Tarim Historic City

Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen
1870--1920
In Tarim, the earthen architecture of Yemen is at its most elaborate and technologically sophisticated. The city's 50-meter-high, unreinforced mud brick minaret is the tallest on the Arabian peninsula. The Al-Awqaf Library, early twentieth-century palaces, and other civic buildings reveal Tarim's role as a trading center straddling the Islamic world and Asia. The styles include neo classical, neo-rococo, early Modernist, and vernacular Hadhramai. Since Yemen's unification in 1992, Tarim's character-defining palaces, previously expropriated for use as public housing, are being returned to private ownership. However, the diaspora of the inheritors of these palaces, and the lack of funds and private initiative for their preservation, has resulted in their neglect. Some of the buildings are now in serious states of deterioration. A systematic documentation should be made of the 23 mud brick palaces, in particular, followed by a pilot program restoration. Ideally, this project will help establish a Center for Mud Architecture, whose mandate will be to perpetuate this building tradition throughout the region. The Wadi Hadhramaut and walled city of Shibam are on the World Heritage List.