Untreated buildings such as dugouts and adobe huts are symbols of extreme simplicity and unpretentiousness for most of us. Meanwhile, even centuries ago, colossal structures were erected from ordinary unbaked clay in different parts of the world, which still amaze our imagination. And we are afraid of losing them.
The Yemeni city of Shibam seems to be an island of orderliness in the midst of the free fantasy of nature. It stands at the bottom of a deep canyon with sides cut by erosion, and the valley between them is named Wadi Hadhramaut. "Wadi" is a special Arabic word for a valley once created by streams of water, or a river bed that flows and dries up depending on the season. The city of Shibam (or rather its central historical part) is made a symbol of orderliness by a low wall that forms a regular quadrangle. What is inside the wall is usually called "Arabian Manhattan" by journalists. Of course, in this poorest part of the Arab world, you will not find anything like the Empire State Building or the towers of the late World Trade Center.however, the layout gives the similarity to the world's most famous cluster of skyscrapers, Shibamu - it all consists of buildings standing close to each other, the height of which is much greater than the width of the streets running between them. Yes, the local buildings are inferior to the New York giants - their height is no more than 30 m, but the oldest of them were built even before the discovery of America. But the most surprising thing is that all this multi-storey exotic is made of unbaked clay based on pre-industrial technologies.that all this multi-storey exotic is made of unbaked clay based on pre-industrial technologies.that all this multi-storey exotic is made of unbaked clay based on pre-industrial technologies.
The plan, prepared as part of the German-Yemeni City Development Project, shows the location of buildings in the walled central part of Shibam (newer areas of the city are located outside the wall). The buildings, marked with different colors, were partially destroyed, but restored as part of the project. Among the objects to be restored were not only multi-storey residential buildings, but also public buildings, mosques and other monuments. The oldest buildings are confidently dated to the 16th century, but perhaps there are structures two centuries older among them. Over the past centuries, the houses have been regularly rebuilt.
Up from the Bedouins
During the rainy season, Wadi Hadhramaut is partially flooded, covering the surrounding area of Shibam with alluvial clays. Here it is, the handy building material of local architects, which they have been using for thousands of years. But here's the question - why did it take so much to "squeeze" in the spacious valley and solve the engineering problems of multi-storey construction half a millennium ago? There are at least two reasons for this. Firstly, the ancient Shibam stands on a small elevation in area - according to some sources, it has a natural origin, according to others - it was formed from the remains of an ancient city. And the elevation is flood protection. The second reason is that high-rise buildings had a fortification meaning. Centuries ago, this part of South Arabia, which ancient geographers knew as Arabia Felix ("Happy Arabia"), was a thriving region of the world. There was a trade route here,connecting India with Europe and Asia Minor. Caravans carried spices and a particularly valuable commodity - incense.
Wealth from abundant transit became the basis for the rise of Shibam, at times it became the capital of the kingdom: monarchs, noble nobles and merchants lived in it. And somewhere in the vicinity wandered the warlike nomadic tribes of Bedouins, who, attracted by the splendor of Shibam, organized plundering raids on the city. Therefore, the locals decided that it was easier to defend a compact territory, and it was better to hide from the Bedouins somewhere higher, where you could not drive a camel. So the buildings of Shibam began to rise upward.
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Goats, Sheep, People
We must, of course, understand that no matter how from a distance the seven or eleven-story buildings of Shibam look like the “towers” of our residential quarters, they are something completely different from apartment buildings. The whole building is intended for one family. The first two floors are non-residential. Here, behind blank walls, there are various pantries for food supplies and stalls for livestock - mainly sheep and goats. So it was originally conceived: on the eve of the Bedouin raid, grazing cattle were herded inside the city walls and hid in houses. Living rooms for men are located on the third and fourth floors. The next two floors are the "female half". In addition to living rooms, there are kitchens, washing rooms and toilets. The sixth and seventh floors were given to children and young couples if the family expanded. At the very top, walking terraces were arranged - they compensated for the narrowness of the streets and the lack of courtyards. It is interesting that between some neighboring buildings, transitions from roof to roof were made in the form of bridges with sides. During the raid, it was possible to easily navigate the city without going down, and observe the actions of the enemy from a bird's eye view.
Cooling accumulators
Shibam's "skyscrapers" are built of adobe bricks, produced using the most primitive technology. The clay was mixed with water, straw was added to it, and then the whole mass was poured into an open wooden mold. Then the finished products were dried in the hot sun for several days. The walls were laid in one brick, but the width of these bricks is different - for the lower floors the bricks are wider, which means that the walls are thicker, for the upper ones they are narrower. As a result, in the vertical section, each of the Shibam high-rise buildings has the shape of a trapezoid. The walls were plastered with the same clay, and on top, for water resistance, two layers of lime were applied. As overlappings and additional supports for them, a timber from local hardwood species was used. The internal interiors make it clear that, despite the high rise, we have a traditional oriental dwelling. Carved frames are inserted into the window openings - without glass, of course. The walls are roughly plastered and not leveled. The doors between the rooms are wooden, carved, doorways do not completely overlap, leaving space above and below. Even in the most unbearable Yemeni heat, clay walls keep the premises cool.
The largest clay building in the world - Jenne Great Mosque in the West African state of Mali. This is not a very ancient structure - he is only one hundred years old. Wooden parts protruding from the walls serve both for decoration and as scaffolding during renovation work.
Breathe life into clay
Today in "Arabian Manhattan" there are about 400 such multi-storey buildings (there are also palaces and mosques), and according to various estimates, from 3,500 to 7,000 people live in them. In 1982, UNESCO declared Shibam (part of it surrounded by the wall) a World Heritage Site. And immediately the question arose about the safety of the clay city. The high-rise buildings of Shibam have stood for centuries only because the city lived an active life and was regularly renovated. Even in the hot climate of Yemen, clay structures require constant maintenance, otherwise they will crumble into dust, which has already happened with some buildings. But from a certain point, people began to leave the clay city in search of dwellings that were easier and cheaper to maintain. Some of the houses fell into disrepair.
Clay, sand, water, manure, straw, sun - that's all it takes to build a home to last. Taos-Pueblo - adobe village with houses of several floors, erected in the town of Taos, New Mexico between 1000 and 1450 AD. It was built, of course, by the indigenous people of America. Even today, Taos Pueblo has a population of - about 150 people
In 1984, UNESCO sounded the alarm and allocated funds to study the possibilities of rebuilding the city. Since it was not about a separate building or monument, but about the whole city, it was concluded that the only way to save Shibam is to convince people to continue living and working among the ancient clay walls. In 2000, the Shibam City Development Project was launched, run by the Yemeni government in cooperation with GTZ, a German aid agency for poor countries. Yemen is on the list of the least developed countries in the world, and life in Shibam, with all its picturesqueness, is monstrous poverty, lack of work and basic modern infrastructure. To make the city more attractive for life, within the framework of the project, the power grid, sewerage system was laid, the cleaning of the streets was adjusted, and craft training courses were created,including for women. As for the clay houses themselves, for those of them that needed cosmetic repairs, the efforts of local residents were carried out to fill in the cracks (all the same good old clay) - local "industrial climbers", armed with buckets of solution, descended on cables from roofs and patched up walls.
Buildings in the most deplorable state have been reinforced with wooden piles that support the lower floors, helping them withstand the pressure of the upper ones. Wooden braces were placed on dangerous vertical cracks. The most difficult was the situation with buildings that had already completely or partially collapsed. One of the challenges was to accurately reconstruct the number of floors. The fact is that the number of storeys depended not only on the personal preferences of the owner, but also on the height of the base, and on the location of neighboring houses. Walking yards on the roofs of neighboring buildings were not supposed to be on the same level - to maintain a kind of "privacy". It is also worth noting that the largest subsidies for repairs within the framework of the project had to be paid to the owners of those houses whose upper floors were destroyed. They did not want to restore them. Contrary to the precepts of their ancestors, the modern inhabitants of Shibam are not very eager to live "on top" and would prefer houses of two or three floors.
Oleg Makarov