sana'a in yemen

The old walled cityof San‘a.

Ronald Lewcock

Unesco

The author is responsible for the choice and the presentation ofthe facts contained in this book and for the opinions expressedtherein, which are not necessarily those of Unesco and do notcommit the Organization.

The designations employed and the presentation of materialthroughout this publication do not imply the expression of anyopinion whatsoever on the part of Unesco concerning the legalstatus of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities,or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Cover photo: High houses and minarets in the centre of Sana

Cover design and layout by Monika Jost

Published in 1986 by theUnited Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization7 place de Fontenoy, 75700 ParisPrinted by Vanmelle, Ghent

ISBN 92-3-102362-4

Unesco 1986Printed in Belgium

Preface

This traditional poem quoted by several poetsand writers from Yemen is an invitation to goon a journey to discover this exceptional citybecause of the wealth and density of its culturalheritage. It also indicates the aim of this book,written by one of the best-known scholars ofIslamic architecture in the Arabian peninsula,Professor Ronald Lewcock.

But today San a, described by the poets asthe ‘pearl of Arabia’ with its white and ochreminarets, domes and tower-like houses, isthreatened by the irreparable decay that mod-ern development inflicts on historic cities. Thissituation has prompted the Government of theYemen Arab Republic to request Unesco’s as-sistance in undertaking technical studies andpreparing a plan of action in order to ensure thesurvival of the old city of San’a as a coherentwhole because of its unique quality.

It is also the purpose of this book to explainthat the full rehabilitation of San’a’, includingboth restoration of houses and monuments andthe regeneration of the entire array of economicand cultural resources, will present technicaland financial problems which the Yemen ArabRepublic is not in a position to resolve alone.

San’a’ must be seen, however long the journey,

though the hardy camel droop, leg-worn on the way.

For this reason, at the request of the govern-ment, the General Conference of Unescoadopted a resolution authorizing the Director-General, in collaboration with the Governmentof the Yemen Arab Republic, to undertake thenecessary technical studies, within the avail-able budgetary limit, to work out a detailed planof action for the preservation, restoration andpresentation of San’a‘, and to establish the mo-dalities for its promotion as an internationalcampaign.

For the Yemen Arab Republic, indeed for thewhole Arabian peninsula, the historical andcultural significance of San’a amply justifies thelaunching of large-scale efforts to save it, and itis hoped that this book, by setting forth the ob-jectives of the campaign, will help to marshalthe country’s technical and financial resourcesas well as foster the prospects of internationalassistance.

A special account has been opened at UnescoHeadquarters for financial contributions to thecampaign. Readers who wish to offer their sup-port should contact the Division of CulturalHeritage, Unesco, 7 place de Fontenoy, Paris,France.

Appeal by Mr Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow,Director- General of Unesco,on behalf of the International Campaignto Safeguard the City of San’a’

The line of poetry quoted in the Preface urgesus to discover the proud city that stands in theheart of a great mountain range: San’a’, theprestigious capital of ‘Arabia Felix’ and one ofthe oldest cities in the world. Legend holds, infact, that it was founded by Ham, son of Noah.

San‘a’ - standing at the crossing-point of tworoutes, one running between the Indian Oceanand the Hijaz and the other linking Ma’rib withthe Red Sea - was the capital of the Sabaeankings and the land where the Himyarites estab-lished their rule in their turn.

The city was occupied by the Abyssinians,subsequently being liberated by Seif ibn DiYazen with the help of the Sassanians of Persia.Even in the earliest years following the hegira,San’s’ was a centre from which the Islamic faithspread outward. Nevertheless, it continued tobe a city of a variety of religious communities,where all the faiths of the Book rubbed shoul-ders and all the inhabitants contributed to thegeneral economic prosperity and beautifica-tion.

During that period San‘a’ played a promi-nent role in the propagation of the Qur’an’smessage. A number of its buildings that are still

standing were erected during the lifetime of theProphet Muhammad: one example is the GreatMosque, a jewel in the heart of the old citywhich was embellished and enriched under theUmayyad and ‘Abbasid Caliphs and the laterYemeni governors. In addition, San’'a' featurespleasing vistas of caravanserais, hammams, suqs,palaces and dwellings surrounded by rich gar-dens, all harmoniously laid out with subtle in-genuity within the walls surrounding the city.

It was essential to avoid encroaching on ar-able land while simultaneously providing for thesecurity of the city’s inhabitants, and Yemeniarchitects rose to the challenge by creating a sitecharacterized by geometrically varied, multi-storeyed buildings whose courses of dressedstone form an attractive complement to thebrilliant white of their projecting friezes and thedelicate latticework of their arched windows.

But San‘'a'’ is also a twentieth-century capi-tal, where the most up-to-date achievements ofa contemporary metropolis stand side by sidewith traditional sanctuaries, madrasahs, marketsand dwellings. It is the juxtaposition of thesetwo worlds that gives the city its originality, butthe main urban activities are tending to move

by degrees outside the walled enclave, with theresult that the ancient part of San‘a’ is in dan-ger of falling victim to a process of slow dete-rioration.

Over the past decade the Yemeni authoritieshave infused San’a’ with fresh vitality, endow-ing it with many features worthy of a moderncity. But the Yemeni authorities are also deter-mined to safeguard the historic, artistic and ar-chitectural treasures of their venerable capital,to launch an emergency programme designednot only to rehabilitate and restore the mostimportant of the threatened monuments anddwellings but also to upgrade the urban infra-structure of the historic centre of San’a’.

The General Conference of Unesco, at itstwenty-first session in 1980, adopted a resolu-tion authorizing me, in collaboration with theGovernment of the Yemen Arab Republic, towork out a plan of action for the preservationand restoration of San‘a’.

This plan is designed to safeguard the uniquecharacter of San‘'a'‘, not only by preserving itshistoric centre but also by introducing there thefacilities it needs in order to adapt to the re-quirements of modern life.

Its implementation will be facilitated by theestablishment, following promulgation of thepresidential order of 16 December 1984, of aCouncil chaired by the Prime Minister and in-cluding several Ministers and prominent citi-zens of Yemen.

Conservation and rehabilitation work willinclude repairs to major buildings such asmosques, madrasahs, palaces, hammams anddwellings, while the modern infrastructure willinclude water-supply and sewerage systems as

well as the renovation of electrical distribution,telephone and transport facilities. Supplement-ing these efforts, social and medical services willbe upgraded, traditional crafts will be pro-moted, and cultural centres and a new museumwill be established.

The financial and technical problems thatmust be overcome before these objectives canbe attained are so massive and so complex thatthey call for a worldwide effort of solidarity.Accordingly, the Government of the YemenArab Republic has asked Unesco to support itswork by appealing to the solidarity of all statesand all peoples.

That is why I stand here today, at this im-posing site, to launch a solemn appeal for in-ternational solidarity.

I invite all the Member States of Unesco andall peoples, their governments and nationalcommunities, public and private institutions,intergovernmental and international non-governmental organizations, and also founda-tions and financial institutions, to participate,by making voluntary contributions in cash,equipment or services, in the gigantic effort thathas been undertaken by the Government of theYemen Arab Republic.

I invite museums, art galleries, academies,libraries and all institutions concerned with thepreservation, progress and dissemination ofculture to organize exhibitions on San‘'a'’ and tocontribute to the task of safeguarding and res-toring it.

I invite all children and all young people,those of the Yemen Arab Republic and neigh-bouring countries in particular, to contribute tothe task of safeguarding what can now be re-

garded as part of the heritage of all mankind, tocollect money by a wide variety of means, to or-ganize competitions, and to participate in allactivities that may help to strengthen nationaland international action on behalf of San’a’.

Unesco, which in the past has launched manyappeals for the preservation of significant mon-uments in all parts of the world, can take pridein having contributed - thanks to internationalsolidarity - to the execution in Nubia of thelargest archaeological rescue operation of alltime, and subsequently to the restoration of oneof the world’s loveliest monuments to humanspirituality, namely Borobudur in Indonesia.Unesco is continuing its efforts on behalf of thesafeguarding of Venice in Italy, Sukhothai inThailand, Fez in Morocco, which is one of the

most striking Islamic capitals, and many otherancient cities as well.

I hope, once again, that all those who areconcerned for the preservation of the culturalheritage of mankind will contribute, accordingto their means, to the international campaignfor the safeguarding of San’a’, so that this citywill be able to preserve, for the benefit of gen-erations yet unborn, its historic treasures andits bewitching charm.

Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow

San‘a’, 19 December 1984

Contents

Introduction 13

The history and development of the cityPre-Islamic history 19Pre-Islamic relics 24Islamic history 26

19

The development of the city 32San‘a in the first centuries of Islam 37The city in Yu‘firid times and beyond 39The city from the Ayubid conquest to the Ottoman conquestThe Ottoman city 45The city during the second Zaydi dynasty 46The city during the second Turkish occupation 47The city under the Hamid al-Din Imams 50The city under the Republic 53

40

Social structure and way of life 55

The traditional way of life 59

The architecture of the old city of San'a'Houses 64Mosques 85Minare t s 89The buildings of the suq 90Wells and well-ramps 95Public baths 96Traditional building construction

63

98

Protecting and conserving the cultural heritage of the old city 103Dangers threatening the old walled city 103

The International Campaign for Safeguarding and Conserving the Old CitySome typical examples of the architectural conservation necessaryin the old city 112The cultural traditions of the old city 114Plan of action and preliminary estimates for the preservation andconservation of the old city 114

109

Chronology 119

Bibliography 121

List of illustrations 123

Introduction

It is hard to believe that, until a few years ago,it was generally held that ‘Arabia, at the rise ofIslam, does not appear to have possessed any-thing worthy of the name of architecture’. Theseare the first words of the 1958 edition of K.A.C.Creswell’s classic, Early Muslim Architecture.

At that time, only a few specialists knew ofthe great pre-Islamic civilizations of SouthArabia, whose wealth was built on trade, andwere aware that in the fifth and sixth centuriesA.D. a kind of classical culture, with its ownunique stone temples, had flourished there.

The last two decades have exposed a greatdeal more evidence of the ancient architecture,and - since the end of the Civil War in the Ye-meni highlands removed all barriers to Euro-pean entry - the outside world has becomeaware for the first time of the surviving wealthof Islamic buildings and the continuing medi-eval way of life of which it had been almostwholly ignorant before.

One of the reasons for the growth of this civ-ilization, which is likewise a reason for its pres-ervation in relative seclusion, lies in the geog-raphy of the Arabian peninsula.

From Mecca southwards a mountain range

San‘a’ is the city of Yemen - there is not to befound in the [highland of’ Yemen, nor inthe Tihamah nor the Hijaz a city greater or morepopulous nor with jiner properties, nor anynobler of origin . . .

Ibn Rustah, ‘Kitab al-A‘laq al-nafisah’,written after A.D. 903 (A.H. 290)

runs parallel to the Red Sea, reaching heights 13of more than 3,000 m. It induces a mild climateand traps the monsoon rains. From ancienttimes this region has held 80 per cent of thepopulation of the Arabian peninsula. To the

- -east, in wadis near the Indian Ocean, lay thegroves of frankincense and myrrh which sup-plied Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, reachedby travelling up caravan routes along the east-ern edge of the mountains. Later, the sameroutes witnessed the passage of luxury goodsfrom India and China, and the gold and silverof the Mediterranean returning in exchange.

Mecca was a trading city on this route, heav-ily reliant on alliances with the rulers of thegreat kingdoms of the south for its prosperity.The Prophet Muhammad’s father had trav-elled to Yemen before Muhammad was born,his great-uncle was said to have been buried atSan’a’, and South Arabia was one of the firstareas to be brought under the influence ofMuhammad’s new teaching. It was from thisregion that the bulk of the soldiers who con-quered vast territories for Islam were naturallydrawn, eventually settling in Kufa, Basra,North Africa, and as far away as Spain.

The old walled city of San ‘a’

RED SEA

Hodeidah’

GULF OF ADEN

jibouti

I The country of North Yemen is divided intoMap of the southern part of the Arabian peninsula.showing the position of San‘'a'‘.

four natural regions, all parallel to the Red Sea.The lowland strip, known as the Tihamah, isan arid, semi-desert, coastal region borderingthe Red Sea. It has a hot and humid climate,with temperatures often reaching 50 “C. Themidland, known as the Jibal, or mountains, hasa milder climate with heavy rainfall during therainy season from June to September.

The highland region averages between 2,200

Introduction

and 2,700 m above sea-level and lies to the eastof the crest of the Jibal. The largely volcanicmountain blocks to the west have been erodedto deposit thick layers of sandy soil, very muchlike loess, with the same property of soaking upmoisture and retaining it like a sponge. Thisaccounts for the great fertility of parts of thehighlands, even though the rainfall is limited toa relatively short period in early and late sum-mer. Ibn Rustah wrote: ‘The rain falls at pre-dictable times: they have timetables for it andare never wrong. During the summer months itrains for one month, and in autumn a full fourmonths; it does not rain again until the sametime the following year.”

In many areas it is possible to dig wells andthus to create, from the plain which wouldotherwise be almost bare in the dry season,gardens and oases that bloom all the year long.The climate is temperate with dry and mildweather, though the differences between day-time and night-time can sometimes reach 30°C.During the dry season there is little groundcover, but the first spring rains blanket thewhole plain and the slopes of the mountainswith the fresh green of vegetation, much of itaromatic and fruit-bearing, which remainsthroughout the summer. The city of San’a’ issituated in the centre of the highland zone. ‘Itsair is considered to be like that of spring be-cause it is so temperate and sweet.‘*

Further east a low range of mountains sepa-rates the highland zone from the deserts whichdescend in a long slope to the Arabian Gulfhundreds of kilometres to the north-east. Shel-tered against the edge of the mountains lie theregions of the Jawf and of Ma’rib, site of the

legendary Kingdom of Saba’, where irrigationat an early period made possible the develop-ment of one of the early civilizations, with ur-ban settlements in the second millennium B.C.

Today, with ancient dams and reservoirs siltedup or broken, only a few scattered settlementssurvive; these depend for their existence on thesmall wadis which come down from the west-ern highlands.

Viewing the old walled city of San‘'a'’ for the firsttime creates an unforgettable impression. Andthis vision of a childhood dream world of fan-tasy castles is not dispelled even on closer ac-quaintance. In the farmlands outside the city,on either side of the roads leading to it, build-ings of all shapes - circular, rectangular, square- rise out of the flat highland plain to seeminglyimpossible heights constructed of apparentlyweak materials. Not merely does the stoneworkof the lower levels consist of rough rubble withloose mortar, but for most of their height thebuildings are made of mud - layered mud, mudbricks of all sizes - and of mud-straw plaster,infinitely eroded by the monsoon rains untildeep indentations mark the channels downwhich the autumnal torrents find their passageto the earth.

Sometimes a building is so weathered that inplaces the whole thickness of the wall is re-vealed, and eventually it has to be abandoned.But the ruin survives to its full height for dec-ades, reflecting the centuries of accumulated

1. Ibn Rustah, Kitab al-A‘laq al-nafisah c. A.D. 903 (A.H. 290).2. Ibid.

15

The old walled city of San'a'

1The roof-tops of San‘'a'’ with Mount Nuqumin the background. The mafraj rooms standing onthe roofs are clearly visible.

16 knowledge that underlay its strength andpermanence.

The houses may consist of square or circulartowers culminating at the top in rectangularrooms crazily cantilevered beyond the walls.Across the mudwork the Yemenites have laiddecoration, sometimes projecting zigzag coursesto mark the divisions between storeys, or gyp-sum-washed cornices, or corner pinnacles, withwhite frames around the large windows high upin the walls.

The old city of San‘a is distinguished by adozen minarets which soar well above even theremarkably tall houses. It is surrounded by anancient wall pierced by gates, many, alas, nowdestroyed. Here the houses are still as unreal asthose of the countryside, rising as high as ninestoreys, but the materials are more refined: well-built ashlar with fine joints below and bakedbrick above.

Almost every house looks fresh and spar-kling, with bright white-washed decorationagainst the orange-red brickwork. There aremore windows in these city houses, and theoriginal wooden-shuttered openings are nowglazed with clear glass. The fanlights over the

The old walled city of $an’a’

windows are much larger; there are more ofthem than in the rural buildings; and they areoften filled with gypsum tracery designs con-taining brightly coloured stained glass. Olderhouses frequently retain fanlights of theancient type - translucent alabaster cut intothin sheets.

18

This is, then, a city in which architecture isranked high, a source of pride and enjoymentfor its owners which is paralleled in the modernWest by the acquisition of more transitory ma-terial possessions. Indeed, it seems to haveserved the same prestige purpose - one of thereasons why it used to be so painstakinglymaintained and why, with the influx of modernvalues, it is beginning to fall into a state ofneglect.

Yemen is a heavily populated country. In theold city of San‘'a'’ alone there are 14,000 towerhouses. It is unlikely that its extraordinary ar-chitectural heritage - not merely houses but alsocaravanserais, public hot baths and countlessmosques of the greatest historical interest -would ever be entirely destroyed. But extensivedamage has already been done, particularly toits urban centres. The city gates of San‘'a' arealmost all gone, the city walls are collapsing,modern buildings are intruding on the old fab-ric. It is not yet too late to save the old city -but the crucial moment has been reached.

Not merely for the people of Yemen, but forall who prize the achievements of humanity, theeffort to preserve the old city of San‘'a'’ has be-come a matter of the greatest urgency.

The history anddevelopment of the city

On the ground of Azal [San ‘a’/ may festivalever continue, and for all time its rank remain exalted.

‘Ali b. Hasan al-Khafanji,mid-eighteenth century

P R E - I S L A M I C H I S T O R Y

Azal, an old name for San‘'a'‘, is traditionallyidentified with the name Uzal mentioned inGenesis as that of one of the sons of Joktan (an-other was Hadramawt, from whom the famousregion in South Yemen is said to have taken itsname). Joktan, or Qahtan, was a descendant ofShem, the first son of Noah. Another of Noah’ssons was Ya’rub, whose grandson was AbdShams, also called Saba’ (in Hebrew ‘Sheba’).The Old Testament refers to the Queen of theland of Sheba as ‘the Queen of the South’, andthe relationship of San‘'a'’ with Saba’ (or Sheba)will be discussed below.

San’'a'’ is certainly one of the most ancientsurviving cities in Arabia. No archaeologicalexploration has yet been undertaken within thelimits of the modern city, however, so thatforming a clear picture of its origins and earlyhistory is difficult.

Lying as it does midway on the great centralhighland plain between the high mountainranges to east and west, and at a point wherethe plain narrows until it is only a few kilo-metres wide, a fortification at the position of

San‘'a'’ could effectively control the movement 19of men and goods from one half of the plateauto the other. All scholars are now agreed thatthe name San’'a'’ in ancient South Arabianmeant ‘well fortified’.

The site of San’'a'’ had the additional advan-tage of controlling a major trade route from westto east, that is, from the ancient capital of thestate of Saba’ at Ma’rib, which lay on the edgeof the great desert beyond the eastern highlandranges, to the ports in the Tihamah on the edgeof the Red Sea.

The Kingdom of Saba’ was probably in ex-istence from some time in the second millen-nium B.C. It was the central kingdom of theYemen, and thus controlled the passage of car-avans, particularly those of incenses, such asfrankincense and myrrh, from the areas wherethey were produced or imported in the southand east, through to the north.

Although many modern scholars doubtwhether the Queen of Sheba who visited Solo-mon in Jerusalem could have travelled from sofar away as Saba’, there are elements in the de-scription of her state that make the identifica-tion possible. According to II Chronicles 9 and

The old walled city of S‘an’a’

I Kings 10, she brought with her ‘a very greattrain, with camels that bare spices, and verymuch gold, and precious stones’. The Qur’an,in Sura 34 (the Surat Saba’) and Sura 27, addsaccounts of the land of Sheba, apparently to beidentified with Saba’ in Yemen: a hoopoe birdreports to Solomon, ‘I come to thee from Shebawith sure tidings. Lo! I found a woman rulingover them and she has been given an abun-dance of all things, and hers is a mighty throne.’

By the time of the last century before the20 Christian era, two trade routes existed for the

passage of spices and oriental goods to thenorth. The oldest and most favoured passedalong the edge of the desert, and was controlledby the Sabaean capital city of Ma’rib. The sec-ond, generally less favoured route led across thehighland plateau, and therefore needed sepa-rate control; this was apparently the role of theearly town of San‘a’ or some fortified point closeto it. An ancient inscription, now in the AdenMuseum, refers to a temple of the ancient moongod, Ilmuqah, at Awa outside San’'a'‘, whichduplicated the name of the principal sanctuaryof the deity outside Ma’rib.

The state of Saba’ was ruled by high priestsor princes, mukarribs, a class which eventuallyfurnished the first kings. Later, it is thought, themukarribs existed as priests side by side with thekings. For centuries Saba’ was a small countryhemmed in on the north and south by the rivalstates of Ma‘in and Qataban. Its wealth de-rived from the great dam built at Ma’rib, on thetrade route which passed along the eastern de-sert. The dam was built of cut stone, securedwith iron or copper cramps, and was more than600 m long and 18 m high. It was provided with

a number of large sluices; through these theflood waters descending from the highlandsafter the monsoon rains, and temporarily heldup by the dam, could be distributed over thefields and gardens of the city.

The prosperity of Ma’rib, which resultedfrom the building of this reservoir, was a fa-vourite theme of the Arab historians, who gaveglowing accounts of its rich fields and orchards,and its splendid buildings.

Pliny termed Ma’rib ‘the mistress of cities,and the diadem on the brow of the universe’,and Masaudi reported that a good horsemancould not ride over the cultivated grounds in thevicinity of the city in less than a month. The in-habitants enjoyed an unexampled degree ofhappiness and prosperity; the rule of theirmonarchs was mild and equitable; they wereloved at home, and feared and respectedabroad; they waged no war in which they werenot victorious, and every invading force (in-cluding the Romans) yielded to their arms.

From the Roman Periplus of the Erythraean Seawe learn that the Sabaeans monopolized thecommerce of India, and acted as the interme-diate agents between the merchants of Indiaand those of Egypt: in the reign of PtolemyPhilometer (A.D. 177) the Hellenistic rulers ofEgypt had imported Indian commodities notdirectly from India, but from Saba’.

The ancient religions of South Arabia all fo-cused on the worship of a male moon god, witha consort, the sun goddess, Shams, who was themother of the moon god’s child, the evening starAthtar. Great temples to their cult, and to thecults of numerous deities who were ‘lords’ of theseasons, rains, agriculture, irrigation, crafts,

The history’ and development of the city

etc., were built all over the densely populatedand cultivated lands of South Arabia. Thosethat have been excavated, or still survive inruins, reveal a great mastery of architecturaldesign, refinement and constructional tech-niques.

Sabaean sanctuaries followed the character-istic Semitic form of a rectangular enclosurewhich was sanctified as a ‘reserved space’. Partof it could be made up of covered or roofed por-ticos. There was a central altar, and often a wellor pool of water for ablutions. Sometimes therewas a sacred tree from which visitors’ offeringsor trophies from warfare could be hung. Thesacred area became a place of asylum for menand animals, and trees growing in it were pro-tected.

Tombs might be almost as substantially builtas temples, or they might be hollowed out of thesolid cliffside. Considerable attention seems tohave been paid to funerary rituals.

A common religious practice of the Arabianswas an annual pilgrimage. Tribes who sharedbelief in a common deity might reunite at asanctuary sacred to the god or goddess. Proces-sions played a leading part in ritual. Some-times these appear to have been preceded by aperiod of fasting, abstinence from warfare, orsexual relations, or of all three. Commonly, pil-grimages or sacred festivals seem to have cli-maxed in a communal feast within or in frontof the sacred area. Stone benches for the pur-pose have remained in position in a few cases.

Burnt offerings of incense and other sub-stances, together with sacrifices, formed the fo-cus of devotion. Libations of the altars fol-lowed. Communal prayer was held with the

congregation standing. At important shrinesoracles could be consulted.

Household gods were worshipped in thehome, and devotions to the gods of the sky wereheld on the rooftops. In many cases individualsmade votive offerings, frequently giving thanks,but also seeking expiation for transgressions,many of them ritual.

The temples received gifts in money and inkind, held lands from which they drew theirrevenue, and served as repositories for legal andregulatory documents. 21

The two neighbouring states of Saba’, Ma’inin the north and Qataban in the south, had acommon interest in checking the rise to greaterpower of Saba’. After a long and sometimesturbulent military history, Saba’ at first bene-fited, and later suffered, from the emergence ofthe state of Himyar in part of the territory ofQataban, some time between 115 and 109 B.C.

It is possible that the weakening of Qataban inthis way gave an opportunity for Saba’ to at-tack and destroy its ally Ma’in.

The history of Saba’ is complicated and as yetimperfectly understood. It seems that in the lastcentury B.C. and in the early centuries of theChristian era there existed a ‘greater Sabaean’state which owed its cohesion to, and expressedits identity through, the shared worship of themoon god Ilmuqak. This expanded state in-cluded territory to the north and south on theedge of the desert and also a large part of thehighlands, extending to the north and south-east of San‘a’. The greater Sabaean state tookon more and more the appearance of a federa-tion, with a number of its rulers being chiefsfrom the aristocratic clans of the highlands. At


some stage, probably before the end of the sec-ond century A.D., San’'a'’ became a second cap-ital, as important to the state as Ma’rib.

By the third century A.D., with the construc-tion of the high fortified palace, Ghumdan,San‘'a'’ was established as one of the most im-portant cities in Arabia. Many stone inscrip-tions of the time refer to it, though it may havebeen mentioned under another name, not yetrecognized as the same town, in earlier centu-ries. It was clearly a royal dynastic centre in-

22 creasingly chosen as the place of residence of thekings of the Sabaeans.

At this time the great King Yasir Yuhan’imand his sons seem to have controlled the wholeof South Arabia; they styled themselves ‘Kingsof Saba’ and Dhii Raydan and Hadramawt andYamanat’. By the fifth century A.D. this title wasfurther augmented by the addition of ‘and oftheir Arabs in the Coastal Plain [Tihamah] andthe Highland [Tawd]‘.

The term given in the ancient texts for San’a’,‘mahram’, is an interesting one. It seems to in-dicate that the town had a special status of royalcity, a place to which free access was restricted,for religious or prestige reasons. Apparently thecities of San’'a'’ and Ma’rib were hedged aroundwith a particular awesomeness from their sta-tus as royal residences.

One of the ancient inscriptions refers to the‘army lands’ at San’'a'‘, possibly the agricul-tural areas set aside for the army to cultivatecrops to provide themselves with food. ThusSan‘a emerges in history clearly as a fortifiedmilitary centre, where the king resided in hisroyal palace. Other inscriptions record the useof San’'a'’ as a military base by the Sabaean

troops in campaigns to the south and westagainst the Himyarites and the Red Sea coastaltribes. The inscriptions record how they re-turned in triumph, received peace missions andhostages. There, at Ruhabah, apparently anopen assembly space outside the town, honourswere handed out to victorious leaders. In onecase it is recorded that San'a'’ served as the basefor the recapture of Ma’rib after it had falleninto the hands of the Himyarites.

During the fourth century A.D. the old poly-theistic cults began to be replaced by the beliefin one god. Judaism began to be observed inmany areas, notably in San’'a'’ itself, whileChristianity also made an appearance and anumber of churches were built. Even more sig-nificantly, there are indications that an Ara-bian monotheism developed. In the fourth andfifth centuries A.D., a few Sabaean inscriptionsappear dedicated to ‘Ilah the Merciful, Lord ofHeaven and Earth’. From this time onwards thestone dedicatory inscriptions, which had beenso characteristic of South Arabia in precedingmillennia, begin to disappear, and with them asource of accurate knowledge for the historian.It seems, however, that the centre of govern-ment may well have moved away from San’a’after the rise to power of the Himyaritic Em-pire, which had its traditional capital farthersouth at Zafar. Nevertheless, there are tradi-tional reports of Jewish kings residing atGhumdan in San’'a'’ at this time. And with thesubsequent Abyssinian conquest it becomesclear that San’'a'’ was still regarded by them asthe major city in the country.

Christianity was reputedly introduced, or inany case officially recognized, as a result of the

dispatch of an embassy from the ByzantineEmperor Constantius in around A.D. 342,headed by Theophilus Indus, an Indian bishop,and a native of the island of Diu. Although thepolitical purpose of this mission was tostrengthen the Byzantine Empire by allying theHimyarites of Yemen against the Persians, asecondary purpose was the conversion of theYemenites, or, failing that, obtaining permis-sion for the erection of churches for the use ofthe subjects of the Emperor travelling through,and residing in, Arabia Felix, as well as for suchof the Himyarites as had been converted toChristianity. Churches were erected at zafar,Aden and other places.

Judaism remained strong, however, and foranother two centuries kings of Yemen reput-edly embraced the Jewish faith, and were pe-riodically intolerant of, and even persecuted,Christians. The most severe of these Himyari-tic rulers was Dhu Ntiwas (‘he of the flowinghair’) who ruled from around A.D. 490 to 525.His religious fanaticism was such that all theChristians within his dominions felt its effects,not least the Roman merchants engaged in theAbyssinian and Indian trades. But the greatatrocity of his reign was the general massacreof the whole Bani Thaleb tribe of Najran, whohad embraced Christianity as the result of thepreaching of a Syrian. After besieging the townwith a force of 120,000 men, Dhu Nuwas prom-ised the inhabitants that no harm would befallthem if they opened their gates. However, upontheir entering into an agreement to do so, heplundered the town, and gave the inhabitantsa choice between Judaism and death. Accord-ing to Playfair: ‘Large pits were dug, and filled

The history and development of the city

with burning fuel, and all those who refused toabjure their faith, amounting, it is said, to20,000, including priests, monks, consecratedvirgins and matrons who had embraced a mon-astic life, were either cast into the flames or slainby the sword.’ On hearing of the massacre, theEmperor Justinian in Constantinople wrote let-ters to the King of Abyssinia, imploring him tosend an expedition into Yemen to punish DhuNuwas.

Abyssinia had originally been settled fromSouth Arabia, and there are temples surviving 23there from the fifth century B.C. of markedlySouth Arabian type. According to Abyssinianchronicles, counter-conquests across the RedSea were gathering momentum during the earlycenturies of the Christian era; by the third cen-tury A.D. large parts of the Tihamah were inAbyssinian hands. The highlands, however, al-ways presented too daunting a prospect for theAbyssinians to attempt a conquest. The con-version of the Abyssinians to Christianity in thefourth century A.D. coincided with the begin-ning of the decline of the Himyaritic Empire, sothat by the early sixth century A.D. the Abys-sinians were in a position to gather their forcesto recapture the whole of the Yemen.

The conquest of the highlands appears tohave been finally triggered by the martyrdomof Najran. In 525 the conquest of Yemen wascompleted. In 537 an Axumite general calledAbrahah seized the Himyarite throne for him-self and undertook the construction of a greatpilgrimage cathedral in San‘'a'‘. Tabari, in hishistory, relates that Abrahah, after obtainingthe approval of his bishop to construct thechurch at San‘'a'‘, wrote to the Byzantine Em-


peror informing him that he was about to buildthe cathedral and asking him for aid. Thereforethe Emperor Justinian assisted him with arti-sans, mosaic and marble. Afterwards Abrahahwrote to the Bishop of Axum: ‘I have built youa temple in San‘'a' the like of which neither theArabs nor non-Arabs have constructed, and Ishall not desist until I divert the pilgrims [Ha,,]of the Arabs to it and they abandon the pil-grimage to their own temples.’

24The legend was invented, if it did not al-

ready exist, that Jesus had once come to visitSan’a’ during his years in the wilderness ‘andprayed in the place of the church, so the Chris-tians made the church in San'a' where his placeof prayer was’ (al-Razi, c. 1000 (39O)).l As it wasa site directly associated with the life of Christ,the architects felt justified in the constructionof a martyrion; it was the extremely sacred na-ture of the church that made it the centre of pil-grimage.

With the construction in San’'a'’ of the largestChristian building anywhere south of the Med-iterranean, rivalling Mecca - with its sanctu-ary containing the ancient Kaaba - in sanctity,it was clearly Abrahah’s intention to create anew centre of political-religious power in SouthArabia. The creation of such a sanctuary had,besides a political purpose, the added economicadvantage that pilgrimage centres were alsomarkets and the recipients of votive offerings.

Abrahah must have been fairly successful indiverting pilgrimage away from Mecca, for anelder from that city incited a youth to enter the

1. Dates given in brackets throughout denote the year or centuryin the Muslim era (A.H.).

cathedral to defile it in the ancient manner bydefecating therein. When Abrahah heard thatthis outrage had been committed on behalf ofthe people of the temple of Mecca to show theirscorn and contempt for the new shrine, legendhas it that he was filled with wrath and sworeto march into battle and lay waste to the sanc-tuary. He ordered his army to set out for thenorth. It seems that he took an elephant withhim: for this reason the event is usually asso-ciated by historians with the year A.D. 570,which is known as Am al-Fiel, the Year of theElephant. Despite initial victories, which en-abled the army finally to reach Mecca, Abra-hah was not successful in his siege of the city; aplague of flies, which some historians believewas a plague of smallpox, broke out, forcing theretreat of the Yemeni army.

Axumite rule in Yemen was brought to anend about A.D. 575 by a conquering Sassanianarmy from Persia, and for the next half centurySan‘'a'’ was the seat of government of a Persianviceroy. Under the Persians the ancient SouthArabian astral worship, Judaism and Christi-anity were all apparently tolerated and there issome evidence of the introduction of Zoroastri-anism. Nearly sixty years later, the last of thePersian viceroys, Badhan, whose palace was stillthe ancient tower palace of Ghumdan, wasconverted to Islam in A.D. 628.

P R E - I S L A M I C R E L I C S

Of the pre-Islamic temples in or close to San‘'a'’we know nothing. No site has yet been identi-fied, nor have any descriptions of them come to


light. There are large numbers of capitals andcolumn shafts, as well as parts of cornices,dressed building blocks and inscribed stonesbuilt into buildings all over San‘a’, scores ofthem in the Great Mosque alone, but many ofthem may be trophies brought from far afield.It is hard to believe, however, that this couldbe the case with all of them, so great is theirprofusion.

Of the great royal palace of Ghumdan, evenits exact site and size are not yet precisely es-tablished, but the location of the general areaof the mound of its ruins is not in doubt. Nofragments from the palace of Ghumdan can beidentified, yet archaeologists hope that somehave survived and may eventually be recog-nized.

With Christian remains, identification issomewhat easier - for both stylistic and sym-bolic reasons. But, in addition, the site of thepolygonal martyrion at the east end of the ca-thedral is pointed out by San‘a’nis to this day,and the foundations (or lower walls) may ac-tually still be seen, lining a pit 14 m across in aclearing in the most eastern quarter of the oldcity, not far from the citadel.

Among the most interesting of the Christianrelics are seven column capitals in the GreatMosque of extremely stylized composite form,very close in size and structural technique tosimilar capitals remaining from the great ca-thedral in Axum. In addition, there are a num-ber of other capitals and column shafts whichappear to be of early Christian and Byzantinestyle, but less directly Axumite. A remarkablesurvivor is the wooden lintel of the main southdoor of the Great Mosque which is carved in an

2Pre-Islamic antiquities in the Great Mosque:a capital of a type believed to date between 100 B.C.and A.D. 100 on an octagonal shaft, standingon an upturned capital of Christian Axumite typefrom the sixth century A.D.


ancient style depicting, among vine tendrils andleaves, rosettes and what appear to be foliatedLatin crosses.

Several other mosques in the old city containcapitals or column shafts which appear to be re-used from buildings of this late period.

I S L A M I C H I S T O R Y

Badhan, the last Persian viceroy, who had em-26 braced Islam, was confirmed in his governor-

ship by the Prophet. Side by side with Islam,the existing older religions were permitted tocontinue to practise their beliefs. But eventu-ally disturbances among the tribesmen and theurban populations led to the dispatch of someof the Prophet’s followers to persuade the Ye-menites by both force and argument to adhereto the Muslim faith. Among them, according tosome early historians, was the Prophet’s son-in-law, ‘Ali ibn ‘Ali Talib, who is said to havestayed in a house near the suq in San’a’, onwhich the mosque of ‘Ali now stands.

The period of the first three orthodox Cal-iphs was one of stability and steady growth ofIslam in the Yemen. With the assumption of theCaliphate by ‘Ali in 656 (35), a civil war brokeout between his followers and those ofMu’awiyah, and San’a’ adhered to the side of‘Ali. Mu’awiyah had to conquer San’a’ by forcein order to establish Umayyad authority there.

Thereafter San’a’ continued to be ruled bygovernors appointed by the Caliph, firstUmayyad and then, after the transfer of theCaliphate to Baghdad, ‘Abbasid. The greatestof these governors was one of the outstanding

family of al-Barmakis, Muhammad ibn al-Barmaki. During his nineteen-year rule he un-dertook a great deal of construction, includinga famous underground water supply, or qanat,known in Yemen as Ghayl al-Barmaki, whichwatered the south and west of the city from asource a few kilometres to the east. The gov-ernor is said to have sworn to spend only hisown funds on this ghayl and its upkeep. He alsoerected a number of public drinking places inthe town, and constructed a mint and a newpalace for the governor. This was undoubtedlya period of great prosperity for the city.

Early in the ninth (third) century, one of thearistocratic Yemeni tribal dynasties in Shibam-Kawkaban, about 60 km to the north-west ofSan’a’, gained local ascendancy and began acampaign to oust the ‘Abbasid governors fromYemen. The leader of the family, Yu‘fir ibn‘Abd al-Rahman al-Hiwali, laid siege to San‘a’and captured it in 847 (232). The Yu‘firid fam-ily then successfully ruled Yemen, or at least thehighland plateau, from San‘a’ for the next 150years. There is some evidence that the early partof their rule was a continuing period of greatprosperity for the city. The latter part of theirreign was marred by continual fighting and bythe attempts of some of the tribesmen and thetownspeople to bring in as ruler the first ZaydiImam of the Yemen, al-Hadi ila 'l-Haqq, fromhis seat of government in Sa’dah where he hadbecome established in 897 (284). Internecinewarfare followed till 905 (302) when peace wasonce more established. With the whole of theterritory of the central part of the Yemen heldby the Yu‘firids, prosperity returned to the city.This was not to last for long, however, for the


end of the period of Yu’firid control was markedby increasing chaos and bad government, a sit-uation which continued until the conquest of thecity by the Sulayhids in 1047 (437).

The Sulayhid was a Fatimid dynasty whichhad been founded two years earlier at the in-stigation of a Fatimid da’i sent from Egypt.Raising their standard in the mountains to thesouth-west of San’a‘, they captured first thesouthern part of the country and the Tihamahbefore mounting their assault on the capital.Forty years later the Sulayhids moved the cap-ital from San‘'a'’ to Dhu Jiblah in the south, andleft San’a’ in the hands of a succession of gov-ernors. In 1098 (492) San’a’ was lost to thecontrol of members of three different families ofHamdan who successively assumed the title ofSultan. In spite of much fighting with the tribes,it seems that the city was under strong controland that the peace that was maintained thereaccounted for its continuing prosperity.

In 1173 (569), however, the brother of Salahal-Din (Saladin), Ttiranshah, led an expeditioninto Yemen to conquer it for the newly estab-lished Ayyiibid family domains. It is possiblethat Salah al-Din wished to safeguard thesouthern end of the Red Sea in order to keepopen the trade route between India and theMediterranean, which was a major source ofEgyptian as well as Yemeni wealth. Also, sincethe Ayyubids had been instrumental in bring-ing to an end the religiously intolerableFatimid Caliphate in Egypt, they wished tobanish Isma’ilism from the Yemen. Turanshahcaptured San’'a'’ after he had already con-quered the whole of the western and southernpart of the country, but it was soon recaptured

by the Sultan of Hamdan. It was another ofSalah al-Din’s brothers, Tughtakin, who con-solidated Ayyiibid power in Yemen and in 1189(585) finally established San’'a'’ as his capital,building a new palace there which he namedDar al-Sultan.

Upon the Ayyubids’ departure to rule fromTa’izz in the south, the city was captured by alarge force of tribesmen supporting the ZaydiImam. Although it was recaptured by theAyyiibids a few years later, San’'a'’ was to be forsome decades a bone of contention between the 27Ayyiibids and the Zaydis, frequently changinghands and experiencing a period of great un-certainty and continual warfare. This waseventually resolved by the rise of the Rasulidsas successors to the Ayyiibids and the creationof a new Rasulid state in 1228 (628). Peace wasestablished between the new dynasty and theZaydis which effectively excluded the Ayyii-bids from the Yemen. The Rasulids continuedthe practice of ruling from Ta’izz in the southand San’a’ was granted as a fief to the nephewof the ruling Sultan. Nevertheless, the Sultandid on occasion take up residence in San’'a'’ as,for example, for a twelve-month period in 1248(646). Subsequently San'a'’ remained a Rasulidfief, although it periodically suffered occupa-tion by the Zaydi Imam, who would move inwith his tribesman army to hold sway there forshort periods while the Rasulid lord of the citywas absent on campaigns in the north. Even-tually, in 1323 (723), the Imam was able to as-sume control of the city once and for all. Forover two centuries, until the entry of the Turks inthe sixteenth century, it remained mainly underthe control of one Zaydi group or another.


In 1515 (920) the governor of San'a'’ capitu-lated to an expeditionary force that had beensent to take Yemen by the Mameluke Sultan ofCairo. The Egyptians had previously con-quered Ta’izz and the south of the country,where they had established a reputation forcruelty and rapacity. In San‘'a'’ they slaugh-tered large numbers of the defenders after thegates had been opened to them, and exactedcrushing levies from the merchants. Hearing ofthe Ottoman conquest of Egypt, however, the

28 commander of the Egyptian troops in San‘a’delivered the address from the minbar of theGreat Mosque in the name of the Ottoman Sul-tan, thereby acknowledging his overlordship,and then departed leaving behind only a smallgarrison in the citadel. In desperation, the gar-rison, together with the townspeople, sent amessage to the Zaydi Imam, who all the whilehad been defying the Mameluke from Thula, tothe north-west of San’'a'‘, and invited him toenter the city, which he did at the end of 1517(922). Using San’'a'’ as a base, the Zaydis beganto build up a new state, absorbing in the souththe ruins of the Tahirid Sultanate. In 1527 (933)the city was hit by a particularly severe plaguewhich is estimated to have taken toll of over11,000 lives. This Zaydi state lasted for onlyabout thirty years. Already in 1538 (945) thecommander of a great Ottoman naval expedi-tion against the Portuguese had capturedZabid. Subsequently they took Ta‘izz and thenin 1547 (954) advanced on San’a’, which wasbetrayed to them by one of the gatekeepers. Thecity was sacked and over 1,200 people were putto the sword.

The Turkish governor, Uzdimir, took up res-

idence in the citadel of San’a’. There the Turk-ish governors continued to reside until the Wa-zir Sinan Pasha, finding it uncomfortable,established a residence for himself outside thecitadel.

In 1566 (974) the Zaydi Imam briefly re-gained control of the city and set about estab-lishing a new state throughout the whole of theYemen. The Sublime Porte in Istanbul re-sponded by sending the Turkish commander inEgypt, Sinan Pasha, with a large force. TheImam, realizing that it would be futile to try todefend the city against this force, withdrew fromSan‘'a'‘, and the Turkish governor was able tooccupy it without bloodshed. He guaranteed thesecurity of the citizens and prevented his troopsfrom looting private houses.

Turkish rule was thereafter strengthened, butfrom 1597 ( 1006) a new candidate for the ZaydiImamate, al-Qasim ibn Muhammad, known as‘the Great’, proclaimed himself ruler. Supportsteadily grew among the wandering tribes to thewest and north of San’a’ until the very presenceof the Ottomans in Yemen was threatened.Six years later, after al-Qasim’s death in1620 (1026), his son Imam al-Mu’ayyad wasable to mount a widespread uprising against theTurks. San’'a'’ was placed under a siege whichlasted for three years, ending in a truce and theexchange of hostages. Before the truce was up,the Turkish governor had decided to retreat tothe coast, and purchased his safe passage by re-turning the Irnam’s treasure. Within a yearTaiizz had fallen to the Zaydis, and six yearslater the last trace of the first Ottoman occu-pation was removed with the evacuation of theTihamah.


Western penetration of the Indian Ocean andthe establishment of mercantile empires, first bythe Portuguese and then by the Dutch, hadprofound effects on the prosperity of the Yemen.First, much of the trade was diverted by seaaround the southern tip of Africa, and second,the European threat brought the Turks into theYemen, where their oppressive measures andextortionate taxation ruined what trade sur-vived. Indeed, the rise of Mocha as the port forthe highlands in the seventeenth (eleventh)century may be directly attributable to theheavy taxation of Aden. By the mid-seven-teenth century coffee had become one of themost important of Mocha’s exports - it was nowin great demand in Europe. Factories wereopened there by the Dutch, French and British,but the Europeans very rarely penetrated as faras San’'a'‘.

In the three and a half centuries of the ZaydiImamate that followed, not all the Imams ac-tually resided in San’'a'‘. Most of those whochose to live outside, however, did so at not avery great distance in palaces in villages of thesurrounding region. All the Imams from 1716(1128) until 1852 (1266) actually resided inSan‘'a'‘. This was a period of peace and stabil-ity, if not prosperity, and scholarship andpoetry flourished.

After 1816 (1231), a succession of weak Im-ams allowed the centralized power to slipthrough their hands and the country fell into astate of anarchy, confusion and considerablepoverty. Recognizing this, the Turkish Sultandecided that the time had come to embark on asecond conquest of the Yemen. A fleet was dis-patched and the Tihamah occupied. In 1849

(1265) the Imam was constrained to become avassal of the Turkish Sultan, receiving in re-turn half of the revenue of the country, theremainder going to the imperial treasury inIstanbul. A thousand Turkish soldiers were tobe stationed in San’a’. The garrison duly ar-rived and within a day the San’a’nis rose enmasse and slew every Turk except those takingrefuge in the citadel and in a garden to the westof the Sa’ilah. Their commander retreated tothe coast, where he died of his wounds.

The reprisals taken against the Imam and his 29advisers reduced San’s’ to even greater dis-order. According to Playfair, ‘Robberies andmurders were of everyday occurrence, the Jewsand foreign merchants were bespoiled of all theypossessed, and this once magnificent city wasabandoned to anarchy and confusion.’ To makematters worse, the people were struck by a ter-rible plague, and disease and drought affectedthe crops. North Yemen reverted to an anarchyof tribal chieftains warring with one another andsmall city states with various rival Imams, eachwith his own tribal backing. The sufferings ofthe people of San’'a'’ were severe.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 (1286)meant that the Ottomans were henceforth ableto send troops direct to South Arabia by sea togarrison the Tihamah. In 1870 (1287) the gov-ernor, Ahmad Mukhtar Pasha, was invited bythe people of San’'a' to enter it as their protec-tor to give them some respite from the contin-ual chaos and lack of security which they weresuffering at the mercy of rival tribal sheikhs.The Pasha arrived in San‘'a'’ in April 1872 and,having secured the citadel and the main defen-sive points around the town, set about taking


over the whole government of the Yemen. Hispolicy was to win over the common people tothe exclusion of the aristocratic administrativeclass, whom he replaced by Turkish adminis-trators. All the revenues of the country were ex-propriated by the Turkish authorities with onlylimited allowances given to the Imam and thesheikhs of the tribes loyal to the Turks, many ofwhom had to begin selling their lands in orderto maintain themselves. But the Turks couldmanage only a precarious hold on the main

30 towns of the highland plains, and with somedifficulty protected their routes of communi-cation to the south and west. In the mountainsto the north in 1890 (1307), a new Imam waselected, al-Mansur Hamid al-Din. Within twoyears the tribes under his direction were able tobesiege San’a’ and a general uprising broke outthroughout the Yemen. The Turks sent a for-mer governer to the relief of the city and theImam was forced to withdraw once more to themountains.

The Yemenites then resorted to guerrilla tac-tics against the Turks, blowing up houses in thewestern garden suburb of San’a’ favoured bythe Turks, as well as others in the area imme-diately adjoining the citadel. The telegraph linesto the coast had to be patrolled continuously toprevent them from being cut, but none the lessthe tribesmen managed to seize them on sev-eral occasions. The post and telegraph office inSan’a’ was blown up as well as a number of of-ficial buildings. These adverse conditions wereexacerbated by a severe famine which resultedin high grain prices. In 1904 (1322) Imam al-Manstir died and was succeeded by his son,Imam Yahya Hamid al-Din. This popular

young man soon attracted an enormous follow-ing among the sheikhs and tribesmen and wasable to give orders for the besieging of Turkish-held towns. His cause was aided by the short-age of food and water. So severe were the con-ditions in San’a that many people, rich andpoor, left. At the height of the siege a delega-tion of Turkish officers with a learned Sayyidleft the city and surrendered to the Imam. Theyconsented to hand over San‘'a'’ to him includingall the artillery and ammunition containedtherein.

The Turks once more sent a relieving forcewhich moved up from Hodeidah to the westernedge of the San‘'a'’ plain, thus intimidating theImam who had meanwhile disbanded thetribesmen; he consequently felt that he had noalternative but to retire once more to themountains. The Turkish governor re-enteredSan‘'a'’ and re-established order, but the return-ing population found that much damage hadbeen done. It was said that half the populationof the city had died in the siege and the fight-ing.

Fighting continued in the outlying districtsand in 1911 (1329) S an’'a'’ was once more be-sieged. There followed a change in Turkishpolicy and the Imam was persuaded to agree toa truce. A meeting between the two leaders ledto the arrangement of the so-called Treaty ofDa’an. Yemen was henceforth to be divided intotwo administrative districts: a Zaydi region withits own capital cities including Haraz andTa‘izz, and a Shafi’i region administered di-rectly by Turkey. At the end of the First WorldWar, the Turkish governor agreed that theImam should rule San’'a' and that the citadel


with all its artillery should be handed over tohim. In November 1918 he entered the old cityamid the joyous acclamations of the people,proceeding first to the Friday Mosque forprayer. Thenceforth Imam Yahya ruled fromSan’a’ until his assassination in February 1948.He maintained an iron grip on Yemen, restrict-ing the movement of his people to other coun-tries and the entry of foreigners into the high-lands. He was opposed to the introduction ofmodern improvements and also attempted tocontrol both the powerful tribal sheikhs and thegreat Sayyid families. It is therefore not sur-prising that opposition to the Hamid al-Dindynasty was fomented among leaders of manykinds throughout the country.

The assassination of the Imam was the keyact of a widespread conspiracy of leading citi-zens to take over the government. In San’a anew Imam, Abdullah al-Wazir, was declaredin the Great Mosque. He led a defence by a fewsoldiers and trainees of the military college. Itwas simultaneously intended to murder all thesons of the Imam who might oppose the lead-ing citizens, particularly the heir apparent,Ahmad, who was at Ta‘izz, but this was notcarried out. The main body of conspirators inSan’'a'’ were therefore at the mercy of the newImam Ahmad when he called the tribesmen tohis banner and began to invest San‘'a'’ fromevery side. When three of Imam Yahya’s sons,who had been imprisoned in the citadel, man-aged to persuade the garrison to come over totheir side and to begin to fire on the town,Abdullah al-Wazir saw no alternative but tosurrender. The city fell to Imam Ahmad on 14March 1948 and was then sacked by the tribes-

men; the top storeys of many of the largest andfinest houses were burnt out and their contentslooted. In the suq the great caravanserais (sin-gular: samsarah) were pillaged, and some havebeen closed ever since.

Imam Ahmad turned his back on San’'a' andfor the next thirteen years took up residence atTa‘izz, which became the capital of the coun-try. San’'a'’ remained the administrative centreof the highlands, but there was little expansionor prosperity.

Imam Ahmad died a natural death in 1962; 3 1his son, Badr, was proclaimed Imam in San‘a’and allegiance was paid to him by a large num-ber of leading religious men, sheikhs and offi-cials. A few days later a conspiratorial group ofyoung army officers attacked his palace at Biral-‘Azab with six tanks. The Imam and hisguards put up a spirited defence, but were un-able to call for assistance because the telephonelines had been cut. In the early morning of thefollowing day the Imam slipped out of the pal-ace and escaped from the city to rally the tribesto him. The revolutionaries, at a loss for aleader, brought in their chief-of-staff who hadbeen appointed by the Imam the precedingweek, and he became the first President of theYemen Arab Republic, with its capital atSan’'a'‘.

The Civil War which followed between theadherents of the Imam and those of the Repub-lican Government lasted until the end of 1969.It was concluded by the establishment of a co-alition government. With the ensuing peace andthe opening of the country to contact with, andaid from, the outside world, a remarkable tech-nological development took place which has

The old walled city of San ‘a

resulted in the rapid modernization of almostevery aspect of the country’s life.

T H E D E V E L O P M E N T O F T H E C I T Y

Archaeological excavation has so far not beenpermitted on the San‘'a'’ plain within or aroundthe city. Some aspects of the urban growth ofSan’'a'’ can therefore only be conjectured, withsparse assistance provided by the examination

32 of excavations for foundations and telephonecables. Nevertheless, geographical and histori-cal descriptions of San‘'a'‘, especially those fromearly Islamic times, combine with surface evi-dence to provide a plausible picture of the de-velopment of the city.

As the name San’'a'’ is an ancient one, andmeans ‘well fortified’, and as the town is lo-cated so as to control the crossing point of twomain trade routes at a place where the high-land plateau is narrowest, it seems reasonableto look for the most dominant position on theplain where a fortification might be built as thelikely kernel of development. Such a position isnot far to seek, for the highest point of the cit-adel, the Qasr, dominates the plain in exactlythat way. So important a position is it that theTurkish occupying forces extensively rebuilt theroughly square fortifications on this knoll lessthan 100 years ago, leaving, however, becauseof their massive construction, two circular, an-cient towers called nobah, built with stonesweighing many tons each. It seems unlikely,from the type of masonry jointing, that these areactually remnants of the pre-Islamic fortifica-tions. They appear, rather, to be work executed

by the first Yu‘firid ruler of San‘'a' c. 849 (233);of him al-Razi wrote in the early eleventh(fourth) century that ‘when Ibn Yu’fir took theQasr apart and uncovered it, he found thebuilding of a foundation on a hill’. That foun-dation, therefore, would probably be all thatremained at that time of the Sabaean fortress.The ancient identification of ‘Qasr’, whosename is usually given as ‘Qasr al-Qalis’, withthe site of the present building is establishedbeyond question, and al-Hamdam, writing inthe late tenth (fourth) century, states that‘Ghumdan and the [Qasr] al-Qalis were twofortresses in San’a”, which he goes on to saywere built by, respectively, the ancientIJimyarite King Tubba‘ and the SabaeanQueen Bilqis - clearly suggesting that the Qasral-Qalis is the older of the two.

Extending down the hillside below the knollon which the two nobah are situated there is afortified passageway, linking the fort on top ofthe knoll to a much larger enclosed and forti-fied area below and to the west of it. Exami-nation of the contours shows that this lower fortalso stands high above the surrounding ground,though it is difficult to say how much this is dueto the accumulation of debris over many cen-turies, and how much to the site’s having beenchosen as a defensive hill.

But the link itself proves to be very old, foron the southern side there is an ancient gate,Bab al-Sitran, built of the same kind of im-mense blocks of stone with very fine jointing -rather like cyclopaean masonry - and thereforealmost certainly part of the Yu‘firid fortifica-tions, if, indeed, it is not earlier. This gate istypical of those in other ancient Yemeni cities


in its use of a defensive screen wall beyond thegateway, making it necessary for the user tomove parallel to the wall for some distance be-fore passing out into the open country betweenthe two outer bastions.

The separation of the citadel into these twoareas, the upper fort on its hill, and the muchlarger, irregularly shaped fortified area belowit, linked to the former by a fortified corridor,suggests that the lower area represents theoriginal walled city, or else the most importantdefensible quarter within it, following a patternof development in which the city area of oneperiod becomes the citadel of a later, muchlarger city. This pattern of development existedin many ancient Greek cities, as well asthroughout the Middle East in cities such asJerusalem and Fustat. The early historians, likeal-Razi, use another term, ‘Qasabah’, whichseems a term distinct from ‘Qasr’, and perhapsthey are using this former term to describe thelower fortified city.

There used to be an ancient tradition amongthe Jews of San’'a'’ that their people were the firstto live in the citadel. This seems quite likely tohave been the case, if we accept that part ofwhat is now the citadel may once have been anancient lower city; until recent centuries theJews were not segregated from those of otherfaiths, which formed with them one homoge-neous group. As the city grew, houses wouldlikely have spread out onto the plain beyond thecitadel wall, perhaps the small houses of crafts-men, bakers and shopkeepers at first, sur-rounding the open space outside the gates whichwould be used for a market on certain occa-sions. This development seems to have taken

place to the west of the citadel gate to form thequarter known in ancient times as al-Qati‘. Asthis space became built up, the market wasmoved away farther to the west and north, tothe edge of the northern wadi. It has remainedon this site ever since.

During the period of great prosperity in thethird century A.D. the city seems to have ex-panded to cover a large area to the west of theQasr. In the middle of the century the greatroyal tower palace of Ghumdan was erected ontop of a rocky point to the west of the al-Qati‘quarter. According to the early historians it wasa square building with one side in dressed redstone, another in green stone, a third in blackstone and the last in white stone. At the cornersthere were four bronze lion’s heads which ap-peared to roar when the wind blew. ‘There wereten (or seven) floors, between each two floorsthere being forty steps. In the morning itsshadow reached right across the plains to themountains on the far side.’ At the top of thepalace there was a room with windows. Eachwindow was set in a door of alabaster and thedoor itself was set in a jamb made of teak andebony. The ceiling of the room was a singlelarge slab of marble (alabaster?). ‘When thebirds flew over, their shadows could be seen onthe ceiling.’ Ghumdan was destroyed either atthe command of the Prophet or afterwards dur-ing the days of the first Caliphs, although thereseems to have been some kind of fortification onthe site until the twelfth (sixth) century.

By the mid-third century A.D., when San‘a’was an important centre for the highland traderoutes from the Indian Ocean to the Hijaz andfrom Ma’rib to the Red Sea, many caravans

35

The old walled city of San'a'’

must have had to be accommodated. The an-cient method of doing this in Arabian cities wasto halt the caravans at the city gates, where thecamels could be grazed and the goods stored intemporary shelters from which they might besold.

After the Axumite conquest of South Arabiain the early sixth century A.D., San’a’ becamethe capital of the Axumite viceroy. The cathed-ral which was subsequently built in the city isdescribed by historians as being about 80 m

36 long and 25 m wide. The building was elevatedon a platform and approached up a flight ofsteps; it was built of coloured masonry with al-ternating triangular stones to produce coursesof decoration to terminate the façades at the top.Internally, there was a nave with columnswhich led into a large chamber (a narthex?),which had arches on which tree and shrub mo-tifs were applied in mosaic, with gold stars be-tween them. From this chamber one entered adomed space 14.5 m in diameter decorated withmosaic on which crosses were depicted in goldand silver. The dome had a large alabasteropening on the eastern side, 5 X 5 m in size, sobright that it caused anyone looking at it fromthe centre of the floor to cover his eyes. It wasdescribed as ‘conducting the light of the sun andthe moon inside the dome’. The domed roomcontained a pulpit of ebony and white ivory. Itssteps were of gold and silver. Another accountdescribes a floor of coloured marble, marblepillars and the interior shining with glitteringgold, silver and coloured glass.

The site of the domed eastern end of the buil-ding is today identifiable by a large pit linedwith coursed rubble masonry which lies 175 m

to the west of the present citadel wall. It is justover 14.5 m in diameter from south-west tonorth-east. West of the open space in which thispit is situated is a block of houses rectangularin shape on the eastern, southern and westernsides, which exactly corresponds to the dimen-sions given for the church. The southern side isprecisely on an east-west axis and slightly morethan 10 m south of the east-west axis of the pit.This rectangular block has at its western endan open square entered by four streets from dif-ferent directions. It seems probable that thisforms the original square facing the entrance tothe church.

The eastern boundary of the market, that is,the clearing that. marks the present Suq al-Milhand hence probably the north-western limit ofthe ancient al-Qati‘ quarter, would then havelain less than 100 m west of the square in frontof the church. Immediately to the south of theSuq al-Milh is an extensive open space nowpartly filled by the twin mosques of Janah andal-Madhhab. This open space seems unlikelyto have been built on in ancient times, andprobably represents the western limit of the an-cient city, beyond which the palace of Ghum-dan stood with its own walls and gardens.

Al-Razi tells us that the Jews had their syn-agogue next to al-Kanisah (the cathedral),which would place the synagogue in the centreof the old quarter of al-Qati‘.

The Abyssinian camp is known to have lainto the north of the early city, though the site wasafterwards selected by the Prophet Muham-mad for the construction of the open-air prayerspace in which the ‘Id (festival) prayers were tobe celebrated - an ironic comment on the War


of the Elephant. The subsequent fifty-year ruleof the Persians is commemorated in the recordsonly by the name of the garden of the Persiangovernor, Badhan, which lay to the west ofGhumdan.

SAN'A'’ IN THE FIRST CENTURIES

OF ISLAM

San’a’ of the mansions and towers tall

Ahmad al-Rada’i,late ninth (third) century

The Great Mosque was erected as the mosquefor Friday prayer on the instructions of theProphet in the garden of the Persian governor,i.e. in the garden of the palace of Ghumdan, andimmediately adjacent to Ghumdan on the west.Some historians, however, report that withintwenty years the palace itself was demolished,probably as part of the Caliph ‘Uthman’s cam-paign to destroy buildings which might act ascentres of national resistance to Islam.

The oldest part of the city, al-Qati‘, was in-habited by Persians, as well as, apparently, byChristians and Jews. A new quarter, clearlyquite large, grew up to the north and west of it,extending around to the south beyond the GreatMosque, and this was known as al-Sirar', afterthe wadi which flowed down from the north sideof the Qasr; this quarter was inhabited mainlyby the tribesmen of the Bani Shihab.

An open-air prayer space (musalla), called theJabbanah, was constructed outside the walls tothe north, on the camp of the Abyssinians. The

mosque of Farwah ibn Musayk, which stillstands - albeit in altered form -was built in theopen countryside just to the north of the Jab-banah. During ‘Abbasid times, the houses of thegovernor and his staff were beyond the limits ofthe city on the north, surrounding the Jab-banah. According to al-Razi, these were

the most imposing of the houses of San‘'a' . . . theywere the dwelling places of such governors as camefrom Iraq, and their entourage coming in delegationwith these governors along with . . . merchants and 37men of wealth and substance. Their houses wereupon the road right and left, stretching up to the sky,with dwelling places and high rooms of the mostsplendid constructton and the most beautiful work-manship . . . the shade of. . . Jabbanah came froma shadow extending from those houses upon the rightand left because of the height of their roofs and theloftiness of the building . . they had fashioned ringsof brass like a hollow statue in the form of a bull. Oneach of these doors there was a ring of brass like thisstatue. When any of them was struck with the ringit gave out a sound and a strong echo.

Ibn Rustah, writing in 900-13 (290-300), saysof the houses that ‘most of them are adornedwith gypsum, baked bricks, and symmetricalstones’.

Earlier governors, like the one appointed bythe Caliph ‘Uthman, had their dwellings nearthe Great Mosque, beside the western door. Itwas, of course, the normal practice for the rep-resentative of the Caliph to enter the mosquethrough the door in the qiblah wall; for this rea-son, at least one of the governors of the‘Abbasid Caliphs had his residence to the northof the Great Mosque, and adjoining it.

The old walled city of San’a

6The Great Mosque seen from the air, looking east,with the built-up mound of Ghumdan beyond itand to the right of centre, and the suq beyondthat to the left. The great bulk of the Samsaratal-Majjah can be seen top left.

By the latter half of the ninth (third) centurythe city of San’'a'’ was walled. To judge from IbnRustah’s account, the northern wall probablyran a little to the north of the suq area as weknow it today and then around to flank an ex-tensive open space to the north of the al-Qati‘quarter and outside the gates of the citadel,which was known as Maydan San’a’, where


tribal disputes used to be settled. The FridayMosque stood near the southern city wall andthere was a main gate near by, as there is to-day, opening to the south.

Al-Razi, on the authority of al-Hamdam, saysthat San‘'a'’ grew in the first period of Islam for290 years. This probably meant that the citywas expanding to the north (we know that therewere houses outside the walls, for ‘Say1 Nuqum* . . spread between the dwellings of the BaniWalid’). The city must also have been contin-ually expanding to the west. In the late eighth(second) century Governor al-Barmaki built themint in the Suq of the Straw Sellers, and a newmosque in the same suq, on the place wheregypsum was beaten for plaster. Today, suqs ofthese types are normally situated beyond thelimits of the built-up area of Yemeni cities.Governor al-Barmaki also constructed Ghayl al-Barmaki, which had to be extended three cen-turies later to take it to the present Bustan al-Sultan. On these two pieces of evidence it seemslikely that the ‘Abbasid city did not extend tothe course of the present Sa’ilah, or that it didso only in the form of a few scattered dwellingsbeyond the densely built-up area. The westerngate at this time is believed to have been slightlyto the east of the present Qubbat Talhah. Gov-ernor al-Barmaki is given credit for other im-provements to the water supplies of San‘'a'‘,suggesting that the city had recently expandedrapidly beyond its earlier water resources. Atthe time, the largest cemetery, given as a wadfoundation, lay beyond the city to the south andwest. Other smaller cemeteries were situatedoutside the southern and northern gates.

It is likely that the reports given by al-Razi

of the census taken of the people in the quarterof San‘a’ as numbering 70,000 during the reignof the Caliph Harun al-Rashid are not far fromthe truth. Elsewhere al-Razi says that the cen-sus taken during the reign of the governor afteral-Barmaki (i.e. the early ninth (third) cen-tury) showed that there were 85,000 poor (orordinary) people in San‘a’. This is about thesame population as existed there within a yearof the end of the Civil War in 1970. Anotherstatistic given by al-R'azi is that a count madeafter 895 (282) showed that there were about 3930,000 houses. This does not seem an unlikelyfigure, allowing for the expansion described byal-Razi earlier. In 1972 there were 58,500houses in the whole of the city.

T H E C I T Y I N Y U ‘F i R I D T I M E S

A N D B E Y O N D

A number of eye-witness descriptions of the cityhave come down to us from the Yu’firid period.The Yu’firids conquered the city during tur-bulent times in the mid-ninth (third) century.Immediately after they became masters ofSan’'a'‘, the city was reconstructed and a sub-stantial fortified wall built around it.

Al-Hamdani tells us that the city continuedto grow until a few years after 902 (290) whenit was destroyed. Early in the tenth (fourth)century a survey of San’a’ showed that therewere 700 shops, 106 mosques, 12 public baths,45 sesame mills, and 133 tanning sheds. IbnRustah, who describes San’'a'’ at the height ofthis expansion (at the beginning of the tenth(fourth) century), says that the:

The old walled city of San‘a

town has a street which splits it into two halves andpenetrates through to a wadi in which the floods flowon the days of rain . . . called al-Sirar . . . the en-trances to the lanes of the town also open on to it.The market adjoins the north side of the street. Fac-ing the Friday Mosque and about ten cubits from itis a fortress, the foundation of which is rock, beingknown as Ghumdan.

It appears that the street that Ibn Rustah de-scribes ran west to east through the centre of thetown, beginning at the gateway next to the

40 present site of Qubbat Talhah. After passingbetween the Great Mosque on the right of it andthe suq on the left, and traversing the old al-Qati‘ quarter, the street emerged into the opengathering place in front of the gate of the cita-del. The eastern part of this street is still in ex-istence. Ibn Rustah makes it clear that the laneswhich opened onto this street on either side ex-tended out as far as the city walls.

Tabari reports that in 901 (289) the Zaydisoccupied San’'a'‘, and that in the subsequentstruggle between the Yu’firids, the Zaydis andrepresentatives of the ‘Abbasid Caliph, San’'a'’changed hands no less than twenty times intwelve years; in 905 (293), for instance, it suf-fered a severe sacking.

Some statistics are given by al-Razi to showhow reduced in size San’'a'’ subsequently be-came, and it declined further after 955 (344).But it recovered in the second half of the tenth(fourth) century and by the time of al-Razi swriting (he died around 1067 (460))) he claimsthat San‘'a'’ was almost as big as it was before.

Al-Razi tells us that many mosques had to berenewed after the devastations of the wars. Oneof these was the ancient mosque of Farwah ibn

Musayk, to the north, which was rebuilt in 1016(407). The Jabbanah was repaired in the sameyear, when the wall around it was rebuilt ‘withplaster and stones’.

During these first centuries of Islam manysmaller mosques were built throughout the city,with market gardens to provide the incomenecessary to sustain them, often occupying pri-vate ground accumulated from charitable be-quests. These market gardens (miqshamah) actedas green lungs within the city, compensating forthe narrowness of the streets and the height ofthe buildings. Some of the public baths also datefrom an early period, often likewise charitablefoundations to help maintain the mosques. Eachzone of the city had its own baths. Inside thebaths, the hot rooms had hypocausts beneaththe floor, heated by fires stoked with fuel ob-tained by drying nightsoil collected from thehouses. The remaining ash was sold to fertilizethe market gardens. The changing rooms of thebaths were often fine vaulted and domed spaces,containing fountains and illuminated fromabove through glazed openings in the brick-work.

T H E C I T Y F R O M T H E A Y Y U B I D

C O N Q U E S T T O T H E O T T O M A N

C O N Q U E S T

With the advance of Salah al-Din’s two broth-ers into the Yemen, first Turanshah, who con-quered San’'a'’ in 1174 (570), and subsequentlyTughtakin, San’'a'’ was forcibly brought intocontact once again with the mainstreamIslamic world to the north. Tughtakin is said to

The old walled city of San 'a'

have incorporated into San’a’ the garden on thewestern bank of the Sa’ilah, subsequentlyknown as Bustan al-Sultan after him (c. 1197(594)). The Ayyubids built their great palacethere. As conquerors, they would not risk livingin the old town. There was also an Ayyubidcamp to the north of the palace for the soldiersbrought in by Salah al-Din’s brothers; it be-came an urbanized area in the fifteenth andsixteenth (ninth and tenth) centuries.

The Ghayl al-Barmaki was extended until it44 reached the palace and a public bath which they

had constructed in the new quarter. The bathhad a fountain which fed channels runningthrough the surrounding gardens; these gar-dens contained many varieties of trees, fragrantherbs and flowers.

The area west of the Sa’ilah may have beenincorporated within the compass of the citywalls before this time, however,-for Ibn al-Mujawir, writing about 1260 (660), says thatthe Sulaybid ruler ‘Ali ibn Muhammad, whoruled 1047-66 (438-59))

encircled its walls with stone and gypsum and madeseven gates for it:1. Bab Ghumdan to the Yemen [south].2. Bab Dimashq towards Mecca.3. Bab al-Sabahah to Maballat al-Sabahah.4. Bab Khandaq al-A'la' from which the flood waters

enter.5. Bab Khandaq al-Asfal from which the flood

waters go out.6. Bab al-NaSr towards Jabal Nuqum and Birash.7. Bab Shar’ah to Bustan al-Sirr.

The first three gates were more important, orwere given some sort of special treatment; cer-

tainly they were the main gates, so that B'a'bGhumdan would have been the earlier name forthe later Bab al-Yemen, Bab Dimashq the namefor the later Bab Sha’tub, though possibly situ-ated farther south (the first use of the later namedates from 1200 (596)), and Bab al-Sabahah theearlier form of the later Bab al-Sabab. Thekhandaqs indicate that this earlier wall crossedthe Sa’ilah.

During the fighting for the recapture of thecity which followed the Ayyubid conquest, thecity wall and the walls of the citadel were bro-ken down, or severely damaged, in 1174 (570)and again in 1187 (583). They were rebuiltagain by 1198 (595)) however, when detaileddescriptions of raids on the city make it clearthat the city walls were of considerable height.

In 1204 (601) there was a serious flood whichdestroyed houses

to the east and west [at the north end of theSa’ilah]; a world of people and beasts perished, andit reached the height of a man’s stature in Masjidal-Sawma‘ah [Ibn al-Husayn] it took what wasaround it and then it broke the wall of the khandaq

and came out of it.

By this date there were suburbs on both sidesof the Sa’ilah.

The palace in Bustan al-Sultan did not havea long life, for in 1215 (6 12) it was destroyed inan attack by the Zaydis. Subsequent referencesto a palace on the site, however, suggest that itwas later rebuilt.

According to an early Jewish history, theJews moved from the area of the Qasr before themid-twelfth (sixth) century, and settled at a


place called al-Marbaki, after a watercourse ofthe same name, which there is evidence for be-lieving ran out of the city through what is nowBab Sha’ub; this may explain why most Jewishshops remained in this area even after the re-moval of their houses to al-Qa‘ in the seven-teenth (eleventh) century. Al-Marbaki may besimply a Jewish name for al-Sirar, in which caseit would also have been used for the old wadibed further west, or it may have been the namefor the diverted waterflow leaving the citythrough Bab Sha’ub. In any case, Jewish housestended to be concentrated in the areas east andwest of the road running from Bab Sha’ub southinto the suq from before the twelfth (sixth) cen-tury until the Jews’ expulsion from the old cityin 1679 (1090). Reputedly old Jewish houses arepointed out to this day in all parts of the walledcity, some of them with identifiable Jewish fea-tures. In particular the north-western area asfar as the Sa’ilah had many Jews dwelling thereat the time of the expulsion, and it was therethat at least one Jewish synagogue, now themosque of al-Jila’, and two Jewish baths (Shukrand al-Jill’) were situated. Mori Salih in hishistory confirms that the centre of Jewish con-centration in the old city slowly withdrew fromthe area east of Bab Sha’ub and moved fartherwest during the sixteenth and seventeenth(tenth and eleventh) centuries.

To the west of the walls of Bustan al-Sultantwo resort areas are said to have developed be-fore the Ottoman conquest of the sixteenth(tenth) century, Bir al-Shams and Bir al-‘Azab,each of which had about twenty large housessurrounded by gardens. The Abhar quarter,west of the Great Mosque, is reputed to have

been the site of the palace of the governor ofSan’a’, before the Ottoman conquest.

THE OTTOMAN CITY

The first Turkish occupation lasted ninetyyears, beginning in 1539 (946). Although PedroPaez commented around 1590 (1000) that thecity declined after the Turks had taken it, it doesnot seem from the amount of new building workdatable to this time that this decline can have 45persisted very long.

The city walls were 4 m thick, made of clay,and ‘to outward shewe as fair as a stone wall’.At the lowest levels there was a plinth of ‘hardgrey stone’. Near the city gates the walls werebuilt to full height of ‘bluish stone’. On the in-side there was a continuous plinth of stone andgypsum to a man’s height. Small round (semi-circular?) towers projected from the wall asbastions at roughly 40-m intervals; some ofthem were battlemented and some entirely builtof stone. The clay walls had to be repaired everyyear after the seasonal rains.

At this period the Turkish governor oftenlived in the citadel. Near it, in 1597 (1005), thegovernor Hasan Pasha erected the great domedmosque of al-Bakiriyyah. As a setting for hismosque, he is reputed to have laid out a finewide street which was lined with trees through-out its length, from the gate of the citadel to BabSha’urb. The open square in front of the citadelgate is also said to have been formalized at thistime, and Hasan Pasha built Hammam al-Bakiriyyah (Hammam al-Maydan) on it as awaqf support his mosque. The area of these

The old walled city of San’a’

urban improvements became the fashionableOttoman quarter of the city.

The western end of the city, Bustan al-Sultan, still largely consisted of open gardensand orchards, albeit contained within the walls.There, ‘the principal people have their gar-dens, orchards, and kiosks or pleasure houses’.The Turks also favoured Bir al-‘Azab and Biral-Shams to the west of the walls for their coun-try villas.

In 1581 (987) a great flood of the Sa’ilah de-46 stroyed the buildings and gardens around and

beyond the southern khandaq, the floodgatethrough the city wall. It also destroyed manyhouses flanking the wadi bed within the city.

In 1619 (1029) there was another damagingflood of the Sa’ilah which finally destroyed theancient arches of the northern khandaq. As a re-sult the governor ordered the widening of thewadi bed; subsequently the southern andnorthern khandaqs were rebuilt to accommodatethe new dimensions of the wadi.

THE CITY DURING THE SECONDZAYDI DYNASTY

The Turks withdrew from the Yemen in 1630(1040)) and San’'a'’ once more became the seatof an independent Imam. There now began aperiod of prosperity for the city which lasted fornearly two centuries; this is well attested by thequality and quantity of buildings erected dur-ing this time. Considerable damage was done,however, by a flood which came down theSa’ilah, around 1674 (1085), and destroyed thesouthern khandaq.

In 1679 ( 1090) the Jews were exiled from theold city and their property there was confis-cated. After a temporary sojourn in theTihamah they were permitted to return toSan‘a’, but not to the old city. Instead they builta Jewish quarter on the western side of Bir al-‘Azab, close to al-Bawniyah, a village that ap-pears to have been in existence before this time;the new quarter became known as Qa‘ al-Yahud.It soon had its own suq, fourteen synagogues, andhouses ‘as handsome as the best in San’'a'“.

An impressive new palace was built in a gar-den outside the western wall of the city, sur-rounded by its own defensive wall; it appears tohave been constructed by the Imam al-Mutawakkil al-Qasim, who came to power in1708 (1120)) but it is possible that it dated fromthe preceding century. This palace, known asthe Mutawakkil palace from the traditional ti-tle of the Imam, al-Mutawakkil ‘ala Allah (‘hewho relies on God’), had at its centre a tallsquare block. At the beginning of the nine-teenth (thirteenth) century another palace wasbuilt there, which still stands.

Between the wall of the palace enclosure andthe city wall lay an open parade ground, en-closed by gates at both ends, the north onecalled Bab Sogair (Shaqadif) and the one on thesouth Bab Intabah. Beyond the latter gate wasa wide space which formed a public square out-side the ancient Bab al-Sabah, the western gateof the city. In this square were erected, before1726 (1139), the public baths of al-Mutawakkiland the tomb of the Imam al-Mutawakkil al-Qasim.

In 1761 (1175) the Imam, a ruthless tyrant,in consequence of his displeasure with one of his


Jewish ministers, ordered the destruction of allthe synagogues and all storeys on Jewish houseshigher than 9 m above ground level. The syn-agogues were afterwards rebuilt, but the Jewshenceforth observed the edict that their housesshould remain low.

At the beginning of the nineteenth (thir-teenth) century walls were built around Bir al-‘Azab and al-Qa. The old Bab al-Sabah re-mained, but a new western gate, Bab al-Shararah, was built on the other side of theMaydan al-Mutawakkil, which now becamecompletely enclosed by walls.

There were three open squares inside the newwalls around Bir al-‘Azab. Between Qa‘ al-Yahud and the rest of the area there existed along public area known as Sulbi Qa‘ al-Yahud,and inside Bab al-Rum and Bab al-Shararahthere were wide parade grounds. Parts of allthree remain to this day.

There were also other wide spaces in the oldcity, which have since been built over. In par-ticular the area between al-Filayhi and thenorthern edge of the suq was an open maydan,

following the line of the ancient wadi bed.In 1810 (1225), San‘'a'’ still seemed to a vis-

iting German ‘the finest city I have seen in theOrient . . . even Constantinople would not beexcepted if it were not for its mosques’, and in1836 (1252) Cruttenden speaks of the city withunstinted admiration, in spite of the brief sack-ing by tribesmen it had been subjected to in1818 (1234) and 1835 (1251): ‘the houses arelarge, and the windows of those of the higherclasses are of beautiful stained glass’. Many ofthe mosques had their ‘domes gilt, particularlythose with tombs of Imams’.

But in 1850 (1267), a weak Imam lost con-trol of San‘a’ and retired to al-Rawdah. The citywas given over to months of anarchy and viol-ence. Eventually in 1851 (1268) it was exten-sively sacked, and again in 1853 (1270).

When S.M. Stern saw it in 1858 (1275) hedescribed Bir al-‘Azab as ‘a large tract of wasteland, varied by cemeteries and fragments offormer dwellings’. Even allowing for exagger-ation, his impression is shared by other mid-nineteenth-century travellers: ‘Now half-ruined. There are hardly any inhabitants in Bir 47‘Azab. . . . Three-quarters of Bir ‘Azab ruined.. . . Public buildings like the mint were demol-ished by people looking for gold.’ In 1872 (1289)Halevy wrote that ‘the Imam’s authority doesnot extend outside San’a’ and Sha’ub has beensacked’. The village of Sha’ub lay at the north-ern gate of the city. Halévy also reported that,although the underground canal called Ghaylal-Aswad continued to flow, Ghayl al-Barmakihad dried up.

THE CITY DURING THE SECOND

TURKISH OCCUPATION

In 1872 (1289) a Turkish governor-general oncemore entered San’a and the city became thecentre of administration of the Yemen by theSublime Porte until the final withdrawal of Turk-ish control after the Armistice of 1918 (1337).

The Turks did not do a great deal to improvethe city, being preoccupied with quelling rev-olutions and repelling attacks by tribesmen onSan’a itself. Reports of conditions in San’'a'’ inthe first fifteen years of Turkish occupation


speak of the decayed state of the city, and of thegreatly reduced population, as few as 20,000according to C. Millingen in 1874 (1291), andbetween 23,000 and 24,000 according to Man-zoni c. 1878 (1296). In 1878 (1295) enormousfloods caused great damage to the city, morethan 100 houses being ruined. But later thepopulation recovered, General F.T. Haig esti-mating it at 30,000 to 35,000 in 1887 (1305),and the Rev. S.M. Zwemmer and H. Bur-chardt both thought it had increased to at least

48 50,000 before the great siege of the city bytribesmen in 1904 (1322) drove many inhabit-ants away again. All informants tend to agreethat the Jewish population constituted aboutone-fifth of the total, and the Turkish garrisonless than one-tenth. Zwemmer and Harrisstressed how flourishing the town had becomeby 1891-93 (1309- 11). The gateway of Bab al-Sabah was removed by the Turks, the namebeing transferred to Bab al-Shararah fartherwest.

The barracks built during the first Turkishoccupation were also destroyed in 1878 ( 1295).The were replaced in 1887 ( 1305) by large newbarrack buildings outside the city, on either sideof the road south of Bab al-Yemen. A militaryhospital had already been built by then. Thesebuildings still remain in use.

The fortifications of the city were further im-proved by the construction at regular intervalsof towers, a ‘few hundred yards outside thewalls, somewhat resembling martello towers’.Most of them were doubtless destroyed in thesiege of 1904 (1322), but several fine nobah ofgrey stone near the city may be identified withthese towers.

One of the first acts of the Turks was to re-store the mosque of al-Bakiriyyah and the tree-lined road between the citadel, the mosque ofal-Bakiriyyah and Bab Sha’ub becoming onceagain the centre of the fashionable quarter of thetown; it was here that the foreign rulers hadtheir shops and cafes, as well as the new mili-tary academy, two civilian schools and an in-dustrial school.

Bir al-‘Azab, outside the old city to the west,once more achieved its earlier importance as aresidential suburb. ‘Here reside the Wali andmost of the senior officers.’


After the prolonged siege by tribesmen in1904 (1322) the walls of the city were severelydamaged, in some places being reduced toground level. ‘Before the siege there were some70,000 inhabitants, now the number was re-duced to 20,000’, wrote A. Herbert, an eye-wit-ness in 1905. .Although San’'a' eventually re-covered its prosperity and the walls wererebuilt, another intensive siege in the name ofthe independent Imam in 1911 (1329) didwidespread damage.

The gateway of Bab al-Yemen was after-wards rebuilt in brick and stone to a new de-sign by a Turkish military engineer, togetherwith a stretch of the wall on either side of it.

THE CITY UNDER THE HAMID

AL-DIN IMAMS

The withdrawal of the Turks in 1919 ( 1338) wasfollowed by a period of consolidation and re-construction, The Imam built a splendid newpalace next to the old site at Bustan al-Mutawakkil, and in this the first electricitysupply in the city was installed.

Inhabitants flocked once more into San‘a’and within a (decade the population had risento 50,000. The new Imam engaged in manypublic works to improve the city, building newhospitals and an orphanage, and extending theGreat Mosque. On the whole, however? littlechange took place in San’'a'‘. The city wassacked by tribesmen in 1948 ( 1368). During thisattack many large houses suffered internaldamage, the Samsarat Muhammad ibn Hasanwas pillaged (and has been closed ever since),


and some fire damage occurred to houses, es-pecially those in Bir al-‘Azab. Life quickly re-turned to normal, however, with the physicalform of the city much as it had been before.Modern improvements were generally frownedupon by the new Imam, who ruled from Ta‘izz.

When the Jews left Yemen as a result of theZionist exodus between 1949 and 1959, thequarter they left behind was regarded as a verydesirable residential area by many of the peo-ple who already owned houses in the old city,even though the Qa‘ al-Yahud was made up ofJewish-style housing, which had been con-structed to rather different plans than the towerhouses of the old city. This quarter has contin-ued to expand ever since.

T H E C I T Y U N D E R T H E R E P U B L I C

In 1962 (1382) the revolution against the tra-ditional rule of the Imams focused on San’'a'‘,which was rapidly modernized with Egyptianaid. Artillery attacks on the city, especially in1968 (1388)) caused considerable damage, butnot perhaps as much as might have been ex-pected considering the capabilities of modernweapons.

The most marked physical change in the citywas the demolition in 1966 (1386) of Bab al-Sabah, to allow the creation of a great publicsquare, Maydan al-Tahrir, between the old cityand Bir al-'Azab; to this were joined two newarms of a new shopping street, laid out as a widedual carriageway with a central island plantedwith trees. This was soon to become the maincommercial focus of the modern city, rivalling

the old market in importance. During the CivilWar the Republican Government also con-structed the first tarmacadam road around theoutside of the city walls, to the south to Bab al-Yemen, and to the north to Bab Sha’ub.

After the cessation of hostilities in 1969( 1389)) San’'a'’ rapidly expanded to the west ofits former limits with the erection of a univer-sity and a residential area around it. On thesouthern and northern sides of the walls of Biral-‘Azab, that is, to the south of the road toHodeidah and to the north of the road to Wadi 53Dahr, new residential suburbs sprang up, in-cluding many new embassy buildings. Similardevelopments took place along the road to-wards al-Rawdah from Bab Sha’ub and alongthe roads running south from Bab al-Yemen.Both the Hodeidah road and the road to WadiDahr were chosen as sites for important newgovernment buildings.

With the removal of the airport from a sitesouth of the city to a site to the west of al-Rawdah on the northern side, and the con-struction of the new international airport, im-petus was given to the development of the cityto the north-west. The: completion of an outerring road on this side of the city in 1974 (1394))the southern part of the outer ring road havingbeen built two years earlier, was the first stagein the growth of the city far beyond the limitsit had traditionally occupied.

The city has since been spreading very rap-idly west, north and south, and even to the eastup the slopes of Nuqum, especially after 1976,and more and more low modern dwellings arebeing built. The changes in the kinds of housesare interesting: one favourite type results from


the Turkish occupation, when a Turkish-styletwo-storeyed house became fashionable. Thereis now a modern version in which the livingquarters are on the upper level with shops,stores or a garage underneath.

The rapid expansion of population in recenttimes is graphically shown by the following fig-ures:1962: 55,000 inhabitants (estimated)1970: 70,000 inhabitants (estimated)1972: 91,795 inhabitants (August)

54 1975: 134,558 inhabitants1982: 250,000 inhabitants (government

estimate)Of this population it is believed that approxi-mately 42,000 live today in the old walled cityand a further 8,000 within the area of the Jew-ish quarter, al-Qa‘. Many are old families, butthere is a certain infusion of immigrants fromthe country districts replacing San‘a’ nis whohave chosen to move to newer-style houses out-side the walls.

Social structure and way of lifecTake care of your neighbours before taking careof your own family.

Yemeni proverb

Since before recorded history, highland Yemenof the mountains and plateaux has been settledby a large number of fiercely independenttribes. Although it is a land of cultivators livingin villages, administration is difficult becauseof constant feuding. There is often only an in-direct relation with the central governmentthrough the tribal sheikhs. It used to be saidthat a tribesman was first a tribesman, and onlyafter that a follower of the central religiousleader and ruler, the Imam. Although the Im-ams could theoretically call on the valour of thenorthern tribes for their support, loyalties wereinconstant and fickle. Attempts to collect taxeswere a frequent cause of friction, often leadingto the casting off of fealty to the Imam: the his-tories are full of accounts of tribes swiftlychanging their allegiance. The tribesman wasalways armed, intensely jealous of his honourand prepared to avenge insults to himself, hisfamily, his tribe or his faith, in more or less thatorder.

Highland and lowland Yemenites adhere tothe Zaydi and Shafi’i schools of Islam respec-tively. Zaydi beliefs are not significantly op-posed to those of the Shafi’is; in general there

has been little physica. discord between them 55on religious matters. An important theoreticalpoint of difference is that for the Shafi’is, whoare Sunnis, the Qur’an is the word of God dic-tated to the Prophet Muhammad, whereas forthe Zaydis the Qur’an is a created work. TheZaydis are Shi’ah, and believe that their Imamhas authority passed on directly from theProphet Muhammad through his daughter,Fatimah, and his son-in-law, ‘Ali ibn ‘Ali Talib.It will be remembered that ‘Ali ibn ‘Ali Talibwas reputed to have been sent by the Prophetto the Yemen, and the country has alwaysshown great loyalty to him and his family.

The Zaydi Imam was selected from amongthe Sayyid class, that is, from one of the des-cendants of the Prophet. He was eligible only ifhe conformed to fourteen qualifications, amongthem being courage, capacity to rule with jus-tice and generosity, and ability to attract fol-lowers. Through the Imamate the establish-ment of a centralized authority for governmentover the tribes was possible. But whenever theImamate became weak - or was brought downby such external causes as invasion - tribal an-archy usually followed. In addition to the other

The old walled city of San‘a’

56

qualities required of him, the Imam had to bea resolute warrior to deal with dissension andmaintain his authority; it was further necessaryfor him to have an almost encyclopedic knowl-edge of the tribes and the families of the Yemen,with all the intricacies of their relationships.

The Sayyids, as members of the Prophet’shouse by birth, enjoyed enormous privilegesand respect throughout the Zaydi Imamate.They were the aristocracy of the country, de-voting themselves to scholarship, administra-tion and legal affairs. Though therefore essen-tially urban dwellers, they frequently possessedrich lands outside the towns. From this groupcome a majority of the ulema, the religious fath-ers. Many of the Sayyids also engaged in trade.

Another leading group in the highland com-munity are Qadis. The title, strictly speaking,means ‘magistrate’ or ‘judge’. It is accorded toan educated man when he is deemed to haveearned the respect of the community by hiswisdom and activities, providing he comes fromone of certain qualified families. It is believedthat these families may have originated from thearistocracy of pre-Islamic Yemen. Many of theofficials, judges and scholars of the highlandsbelong to this class.

The remainder of the social classes in Yemenare tribal in origin - except for the lowest classof all. This is true in both urban and rural so-cieties. Occupations are divided into those thatare ‘honourable’ and those that are deemed so-cially inferior.

The sheikhs of the tribes form an importantgroup in the Yemen. They are elected fromamong the tribesmen and usually belong to oneor two of the leading families of that tribe.

In the towns those people engaged in ‘hon-ourable’ pursuits, like peasant craftsmen, wouldbe termed manasib, that is, they are understoodto have a ‘tribal ancestry’. Often the word‘Arab’ is used to designate them. They are en-gaged in all the leading branches of commerceand in all the most skilled of the handicrafts,their occupations ranging from goldsmiths andsilversmiths through coppersmiths and black-smiths to the makers of daggers, joiners, turn-ers, stonemasons, bricklayers and porters. Able-bodied men of this class who were capable ofbearing arms were traditionally compelled to doso if their town was attacked.

At a lower social level, regarded as below thehonour of a tribesman, are activities under-taken by members of the muzayyin class. Thisclass would include shoemakers, beltmakers,saddlers, tanners, brickmakers, barbers, bathattendants, butchers, cafe proprietors and mar-ket gardeners. :It would be socially degradingfor a child of the manasib class to marry into themuzayyin. They even live in separate quarters insome of the highland towns - there is also anobservable tendency for this to occur in parts ofthe old city of San’a’. In common tribal law thekilling of a muzayyin by a tribesman, or mansub,would be regarded as a discreditable act.

The lowest class of all are the akhdan, a nu-merically small group in San‘a’, mostly em-ployed in former times as street cleaners. Theywere not allowed to take up the occupations ofthe other classes or carry arms or purchasehouses or land.

The class to which a man belonged was tra-ditionally indicated by his dress, in particularby two features of it, the dagger and the head-

Social structure and way of life

dress. The Sayyid, Qadi, and other educated,respected men still wear on formal occasions akind of hat made of a stiff, flat-topped cylindri-cal frame with a top finely worked in whitethread around which is wound an embroideredcloth or a strip of white muslin. The dagger intheir belt is slightly curved and has an ornatehandle of silver filigree work housed in a silveror embroidered case; the belt is of woven silveror gold thread. They are frequently very neatlydressed in well-tailored, dark coats worn overwhite cotton robes.

Until recent times the standard head-dressof a tribesman was a turban of cotton, dyed inindigo so that it shone like metal, wrappedaround a small crocheted sweat cap. It was alsoworn by craftsmen in the market and by someof the lower classes. Today this kind of head-gear is more commonly replaced by shawlsmade in the Tihamah or in India. The daggerof the tribesmen and those San’a’nis who claimtribal origin is J-shaped with a bone or woodenhandle housed in a leather sheath and worn ona leather or cloth belt. Tribesmen or craftsmentraditionally wear either a striped, wide-bodiedand wide-sleeved, full-length garment or a shirtand futah a striped cloth wrapped around thewaist.

By contrast, female dress revealed no specificmarks of the status of a woman. Regional oreconomic differences might be recognizable, buta woman could easily wear the dress of anothergroup without reprobation. In any case, be-cause in public women were veiled, there wasan all-pervading anonymity about female dress.

Jews in San’'a'’ were mostly craftsmen; veryfew were traders. They worked side by side with

14A Qadi wearing the traditional headdressand dagger (janbiyya), Qadis weartheir janbiyya to the right side of the belt(cf. Plates 33 and 34).


58

Muslims who belonged to the same craft ortrade, often sharing adjoining premises in thesuq. There is no indication that any craft ortrade was reserved exclusively for the Jews.

The Jews, who until the 1950s numberedabout a fifth of the population of San’'a'‘, that is,at various times from 8,000 to 12,000, were onthe whole a prosperous community. It has beenestimated that between a quarter and a third ofthem were wealthy by San’'a' standards, someof them very wealthy indeed. Many owned ex-tensive property, houses and shops, not only inthe Jewish quarter but in the rest of the city andoutside. The Jews played an important role inYemeni history and frequently provided finan-cial support for the administration, wars and

development projects of the Imam. Owing theirsecurity to him, and lacking tribal affiliations,they formed, from his point of view, one of thegroups in the community on whom he couldmost depend.

Like almost all Islamic towns, the adminis-tration of San‘'a'’ was divided up into a numberof quarters or wards, each named after the mainor largest mosque in each quarter (often therewere two or three other mosques in a quarter).Perhaps because San’'a' had been for at least1,000 years a ‘protected’ town (hejira), the orig-inal function for which the quarter system wasevolved (i.e. to protect tribesmen from attackby neighbours who belonged to traditionallyhostile tribes) may have fallen away. Hence the

15Schoolgirls wearingblack robes and face veilsin a bookshop nearthe Zumur mosque.


boundaries between quarters were not as im-portant as they may have been in the days whenquarters were separated by walls or openspaces. In San’'a' it appears that the number ofquarters, and hence their size and boundaries,have often changed quite arbitrarily through-out history.

In San‘'a'’ each quarter had a headman, the‘aqil, who was responsible to the governor of thecity for the maintenance of security, the collec-tion of taxes and for settling any local disputes.Every craft also elected or nominated a sheikhwho represented the interests of that craft, en-sured fair prices and arbitrated in the case of adispute between a member of the craft and oneof his customers. These craft sheikhs elected thesheikh of the market, who was responsible formaintaining security at night by hiring watch-men and who acted as a spokesman for themerchants and craftsmen with the governor ofthe city. Under him, however, there was an of-ficial responsible for security at night, a sheikhal-layal, whose job was to supervise the watch-men. Since the second Ottoman Turkish oc-cupation a municipal organization has been setup in San’'a'’ which to some extent relieves theseofficials of the more irksome of their duties, andhas accordingly somewhat reduced theirstatus.

T H E T R A D I T I O N A L W A Y O F L I F E

In San’'a'‘, mornings and evenings are the work-ing periods; afternoons are spent relaxing ingroups in the houses or shops, smoking hoo-kahs (water-pipes) or chewing the stimulant leaf

16Man returning from the qat market. His headdressis of the type worn by Sayyids and Qadis.

qat. If there are strangers present, the groups aresegregated, the men sitting in one ‘room of thehouse and the women in another. Occasionallythere is further separation between the youngand the old people of both sexes.

In the streets, the men dress in stylish, col-ourful clothes, with daggers in their belts; theywear turbans or cylindrical hats and carryshawls across their shoulders. Variations in thestyles and colours of the garments come and gojust as they do in the Western world, but on aslower time scale. Until the present century,material and clothing were expensive. Mostpeople reserved new clothing for ceremonialoccasions, such as festive days and wedding


60

feasts, and kept garments for as long as possi-ble, redyeing and patching them. Men nor-mally cut their hair short, but remote tribes-men from the countryside sometimes wore noheadgear and left their hair long. In coldweather a kirk, that is, a coat with a blacklambskin lining, would be worn; if the ownerwas from the upper class, this would be cov-ered with a smart coat of blue serge; if from alower class, it would be left with the skin of theanimal showing.

Yemeni men seemed to possess an innatecolour sense. Bright colours were often worn incombination but almost never to poor effect.Aristocrats and scholars preferred white orpastel colours. Striped cloths were always pop-ular. Tribesmen from the country wore, and stillusually wear, simple undyed cottons or those inplain colours, or the old-fashioned indigo-dyedcloths.

Until a few years ago, women were veiled inall circumstances in the company of men otherthan those of the family. Not only the face, butif possible the feet and ankles too, had to becovered. Girls younger than the age of 12 andwomen past menopause were allowed to ap-pear before strangers unveiled. The wearing ofthe veil had a particular advantage in San’a’;because the houses did not provide a fully sep-arate zone for women, the veil allowed a womanto preserve her modesty before men who werenot of the immediate family and yet be unhin-dered in her movements. It may be said herethat veiling women in the company of men wasregarded as a means of honouring the womenand their modesty among at least the morethoughtful of the traditional society. Tribes-

women generally did not veil their faces buteach wore instead a simple black shawl thrownover her head, which might be gathered acrossthe lower face as a veil if she so desired it.

In the home, women normally wore a simplecotton dress with narrow sleeves which theydyed and redyed black or dark red until it wasthreadbare. On their heads they wore a mini-mum shawl which could double as a veil. Butin the afternoons, women normally dressed togo to a party or to receive guests. For this theywore finer clothes, long dresses with woven sil-ver or gold thread, lace stockings, brightly col-oured or silver shoes, silk, velvet, Indian bro-cades, or even imported European silks.Quantities of rich silver jewellery were wornaround the neck, ankles, wrists and possibly onthe forehead. Yemeni silver-work was among themost famous in the Islamic world. But neck-laces of amber and semi-precious stones werealso worn. When a woman went out she woreover these a dark outer garment, usually black,a face cloth of local San’a’ni dyeing, with largecircles in black, white and red, and over thewhole was thrown an imported Indian glazedprinted cotton in red, blue, green and orange.Until recently, both cotton and woollen clothwere woven in San’a’, and the embroidery ofcloth is still carried on there. The striped shawlsmade in San‘a’, with bands of white and silverand gold thread running through them, havebeen famous since early Islamic times, but theirmanufacture in the highlands is fast disappear-ing. Yemeni cloth is still manufactured in thelowlands and the Tihamah, but foreign cloth isincreasingly imported for sale.

To this day some carpets are woven in the


countryside around San’'a'’ from wool producedby the farmers and spun by the womenfolk.Striped patterns or plain black carpets are fa-voured. The carpets have no pile but are verythick kilims.

Greetings between men are often elaborate.There are said to be more than fifty kinds ofgreeting. They range from a simple clasp of thehand or a touch on the shoulder to repeatedkissing of the back and palm of the hand, thewrist, the shoulder and even the knees as signsof respect or affection. Niebuhr reported in theeighteenth (twelfth) century that it was cus-tomary for the Imam to be greeted by a kissplaced on the back and palm of his hand, as wellas the hem of his robe, and on one occasion thetownspeople approached the Imam to kiss hisknee.

Food typically consists of a large meal afterthe midday prayer, a very light meal in the eve-ning, and the consumption of bread at break-fast time. A meal for a guest at lunch time (i.e.a full meal) begins with the eating of radishesand continues with the serving of al-shafut, bro-ken-up pieces of flat bread soaked in buttermilkor sour skimmed milk and garnished withgrated garlic, leeks, chilies and thyme. The nextdish is often bint al-sahn meaning ‘daughter ofthe bowl’, which is made of alternate layers ofthin cake soaked in ghee, honey and blackcumin seeds, served in a hot stone dish andcovered with melted butter and honey. Themeal being half over, the diners more than halffull, meat is then served, usually in the form ofa broth (merak) followed by stewed or roastedmeat together with pieces of okra, fried, boiledor roast potatoes, rice or beans. Finally, the

meal is concluded with jelly or fresh fruit, ap-ples, apricots, peaches, pears, figs, pomegran-ates, melons, bananas and the grapes for whichthe countryside around San’'a' is particularlyfamous.

Other meals might include porridges madefrom various grains, or dhals. There are ninekinds of bread, besides a large number of breaddishes and at least four kinds of cake.

Servants were practically unknown under theImamate, even in the houses of the wealthy.The households were so large that the house-work and cooking could be done by the house-wife, her daughters and other relatives. Someslaves were once employed as a sign of prestigeor to do menial tasks in the great houses, butthese were few and reputedly treated as mem-bers of the family.

At celebrations there was music and danc-ing, although a number of the Imams issued in-junctions against it. The musical instrumentmost favoured was the lute, or ‘ud, which theYemenites claim originated there. It was usu-ally played by a single singer to accompany hisballad, although groups of two or three ‘udplayers singing together are common today.Dancing was usually performed to the music ofside drums and a double flute, the mizmar. Thehigh-pitched, buzzing sound of the mizmar wascharacteristic, the piper leading the drummerwith a nod of the head whenever necessary. Themethod of dancing was that two men faced eachother, or a group of men formed a circle, andused their daggers - which they waved abovetheir head and dropped - to mark time, whilethey paced out an elaborate pattern of stepswith their feet.

61

The architectureof the old city of San’a.

The heritage of your father is worth morethan years of study.

Yemeni proverb

The opportunities for undertaking research inthe Yemen, and particularly in San’a’, after theend of the Civil War have nowhere been moresignificant than in architecture. Althougharchitectural researchers are seriously handi-capped by the lack of any archaeological studywithin or near the city, as well as by the ab-sence of classification of most of the documen-tation, the immense wealth of surviving build-ings in San‘'a'’ has made it possible to establishthe main outline of building development for atleast the last 300 years, and, in the case ofmosques, for well over 1,000 years. It hasproved possible, subsequently, to link this in itsessentials with detailed accounts of the physi-cal character of the city in the tenth (third)century, and with what little can be gleaned ofpre-Islamic San‘a’, so that the essential conti-nuity of architectural design can be assertedwith some confidence for a period dating backto the beginning of Islam, and, on the evidenceof the tower palace of Ghumdan and a few otherfragments, to four centuries earlier.

As timber was in short supply, because treeswere relatively rare and small, the traditionalarchitecture of San’a’ relied to only a limited

extent on the use of wood. Flat floors and roofs 63were achieved by employing small twistedbeams, most of them spanning no more than3 m, covered with layers of brushwood andearth, on top of which the horizontal plaster orearth-finished surfaces were laid. The con-struction of fine ceilings with larger woodenbeams was so expensive that these are found inonly a few mosques and palaces.

Primary building materials were stone andderivatives of clay from the loess-like plains be-tween the mountains. Sometimes gypsum andlimestone deposits occur, and from these wereproduced, by low-temperature firing in kilns,the splendid gypsum plaster (plaster of Paris)and lime whitewash for waterproofing. Vaultsand domes were not part of the domestic ar-chitectural tradition and seem to have been in-troduced as a means of roofing larger spaces inmonumental buildings, and possibly baths, un-der Byzantine and perhaps Persian influence,in the centuries preceding Islam. But after thearrival of Islam they went out of style again, andwere only revived under the Rasulids in thethirteenth (seventh) century, and then only fortombs, mosques and public baths.


18Bayt Wassa, seen from the west (see Fig. II)

HOUSES

The predominantly square tower houses impressthe visitor with their height. Many houses aremore than five storeys high, the largest com-monly having seven, eight or even nine storeys.A view of the city from a distance, with manyhundreds of these houses soaring above the citywalls, makes an unforgettable impression.

The streets of the towns are generally narrowand flanked by towering houses with no sight ofvegetation or water to relieve the eye, yet be-hind the houses and extending right up to themthere are frequently large gardens. These are thewaqf foundations which support the mosques;they are planted with vegetables and fruit whichare sold to the inhabitants of the encirclinghouses, the surplus going to the market. Thusalmost every house, even in San’'a'‘, has a viewthrough its windows into extensive gardens.The cultivated areas frequently appear sunken,and indeed it was from these areas that earthwas taken for the construction of the surround-ing houses, but the effect is increased by the ac-cretion of centuries of rebuilding along thestreets, so that the building and street levelshave risen several metres above the originalground level.

The houses are seldom joined together tomake one architectural façade. Each house,even if wall to wall with another, appears towant to be looked at for itself and pays little at-tention to an exact alignment with its neigh-bours. Many of the largest houses are so packedthat they do not have an entrance court, but afew stand in small gardens which are hiddenfrom the street by high walls.

The architecture of the old city of San‘a’

The houses are constructed of ashlar stone-work up to approximately 6-10 m above streetlevel, where exposed brickwork takes over. Thestone walls are not solid but have a rubble-and-clay infill, faced on each side with squaredstones tapering slightly as they penetrate thewall. The flat square bricks are made from theclay of the surrounding plains and average16.5 cm square and 4 cm thick. Externally thelower levels are plain whitewashed or barestone. They are entered through only one open-ing, a squat wooden door, usually in the middleof the southern side.

Yemeni houses are normally built for onenuclear family; old houses may have two or eventhree closely related families living in them; ina few cases houses are owned by a sheikh for useby members of a tribe, or are waqf foundations,in which case they may be subdivided.

The distribution of usable space is basicallythe same in all these tower houses. The groundfloor serves for the accommodation of animals,ranging from cattle and beasts of burden tosheep and goats. From it a stair leads up to thefirst upper level, sometimes a mezzanine aboveonly a small part of the ground floor. This firstlevel may be used for the storage of grain andfruit. It sometimes contains the circular stonemills for grinding grain; alternatively these millsare placed on the ground floor, inside the en-trance. Above these levels is the first domesticlevel, usually containing a family living-roomin which business may be conducted and visi-tors initially received; at such times women re-treat to the higher levels.

A carved door opens from the staircase ateach upper level to give access to a generous

6-

I IBayt Wassa: plans and section.


19Bayt Mutahar: the diwan, now also used as abedroom, showing the introduction of aWestern-style bed on the right.The upper windows are of alabaster.

lobby, around which the rooms are grouped,usually one main room, a store and a bath-room. Sometimes another tiny room is pro-vided for the preparation of beverages and tohouse the charcoal brazier used for lighting thetobacco pipes; these activities may also takeplace in the lobby.

On the second living level is the diwan, a kindof large parlour kept locked except for familygatherings for feasts, weddings and funerals;

The architecture of the old city of San’a’

this room is also used as the place prepared forchildbirth, with an elaborately arranged anddecorated raised couch.

Above the diwan are similar? semi-privaterooms and the kitchen, and at the highest levelof the house the afternoon reception room, themafraj, used most often by men. In the mafraj anassembly of relatives and friends smoke the tra-ditional hookahs and chew qat, while engagedin conversation which is often phrased in ele-gant formal language or even in poetry.

The mafraj is built at a great height above theground, and is customarily the most decoratedroom in the house; it has large windows on threesides providing magnificent views, which are attheir best at sunset, when conversation tends toflag. The fourth direction, the north side, is keptclosed to prevent the entry of cold winds.

Because the walls of the houses are of stoneand thickly plastered, the extremes of heat andcold experienced from noon to midnight arerarely felt indoors. The thermal capacity of thewalls introduces a heat lag which smooths outmost of the temperature differences. There is noheating, even though the climate is quite coldin winter.

Permanent ventilation is provided in thestaircases and lobbies by means of projectingmasonry cooling boxes. These have shuttereddoors which can be closed in cold or windyweather. Rooms are normally ventilated at ahigh level by tiny opening flaps set in the wallsbetween the fanlights. In the rare event of highhumidity after rain, the lower shutters can beopened to provide cross ventilation at bodyheight.

The lighting levels are high, due to the large

areas of fanlight above the low-shuttered open-ings. In some cases the fashion for colouredglass tends to reduce the natural light, but inthe older houses alabaster panels above theshuttered windows flood the interiors with agolden light.

The following sections give a detailed descrip-tion of these houses.

The ground floor67

The stalls for animals on the ground floor usu-ally take the form of enclosed rooms ap-proached by hinged wooden doors and venti-lated onto the street through small openings inthe outside walls. Firewood for the house isstored in one of the larger animal stores or inthe entrance lobby. The ground floor of thehouse also contains a closed room for nightsoilunder a ‘long-drop’ lavatory. Here the night-soil is stored and dried, then shovelled outthrough a low opening in the street wall andtaken away to be used as fuel in the publicbaths. From the entrance hall a wide internaldoor opens onto the stone staircase, whichwinds upwards around three sides of a centralzone pier and is enclosed throughout its heightin walls. This is one of the reasons for thestrength of Yemeni buildings: the staircase actsas a kind of hollow column. The entrance hallis lighted through a cluster of slits above thefront door.

The entrance door is pivoted on stone padsat top and bottom and fits into a recess in thethickness of the outer wall. It is furnished in-ternally with two sliding wooden bolts and a

The old walled city of San‘a'

68

I I IBayt al-Belayli: a perspective of the plans.

wooden lock. The lower bolt can as a rule beoperated from outside by a large key, whichmust be turned four or five times to slide thebolt back through a series of notches cut in itsunderface. The upper bolt cannot be openedfrom outside, but it can be closed by pulling acord passed through a hole in the door. Thisenables the inhabitants to secure the housecompletely against intruders; even with a keyto the house the door cannot be opened. Thissecond bolt can furthermore be opened fromany level of the house, by pulling the cord whichpasses over a wooden pulley and then travelsvertically through holes in the floors of the up-per staircase lobbies. The cord is fastened to theend of the bolt, drawing it from its socket. It iscustomary for a visitor to shout from the streetto the inhabitants above, who then open thedoor in this way. Alternatively, a special pat-tern of knocking, which is known only to thosewho live there and close friends, may be used.

The first upper level

This is often a mezzanine level, the entrance hallitself rising through two storeys. In this case,one or two large arches, built of exposed stonevoissoirs, cross the entrance hall to supportmain internal walls on the upper floors. Com-monly, the mezzanine level contains no living-rooms, though in some very old houses there isone. Large houses may have a guardroom onthe mezzanine level which overlooks the en-trance hall. This often has a private wardroomadjoining, as well as a lavatory.

Most of the mezzanine space is used for stor-ing grain. The wheat, corn, millet or other grain

The old walled city of San'a'’

is placed in large stone vessels which reach towaist level; these stand in rows down one orboth sides of each store-room. Occasionally thegrinding mills are placed on this level; whenthere is not enough space below, animals mayalso be housed in some rooms on the first upperlevel. The mezzanine store-rooms are reachedeither from the main staircase or up specialstairs from the ground floor. Large houses oftenhave another level for store-rooms above themezzanine level. Sometimes there are rooms set

70

aside as store-rooms at higher levels of the houseas well.

The first living level

From the staircase one enters a large lobby offwhich open two or three rooms. The most im-portant of these, entered through double rooms,is the family living-room where strangers arecustomarily received socially or on business.The floors throughout are stone flagged.

The architecture of the old city of San ‘a’

I VA cluster of houses in the Salah al-Dinquarter: plans and section.

The family living-room. Almost all the Yemenirooms can be used alternately for eating, sittingor sleeping; the family living-room is typicallyarranged with the minimum of furniture. Thefloor space nearest the door is generally keptclear to allow shoes to be left just inside theroom, and part or all of the remaining space iscarpeted and lined around the walls with acontinuous seat of kapok or wool-stuffed mat-tresses. Behind these mattresses, against theplaster wall surfaces, stand vertical cushionsstuffed with straw, used as back-rests. Above 71these there are sometimes placed smaller cush-ions as headrests, often with fringed white an-timacassars. There are usually hard cushions,stuffed with straw, used as armrests and ar-ranged to denote separate seats. Strip carpetsoften cover the seat cushions.

The windows have low sills, approximately45 cm high, to permit people to see outside froma sitting position. They are closed by shutterswith separate, arched, semi-circular fanlightsabove the windows, of fixed translucent mate-rial to let light in to the room even when theshutters below are closed. This material is eitherthin alabaster sheeting (called qamari, derivedfrom the Arabic for ‘moon’, approximately1.5 cm thick) or stained glass set in gypsumsheets. During the present century, the practicehas slowly gained ground in San’'a'’ of introduc-ing a pair of clear glazed sashes inside or out-side the lower wooden shutters. This practice isnot found in older, unaltered houses or in out-lying areas.

On the walls of the room are high shelvesmade of hard gypsum plaster, on which articlescan be placed when not needed. On the ceiling


72

both the area of the rough beams and the sur-faces between are completely plastered andwhitewashed.

One of the remarkable things about the oldhouses, noted by al-Hamdani in the ninth(third) century, is the cleanliness and freedomfrom odours of the bathrooms, which contain thelavatories. The lavatory consists of a stoneplatform 70 cm square with a square hole in thecentre. The latter opens into a vertical shaftwhich drops down into a square stone recep-tacle underneath designed for collecting thesolid waste. In front of the lavatory is a slopingsection in the stone platform, which leads urinedown to a channel in the stone floor. The chan-nel takes the liquid through an opening in theoutside wall, whence it runs down the face of aspecially constructed and shaped verticaldraining surface made of waterproof gypsumplaster. Frequently these vertical drains are el-egantly shaped and decorated. As soon as itreaches the ground, the liquid disappears intoan underground drainage sump, from which itis led either to an underground ‘French’ drain,for disposal into the soil, or to a cess-pit. A re-cent tendency, introduced within the last fewyears, has been to collect this liquid at a sumpat the level of the lavatory and lead it down theface of the wall in a pipe.

Odours are completely eliminated from thelavatory in two ways. First, by ensuring thatliquids are not allowed into the ‘long-drop’ shaftor the chamber beneath, the solid waste is al-lowed to dry very quickly (San‘'a'’ has a low hu-midity) and becomes odourless. Secondly, a potor ladle stands on a stone cylinder near the lav-atory; with the aid of this, the surfaces over

which urine has run are swilled down afterevery use of the lavatory. Later the dried night-soil is shovelled away and burnt as fuel in thepublic baths of each quarter, the ash serving tofertilize the market gardens around which thehouses are grouped. Thus an ecological cycleexists remarkable for its simplicity, hygiene andeconomy.

The bathing facilities consist of a pair ofsquare stones spaced approximately 12 cmapart, on which the user squats, and a cylin-drical stone centrally in front of them which hasa recessed top to receive the container of water.The container is usually an open-necked ear-thenware pot about 20 cm in diameter, withouthandles. Often a much larger earthenware ves-sel for water is placed in one corner of the bath-room, or in the lobby outside, from which thebather’s supply can be replenished.

If the house has a well, it usually risesthrough the lower levels up to at least the lobbyof the first living area. In many cases it risesfurther to the level of the kitchen above. In thisway water may be drawn in the lobby area oneach level, as well as in the entrance hall.

The well is usually a small square shaft,about 28 x 22 cm, built above a circular stonewell in the ground, which extends approxi-mately 30 m below ground level. There arewooden pulleys at the top level so that water canbe drawn on the ground floor for the animals,on the living floors, and up to the kitchen. Thewell is cemented with a special water-proofingmortar made by mixing wood ash, animal hairand seeds of rushes into the lime plaster. Aleather bucket: is used, drawn on rope madefrom vines or local fibres.


Larger houses have bathrooms which con-tain lavatories on more than one of the upperfloors. They are usually superimposed, whichmeans that a vertical waste shaft passes throughthe lower bathrooms. This is a plain stone-builtbox, plastered so that from the inside it appearsto be part of the walling of the house. The wasteliquid passes to a vertical draining surface onthe outside of the house which is shared by allthe bathrooms. In most houses these are on thecold, or north, side of the building. The wallsare finished with hard, smooth, gypsum plasterwhich is easy to wash.

In the outer wall of each lobby there is usu-ally a projecting window box (shubbak), built ofopen-work masonry above timber beams. Itsfloor is constructed of wooden slats or boardswith several holes drilled in them; these holespermit the women of the house a view of thefront door below without themselves being ob-served, while the projecting box catches thewind, to cool earthenware jars of water placedor hung on hooks inside it. There are usuallyone or more arched fanlights of alabaster orstained glass in the wall above to light the lobby.A neatly framed hole in a corner of the lobbyfloor allows the passage of the rope which isused to open the front-door bolt.

The second living level

The largest room on this level is the diwan, en-tered by a pair of double doors which are usu-ally kept locked. In an average house the diwanwould be 5-6 m long and 3-5 m wide; in largerhouses it may be as much as 12 m long. Suchbig rooms are usually crossed with masonry

21Characteristic diwan in a very old house in San‘'a'‘.

arches to strengthen the structure. Generally,one end of the room is more important than theother, and is kept furnished with cushions, rugsand carpets. This is the end of the diwan usedfor childbirth and for laying out the dead. In thecase of the family living-room - and the diwanwhen it is used for family gatherings and feasts- it is not uncommon for older people to gatherat the more important end with the young at theopposite end. During feasts, or when the roomsare being used for entertaining, the furnishingsof the room are often supplemented by the ad-dition of large brass trays carrying hookahs,braziers and spittoons.


Occasionally the windows of these rooms aresplendidly decorated, the shutters of the lowersection having differing patterns carved on themwith bosses and fittings of ornamental brass.Sometimes a latticed box is provided, project-ing from the building so that when women openthe shutters to look out they cannot be seen fromthe street. There are large sheets of alabaster infixed areas above, or double plaster tracery,each panel different, filled with brightly col-oured stained glass in the inner panels. Older

74 houses have small circular areas of stained-glasstracery, usually two in each fanlight, fitting intospaces which apparently once held sheets ofalabaster.

Important officials, or other men transactingbusiness in their houses, sometimes do so in alower room specially set aside for the purpose,or in the diwan.

Alternative second living level

In very high houses the diwan may be relegatedto the third living level. In this case a suite offamily living-rooms is often interposed on thesecond living level. This suite may be used pri-vately by the dowager mother of the household,by a close male relative and his wife and chil-dren (son, father, etc.), or by the women of thehousehold, as their living and entertainingspace. Being self-contained, space in theseapartments is at a premium, and they are char-acterized by one or two low store-rooms at ahigh level built over the bathrooms. These areused as wardrobes to store the women’s or chil-dren’s clothing and are approached up narrowflights of stairs made of hard gypsum plaster.

The third upper living level

This is usually the level on which the kitchen isplaced, and may have other store-rooms androoms used mainly by the women of the family.The kitchen is a smoke-blackened room con-taining a stone cooking stove on the northernwall. There is sometimes a stone-built oven nextto the stove, and above the stove there is achimney emerging on to the roof. The stove,more than 1 m deep and 1 m high, is composedof a row of three or four hollow, earthenwareovens in a stone bench, each tapering to a cook-ing opening at the top; a hole is left in the sideof each oven at the bottom so that hot coals canbe inserted or removed during the cookingprocess. The stone construction of the stove ispacked with ash to provide insulation. In thekitchen there is also a raised washing surfacewhich drains through the wall onto a verticaldrain outside. Adjoining it there may be a stonebench for the cutting and preparation of food.A grinder made of stone may stand on the floor;it has to be used in a squatting position.

Surplus smoke from the stove finds its wayout through the walls, which are pierced with alarge number of holes arranged in patternedareas.

There is normally only one kitchen in ahouse, no matter how large the number of fam-ilies in it, and this is shared by all the women.Food may be heated or reheated elsewhere us-ing braziers. Reasons why the kitchen is nor-mally on the upper floor include the seclusionof women, the need to serve refreshment up inthe entertainment rooms as well as down in thediwan, and the desire to keep smoke and fumes


away from the windows of the living-rooms. Thechimney is normally placed on the north side ofthe mafraj, which has no opening windows. Inthe few cases where the kitchen is placed lowerdown in the building (which is usually an in-dication that the building was once lower) aspecial well may be provided to allow the smoketo escape.

Sometimes the kitchen is on the roof of themain structure of the house, so that there areterraces adjoining it. The kitchen may even beentered from an open terrace or courtyard. Thehouse normally continues upwards anotherfloor or two to the mafraj. Generally the top ofthe building has a greatly reduced floor area, sothat open terraces are provided for the practi-cal use of the women. The laundry may be onsuch a terrace or under cover. It consists of adeep open reservoir for rainwater, which is col-lected from the roofs above and drains downinto a plaster spill, and a hard plaster or stonefloor surface on which the clothes are scrubbed.They are hung to dry over the parapets or onlines stretched across the terraces.

The upper entertaining rooms

In a large house the most important entertain-ing room is the mafraj, a high room with longlow windows on at least three sides, used by themaster of the house for entertaining in theafternoons. There may be other rooms for thesame purpose. Often, one floor below the maf-raj, there is a smaller reception room, with win-dows with a view on only two sides or even one.This is usually called a manzar, a name some-times used for the highest entertaining room of

a smaller house. Since the house narrows as itrises above the kitchen level, this lower enter-taining room often has a roof terrace outside it.Sometimes it is the prerogative of the women touse this room for entertaining when the men arenot in the house, in which case the terrace iscarefully screened with pierced masonry arcad-ing.

Above the mafraj, there is, in a few cases, an-other level, comprising one small room, the zih-rah. This is used by the owner of the house whenhe wishes to chew qat or smoke alone, or enter-tain a small number of friends. The room is sel-dom more than 2 m square, with a window onevery side, so that it enjoys magnificent views.It is often constructed in the staircase walls.

The staircase usually continues up unbrokenfrom the bottom to the top of the house, a solidconstruction of stone with a massive centralstone pier acting as a kind of spine to strengthenthe whole building. In some cases, though, thereduced size of the top two or three levels ne-cessitates the inclusion of another staircase in adifferent position on the plan.

The mafraj is sometimes further elevated byplacing it above an additional storey whichcontains a store-room for food and clothes, or aminor living-room.

The mafraj (the word comes from faraja’:dispelling grief or anxiety) is usually some 6 mlong by 4 m wide, with a lobby 4 m square con-tinuing its volume at one end. The mafraj is astep higher than the lobby; it is separated fromit by double doors. At the end of the lobby is along window, closed by double folding shut:ters, which opens to almost the full width of theroom. There is a large semi-circular fanlight

75

The architecture of the old city of San'a'

above, containing alabaster slabs, or else richlycoloured stained glass set in gypsum-plastertracery. Similarly wide view-windows areplaced at the opposite end of the mafraj and inthe middle of the south-facing long side. Theremainder of the south-facing long side hassmaller openings, with fanlights placed on eitherside of the main view-window fanlight. The op-posite, northern, long wall usually has highfanlights with decorated plaster shelves be-neath to hold ornaments and articles for use inthe mafraj.

The shutters and doors are stained naturalwood, except in the richest houses when theymay be lacquered and decorated with paint-ings. The window shutters often have anothersmaller shutter within, with an ornamentallyshaped top edge, designed to provide a silhou-ette against the light. Frequently, the elaborateplaster decoration includes passages of poetryand verses from the Qur’an. There are hooksfor coats below the shelves, and a small cup-board with a finely decorated door.

The furnishings of the mafraj follow the tra-ditional furnishings of all Yemeni living-roomsdescribed above, but they are usually of luxu-rious materials. There is an expensive carpet inthe centre of the floor space. A circular brass orsilver tray stands on the floor near the entranceto the room and is filled with pipes, braziers,jugs for water, incense burners, and spittoonsfor use when chewing qat. There is sometimes ahigh tray on a pedestal for serving coffee. A lowbox which acts as a writing desk may bebrought in. Candlesticks sometimes stand onthe wall shelves or on the brass tray.

On the same floor as the mafraj, or on the floor

below, is a lavatory for people using the enter-tainment rooms. There is often a larger water-cooling box related to it projecting from thebuilding, or even a room with pierced walls onthe end of the building or a corner of it, in whichearthenware jugs of water are placed for cool-ing.

Window boxes of aromatic flowering herbsare often provided for the mafraj and the enter-tainment rooms. There may also be a smallgarden of fragrant plants in pots on the roofsoutside these rooms. 77

Alabaster plasterwork

Some houses preserve in their entrance halls,staircases and lobby walls a feature which ismissing from those houses which have been ex-tensively renovated in recent years. This is thedecoration of the lower wall surface up to waistheight with hard, honey-coloured plaster pol-ished so that it shines like marble. In the lobbythe plaster surface is moulded into patterns,each contained within a framed panel. Aroundthe staircase walls a stepped band runs contin-uously, paralleling and reflecting the rhythm ofthe stairs. In many of these dado panels thedurah plant is used as a theme. This type ofplaster is made of a mixture of ground alabas-ter and gypsum. It gradually darkens with ageuntil it is almost black, a characteristic sharedby the alabaster panes in the upper windows,This may explain why this special plaster dec-oration has so often been stripped in houses inSan’'a'’ (similarly, alabaster window areas haveoften been replaced in recent years by sheets ofopaque or clear glass).


23Traditional alabasterplaster dado decorationin a house staircase.

Symmetry

Symmetry, or at least symmetrical balance, wasclearly felt to be desirable in the houses ofSan’a’, as is evidenced by comparing the mainfacades. In some cases this desire produces analmost symmetrical plan. In other cases theplans are less symmetrical because the stair-case is in one corner, but the main facade re-tains its balanced eurhythmy, with a centraldoorway or symmetrically placed lower win-dows.

San‘a’ni architecture, even in small houses,thus has a strong ingredient of conventionalformality. It is this that gives the quality of or-dered repose to the exteriors, a characteristicthat is as strongly felt in the interiors, with theirplain, whitewashed, cubic or rectangular roomspunctuated with evenly spaced doors, square orcircular windows and whitewashed shelves -rooms which in each house are approached upa plain staircase of short easy flights within asquare plan.

External decoration

Usually there is ornament on the front door inthe form of carving or fretwork, with a metaldoor knocker on a shaped wooden mount.Sometimes ornamental strips of wood or metalare added. Often there is a decorative framearound the door, executed in plaster withdurah-plant shapes at the corners. In the oldestexamples a frieze of triangular stones of alter-nating colour is introduced above the door.Alternating bands of different coloured stonesare sometimes found ornamenting the lower


25The carving of a gypsum fanlight screen,one of the most skilled crafts in the Yemen.

storeys. Occasionally, abstract or emblematicpatterns are let into the stonework of the lowerstoreys in variously coloured stones.

A band of decorative brickwork separates thelower stone wall surface from the brick surfaceabove. Repeated in the bands higher up be-tween the storeys and in the crowning corniceband, this decoration usually consists of varia-tions of a zigzag motif.

Older houses have upper fanlights aboveshuttered openings which are made of one, twoor more large circles originally filled with ala-baster, but in some cases afterwards renewedin stained glass. The circles are often containedexternally in a frame which resembles an archedwindow. The solid areas between the circles arethen ornamented with motifs which are takenfrom those used in the ornamental bands.Empty spaces below the fanlights or betweenwindows may be filled with areas of decorationwhich are the richest and most imaginative inthe wall surface. Occasionally a lattice effect isproduced, not unlike a pierced screen, whileother surfaces resemble hanging necklaces orfestoons - even though they follow straight, notcurved, lines. These patterns are usually pro-duced in cut-brick bas-relief.

Not part of any pattern, but sometimes foundon the corners of houses about 7 m above streetlevel, are symbols of snakes. In country areasthese are sometimes executed in iron and proj-ect from the corners, but on the old buildings inSan’'a'’ that still retain them they are carved inrelief on stone. They are said to protect build-ings from evil and may be related to the ancientlegend that no snake may cross the threshold ofthe city gates and survive.

The architecture of the old city of San'a’

Besides simple arches, trefoil arches and thosewith an arc of a circle rising out of a flat headare found, particularly as heads to blank panels.Pointed arches are seldom seen and then onlyin a few very old buildings.

The age of the tower houses

High houses seem to have existed in the Yemenin pre-Islamic times. A Himyaritic inscriptionin the Ta‘izz Museum refers to the construc-tion of a house with ‘six floors and six ceilings’.A stone of unknown provenance shows a graf-fito of a house with nine storeys. The greatSan’'a'’ palace of Ghumdan had at least sevenhigh storeys, and its height awed all the histo-rians. It will be remembered that it was de-scribed as a square building having a specialroom at the top ‘with windows’.

The appearance of the pre-Islamic house inthe Yemen almost certainly inspired the Axu-mite architectural style recorded in the greatstelae of Axum, which are variously thought todate back to between the fourth and the sixthcenturies A.D. These include a number of fea-tures typical of the San‘a’ni houses describedabove. They have the same formal symmetry,with one great entrance door. There are nowindows on the ground floor, but small win-dows clearly express the storage mezzanineabove it. The lowest large windows, which in-dicate the first living floor, occur above that.The windows are made up in the same way asthe windows in San‘'a'‘, that is, they are wooden-shuttered openings shown below, and over eacha fanlight with a single large sheet of materialglazing it. The top floors are shown as the most

important levels; on the great stelae the two topfloors (of the thirteen levels shown) have tra-cery screens in the fanlights. At Axum there aresix surviving stelae on which these houses, fromfour to thirteen storeys, are represented. Theconstruction technique represented showsbands of wood encircling the houses, of the typethat still survive on many San‘a’ni houses.

One constructional detail shown at Axum isno longer seen in the Yemen highlands, how-ever. This is the use of lateral pieces of timberrunning through the thickness of the wall and 81projecting beyond its face, to form square pro-jections of the door and window frames, andcircular bosses along the wooden bands. Butthese techniques do survive in the coastalbuildings of the Red Sea in the Yemen andSaudi Arabia, where rubble stone and clay arewidely used in high buildings, as they were inAxum.

The first description of the houses of San’a’in Islamic times occurs in Ibn Rustah (c. 903-13 (290-300)): the ‘fine houses’ rise ‘some aboveothers’, and are ‘decorated with plaster, burntbrick and dressed stones’. Al-Hamdani (d. 943(330)) includes several references to San’a’nihouses; one compares mud towers elsewhere tothe towers of San‘'a'’ ‘because of their height’,another refers to the cleanliness of the sanita-tion. Al-Razi quotes him as speaking of ‘the lof-tiness of structure’ of the San‘a’ni houses. Al-Razi says elsewhere that the houses were ‘talland imposing and many had high prices’. Otherearly references describe the use of alabaster inwindows and the spaciousness and clean whiteinteriors of the houses in San’a’.

The oldest surviving houses have frequently


A nobah: plans and elevation.

had their upper levels rebuilt. The thinner brickwalls have decayed, or cracks lower down havegot wider as they reached the top of the build-ing. At various times, when San’'a' was sackedby tribesmen, the mafraj storeys of the largerhouses were plundered and sometimes burnt.It is clear that the lower levels of some of thehouses are extremely old. Documentary evi-dence points to an age of up to 800 years for afew of them. Most of the houses, however, arenot much older than 300 years, and the top-most storeys are usually less than 100 years old.

The origin of tower houses

It sems fairly certain, from surface remains, thatin remote antiquity agriculture was of two types.It was carried on either in wadi beds, whichwere sometimes irrigated from dams builtacross their upper valleys, or in stone terracesbuilt on the slopes of the mountains to retain themoisture in horizontal soil beds. Centres ofhabitation were seldom situated on valuableagricultural land, but were concentrated on out-crops on the valley floor, or on slopes and hill-sides that were too steep or rocky for agricul-ture. Isolated farmhouses, though they didoccur, were rare. More commonly, clusters ofbuildings came together for mutual protectionto form small villages. With building land nearthe farmlands restricted in area, and oftensteeply sloping, it is not surprising that the earlyhouses had small ground floors, and extendedvertically rather than horizontally.

The mountainous terrain afforded good shel-ter for the marauding tribes who at any mo-ment might descend to pillage the villages and


farms of the agricultural areas. So the need fordefence was another factor leading to the formof the tower houses. Throughout the region,towers built of cyclopaean stonework seem tohave been used for domestic purposes. Somenorthern villages still retain clusters of them toonumerous to have been part of a fortificationsystem. It seems likely that the modern squaretower houses seen in farms, villages and citiesare sophisticated descendants of such a proto-type. An intermediate phase may be repre-sented by the circular farmhouses, the nobah ornawbah, which continued to be built until re-cent times. A large farm would possess one suchcircular tower as its main refuge in time of at-tack, surrounded by a number of low rectan-gular buildings.

The San’a’ house - an alternatiue type

Not all houses had their mafraj on the roof; somewere at ground level with a reflecting pool out-side. As this took up considerable space, veryfew of this type were built within the walls ofthe old city. Outside the old walls to the westare the villa areas, such as Bir al-‘Azab, whichwere particularly popular during the Ottomanoccupations. These areas contain larger housesand palaces that commonly have a mafraj of thistype. Some of the richest have another on theroof as well.

Although situated within the house, the lowermafraj is characteristically not entered from in-side; instead there is a separate outside en-trance to it past the reflecting pool. An open

83

26Exterior of the upperlevels of a nobah.

The old walled city of San a’

arched balustrade of lime-washed plasteredbrickwork shields the mafraj pool from the sur-rounding garden, providing a sense of enclo-sure. It is overhung by trees planted just be-yond the balustrade. A vine trellis crosses thepool and its central fountain, sometimes sup-ported in the centre by columns rising throughthe water of the pool itself.

A large arcade forms a loggia which sepa-rates the pool from the mafraj. In some housesthe top of the loggia acts as a screened terrace

84 for the private use of the women of the house.

Jewish houses

An essential difference between the Jewishhouse and the Islamic house was that the for-mer had as its focus a courtyard on the roof fromwhich all the main rooms opened. A second pe-culiarity was the Jewish practice of arrangingthe rooms so that there were seldom two on thesame level, the principal entertaining roombeing highest, the diwan next, and so on down-wards until the kitchen was below the level ofthe courtyard and the lavatory lower still. Thisinvolved small flights of stairs before eachdoorway leading up or down from the court-yard.

The explanation given for these characteris-tics is that they are derived from a religious be-lief. The need for a courtyard was explained toGoitein thus: ‘According to strict Jewish law,during the Feast of Tabernacles, celebrated forseven days in September/October, a manshould not only take all his meals in a roomcovered only with branches of a tree or similarlight material, but also sleep in it.’ The court-

yard made possible this temporary construc-tion, but ‘in order that the light material cov-ering the tabernacle should not be blown awayby the winds’, a screen wall called a kuwwabahhad to be built around the courtyard. Thescreen wall was sometimes pierced with a proj-ecting stone box for water jars, or by areas ofgypsum tracery contained in arches.

The hierarchy of levels around the courtyardhas also probably something to do with this re-ligious belief. That is to say, since the court-yard served to house the tabernacle during abrief period each year, it became a sacred placeat that time, and no room could be exactly ona level with it. In particular the lavatory andbathroom had to be below it, as they were in thesynagogue. The extra height to which the en-tertaining room was raised was probably dueto the feeling that it should conform to theYemeni custom of having a fine view.

The front door openings of Jewish houses areusually simple rectangular constructions,framed in large blocks of stone, like the oldesthouses in the old city. Jewish door knockers arefrequently like Islamic ones, but there is also theuse of a ring as a knocker, recalling the typementioned by al-Razi.

The Jewish houses of al-Qa‘ are much lowerthan Islamic houses, presumably in accord-ance with the sumptuary regulations of IslamicSouth Arabia. While it is true that it is re-corded that the houses were originally higherin al-Qa’ and were reduced by edict of theImam - and perhaps some were - they werealso larger in plan than it was possible to be inthe press of the old city for at least hundreds ofyears before. The advantage of the increased


size of the plan, of course, was that more iiving-rooms could be grouped around the courtyard.As this also increased the area available forstore-rooms and stables underneath, the mez-zanine could be eliminated. Thus the height ofthe house could be reduced from four levels totwo, with a great increase in amenity. If a richman could acquire a larger site, or join twohouses together, as often seems to have hap-pened, then he could continue to increase theaccommodation without building upwards,something that could not easily be done in theIslamic house with its more rigid concept ofgrouping rooms around a single staircase in-stead of around large and flexible courtyards.

MOSQUES

Although the use of vaults and domes appearsto have been known in the Yemen before Is-lam, the earliest mosques that can be dated donot have them, but are flat-roofed. A possiblereason for this is an early Islamic insistence onsimplicity and unpretentiousness. But an alter-native explanation is the strength of the ancientindigenous tradition, reinforced by the influ-ence of the Sassanian Persian audience hall, theapadana. The latter may explain the construc-tion in Yemen of a number of high mosqueswith elaborately moulded and decorated ceil-ings carried on high slender columns.

The Great Mosque of San’a’, according totradition, was built at the instruction ofthe Prophet Muhammad himself. In the formin which it was rebuilt at the beginning of theeighth (second) century, it had arcades,

parallel to the wall, which carried the flat roof.It seems likely that these arcades date back tothe earliest construction of the mosque and arederived from Byzantine influences in the Yemenat a time when the largest church in theAxumite Kingdom was erected at San‘a’. EarlyIslamic historians say that Byzantine archi-tects were involved in the design and construc-tion of this church; a door in the Great Mosquewith panels containing pre-Islamic inscriptionshas arcades as part of its decoration, and pos-sibly came from it. 85

Of the earliest Great Mosque, built at theorder of the Prophet Muhammad, probablynothing remains except possibly some of the ar-cades and a few fragments of ornament nowgathered with others in the high western ceil-ing. From the position of a natural rock whichstill survives, it seems likely that the westernedge of the mosque has not changed from thisearliest building. Its qiblah wall lay across thepresent courtyard, with the building probablyencircling a smaller square courtyard. Thesouthern limit of the mosque apparently coin-cided with the present southern wall. To thenorth of the qiblah wall, half under the presentprayer hall and partly beyond it, was the largetomb of an early prophet, possibly Hanzalahibn Safwan. It is true that some of the arcadingmay survive from this earliest mosque, reincor-porated in the second mosque, but it is re-ported by one of the early historians that thismosque was a new structure, so it is more likelythat the earliest surviving arcading is from al-Walid’s mosque.

The rebuilding of the mosque by al-Walid (c.705-l5 (87-97)) probably accounts for the

The old walled city of San'a’

27The Great Mosque: internal courtyard with alate Christian, or early Islamic, capital and shaftstanding on an upturned Axumite Christian capital.

general external character of the Great Mosqueas it stands today. Much of the stonework of thenorthern, western and southern sides may datefrom this time, as do many of the stones in theremainder of the walls. The Great Mosque isbuilt in an ancient style of stepped stoneworkwhich is linked to the style of AbyssinianAxumite building.

The plan was greatly enlarged, and took theshape it has today, except possibly that it waslater widened to the east. The pre-Islamicprophet’s tomb to the north of the mosque waswholly or partially demolished to make way forthe moving of the qiblah wall and the whole ofthe prayer hall further north, more than dou-bling the size of the courtyard. The generalcharacter of the arcading probably dates fromthis period, when capitals, shafts, bases, woodendecoration and possibly the door referred toabove were removed from the ruins of theAxumite Christian cathedral further east. ThisChristian material was mixed indiscriminatelywith other pre-Islamic material of indigenousSouth Arabian style, taken from the greatruined palace of Ghumdan alongside, and fromsome Sabaean temples, and used to build up thecolumns under the brick arcading. There was arichly decorated mihrab to the mosque, whichwas afterwards stripped of its ornament by azealous Qadi. The five toplights allowing lightto fall onto the centre of the qiblah wall wereprobably added at this time, if they were notmoved from the first mosque or a pre-Islamicbuilding.

The mosque was subsequently rebuilt (or re-paired?) on the order of the ‘Abbasid Caliph in753 (136), according to the inscription

The architecture of the old city of San‘a'

preserved in the courtyard - though it is pos-sible that other mosques are referred to. It mayjust record the erection of a single minaret, theeastern, standing when the Qarmatians camein 911 (299). However, this minaret could haveoriginally been built during the construction ofal-Walid’s building, or during the next rebuild-ing phase.

In 878 (262) the mosque was damaged in agreat flood and had to be extensively repaired,but it was not completely rebuilt, if we are tobelieve Ibn Rustah, who was told that themosque building was ‘ancient’ in 903 (290). Theclose resemblance between the fragments in thewestern bays of the prayer hall and the ceilingof the Shibam-Kawkaban mosque, built at thistime, suggest that the San’a’ mosque was givena similar high, richly decorated ceiling, after-wards mostly destroyed and lowered.

While the colour on this ceiling was still freshand bright, the mosque was allegedly deliber-ately flooded in 911 (299). The water was al-lowed to remain ‘until the freshness of the dec-oration in the ceiling was lost’. This must havecaused considerable damage to the structure,and may have directly resulted in the need,probably within a century, to lower the ceilingand replace it by one of a plainer design, pre-serving possibly only the four bays of the higherceiling at the western end, into which the sur-viving wooden fragments were gathered.

The eastern wing was rebuilt, at least par-tially, by Queen ‘Arwa ibn Ahmad in the elev-enth (fifth) century; she added a magnificentlycarved and gilded ceiling to the new easternwing, and a slightly less splendid one to the oldwestern wing. Parts of the ceiling of the north-

ern prayer hall were repainted in the same style,with some calligraphy. It is possible that thesecond (western) minaret was added at thistime, to match the first. Both minarets were‘restored’ in the early years of the thirteenth(seventh) century. They do not seem to havebeen altered since. A new mihrab was made in1266 (665), but was removed when the presentmihrab was added in this century.

The domed building for waqf documents inthe courtyard was built in 1603-07 (1012-16),and the courtyard paved. It is possible that acentral building existed in the courtyard beforethis date, and not inconceivable that it origi-nally had some other function, perhaps a foun-tain with a treasury above, of the type built byal-Walid in the mosques of Damascus andHama. In 1936 (1355), Imam Yahya built alibrary over the southern hall of the GreatMosque and a new aisle on the northern sideof it.

There are over 100 other, smaller mosques inSan’a’. The early ones had merely a clearing infront of them and no proper courtyard; theywere devoid of ablution places, the people per-forming their ritual ablutions in their ownhouses before going to the mosques for prayer.Following the plague of 1526 (933), the Imamtook over the properties that had been leftwithout owners and used the money collectedfrom their sale to construct ablution places, and,where there was no room, other mosques onnew sites. As a result, people abandoned someof the smaller mosques with no ablution places.They fell into ruin and were eventually lostwithout trace.

The oldest standing mosque is that of

87


Farwah ibn Musayk, who was one of the Com-panions of the Prophet. It must therefore havebeen built, if we are to believe the historians, inthe seventh (first) century. It is difficult to sayhow much, if any, of that building remains now.Possibly some of the lower walls on the easternside are original, or very early - they have thesame stepped stonework as the Great Mosque.But it is known that this mosque was exten-sively repaired after it suffered major depreda-tions in the wars at the beginning of the

88 eleventh (f i fth) century. Later in thesixteenth (tenth) century it was altered againand covered with pointed domes.

This history is typical of the continual re-building and alteration of many of the San‘a’mosques. The musalla (place reserved for pray-ers), or Jabbanah, was laid out on the camp ofthe Abyssinians at the instructions of theProphet Muhammad himself, according to theearly historians. The wall in which the mihrab isplaced and the remainder of the surroundingwalls are probably those referred to as built in1015 (407), although they were substantiallyextended during the present century. Unfortu-nately the central open area of the Jabbanah hasrecently been filled by a large modern mosque.

A number of early mosques of the unpreten-tious style described above survive in San’'a'’ -that of al-Tawus is likely to incorporate thegraves of one of the second-generation Com-panions, who died at Mecca in 724 (106).

Apart from these early mosques which weresupported on columns, there are a number ofmosques constructed with arcades, which arethought to date back to the ninth-tenth (third-fourth) centuries. These include the mosques of

Ibn al-Husayn and al-Shahidayn near the suq.From the mid-thirteenth (seventh) century,

which appears to have been a great age formosque-building - and indeed a period of greatprosperity for the Yemen as a whole - dates theconstruction of much loftier and grandermosques with high, wide, and beautifully pro-portioned pointed arcades. In San’'a' they in-clude the mosque of al-Madrasah and that of al-Filayhi. At this time a number of domed tombbuildings were built, many of them finely dec-orated; but mosques with large domes ap-peared only after the Ottoman conquest in themid-fifteenth (tenth) century. The double-domed mosque of Janah, in the suq, was builtaround 1583 (991); and the mosque of al-Bakiriyyah was erected by the Ottoman gov-ernor Hasan Pasha in 1597 (1005). The latteris in the metropolitan style, very grand by San‘'a'’standards, though small by those of Istanbul. Thelater, smaller-domed mosques of the QubbatTalhah, 1619 (1029) and 1831 (1247), and theQubbat al-Mahdi ‘Abbas, 1750 ( 1164)) continuethe Ottoman tradition; although they are smallerin scale, they are extremely fine in design and inthe quality of their decoration.

The mosque of al-Bakiriyyah was redecor-ated during the second Turkish occupation insplendid pastel colours, and furnished with anew raised diwan, for the use of the governor,and a fine minbar.

Mention should be made of the splendidquality of some of the carved wooden tombs.These are sometimes finely decorated in colouror polished. Outstanding examples survive inthe tomb of al-Mutawakkil, 1726 (1139), andthat of al-Mahdi ‘Abbas, 1750 (1164).

The architecture of the old city. of San’a’

M I N A R E T S

The f i r s t r ecorded minare t i s tha t o f themosque of Farwah ibn Musayk. If the earlyhistorians are to be believed, Farwah watchedthe construction of the Jabbanah from thisminaret, which would place it in the seventh(first) century. His to r ians nex t re fe r to am i n a r e t o n t h e G r e a t M o s q u e w h i c h w a sstanding when the Qarmatians arrived in 911(299). As mentioned above, it is quite likely thatit dated from the time of al-Walid’s building,since he is known to have built minarets on theFriday Mosques at Medina and Damascus. Itis indeed possible that there was more than oneon the Great Mosque at this time (it is cer-tainly true that there were two minarets by at

least the twelfth (sixth) century).The mosque of Ibn al-Husayn was called in

the early times the ‘mosque of the minaret’,though it is difficult to know what the form orheight of this minaret might have been. There

is evidence that at least some of the Zayditheologians were opposed to minarets on thegrounds tha t they made mosques resemblechurches. They advocated that minarets shouldnot be ra i sed above the roof l eve l o f themosques. That is to say, that the call to prayercould be made from the roof-top and possibly asmall shelter against the sun provided there forthe muezzin. A number of the small mosques ofSan’a' still have roof shelters of this type, withno minaret.

But in the case of the larger mosques, thisZaydi prejudice against the minaret does notseem to have persisted beyond the fifteenth(ninth) century.

28Minaret of Musa mosque.Made of baked brick decoratedwith gypsum, and standing on asquare base, it is a typicalexample of a San‘a' minaret.


90

In the early sixteenth (tenth) century the firstof the patterned, baked-brick minarets, later tobe repeated on many mosques in San’'a'‘, wasbuilt - that of al-Madrasah. The shaft of theminaret is cylindrical with bas-relief decorationin diamond shapes, but it rises in three stagesfrom a square base through a polygonal stage,and is crowned by a circular balcony beneath apointed dome. At various times the brick dec-oration, which is in relief, has been picked outwith whitewash to make a stronger pattern.Many other minarets of this type, like those ofthe mosques of Salah al-Din and al-Bakiriyyah,were built later in the sixteenth (tenth) cen-tury. But the construction of similar minaretshas continued into modern times.

Two other minarets should be mentioned:that of the mosque of al-Filayhi and that of themosque of al-Abhar. The former has a fluteddome and the latter a fluted shaft; it is possiblethat they are slightly earlier than the beginningof the sixteenth (tenth) century and predate thebaked-brick style.

THE BUILDINGS OF THE SuQ

The market of San’'a'’ is a single-storey arealocated in the heart of the present city. It is sur-rounded by caravanserais, called in San’a'‘samsarah’, some open to the air and others cov-ered. It was unusual to bring camel caravansinto Islamic towns, and this is one of the rea-sons for thinking that the market might havebeen outside the town gates in ancient times andlater absorbed as the dwelling areas of the townexpanded to the west. Each craft or trade has

its own area in the suq, often its own street, andthere is evidence in many cases that it hasoccupied it for centuries.

The great samsarah buildings which surroundthe suq belong to a curiously South Arabiantype. Each of them has large stables for ani-mals on the lower levels, surrounded on two orthree storeys by lower store-rooms, to whichgoods are carried up staircases. High columnsrise through these lower mezzanine levels tosupport the main roof, which is pierced withopenings to allow shafts of natural light to reachthe stables.

Above the roof, there used to be what wereessentially hotel complexes, rooms aroundcourtyards in which the caravan owner and hisdrovers could stay. They were apparently fairlycomfortable establishments; there was some-times a pool in one of the courtyards, and verycommodious bathrooms equipped with hot-water boilers. The vertical arrangement of sta-bles, store-rooms and living spaces follows thesame pattern as that in the Yemeni houses; itseems likely that this is an ancient type ofbuilding which has existed continuously up tothe present day. The upper levels of these car-avanserais have not been used for the accom-modation of visitors since the end of the CivilWar, but another traditional type of hotel or innwas in use until about 1980. This was a double-level building, the lower level having coffee,smoking and dining rooms, and the upper levelprivate rooms which were let to visitors.

The stalls in the market were small and raisedon stone or brick plinths to the height of a metreabove street level. Each always contained acounter and a fretted wooden cupboard in


which a hookah was placed so that it could besmoked without knocking it over. Where it wasnecessary, the walls of the store were lined withshelves and there were chests of drawers forgoods and money. In stalls like these a numberof trades were also carried on, such as wood-turning, the manufacture of hookahs, shoes,daggers, silver and gold jewellery, and so on.

The camel market, which was enteredthrough the northern gate, provided access tothe suq for large camel loads and today also forvehicular traffic - although movement is al-most blocked by a mosque in the middle of themaydan. During the monsoon rains the camelmarket is rendered impassable for some hoursas an old watercourse finds its way to the northacross it.

In a medieval Islamic suq such as this, themills that grind sesame seed and salt are an im-portant ingredient. There are about forty ofthese mills around the San’a’ni suq. Anotherimportant element consists of the buildingsowned by the awqaf built from bequests, inwhich the poor, students and the old and sicklive. There are a number of these rooms over theshops in the suq, around the edges of the mar-ket, as well as many adjoining the mosques.

There are few gaols. Wrongdoers are gener-ally punished in public by being made to wearshackles or chains. One story is typical: a smallboy was accused of stealing from a shop, so hespent the afternoons after school displaying hischains in front of the shop to embarrass theshopkeeper.

W E L L S A N D W E L L - R A M P S

A characteristic feature of the old city are theenormous structures which housed the well-ramps. These were ramps which made it easierfor animals or men to draw water because theywere moving downhill as they pulled on theweight of the buckets. When the buckets wereempty they climbed to the top of the ramp andbegan their descent once more. At the top of thewell, the well-master tipped the buckets into acistern opposite the ramp and from there the 95water could be drawn as needed to feed ani-mals and to irrigate the land. The animals mostusually used for the well-ramps were camels,and at an early stage the Yemenites developedthe habit of shading them from the sun by con-structing a roof over the ramp. Although thispresumably rendered the animals much moreefficient, the practice of roofing in the well-ramps was only observed in the urban areas. Asthe water table has dropped in the last 100 yearsthese well-ramps have had to be extended, andmany of them now terminate underground andare over 30 m long.

Above a number of the well-ramps otherstructures have been erected, for example inQubbat Talhah, where students’ rooms be-longing to the mosque have been constructed.In the old city there are usually one or two ofthese well-ramps associated with each of themarket gardens and with the major mosques.

An alternative method of bringing water intothe city was practised until the Civil War. Thiswas the use of underground channels, calledghayls or qanats. The ghayl has to be ventilatedevery 100 m or so; the stone-lined circular


Hammam Shukr: plans and section.

ventilation holes also serve for the cleaning outof silt from the water channel, so that the venti-lation hole can eventually be seen from a dis-tance because of the large mound of eartharound it.

Six of these ancient ghayls have been identi-fied coming into San‘a’ from the north andsouth, but more are known from ancient texts.In times of war it was common to seal them upto prevent secret entry into the city, and sincethe Civil War they have not yet been broughtback into use.

PUBLIC BATHS

The baths are a very fine element in the old city.Although there are many of them - seventeenwere functioning in 1980 - there seems to be noconnection between the number of baths andthe number of quarters or wards. Indeed itwould be difficult to establish such a directconnection, for the use of the baths alternatesbetween the sexes - men on some days andwomen on others. It seems that people simplywent to the nearest bath which was open to theirsex on the day they chose to bathe. There wasno obligatory connection between the local bathand the people who lived in the houses near by.

Some Yemeni scholars believe that the pub-lic baths existed in the Yemen before Islam. Theoldest that can be identified have a form closeto that of a provincial Roman bath. They areroofed with domes and vaults, they are usuallyfocused around a large, domed, central roomcontaining a wide, central, cold-water pool withfountains, and the rooms which make up the hot


area of the bath are heated by means of hypo-causts and flues in the vertical walls. A char-acteristic feature of the plan of the Yemeni bathsis that the temperate and hot zones comprise sixrooms - a central room and two side rooms ineach zone.

The hot rooms are underground, because itis rather cold at night and in winter there areshort periods when it is cold during the day; thisdesign, with the bath sunk into the ground,avoids the need for insulation, and makes watercirculation easier. The domes are built of a spe-cially fired baked brick; glass inserts are let intothem to allow light to filter down into the bath-rooms below.

Apart from the great luxury of being able tohave a hot bath in an often chilly climate, thepublic bath is a pleasant place for talking tofriends and relaxing.

The baths are open for eighteen hours a day,from 4 a.m. until 10 p.m. The fires to heat themnormally burn dung cakes made from thenightsoil from the neighbouring houses, or fromdried skins and bones from the slaughter yards.A deep well and reservoirs behind and abovethe baths ensure that there is a sufficient sup-ply of water, which is circulated from the hotboiler or the cold reservoir through a system ofpipes so that it is available to be drawn directlyin the hot and temperate rooms.

On entering the bath, the bather takes off hisshoes and leaves them with the bath-keeper,who puts them in a special recess in the wall.He is shown a vacant place in the changingroom where he takes off his garments - alwayspreserving his modesty under a cloth wrap, orfutah - and places them either on a high shelf or

in one of the many niches in the walls. Finallyhe takes his valuables and deposits them withthe bath-keeper. Before leaving the changingroom area it is normal for him to wash his feet,standing on the stone steps which lead down tothe drained stone floor around the cold pool;using a dipper, he takes the water from a smallreservoir specially provided for the purpose. Hethen proceeds straight through the temperaterooms to the central hot room, where the at-tendant douses him several times with very hotwater to begin his bath. Bringing another 97leather bucket of water, the attendant swillsdown an area of the heated floor in the centralhot room or one of the side rooms so that thebather can sit or lie on it. Here he remains forten minutes or so to induce sweating. To ac-celerate the process, he may perform some ex-ercises, periodically calling for the attendant todouse him again with hot water.

After he feels that he has stayed long enoughin this heat-charged atmosphere, the bathermoves out to the temperate rooms, where he isseated next to a stone basin by an attendant; heeither rubs the top layer of dead skin off himselfwith a rough woollen glove, or has a member ofhis family or an attendant do it for him (womenand children use pumice stone instead of aglove). This stage is followed by a head-to-footsoaping, again performed either by the batherhimself, by one of his family or by an attend-ant. It is a mark of great friendship if one mandirects another, not of his family, to help him inthis way.

The soaping complete, the attendant from thehot room brings in several buckets of hot waterwhich are poured over the bather. He then


proceeds to one of the unlit side rooms of the hotarea of the bath; here he may remove the clothwrapped around his loins without any loss ofmodesty and complete the washing process.That done, he receives a further dousing withhot water from the attendant and may then re-turn to the cold room. Some bathers go back tothe hot room and complete the cycle of sweat-ing and rubbing a second or a third time.

Upon returning to the cold room, the batherstands on one of the steps leading up to the

98 changing-floor and is doused for the last timewith a large dipper of hot water brought fromthe hot rooms, the water running back into thedrain in the cold-pool room. His towel and asecond cloth are brought to him; the towel iswrapped around his shoulders and the secondcloth around his waist. He then proceeds to re-move the wet waist cloth from beneath the sec-ond cloth, and leaves it with the attendant tobe wrung out, while he returns to his place inthe changing room to dry himself. There he sitsor squats, talking to the other bathers and thebath-keeper, taking coffee or tea or, if it is timefor prayer, praying. For the latter purpose thereis usually a mihrab in the wall of the changingroom to indicate the direction of Mecca. Even-tually the bather begins to feel cool and then hedresses in preparation for his departure. Hepays the bath-keeper whatever is required of hisstatus (the rich pay many times more than thepoor). Wrapping his towel around his head tokeep from catching cold, he goes to the outerentrance of the bath where he may sit for a fewmoments on a seat in the outer lobby, providedfor the purpose, before venturing into the street.

Baths can be hired by the hour, and this is

usually done by rich or even moderately well-to-do men in preparation for a wedding festiv-ity, or by a group of friends before a festival.

T R A D I T I O N A L B U I L D I N G

C O N S T R U C T I O N

In old San’'a'‘, the characteristic building ma-terials were stone, baked brick and wood, withplaster and decoration of gypsum. In the Jew-ish quarter and some parts of the old city mudwas used.

The foundations of a San’'a'’ tower house nor-mally lie a metre or so below ground level; theyare constructed of igneous quarry stone, splitblack basalt boulders, or wadi-bed stones. Atthe base, the foundations project slightly oneither side of the wall above, the additionalthickness averaging about 20 cm. The steppedfoundation generally extends upwards 60-80cm. Above the foundation walls, the lowercourses of the wall are built of hard black quarrystone, each course being 20-25 cm high. Thispart of the wall sometimes has a hard mortar oflime and earth from 50 cm below to 150 cmabove ground to prevent salts and damp risingin the stonework. Rubble stonework is usedabove that for the lower storeys of the buildingsin rougher work, for store houses or rear walls;this is usually coursed. In better work, how-ever, the rubble is retained only for the core ofthe wall, the external and internal faces beingconstructed of squared ashlar stone. Each stoneis tapered behind the face of the wall, so that itcan be fitted with fine joints (less than 1 mm iscommon). The strength of the wall therefore

The architecture of the old city of San‘a’

depends on the ability of the mortar used in thecore to hold it all together; a good clayey soil isquite adequate, but careless builders whochoose the wrong soil may produce a weakbuilding. In mosques, tombs and finer houses,a mortar of gypsum or even lime was some-times used.

The preferred stone for ashlar facing is a blue-grey pumice-like basalt? or tufa, which is palebuff in colour. Fine-grained limestone is popu-lar to produce variety, ranging from white to redor green. Cheaper facing stones are cut fromcoarse white limestone.

The process of building the wall is first toshape the square facing stones, determining thesize of each by the span of a man’s hand (20 cmapprox.), and then to lay a course of the finelydressed outer facing stones, each propped on agypsum fillet (which shows as a thin white jointbetween the facing stones when the wall is fin-ished). Then the corresponding inner course ofstones is laid, these more roughly dressed, butstill tapered into the wall. Finally, the 3-10 cmgap between the stones is filled up with a mix-ture of good clayey-soil mortar and crushed-stone aggregate to make the core of the wall.The next course can then be laid, and so on.Such a stone wall is at least 45 cm thick, ap-proximately a dhira‘, the building unit, which isgenerally 47.5 cm. The rough inner stoneworkfacing is usually plastered over.

To the outside faces of the external wall aretied the crosswalls, by which means the planarea is divided into easily roofed sections ap-proximately 3 m wide. The system is one of thetwo devices by which the stability of the struc-ture is assured, the other being the strength of

the staircase pier, usually built throughout itsheight in stonework. Both the external cornersand the staircase pier are built using gypsummortar for extra strength.

The inner faces of the external walls supportthe floor, roof beams and lintels. The buildingof the external and internal faces of stoneworkis carried out by two entirely different trades,then a third trade builds the central earth-and-rubble core of the wall.

Crosswalls are built of rough rubble or un-baked brick. They may be interrupted by large 99arches or door openings without their essentialstrengthening function being impaired.

Brickwork begins above the stonework, whichin houses usually ceases between 3 and 10 mabove ground level. Brickwork, being lighterthan stonework, is more suitable for upperwalls; bricks are easier to carry up staircases,and more flexible in permitting large openings.

Baked bricks (yayur, pronounced ‘yagur’) av-erage 16.5 cm square and 4 cm thick, but varyconsiderably. Older bricks are as much as 8 cmthick and up to 20 cm square. They used to bemade from a local clayey soil found on thenorth-east side of the city, a short distance be-yond the walls. After being shaped in a box anddried in rows in the sun, they were stacked inone of a number of low brick kilns and burnt fortwo days using dung or skin and bones as fuel.Today bricks are usually brought in from othertowns.

Mortar for brickwork is normally clay mor-tar, with a little gypsum added, but this ischanged to a pure gypsum mortar every five orsix courses, over large openings and in areas ofstress, such as the corners. On the outside face,


where it is particularly exposed to the weather,lime mortar is sometimes used for the outerjoints, but this is not very widespread.

Upper walls are generally two bricks thick(i.e. 36 cm or more), lower levels two and a halfor three bricks thick. The topmost storey andparapets are sometimes only one brick in thick-ness, with extra reinforcements provided bypiers.

Wooden bands run around many of thehouses, especially those with lower storeys built

100 in stone or brick. They are carefully joined atthe corners so that they form a continuous gir-dle preventing the walls from bulging out-wards; they naturally also take up stresses dueto unequal settlement or earthquake shocks; afurther advantage in their use is that they allowsections of the stone wall below them to be re-newed with less danger of the wall above themcracking. There are usually two of these bandsabove and below the lowest large windows, act-ing as sill and lintel, and sometimes anotherrunning through the stonework below. They areoften whitewashed for weather protection, andtherefore not immediately recognizable as wood.Although other woods are used, a favourite forthis purpose is apricot wood, which becomesstronger when damp and thus resists decay.

Unbaked brick (libin) is sun-dried and con-tains straw and chaff for greater strength. Itvaries from the common size of baked bricks upto the massive size used in farmhouses of ap-proximately 44 X 22 X 11 cm; even larger sizesare sometimes seen. Mouldings are usually ex-ecuted in common-sized bricks, either lightlybaked or hard-baked.

Openings are bridged, using arches of the

same materials, or flat arches of small bricksresting on a row of thin timber beams. Themortar used is a clay, sand and straw mixture,sometimes with animal dung added; it is left to‘mature’ for several days (fermentation pro-duces chemicals which give it strength).

Unbaked brick walls are frequently used oncheaper work above stone plinths or lowerwalls. Occasionally the highest, thinnest sec-tions of a house built mainly of unbaked brickwill be executed in baked brick.

Coursed clay is used for lower walls inrougher work in San’a’. It is laid in courses50-70 cm high, the bottom of each courseslightly overhanging the one below and thentapering gently to become thinner at the top,creating a visual separation between the courseswhich is frequently accentuated by weathering.The clay is taken from a borrow pit near thesite. It is mixed with sand, straw and chaff,water is added, and then it is beaten or troddenunderfoot. It is left to mature for two days, dur-ing which time chemicals from the straw andchaff mix with the clay to produce a strongerand more water-resistant material.

The clayey-earth mixture is passed from theground to the workmen on the walls by shapingit into balls which can easily be thrown. Thebuilder catches them and lets them drop intoposition on the wall, then pummels them intoshape so that they make a homogeneous mass40-50 cm wide. There is no shuttering.

Each course is completed and left to dry forfrom two days to a fortnight before the nextcourse is begun. Openings are bridged withstone slabs, or with rough timber reinforcingbuilt into the thickness of the clay courses.


The foundation of these earth walls is ofcoursed rubble and usually extends aboveground to a height of between 30 and 90 cm.Often a layer of gravel or a course of bricks isintroduced on top of the stones, before the firstearth layer.

The bulk of all plasters used in San‘'a'’ arederived from gypsum; lime plaster is relativelylittle used, as lime is expensive, and is reservedfor conditions requiring a good deal of water-proofing or protection from the weather.

Gypsum plaster is usually reserved for inter-nal decoration, for making plaster shelves, smallflights of stairs to upper store-rooms, and forconstructing pierced screens and tracery win-dows.

There are two special lime plasters for per-manent, weather-resistant high-quality fin-ishes: khudr and qadad, the former is the cheaperand less durable of the two. Khudr is a generalwaterproof plaster, floor or roof finish, or mor-tar. It is used for joining the stones in the floorsof bathrooms and lavatories in houses and else-where, also for the stone pavings of mosquesand public buildings. It is made by crushingtogether dry lime and ashes with a hard stone,and afterwards mixing this powder with waterand sand to form a mortar. Qadad is used forboth waterproof dados and other surfaces onwalls, for lining water cisterns and drains? andfor roofs on mosques and on other importantand expensive buildings. The manufacture ofqadad is an extremely skilled and prolonged op-eration. Grit is obtained from pumice stonescalled hishash, which can be ground very fine;three measures of it are mixed with two of thelime. Water is added, and the mixture is

crushed together by pounding with a blackstone; it is then left to ferment for a week. Whenthe mature mixture is ready, a layer of it is ap-plied by beating it into place with a black stonefor a whole day. Not surprisingly, this is de-scribed as being ‘very laborious’ work. On thesecond day the same procedure is followedagain, but for a little less time. On the third day,by which time it is beginning to dry, the beat-ing is repeated. Usually it is dry after the thirdday, after which a second layer can be appliedand treated in the same way for a day and ahalf. Finally, when that is dry, a wash of plainlime is applied and polished with a piece ofpumice; the same finishing process is then re-peated three times more, at weekly intervals.

The earth/straw plaster applied to the sur-faces of earth walls differs little in compositionfrom the earth/clay mixture used for construct-ing adobe walls, except that the proportion ofearth is reduced in favour of more grit and chaff.Cheaper burned brickwork walls are often pro-tected externally with this earth coating, and itis also a common finishing material for the out-side of houses in smaller towns and on farms. Itis not usual to paint the earth coating, whichretains a good natural appearance and colour,except possibly around important windows,which may be whitened with lime to give thema frame. Sometimes the earth coating is en-tirely repainted with a wash made from animaldung and straw, which hardens the surface andgives it an excellent appearance.

Upper floors are made by laying tree trunksand branches stripped of their bark as beamsplaced about 60-100 cm apart across the spacebetween the walls. Thick bundles of small sticks

101


102

are placed on top so that they span across them;the resulting platform is then covered with athick layer of earth, finished with stone slabs tocreate the floor surface.

Roofs have the same construction as floors,but the best work is finished in hard lime plas-ter for waterproofing purposes, instead of stone.Alternatively, a thin layer of fine clay can beapplied, which becomes waterproof when wet;this is smoothed and beaten into place aftereach rain. An older technique was to use a layerof grit and lime. The waterproofing material issometimes obtained from old houses which arebeing demolished, or the fine clay can be im-ported from an area north of San’'a'‘.

For stability, the thickness of the walls of theSan‘'a'’ house decreases gradually as the build-ing rises in height. Nevertheless, the thicknessof the walls at their base seldom exceeds 70 cm,and the audacity of the architects in buildinghouses which are often more than 25 m high re-mains surprising. Although collapses have been

known, they were rare before the days of thehigh water table and were usually limited to theouter wall nearest the street. This seems to sup-port the belief of the old builders that the realstrength of the house lies in the staircase, themassive central stone pier joined to its outerwalls by stone-paved steps on wooden beams,constituting a braced structure usually morethan 4 X 5 m in size which serves to stabilizethe remainder of the house. This strength issupplemented by the system of carefully divid-ing the building with crosswalls into sections,each approximately 3 m wide.

Given the relative fragility of the building, theimportance of preserving its geometry becomesparamount: walls must remain plumb, andarches evenly loaded. Hence the extreme con-cern with which movements of buildings areviewed in the old city; such movements out ofthe vertical have become common as a result ofthe water leakages into the ground which haveoccurred in the last few years.

Protecting and conservingthe cultural heritage of the old city

A little that lasts is better than a great dealthat is ended.

Yemeni proverb

The old city of San’'a'’ possesses a uniqueness inYemen and in the world which can only becompared to the special quality of Venice; thatis, its value lies not so much in the merit of theindividual buildings, important though theymay be, as in the unforgettable impressionmade by the whole - an entire city of splendidbuildings combining to create an urban effectof extraordinary fascination and beauty.

But the old city is even more than that, for itis amazingly untouched by change: mosques,baths, suqs, caravanserais, houses, market gar-dens, all as they used to be hundreds of yearsago; a living, functioning city out of the Islamicmiddle ages, the people a pageant in them-selves with their varied, colourful clothes andtraditional manners. It is the coherence andharmony of this ensemble, more than thebuildings taken by themselves, that give oldSan’'a' its exceptional quality.

D A N G E R S T H R E A T E N I N G

T H E O L D W A L L E D C I T Y

To what extent is it possible to protect andpreserve all this for posterity? There is strong

evidence that the people of Yemen would liketo do so, but the pressures against it are enor- 103mous.

The first of these pressures is the speed ofmodernization. Yemen was effectively closed totechnical advances or contact with the outsideworld under the Imams. During the Civil Warthe country was too distracted for much changeto occur. Peace and the establishment of for-eign embassies, international aid organiza-tions, banks and commercial enterprises in theearly 1970s therefore quickly produced a phys-ical impact of enormous magnitude on both thepeople and the country. It also happened to co-incide with the emigration of hundreds of thou-sands of workers into the neighbouring rich oilstates who, returning with their wages, drasti-cally changed the purchasing power of theirfamilies and of the whole country. Migrationinto the big cities from the countryside beganfor the first time, and San’'a'’ was one of theprincipal magnets.

As already mentioned, the population ofSan‘'a'’ had grown from about 55,000 in 1970 to250,000 by 1982. This means that to the100.8-hectare area of the old city (including al-Qa‘), which contained approximately 50,000


104

inhabitants, was added the area outside thewalls of 1,250 hectares, accommodating a fur-ther 200,000 people. The old city has thusshrunk from being the dominant physical andsocial area of the city to a position of relativeinferiority, occupying only a tiny fraction of thecity confines, and housing only one-fifth of thepopulation.

This change was paralleled by a shift in themain shopping area, banking and governmentfacilities out of the old city, mainly to the westand north-west. Education, recreational, enter-tainment and health facilities have also almostall moved away to the area outside the walls.

There is thus a very real danger of the oldcity’s dying. Today, it is only the traditional roleof the suq as a market for the sale and supplyof produce and commodities for the large agri-cultural hinterland that keeps the old city alive- that and the decision of a number of San‘a’nisto maintain their tower houses within the oldcity, in spite of the inconvenience involved.

But more and more of the old families arebuilding new houses and moving to the newoutlying districts. Their reasons for making themove are the unsanitary and unwholesomecondition of the streets, the lack of services andthe relative inaccessibility of their houses forvehicles. Other important factors are the at-tractions of nearby educational facilities andmedical services, and the possibility of a differ-ent, more modern, life-style.

There has been a move away from the tight-knit restrictions of traditional custom since theend of the Imamate, and a new value is beingattached to life within a nuclear family in pref-erence to an extended one. This has meant that

young men and women are no longer contentto live as married couples within the shadowand authority of their parents, but prefer tomove into new, smaller homes. They have beenable to do this only by leaving the large towerhouses of the old city and moving into newareas. With the old tall houses thus semi-deserted, the parents have either closed up largeparts of them, or decided to move away them-selves and allow them to be divided up for ten-ancy among poor relatives or new immigrants.

These social changes are fundamental. Notmerely do they pose a threat to the survival ofthe old city as a society, but they are encour-aging the intrusion into the old city of newbuildings which are executed in alien ‘modern’materials and in styles that are catastrophic intheir visual effects upon the existing street scene.

At the same time, the maintenance of manyof the old buildings, whether religious, publiclyowned or private, is being almost wholly ne-glected. Attention is naturally focused on theareas of modern development, and there is ageneral feeling that the walled city is a phe-nomenon of the past, even though it would beunwise politically and patriotically for this ideato be admitted.

The list of dangers and problems that are af-flicting the old city on a purely physical level isformidable. One of the most visible and mostserious is the extent to which dampness is ris-ing to unprecedented levels in the walls of thebuildings. The reason this is happening is thatabout ten years ago piped water was madeavailable throughout the whole of the old city,but until now no drainage facilities existed fortaking that water out of the city again. So for a

Protecting and conserving the cultural heritage of the old city

decade vastly increased amounts of water (andmost of the old houses now have washing ma-chines for clothes) have been pouring into theground and accumulating there. To make mat-ters worse, the original water-supply pipes wereof poor quality, laid close to, or even on, thesurface of the ground, so that they have easilybeen damaged. The resulting escaping water,combined with the vast quantities used in thehouses, has undermined the foundations, andwater has risen by capillary action to quite highlevels in the walls of the buildings. If, as oftenhappens, the water is also polluted by humanand animal waste, the acids thus formed canreadily attack the materials of the walls. At-tempting to deal with the water and the result-ing dampness is a major problem for the oldcity; the cost of improving the infrastructure andrectifying the damage that has already beencaused is likely to represent something like25-33 per cent of the total cost of any conser-vation programme.

The first step is a thorough review of thewhole system of water distribution, with the aimof testing each part of the system immediatelyand replacing defective pipes wherever neces-sary. The authorities are beginning the work ofinstalling a sewerage and drainage system in theold city, which has to be of the highest stand-ards of materials and workmanship, so that therisk of leakage is reduced to an absolute mini-mum.

Impassable streets

In wet weather the streets are often impassablebecause of mud and flowing water, conditions

which are exacerbated by vehicular traffic. Thepaving of at least the main streets with smallstone blocks is a matter of high priority. Oncethis is done, a system of stormwater drains willhave to be introduced into the city to removethe large volume of water that can accumulatein the streets during the monsoon rains, in or-der to prevent it soaking down into the foun-dations of the buildings.

Traffic105

The congestion of the streets by parked vehi-cles makes passage by pedestrians and motor-cars well-nigh impossible in many areas. Thisis cited as one of the main reasons for the aban-donment of the walled city by the old families.Vehicular circulation and parking, and theireffect on the old city, have to be carefully stud-ied in the context of the expanded city of San‘'a'’as a whole.

A particular danger that has to be avoided isthe cutting through of a main road across theold city from north to south; this has alreadybeen proposed above a covered-over sa’ilah (dryriverbed) where the flood waters run. Its effectwould be catastrophic, irrevocably dividing thetraditional way of life of the people of the oldcity into two weaker, fragmented zones, andinevitably attracting high commercial build-ings on either side of it. From the viewpoint ofconservation it would introduce alien featuresof such a scale and impact that the conserva-tion of the western half of the old city - andtherefore ultimately of the whole - would be-come meaningless.


Litter

The conditions of the streets are generally ap-palling. Garbage and rotting litter, sometimesmixed with animal and human dung, combineto produce the most unhygienic and unpleas-ant atmosphere imaginable. Not only is this apotential hazard for the sudden spread of epi-demics, but it has a major effect on the inhab-itants. Many are persuaded to abandon the oldcity simply for the sake of their children’s

108 health, while many of those remaining are dis-couraged by the environment from repaintingor doing repair work to maintain the appear-ance of their houses. A satisfactory system ofwaste collection and disposal and of streetcleaning is an urgent necessity.

Unsightly wiring and aerials

Electricity and telephone wires are drapedacross the buildings in the old city, or sus-pended from ugly, leaning poles at street cor-ners. The number of wires is proliferating all thetime, and a rash of television aerials has brokenout against the sky. All this is disfiguring thecharacter of the buildings. The only feasible so-lution, if the traditional visual character of thecity is to be retained, is to install all this wiringunderground and to provide a communal tele-vision aerial connected by cable throughout thewhole walled city area.

Maintenance

The lack of maintenance has already beenmentioned, and yet it cannot be too strongly

stressed that this is one of the serious dangersthreatening the old city. Buildings which werebuilt in the traditional way were meant to bemaintained every year. It was accepted thatafter the rains repainting and replasteringwould be necessary to repair any damage doneby the water. If this is no longer carried outevery year, deterioration is extraordinarilyrapid. Yet maintenance is not being under-taken, not merely because the owners are care-less, but also for a number of other reasons: pri-marily a shortage of builders. A new generationof builders has grown up who are not aware ofthe need for constant maintenance, and manyof the building materials needed to repair thetraditional buildings are not easily available.The shortage of traditional craftsmen has beencaused by two factors: first, emigration to workin the oil states and, secondly, the temptationfor skilled workers to move into modernizedbuilding industries where they can earn higherwages. In addition, building workers who weretrained in other areas and do not have any ex-perience or understanding of the traditionaltechniques of old San’a' have come into thebuilding industry there.

Traditional building materials needed for re-pairs include such materials as lime, gypsum,alabaster and special plasters. Some of these areeither unobtainable or are prohibitively expen-sive owing to the cost of raw materials and la-bour - or both. It is therefore essential, if main-tenance of these buildings is to be revived, thatmeasures be taken to encourage traditionalbuilding skills and crafts, and also to ensure thatsupplies of traditional building materials aremaintained by the government.


A related danger is that the old buildings maybe repaired using the wrong materials. One ofthe great hazards is cement, which, if used in-correctly, can cause more damage than it pre-vents. It cracks easily and can therefore let inwater, and it also contains free excess saltswhich can interact with the surrounding build-ing materials to destroy or discolour them.Traditional techniques for repairing such thingsas roofs, cracked walls or settled foundationsneed to be revived, for they are in the long runmore economical and yield less unsightly re-sults in the old buildings than the best moderntechniques.

Public amenities

The lack of public amenities is a serious defectin the old city. Not merely do more schools haveto be constructed, but playing spaces have tobe found in or near the old city for games andsports. Health clinics need to be built wherethey can be easily reached. Finally, public lav-atories have to be provided for the suq and otherpublic areas.

Ugly modernization

In the public interest, control must be exer-cised over new building in the old city. Certainprinciples need to be established, such as thestrict observance of a blanket height limitthroughout the old city and restraint on façadechanges, on the addition of extra storeys with-out permission, and on the introduction ofbuildings made with new materials or havingnovel elevational characteristics.

T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L C A M P A I G N

F O R S A F E G U A R D I N G A N D

C O N S E R V I N G T H E O L D C I T Y

The campaign hopes to attract the participa-tion of many organizations and countries to as-sist the people and Government of the YemenArab Republic to undertake the difficult andambitious task of preserving and safeguardingthe old city of San’a’. It is intended that thisshould be done by using an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach, through careful urbanand regional design of the relationship betweenthe new parts of the city and the old, by reha-bilitation, by conservation, by the encourage-ment and revival of crafts and trades, and bythe sponsorship of cultural activities.

In many of these fields international aid isneeded to supplement those resources lackingin the country itself. Expertise, fellowships, andequipment as well as voluntary financial con-tributions are urgently needed from all sourcesif the campaign is to have any hope of success.

The campaign will take as one of its targetsthe growth of a sense of participation of thepeople of the city of San‘'a'’ and of the YemenArab Republic in the spirit of a national cul-tural identity symbolized by San’a’. At the sametime, it will help to generate an awareness at theinternational level of the historical and culturalsignificance of San’'a'‘, and thus ultimately en-courage more understanding and appreciationbetween differing cultures. As part of the cam-paign, brochures, books, cinema and televisionfilms are being prepared to disseminate knowl-edge about San’'a'‘, its history, its culture, andits heritage of sites and buildings. No method is

109

The old walled city of San‘a

110

to be spared which might contribute to thecampaign: articles in magazines, programmeson international radio and television, the pub-lication of tourist books and serious researchworks on the subject, the preparation and saleof postcards, special postage stamps andposters.

A strategy for conservation

The government has established a special com-mittee of the Cabinet to assist the internationalcampaign. It is hoped, as aid funds becomeavailable, to set up an office for the preserva-tion and conservation of the old city of San‘a’.This will be headed by a director-general, adistinguished Yemenite, aided by an adminis-trative staff and an executive technical organi-zation. The latter will be composed of execu-tive technical officers, specialized technicalconsultants and laboratory and research staff.For practical reasons it will probably be nec-essary to utilize the services of internationallytrained and experienced personnel for some ofthese tasks.

Priorities for immediate action will be estab-lished quickly, and resources directed at thesetargets first. Among them, the solving of the in-frastructure problems of the old walled city willtake an important place.

A policy for action

Because the value of San’'a'’ lies in its excep-tional quality as an ensemble and not in themerit of individual buildings, important thoughthese may be, it would be dangerous to focus too

much attention in the conservation programmeon any one section of the city, or on the signif-icance of a few monuments at the expense of thewhole. Part of the uniqueness of the city is thatit is still alive - a breathing medieval city bus-tling with activities that have been essential toits survival for more than 1,000 years. It has tobe kept as a single living organism, one whichcannot be dissected so that certain parts areprotected and preserved while others are al-lowed to change. The policy of conservation istherefore designed to have three main goals:First, the preservation of as much of the phys-

ical context and as many of the monumentsof the old medieval city as possible, in orderto convey its unique character together withits sense of age and history.

Second, ensuring the preservation and rehabil-itation of the traditional way of life of the me-dieval city as much as possible for those whodesire it, while recognizing the importance ofcarrying the burden of history without sti-fling urban life, so that the population is en-couraged to change and upgrade its way oflife as it wishes.

Third, achieving a very simple method of im-plementation for every aspect of the preser-vation and conservation of the old city.

There clearly exist today two cities in San’a’,the old and the new, with widely differingphysical and social patterns. The old city pre-serves a way of life, firmly rooted in its physicalform, which is immediately recognizable to thegreat majority of Yemenites who visit San’afrom the rest of the country and who them-selves come from such an environment. The oldmarkets act as the primary exchange centre for


a large agricultural region, as well as serving thetraditional needs of a large part of the wholeurban population. (Most inhabitants of the newareas of the city are said to visit the market inthe old city at least once a week.) Many of theremaining inhabitants of the old city are crafts-men or are engaged in some other traditionaloccupation. The new city serves to house thebulk of the newly arrived immigrants, as wellas an emerging Western-oriented middle class.The inhabitants of the old city visit the smartWestern-style shopping streets of the new areasnot less than twice a week.

While it is possible to argue the validity of anurban framework which accepts and caters forboth the traditional and the innovative, it isimportant to recognize and attempt to under-stand the strains and stresses of such a two-foldsystem. This is nowhere more true than at thephysical points of connection between the twosystems; careful thought needs to be given tothese connections wherever, and in whateverform, they occur.

Above all, it is important that the old cityshould never be considered in isolation; its 111problems and the solutions proposed for them

3 9Samsarat al-Majjahlooking up at the brick bas-relief of the façade.

The old walled city of San 'a’

should always be considered in the context ofthe city as a whole.

Some specific detailed aims are as follows:1. To retain the traditional street pattern.2. To retain as far as possible the traditional

method of use of the street: i.e. mixed cir-culation of vehicles, animals and pedes-trians.

3. To retain the gardens (singular: bustan) asfunctioning market gardens (singular:miqshamah) supplying vegetables to the

112 houses and markets, and to prohibit build-ing on them.

4. To create a strictly controlled buffer zoneoutside the old walls.

5. To protect and conserve, meticulously, se-lected national historic treasures within theold walls, including historic sites and mon-uments.

6. To prevent the erection of new construc-tions or additions above the general heightof the highest houses in each local area.

7. To control the excessive use of materials andcolours on the buildings which would be outof character with the traditional appearanceof buildings in the old city.

8. To preserve the diversity of life and crafts inthe old city, by the protection of activitieswhich are of small scale and cannot alwayssurvive in new developments with higherrents.

9. To use every means to obtain the co-opera-tion of the general public in the old city,through publicity in all the media, andthrough the establishment of informationbureaux and advisory services.

SOME TYPICAL EXAMPLES OF THE

A R C H I T E C T U R A L C O N S E R V A T I O N

N E C E S S A R Y I N T H E O L D C I T Y

The Great Mosque(see Plates 2, 4, 6 and 27)

A detailed account of the history and impor-tance of the Great Mosque is given on pages85-7. Although it was last repaired in 1974, thisbuilding merits conservation work of the mostthorough kind on the roofs, minarets, ceilingdecorations and antiquities.

Estimated cost (approx.) $200,000

The mosque of al-Bakiriyyah(see Plates 9 and 10)

This mosque was built by an Ottoman gover-nor, who named it after one of his friends whowas killed at San‘'a' and is buried in one cornerof the mosque. Built and decorated in typicalsixteenth- (tenth-)century Ottoman style in1597 (1005), it was extensively redecoratedduring the second Turkish occupation after1872 (1289).

Conservation will involve repairs of the min-aret, of all the roofs and walls, where they arecracked, the removal of whitewash from thegilded and coloured decoration, and its generalrestoration.


Protecting and conseruing the cultural heritage of the old city

The Hammam al-Maydan Bayt Fay ‘ and Bayt Bertowah(formerly al-Bakiriyyah) in the Harat Salah al-Din

(see Plate 7) (see Fig. IV)

This great public bath, with a domed changingroom 13 m high internally, was built by thesame Ottoman governor as a waqf property forthe new mosque. It has fine rooms throughout,now somewhat altered and reduced in quality,but it is still used.

It needs general conservation work, repair ofthe roofs of the domes, replastering internallyand the removal of later accretions, so that itcan be effectively restored to its original stateas it was at the beginning of the seventeenth(eleventh) century, consistent with its use today.

These two adjoining houses are those shown inthe bottom left and top right of Fig. IV. Thelower levels of the former are claimed to dateback to the late fourteenth (eighth) century (theowner was treasurer of the Zaydi Imam Salahal-Din), and the whole of the latter to 1509(896). They are certainly two of the oldesthouses remaining in the city. Bayt Bertowah has 113been owned by the government since 1962 andis let out as apartments. They are in varyingstages of decay.


Bayt al-Belayliin the vicinity of the Suq al-Milh

Extensive repair, reconstruction and conser-vation work is urgently needed if these historichouses are to be preserved for posterity.


(see Plates 30 and 32 and Fig. III) The Samsarat al-Majjah(see Plates 6 and 39)

This is one of the finest surviving houses inSan’'a'‘, though it is in a neglected state. It hasbeen owned by the government since 1962 andis now let out as apartments. The bulk of thebuilding was erected in the early seventeenth(eleventh) century. The top floors were rede-corated, or possibly completely rebuilt, in 1904(1322).

The mafraj, the manzar and the zihrah are allof quite exceptional quality, as are the wood-work, gypsum screen work and stained glassthroughout the building.

The house needs general conservation workto restore it to its former beauty.


This caravanserai, reconstructed in its presentform in the seventeenth (eleventh) century, istypical of those discussed on page 90. Althoughthe stables are no longer used for housing ani-mals, the lower levels of the building are still inuse as warehouses. Above the roof, however, therooms for lodgings and bathrooms have falleninto disuse, and have lost their doors.

The building needs general conservation, andadaptive re-use of the upper floors, possibly asa youth hostel or students’ lodgings.



T H E C U L T U R A L T R A D I T I O N S

O F T H E O L D C I T Y

Many of the crafts, trades, pursuits and cul-tural activities of the people of the old city ofSan‘'a'’ need encouragement, training pro-grammes and financial subsidies:Crafts: woodcarving, wood turning, forging,

carving of pierced gypsum fanlights, weav-ing, etc.

Trades: traditional building skills, in particular114 specialized ones like qadad plaster laying.

Pursuits: traditional medicine.Clothing and jewellery: traditional embroidery of

various kinds, gold- and silver-working.Food: traditional cooking, particularly of old

recipes which are in danger of being lost.Poetry and folklore: the collection of San‘a’ni say-

ings, epigrams, proverbs and poetry, bothancient and modern.

Music and dance: traditional aspects relating tothe old city up to the present day.

A new museum of pre-historic, pre-Islamic andIslamic cultures is already being planned on asite within the old city on the southern side,to the west of the Sa’ilah.

P L A N O F A C T I O N A N D

P R E L I M I N A R Y E S T I M A T E S F O R

T H E P R E S E R V A T I O N A N D

CONSERVATION OF THE OLD CITY

Emergency measures

1. Immediate repairs to roofs to prevent raindamage to the most important buildings.

2. Introducing measuring devices into build-

ings which are cracking in order to studythe extent of failure.

3. Shoring and stabilizing buildings which arecollapsing.

4. Holding action to prevent the constructionof new buildings in the old city or the exe-cution of major external alterations to oldbuildings.

5. Holding action to prevent damage tomiqshamahs and bustans.

6. Establishment of an advisory service for theinhabitants of the old city in construction-and-repair techniques, improvements andupgrading. To be located in Dar al-Jadidwithin the old city. Staffing by Yemenitesand foreign volunteers. Furniture andequipping by Yemeni Government and in-ternational agencies.

7. Demonstration, restoration and improve-ment projects (Dar al-Jadid and twoothers in different parts of the old city).

Phase I: priority work (first year of action withinternational funds)

1. Testing and replacement of all water pipeslikely to form leaks in the water-supply sys-tem of the old city. To be executed as partof the sewerage-laying scheme in someareas.

2. Establishment of the organization for safe-guarding and conserving the old city. Toinclude an administrator and a technicaldirector whose salaries would be paid fromthe fund-raising campaign; also to includea number of technical advisers, bothYemeni and foreign, the attendance of the


latter to be funded from international fundsor by bilateral aid.

3. Restoration of eight or ten key monuments(including two or three houses) as visualevidence of the commencement of the con-servation campaign.

4. Repair, cleaning and rehabilitation of thepublic baths, both inside and outside.

5. Detailed investigation of certain aspectsof the conservation programme, if investi-gation of these has not already been com-pleted before the commencement of theimplementation of the international cam-paign:

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

the upgrading of the hygiene and serv-icing of solid-waste disposal systems intraditional bathrooms, together withthe possible introduction of alterna-tive ‘dry’ systems of solid-waste dis-posal;the provision of amenities for vehicu-lar circulation and the parking of ve-hicles, of vehicular services to the oldcity, and the detailed design of thesystem (it is of the utmost importancethat this should be considered in re-lation to the city as a whole);demographic and socio-morphologi-cal studies of the old city, includingemployment and incomes analysis,length of occupation and previous oc-cupation records back ten years (incourse of execution by the CentralPlanning Office, 1982-85);the effects of social and economicchange on the old city, together withstudies of the positive or negative

6.

effects of the international campaignon the citizens, in conjunction with (c)above.

Detailed structural survey and analysis ofall dangerous houses and other buildings,recommending either:(a) temporary abandonment and shoring;(b) method of repair and strengthening, if

possible;(c) demolition, if it is not possible to re-

pair them; in this case the doors andwindows of old facades and any other 115,recoverable parts of the best houseswould be taken out before demolitionand stored, ready for rebuilding intoother reconstructed houses (to bedone, if necessary, by Yemeni and for-eign volunteer teams under the direc-tion of conservation architects).

7. Investigation of the means of providing in-centives, financial and otherwise, to en-courage building owners and the inhabit-ants of the city to maintain the buildings.Investigation of action to be taken againstabsentee landlords, clarity of land tenure,the possibility of long-term leases for ten-ants, etc.

8. Investigation of methods of upgrading thebuilding technology and facilitating main-tenance.

9. Establishment of mechanisms for the re-vival and training of all the traditionalbuilding crafts and skills needed for the ef-ficient repair and maintenance of the oldbuildings.

10. Programme evaluation and revision of thesubsequent plan of action.

Subsequent phases (four subsequent years)

1. Replacement of all above-ground electricwiring with underground cables, togetherwith similar action (where necessary) fortelephone wires and the provision of an un-derground cable connected to a communaltelevision aerial.

2. Rebuilding and repairing of the old wallsof the city.

3. Upgrading of the hygiene and servicing of116 the solid-waste disposal system for those

parts of the old city which still utilize it, asproposed in Phase 1.5(a) above.

4. Provision of amenities for vehicular circu-lation and the parking of vehicles to servicethe old city, with the design of the system,on the basis of the studies proposed inPhase 1.5(b) above, taking account of theprovision of paved roads and kerbs, emer-gency services, fire, ambulance, mainte-nance of public facilities, etc.

5. Investigation of means of transferring someproperties in the old city owned by variousgovernment ministries to the control andcare of the conservation authority, possiblyby exchange.

6. Conservation of all monuments and pub-licly owned building in the old city. Roughestimates of the cost of conserving thebuildings are divided here into two parts.It is envisaged that all government-ownedproperties, including houses, will be re-paired and conserved using governmentfunds, or grants, aid, or loans made avail-able to the government from internationalsources. Private properties, on the other


hand, whether large commercial buildingsor houses, will be repaired at the expenseof the private owners, but with subsidies toprovide incentives and low-interest loansmade available from a special bank set up

for the purpose, possibly with some of itsfunding internationally raised.

The only exception to the above divisionis that nearly a third of the privately ownedhouses are estimated to be neglected forreasons of poverty - the incentives and thewherewithal for repairs no longer beingavailable to their owners. This part of theprivate building sector is therefore as-sumed to need more than subsidization,and in these cases it has been assumed thatthe burden of conservation of the whole oftheir structures, of the exteriors and theroofs would have to be borne by the con-serving authority, maintenance once theyare repaired returning to the hands of theprivate owners.

7. Development of incentives for the conser-vation, repair and maintenance of pri-vately owned buildings in the old city (con-tinuation of Phase 1.7).

8. Improvement of educational and trainingfacilities related to all the traditional craftsand trades in the old city.

9. Improvement of public amenities for the oldcity, schools, playgrounds, sports-fields,clinics, markets, fire-fighting facilities, etc.

10. Co-ordination of studies of the city, partic-ularly archaeological studies, with the otheractivities of the campaign.

11. Presentation of aspects of the city’s life andhistory to the public. Presentation of the


most significant archaeological sites, mon-uments, representative old houses tradi-tionally furnished, etc.

12. Continuous re-evaluation of the pro-gramme and revision of the plan of action.

Preliminary estimates

Modernization of the infrastructure:1.2.3.4.

5.6.

7.

Upgrading of waterUpgrading of electricityUpgrading of sewerageIntroducing stormwaterdrainage (including wallingand paving the Sa’ilah)Paving of streetsCommunal television aerial(underground cable)Upgrading of solid-wastesystem

US$3,000,000

10,600,OOO4,400,000

4,000,00030,000,000

10,000,000

250,000

62,250,OOO

Transport and circulation:1. Provision of car parking2. Special service vehicles3. Road improvements and

controls

100,000,0002,000,000

2,000,000

Buildings:Repair: assuming repair ofone-third of 6,000 houses hasto be paid by government =2,000 housesOf these:

US$

50 per cent = 1,000(at 50,000 rials)= 50,000,OOO rials

25 per cent = 500(at 100,000 rials)= 50,000,OOO rials

25 per cent = 500(at 30,000 rials)= 15,000,OOO rials

11 ,ooo,ooo

11 ,ooo,ooo 117

3,500,000

25,500,OOO

Improvement:Assuming two-thirds of6,000 houses have tobe improved fromgovernment loans:= 4,000 X 25,000 rials =100,000,000 rials(to be arranged as repayableloans from internationalaid bodies and excluded

104,000,000 from total estimate) 23,000,OOO


Conservation of public buildings:Great MosqueAverage of other mosques =$ 30,000 x 30Presentation of buildingsto the publicWell-ramps, public bathsand other public buildingsWalls of city

US$200,000

900,000

500,000

1,500,0004,000,000

7,100,000

118Encouragement of craftsmen and tourism:

from international aid fundsand UNDP + 500,000

Development of property laws:from government funds

Socio-cultural activities and leisure:from government funds andinternational aid + 1 ,ooo,ooo

Material:1. Equipment of offices,

workshops, drawing officesfrom Unesco permanentfunds, Yemeni Governmentand international aid + 500,000

2. Conservation laboratoryfrom international aid 200,000

3. Rolling stock frominternational aid,Yemeni Government + 500,000

1,200,000

Experts:Average of twenty expertmonths per year plus tenfares annually for five years

us $

1 ,ooo,ooo

Officers of Conservation of San’a’ Campaign:Fifteen permanent staff forfive years 7,500,000Remainder of staffing frominternational aid andYemeni Government(amount not included intotal estimate)TOTAL ESTIMATE (approx) 210,050,OOO

Note: This estimate includes the cost of everyitem judged necessary for the conservation ofthe old city; where there is doubt, it repre-sents the maximum needed; each item is onlyan approximation, and is expected to bedrastically reduced as the work proceeds andexact estimating becomes possible. It ishoped that much of the expenditure wouldcome from funds allocated by the govern-ment, or might be granted as aid in kind frominterested bodies, governments or interna-tional organizations.

Chronology

C. 5000 B.C.

First village settlements yet identified inYemeni highlands

C. 1200 B.C.

First urban settlements yet identified onedge of eastern deserts

C. 700 B.C.

Construction of Ma’rib dam (?)C. 700 B.C.

Construction of Sirwah temples (?)C. 500 B.C.

Beginning of period of great prosperity forSaba’, with construction of many finemonuments

C. 115-109 B.C.

Emergence of state of Himyar as a rival toSaba’. Probable conquest of state of Ma‘inby Saba’, and rise of ‘greater Sabaeanstate’

By first century B.C.

San’'a'’ becomes centre of inland traderoute

C. 100-200 A.D.

San’'a'’ a royal city, joint capital ofSabaean federation

c. 210-50 A.D.

Construction of great palace of Ghumdanin San’'a'’

After 300 A.D.Himyarite domination of South Arabialeads to use of Zafar as alternative royal 119residence

342 A.D.Embassy of Byzantine EmperorConstantine to Yemen

c. 520 A.D.Massacre of Christians of Najran by DhuNuwas, Himyarite ruler of Yemen

525 A.D.Aryat, general of Abyssinian army, defeatsDhu Nuwas and assumes government ofYemen in the name of Axumite Emperor

537 A.D.Abrahah assumes government of Yemen

570 A.D.War of the Elephant against Mecca(Qur’an, Sura 15)

C. 575 A.D.Persians conquer Yemen at request of Hi-myarite princes

c. 628 A.D.Yemen converted to Islam during the life-time of the Prophet

c. 847 A.D. (232 A.H.)Bani Yu‘fir, first independent YemeniMuslim dynasty, rules from San’'a'’

The old walled city of san'a'

120

1004 A.D. (399 A.H.)

End of period of Yu‘firid rule from San’'a'’C. 1047 A.D. (437 A.H.)

Conquest of San’'a'’ by Sulayhids of Zabid1173 A.D. (569 A.H.)

Invasion of Yemen by Ayyubid brothers ofSalah al-Din

c. 1189 A.D. (585 A.H.)

Ayyiibids reside permanently in San’'a'‘,using it as their northern capital

1323-24 A.D. (723 A.H.)

After a long period of alternatinggovernments, the Zaydi Imams finallyestablish themselves as rulers in San‘'a'’

1515 A.D. (920 A.H.)

Mameluke Egyptians obtain San’'a'’ for twoyears after surrender of governor

1517 A.D. (922 A.H.)

Zaydi Imams resume government1547 A.D. (954 A.H.)

Ottoman Turks conquer San‘'a'’ and put1,200 people to the sword

1623 A.D. (1029 A.H.)

Zaydi Imams drive out Ottoman Turksand begin long period of rule from San’'a'’

1849 A.D. (1265 A.H.)

Weakened Zaydi Imamate agrees tobecome vassal state of Turkish Empire

1872 A.D. (1289 A.H.)

Turks initiate second occupation ofYemen, ruling from San’'a'’

1918 A.D. (1336 A.H.)

Ottoman Turks retire, leaving Zaydi Im-ams once more rulers of Yemen

1948 A.D. (1367 A.H.)

Assassination of Imam Yahya. Accessionof Imam Ahmad. Sack of city of San’a’.Capital thenceforth transferred to Ta‘izz

1962 A.D. (1382 A.H.)

26 September Revolution against ImamBadr, who had recently ascended thethrone on the death of his father, Ahmad.Civil war between Royalists andRepublicans then follows

1968 A.D. (1389 A.H.)

End of Civil War. Establishment ofcivilian government of the Yemen ArabRepublic

Bibliography

AL-AKWA’, Isma’il ibn ‘Ah. Al-Mad&is al-Islamiyyahfi’l-Yaman. Damascus, 1980.

COSTA, Paolo M. La Moschea Grande di San‘'a'‘. An-nali dell’lstituto Orientale di Napoli, Vol. XXXIV,1974.

CRESWELL, K.A.C. Early Muslim Architecture. Ox-ford, 1932-40.

- . Origin of the Concave Mihrab. Proceedings of the26th International Congress of Orientalists. Poona,1970.

CRUTTENDEN, Charles. Narrative of a Journey fromMokha to San‘'a'’ in July and August 1836. Jour-nal of the Royal Geographical Society (London), Vol.VIII, 1838.

ECOCHARD, M.; LE COEUR, C. Les bains de Damas.Beirut, 1942/43.

GLASER, Eduard. Lange und Breite von San‘a’.Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissen-schaften in Wien, Vol. XC, No. 11, 1884.

-.Von Hodeida nach San’'a'‘. Petermann’s geogra-phische Mitteilungen (Gotha), Vol. XXXI, 1886.

GOITEIN, S.D.F. Jemenica, Sprichworter und Redensartenaus Zentral-Jemen. Leiden, 1970. (Reprint of 1934Leipzig edition.)

- . From the Land of Sheba. New York, 1947.-. Studiesin Islamic History and Institutions. Leiden,

1966.AL-HAJAR~', Muhammad ibn Ahmad. Masajid San'a'‘.

San‘'a'‘, 1942.HALEVY., Joseph. Mission archéologique dans le Yé-

men. Journal asiatique (Paris), Vol. XIX, 1872.

- AL-HAMDANI, al-Hasan ibn Ahmad. Sifat Jazirat al-‘Arab. Ed. by D.H. Muller. Leiden, 1884-91. 121

-. Sifat Jazirat al- ‘Arab. Ed. by Muhammad al-Akwa’. Riyadh, 1974.

-. Iklil 1. Ed. by 0. Lofgren. Uppsala, 1954.- . Iklil I. Ed. by Muhammad al-Akwa’. Cairo,

1963.-. Iklil II. Ed. by 0. Lofgren. Uppsala, 1965.- . Iklil II. Ed. by Muhammad al-Akwa’. Cairo,

1967.- . Iklil VIII. Ed. by Anastase Marie al-

Kirmili. Baghdad, 1931.-. Iklil X. Ed. by Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib.

Cairo, 1948.AL-HAMDANi Muhammad ibn Hatim al-Yami. Al-

Simt al-ghali. In: G.R. Smith (ed.), The Ayyu-bids and the Early Rasulids in the Yemen. GMS(London), Vol. XXVI, 1974-78.

HAMILTON, Captain Alexander. A New, Account of theEast Indies. London, 1727.

HANSEN, Thorkild. Arabia Felix. London, 1964.AL-JANADi, Abu ‘Abd Allah Baha’ al-Din. Kitab al-

Suluk. In: H.C. Kay (ed.), Yaman: Its EarlyMediaeval History. London, 1892.

JOURDAIN, John. Journal of John Jourdain, ed. by W'‘.Foster. London, 1905. (Hakluyt Series.)

KAY, Henry Cassels. Yaman: Its Early Mediaeval His-tory. London, 1892.

KIRKMAN, James S. City of San'a'‘. Ed. from texts byR.B. Serjeant and Ronald Lewcock. London,1976.


LEWCOCK, Ronald. Towns and Buildings in Arabia,North Yemen. Architectural Association Quarterly(London), Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1976, pp. 3-19.

- . Bau ornamente in der Stadt San’a’. DU’ (Zu-rich), August 1976.

-. (See also SERJEANT and LEWCOCK.)LEWCOCK, Ronald; SMITH, G. Rex. Two Early

Mosques in the Yemen. Art and Archaeology Re-search Papers (London), Vol. IV, 1973.

- . Three Mediaeval Mosques in the Yemen. Ori-ental Art (London), Vol. XX, 1974.

LITTMAN, E.; KRENKER, U.V.; VON LUPKE, T.Deutsche Axum Expedition. Berlin, 1913.

122 MANZONI, Renzo. El Yemen. Rome, 1884.MIDDLETON, Sir John. In: Robert Kerr (ed.), A Gen-

eral History and Collection of Voyages and Travels,Vol. VIII. Edinburgh, 1811-24.

NIEBUHR, Carsten. Voyage en Arabie. Trans. of Beschrei-bung von Arabien. Amsterdam, 1774-80.

- . Travels through Arabia. Trans. and abr. by R.Heron. Edinburgh, 1792.

PHILLIPS, Wendell. Qataban and Sheba. London, 1955.PLAYFAIR, R.L., History of Arabia Felix. Bombay,

1859.RATHJENS, Carl; GOITEIN, S.D. Jewish Domestic

Architecture in San‘a’, Yemen. Jerusalem, 1957.RATHJENS, Carl; WISSMANN, Hermann von. Sanaa,

eine sudarabische Stadtlandschaft. Zeitschrift derGesellschaft fir Erdkunde, Berlin, 1929.

Landeskundliche Ergebnisse. Sudarabien-Reise-(Hamburg), Vol. III, 1934.AL-RAzi, Ahmad ibn ‘Abdullah. Tarikh madinat

San’a’. Ed. by Husayn ibn ‘Abdullah al-‘Amriand ‘Abd al-Jabbar Zakkar. Damascus, 1974.

ROSSI, Gian Battista. El Yemen. Turin, 1927.IBN RUSTAH, Abu ‘Ali Ahmad ibn ‘Umar. In: M.J.

de Goeje (ed.), Kitab al-A‘laq al-nafisah, Liber

viarum et regnorum. BGA (Leiden), Vol. VII,1892.

RYCKMANS, Jacques. Le Christianisme en Arabie dusud pré-islamique. Accademia Nazionale dei Lin-cei, Atti de1 Conuegno internazionale sul tema: L’Or-iente cristiano nella ciuilta. Rome, 1964.

SAUVAGET, J. Un bain damasquin du XIIIe siècle.Syria (Paris), Vol. II, 1930.

SCOTT, Hugh. In the High Yemen. London, 1942.SERJEANT, R.B. Islamic Textiles: Material for a History

up to the Mongol Conquest. Beirut, 1972. (Re-printed from Ars Islamica, Michigan.)

-. The Islamic City: Selected Papers from the Collo-quium held at the Middle East Centre, Faculty of Ori-ental Studies, Cambridge. Paris, Unesco, 1980. PartI, Social Stratification in Arabia (R.B. Ser-jeant); Part II, San‘'a' (Paolo M. Costa).

SERJEANT, R.B.; LEWCOCK, Ronald. San’a’, An Ara-bian Islamic City. London, 1983.

SMITH, G. Rex. The Ayyubids and Early Rastilids inthe Yemen, al-Simt al-ghali. Gibb Memorial Se-ries (London), Vol. XXVI, 1974-78.

TRITTON, A.S. Rise of the Imams of Sanaa. Ox-ford/Madras, 1925.

VALENTIA, Viscount George. Voyages and Travels toIndia, Ceylon, and the Red Sea in 1802-1806. Lon-don, 1809.

VARTHEMA, Ludovico de. Travels. Ed. by G.P.Badger, London, 1863. (Hakluyt Series.)

WARD PERKINS, J.B., et al. The Hunting Baths at Lep-tis Magna. Oxford, 1949.

WEXNER, Manfred W. Modern Yemen 1918-1966. Bal-timore, 1967. Reviewed by R.B. Serjeant inBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies(London), Vol. XXXIII, 1970.

WISSMANN, Hermann von. Zur Geschichte und Landes-kunde von Altsiidarabien. Vienna, 1964.

Illustrations”

Front cover: Detail of the facade of the minaret al-Madrasah.

Back cover: High houses and minarets in the centreof San’a’.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

P L A T E S

The roof-tops of San’a’, withMount Nuqum in the background 16- 17Pre-Islamic antiquities in the GreatMosque 25The minaret of the San'a' al-Din mosque,with the upper levels and mafraj of Baytal- ‘Afari 33The Great Mosque: the alabaster toplights in the qiblah wall 34The citadel seen from within the city,showing the fort containing two nobah 34The Great Mosque seen from theair, also showing the mound ofGhumdan, the suq and theSamsarat al-Majjah 38The changing and cold-waterrooms of Hammam al-Maydan 41

8.

9.10.

11.

12.13.

14.

15.

16.17.

18.19.20.21.

The high houses of the old city seenfrom the Sa’ilah in time of flood 42-3 123Al-Bakiriyyah mosque: the interior 48Al-Bakiriyyah mosque: the carvedgypsum ornament and inscriptionsof the portico 49A typical Jewish house in Qa‘ al-Yahud 50A view of Bayt Jarafi, with a bustan 51A view of the miqshamah adjoining theFilayhi mosque 52A Qadi wearing the traditionalheaddress and dagger 57Schoolgirls wearing black robes andface veils in a bookshop near theZumur mosque 58Man returning from the qat market 59Details of facades near the Talhahmosque 62Bayt Wassa, seen from the west 64Bayt Mutahar: the diwan 66Facade of Bayt Sari‘ 69Characteristic diwan in a very oldhouse in San’'a'’ 73

* Captions printed in italics refer to colour plates.


22.

23.

24.

25.

The tops of large tower houses inSan’'a'‘, with the mafraj roomsclearly visible on the roofsTraditional alabaster plaster dadodecoration in a house staircaseTypes of fenestrationThe carving of a gypsum fanlightscreen

26. Exterior of the upper levels of anobah

27. The Great Mosque: internal124 courtyard

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

Minaret of Musa mosqueThe camel suq, showing the surroundingbustansBayt al-Belayli: the mafraj, looking atthe view across the lobby through theentrance doorsA nobah: the diwanBayt al-Belayli: the mafrajClose-up of a daggerTraditional men’s tribal dressWomen dressed for the streetThe Suq al-Milh, with the domes of anOttoman mosque behind itThe suq: the open space in which old orsick donkeys are fed

76

39.7879

Panoramic view of the old city fromthe minaret of Qubbat al-Mahdi‘Abbas 106-7Samsarat al-Majjah: the brick bas-relief of the façade 111

80 F IGURES

83

86

89

91

929292939393

94

94

I.

II.III.

IV.

V.VI.

Map of the southern part of theArabian peninsula, showing theposition of San’'a'’ 14Bayt Wassa: plans and section 65

Bayt al-Belayli: a perspective of theplans 68

A cluster of houses in the Salah al-Din quarter: plans and section 70-lA nobah: plans and elevation 82Hammam Shukr: plans and section 96

Photo credits:Plates l-11, 18, 21, 23-7, 29-32, 34, 36-7, 39and back cover: the author.Plates 13-17, 19-20, 22, 28, 33, 35, 38 andfront cover: Pascal Maréchaux.Plate 12: Jean-Franqois Breton.

38.

Date post:	01-Dec-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	alhussain-alareqi-
View:	198 times
Download:	15 times

sana'a in yemen

Documents