based on a multi-story construction. It represents the most successful example of Hadrami urban architecture and emerges from a plain that is often flooded, so it is a real challenge.

Ancient Shibam

Located between two mountains and almost completely away from other citiesIt is strange and wonderful the way these people have preserved their traditions and adapted to a world that is not always kind. The buildings of Shibam have not defenestrated the soil and the adventure of their construction and maintenance has remained as a reflection of the war between the powerful families of the region in a critical period of local history, from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century, when the wealth of the trade became political power.

The best of all is that this UNESCO appointment has ensured its preservation. It was already protected by a couple of Yemeni laws but now there is an urban conservation master plan that, if approved in these months, should conserve funds to make it last several more centuries. The fact that it is a World Heritage Site forces Yemen to put the batteries.

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If you wonder if there are tourists coming to Shibam The answer is yes: they walk through its streets, stay at dusk and take hundreds of photographs and if they can enter the buildings. There are not thousands, but there are people who are encouraged to travel to Yemen. The most adventurous, naturally.


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