Shibam owes its fame to its distinct architecture, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The houses of Shibam are all made out of mud brick but about 500 of them are tower houses, which rise 5 to 11 stories high, with each floor having one or two apartments.This building technique was implemented in order to protect residents from Bedouin attacks. While Shibam has been in existence for an estimated 1,700 years, most of the city’s houses originate from the 16th century. Many, though, have been rebuilt numerous times in the last few centuries.
Shibam is often called “the oldest skyscraper city in the world” or “the Manhattan of the desert”, and is one of the oldest and best examples of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction. The city has the tallest mud buildings in the world, with some of them over 30 meters (100 feet) high, thus being early high-rise apartment buildings. In order to protect the buildings from rain and erosion, the façades are thickly coated and must be routinely maintained.
Archnet writes about the architecture of Shibam:
Renowned for its mud brick tower houses, the city of Shibam is an architectural gem. It is located in the southeast of the country at the heart of the Wadi Hadramawt – an oasis extending 300 kilometers across the southern section of Yemen, the most expansive one on the Arabian Peninsula. The city is situated on an elevated piece of ground in the river floodplain that is about half a kilometer long. The geographic constraints of the site and of the exterior mud wall have limited outward urban expansion. The city consequently has developed vertically, culminating in a dense urban fabric of about 500 houses that are five to six stories in height with a few rising to eight stories.
Shibam was first settled as a result of ancient incense trade routes. It prospered as the capital of the Hadramawt for centuries under Islamic rule. Sections of the Great Mosque Shibam, the main congregational mosque of the city, date to the rule of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the ninth century. Due to the constraint of the mud brick material used for housing, houses in Shibam are rebuilt over the centuries on their stone foundation. A majority of Shibam’s housing stock is 100 to 200 years old. The House of Jarhum, the longest standing house in the settlement, is close to 400 years old.
Even though the town is perched on high ground in the floodplain, Shibam remains at risk of great damage from floods resulting from heavy seasonal rains. Residents whitewash the rooftops and the upper and lower exterior façades of the houses are whitewashed with a protective covering of crushed gypsum or limestone to prevent water damage.
pictures via google
