This Ancient Walled City In Yemen Is Known As 'Manhattan of the Desert'

With its mud-brick buildings, Shibam, a 16th-century city surrounded by a fortified wall, has been dubbed the "Manhattan of the Desert." With buildings composed entirely of mud bricks that have been meticulously conserved to face the harsh weather, this architectural wonder exemplifies Yemen's distinctive style. In addition to Shibam, the cities of Sana'a and Zabid also have outstanding mud-brick architecture and are designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites due to their outstanding architectural and cultural value.

It is one of the oldest and best examples of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction. Its impressive tower-like structures rise out of the cliff and have given the city its distinct recognition. British explorer Freya Stark in the 1930s gave the city its nickname 'the Manhattan of the desert'.

Photo Credit: Instagram/Manhattan of the Desert

According to UNESCO, located at an important caravan halt on the spice and incense route across the Southern Arabian plateau, the city of dwellings up to seven storeys high developed on a fortified, rectangular grid plan of streets and squares. The city is built on a rocky spur several hundred metres above the wadi bed, and superseded an earlier settlement that was partly destroyed by a massive flood in 1532-3. The Friday mosque dates largely from the 9th -10th century and the castle from the 13th century, but the earliest settlement originated in the pre-Islamic period.

According to a report by The Guardian, Shibam has largely escaped direct violence of the Yemen's complex civil war, but is still suffering from years of neglect, despite being a Unesco world heritage site.

Photo Credit: whc.unesco.org

Named for King Shibam Bin Harith Ibn Saba, it is one of the oldest - and still one of the best - examples of vertical construction in the world. In the 16th century, Shibam's inhabitants found they had run out of space to expand. To compensate, they began to build carefully on a rectangular street grid, and instead of spreading out, they built up, giving the world its first skyscrapers. The tallest of Shibam's mudbrick and cedarwood towers contains eight storeys and stands 30 metres high.