The oldest skyscrapers in the world: the clay city of Shibam

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Untreated structures such as dugouts and adobe huts are symbols of extreme simplicity and unpretentiousness for most of us. And yet, centuries ago, colossal structures were erected from ordinary unbaked clay in different parts of the world, which still amaze our imagination to this day. 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, but the similarity with the world's most famous cluster of skyscrapers, Shibamu, is given by the layout - it all consists of buildings standing close to each other, the height of which far exceeds 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.

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 the question is - 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 old Shibam stands on a small rise 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 the 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 connecting India with Europe and Asia Minor. The 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 the Bedouins, who, attracted by the splendor of Shibam, organized predatory raids on the city. Therefore, the locals decided that it was easier to defend a compact territory, and it is better to hide from the Bedouins somewhere higher, where you can not ride a camel. So the buildings of Shibam began to rise upward.

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 dedicated to 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. On them during the raid it was possible to easily move around the city without going down, and observe the actions of the enemy from a bird's eye view.

Original and cheap

While some are fighting to preserve the centuries-old clay "skyscrapers", others are trying to convince their contemporaries that buildings made of clay mixtures or even just earth are practical and environmentally friendly. Unlike concrete and other modern building materials, building materials literally dug out on the spot do not require a lot of energy, when a building is demolished or destroyed, they dissolve without a trace in nature, and they better maintain the microclimate in the building. Now buildings made of sun-dried clay soil with additives (in Russian the term "adobe" is used, in English - "adobe") have become widespread in Western Europe and the USA. One of the original methods of using untreated soil in construction was called Superadobe. Its essence is that walls, arches, and even domes are erected from plastic bags filled with ordinary earth, and barbed wire is used for fastening.

Cooling accumulators

The "skyscrapers" of Shibam are built of adobe bricks, produced according to 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 floors and additional supports for them, a beam from local hardwood species was used. The interior interiors make it clear that, despite the high rise, we have a traditional oriental dwelling in front of us. Carved frames are inserted into the window openings - without glass, of course. The walls are roughly plastered and not leveled. Doors between rooms are wooden, carved, doorways do not completely overlap, leaving space above and below. Even in the most unbearable Yemeni heat, the clay walls keep the rooms cool.

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 stood for centuries only because the city lived an active life and was regularly renovated. Even in the hot climate of Yemen, adobe 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.

In 1984, UNESCO sounded the alarm and allocated funds to study the possibilities of rebuilding the city. Since it was not a single building or monument, but an entire city, it was concluded that the only way to save Shibam was 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 the German aid to poor countries GTZ. Yemen is included in 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. In order to make the city more attractive for life, the project included the laying of electricity, sewerage, street cleaning, and training courses in crafts, 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 cover the cracks (with 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 to withstand the pressure of the upper ones. Wooden braces were placed on dangerous vertical cracks. The most difficult situation was 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 - in order 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.