Character of traditional buildings

'Architecture' is the one word that describes the quality which makes the Hadramawt deferent from any other country and gives it a peculiar cachet of its Own.

Harold Ingrains

Ancient architecture

In ancient times buildings in the wadi were of three principal materials: earth, stone and wood. It seems clear that at first all the buildings were of earth, in the form of sun-dried bricks. But temples and important secular buildings came to be constructed of stone, at least in their lower parts. By the fifth century B.C. the Hadrami temple was typically built at some height above the flood plain, with a small cella of wood and stone in the centre, or at the back of a flat platform. There was an open-air area for sacrifice in front of the cella.

The approach to the old walled city of Shibam. Seen form the southeast. The houses tower over the dry bed of the wadi. In recent years, lower buildings have been erected outside the city walls.

The sacred area was approached up a long flight of wide steps which usually led dramatically straight up the hillside from the valley floor. Sometimes there was space for circumambulation around the cella, but often not; in a few cases there were ranges of other rooms at the back or sides of the sacred area. The cella was usually large enough to house a statue on a raised platform, with a small number of worshippers. In a few cases the roof of the cella was supported on internal columns arranged on either side of a central axis. In two of the surveyed temples there were two large cella buildings, both containing columns on the same sacred platform. The lower wails at least, for that is all that ever survives, were of smooth-faced, fine-jointed ashlar work.

A second type of temple was built within the town precincts; the best evidence exists to date at Raybun and Sunah. In form these temples seem to have resembled closely those on the hillsides; they were elevated on stone platforms, with short Staircases.

At some as yet unclear stage, Hadrami builders began to introduce extensive wood reinforcing into the stone and mud- brick buildings, undoubtedly as a preventive measure against damage by earthquake. The principle adopted involved wooden ringbeams outside and inside, tied together through the thickness of the wall with crossmembers and vertically by upright posts. The ringbeams were placed about 2 m apart up the entire height of the building.

The main evidence for this ancient form of earthquake-proof construction comes, first, from the deserted city site of Mashghah, where the lower levels of three large houses or palaces survive, and, second, from the French excavations at Shabwah, where a part of the courtyard façade of the 'palace' had fallen in antiquity and fragments were well preserved. At Mashghah the base of the wail was of rough river stones, which changed to the half-timbered system of construction I m or so above the original ground level. The buildings must have been entered by means of external stairs or ladders.

From remains of large houses at Mashghah and Sunah it is apparent that ancient house planning was similar to that of recent times, at least on the ground-floor level: a wide central entrance lobby ran from front to back of the plan, ending in a staircase with straight flights around a strong rectangular pier. On either side of the entrance lobby there were smaller rooms, some interconnecting, like those used as animal stalls and storerooms up to the present day.

Islamic architecture

Shibam. The Friday mosque. Parts of the building apparently date back to the fourth (tenth) century. The minaret was refaced and redecorated about twenty years ago.

At some period the extensive use of wood reinforcing against earthquakes went out of use again. This probably happened a century or two after the last major earthquake recorded in South Yemen, which took place in the twelfth (sixth) century. It is not thought that any of the surviving Islamic buildings-even the oldest tombs and mosques-have any remains showing the use of the ancient system of construction. This may well indicate a more recent date than the twelfth (sixth) century for all the standing portions of monuments from Islamic times.

Mosques. The oldest mosques, like those at B?r, in the old centre of Tarim, and in Shibam, were flat-roofed ranges of open arcades around central courtyards. The main prayer hail, on the west or north-west side, was three or four aisles deep. A significant feature is that some of the older mosques, like that of Qatn, have no range of arches or columns on the entrance side of the court, but simply a plain wall, making them quite similar in form to some of the Sabaean temples excavated farther west, in the Yemeni highlands.

There is some evidence that parts of the present structure at Shibam date back to the early tenth (fourth) century, since red baked bricks, of a type wholly alien to Hadramawt, have been found low down in two of its corners.

Shibam. The Friday mosque. Situated in the centre of the old city, with the tall tower houses rising around it.

These red bricks are Consistent with the legend that the mosque was built (or rebuilt) by architects from Abbasid Iraq during the reign of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. In their present form, the mosque arcades are thought to date from the fourteenth (eighth) century. The plan of the mosque at Bor is believed to date back to approximately the same period as the plan at Shibam, although the present structure is a rebuilding of the fifteenth (ninth) century. The oldest surviving mosque building is quite possibly that of Masjid Sirjis at Tarim, which scholars claim dates from the seventh (first) century; there is, however, no single architectural feature in the building that could easily be associated with the early centuries of Islam.

Shibam. The Friday mosque. The arcades of the courtyard show a curious mixture of round-headed arches and pointed arches, evidence of various rebuilding from the tenth (fourth) century to the fourteenth ( eighth) century and beyond.

Several other phases of mosque-building activity can be surmised: the Friday mosque in Sai'un, with the most beautiful interiors of any mosque in the wadi, was first built in the eleventh (fifth) century.

Sai'un. The Friday mosque. The main prayer hall.

Then, in the thirteenth (seventh) century, a number of mosques were built by Sultan Muzaffar of Ta'izz, one of which is still standing in Tarim.

The mosques of al-Haddad in Sai'un and the Masjid Babath in al-Ghurfah date from the sixteenth (tenth) century. The latter has fine Tahirid-type decoration over the three porches on the entrance side, and a mihrab with a shell decoration on its semi- dome. Its minbar is of the same date, or even earlier, incorporating beautiful arabesque work.

Subsequently, as mosques were erected near the tombs of saints or by wealthy returned merchants, their number increased greatly, until in Tarim alone there were said to be 360 mosques.

Mosques and tombs were always erected under the patronage of the Saiyid or Mashayikh class, hence they were generally better built and ornamented than most private houses. They were maintained on an annual basis with scrupulous care, and therefore always seemed to be gleaming with fresh white paint.

Al-Ghurfah. One of the characteristic tombs of Islamic saints which are seen in many places in the wadi.

Qaber Nabi Allah Hud. The lower prayer hall and the 'rock of the camel' on the right, with the houses, mosques and tombs of the deserted pilgrimage town spread out below.

Tombs. Cemeteries were found on the outskirts of towns-or even in the towns if they had expanded to encompass them. Within the cemeteries there were often tombs of Hadrami saints, each tomb constructed in the first instance by erecting a dome on four pillars, which were afterwards closed in by grilles or solid walls to prevent damage by weather or animals.

Tombs of saints were sometimes constructed in other ways, however. Leaders of families of Saiyids were often regarded as saints in their own lifetime-especially as many followed a regimen of abstinence and devotion. Such a man might demarcate a bawtah, a neutral territory where men from various tribes could meet in safety for prayer, parley or trade. The limits of the neutral zone were indicated by erecting whitewashed pillars on the paths or roads leading into it. After the death of a Saiyid, his holiness and spiritual power were regarded as embodied in his tomb, which was administered by his family (the head of whom, as the administrator of the bawtah, was known as Mansab).

Qaber Nabi Allah Hud. The rooftops of some of the empty houses in the town below the tomb, which are inhabited only for the three days of the annual pilgrimage.

As a sanctuary, the tomb was often rebuilt several times, until it assumed the scale of the largest domed mausoleums in the wadi. Inside, the saint's coffin was often set within a richly ornamented wooden or bronze shrine.

Some of the finest tombs are Qaber HUD and the mausoleum of the first Saiyid in the wadi, Abmad ibn Isa. The oldest standing mausoleum in Tarim is that of Masud ibn Yemeni, dated A.H. 648 (1270), and presumably built at the time of the Rasulid occupation. The large and beautiful tombs of Habshi in Sai'un and of Qadi Muhammad ibn Umar al-Haddad ibn 'Ali at Qatn date back only seventy years.

Minarets. The minarets of the wadi take basically two forms, square and cylindrical. Those that are square in plan are believed to be the oldest (e.g. al-Ghurfah, the original stone minaret of the Friday mosque in Shibam, and so on). The cylindrical minarets are said to have been imported as a type in the sixteenth (tenth) century, from examples seen in India. The latter are always crowned with a small colonnade, like a miniature classical circular temple, and the roof is shaped in a curving cone (rather like the crowns of the straw hats worn by the women workers in the fields). Minarets were mostly built of mud-brick, and were always whitewashed or painted a cream colour.

There is at least one square minaret of recent date: the extraordinary 41 -m-high, white-plastered mud-brick minaret of al-Mohdhar mosque in Tarim.

Public wells. A type of building which is characteristic of the wadi is the covered public well, the siqayah. It consists of a circular well and a cistern into which the water is poured when it is drawn, and from which it is taken by the people for drinking by means of a wooden ladle. Both parts are usually covered with a single dome resting on corner columns; the space between the columns is Sometimes closed in on three sides with brickwork in an open herringbone pattern, and the whole painted white. There is also often a drinking trough for animals outside the domed area.

Houses. In the plateau areas and the remote upper valleys, the buildings are of stone, with beams and lintels of rough local Wood. Being of the same material as the mountainside, they tend to blend in with it from a distance.

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