Shibam, the first city on earth to construct vertical buildings, was highly appreciated for its strategic architectural design since the pre-islamic period. Situated in the Governorate of Hadrahmaut in Yemen, Shibam’s building has existed over 1,700 years. In 1982, the city was added in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list and often described as the “Manhattan of the Desert”, which is a famous phrase that circulated when a British explorer, Freya Stark, visited Shibam in the late early 1930s.
The main feature of the city is the verticality of the buildings: towers up to 40 meters and 7 floors that are built with mud: a soil, hay and water mixture made into bricks and baked under the sun for several days. The ground floors were windowless and were used for livestock and grain storage, while the upper floors with windows served as communal floors for socializing. Bridges and doors connecting buildings formed a quick escape as defensive elements (National Geographic, 2015).
The city has some of the tallest mud buildings on earth and the buildings are densely packed keeping the them shaded for most of the day, protecting them from the intense desert heat.
The whole city is elevated to shield its self from the giant flood wadi at the periphery, meanwhile it is within close proximity to the wadi for the daily essential water. In addition to the elevated position, the city was built behind the fortified wall, which provided a protection mechanism from enemies seen approaching at that time.
Over the years, the structures were threatened by the harsh weather: wind, rain, and heat erosion, which called for urgent maintenance. In 2015, the city was added to the World Heritage Sites in Danger, due to the Yemeni civil war, where the buildings were severely damaged by the constant bombing in the capital city, Sana’a (National Geographic, 2015).
