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First Skyscrapers of the world (YEMEN)
When was the first Skyscraper-like figure built? If your answer is “Manhattan”. No way. You need to go farther more to the East to Yemen.
The city of Shibam with about 7,000 inhabitants, and capital for periods of the Hadramawt kingdom (its territory corresponding to the most eastern third of today's Yemen,owes its fame to its distinct architecture, which now is on UNESCOs programme to safeguard the human cultural heritage. The houses of Shibam are all made out of mud bricks, but still there are about 500 tower houses, rising 5 to 9 storeys high.
While Shibam has existed for around 2,000 years, most of the city's houses come mainly from the 16th century. However over the following centuries, many have been rebuilt over and over again.
Shibam is often called "the oldest skyscraper-city in the world", which is a claim with quite a bit of consistency.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, travelers were struck by the height of these houses five to six stories high. They wondered why and concluded - correctly - that since the city is situated along a border between two Sultanates, Ku'aiti and Kathiri, Shibam dwellers built their skyscrapers to be forts as well as homes; they sought refuge and protection in the height of the structures.
Rising towards the sky, these houses are also striking symbols of economic and political prestige. Since the 17th century a quarter of the population from this area has traveled abroad and Yemeni families once settled in parts of Southeast Asia and East Africa. In Singapore, Surabaya and Batavia, for example, a family named al-Tuwey owned enough land to accommodate 30 houses In the 18th and 19th centuries, back in Shibam , these traders built the skyscrapers - partly to display their wealth, but also to save on the cost of land within the walls. According to W.H. Ingrams, Political Officer in the Hadramaut in 1936, a plot of land 25 meters long by 17 meters wide (82 feet by 56 feet) then cost more than $10,000 and a 30-meter high building (98 feet) cost more than $20,000, a staggering amount in today's dollars.
And yet the houses are still built in the same old way. Builders dig deep into the ground to find firm soil and, at the bottom of the trench, place a layer of animal droppings covered by a layer of salt. On this course they place timbers parallel to the walls, with stones packed in the interstices. In this manner, the builders construct a masonry wall of stone and lime up to street level. Then they pile sun-dried mud bricks up to the sixth floor, reducing the thickness of the walls as the building rises so that the internal dimensions seem to be constant and the external profile tapers slightly from ground to roof. While building the houses , hand made details giving different decorative shapes are inpressive.
Height has been an obsession among the people of Yemen since centuries. Not only the buildings , but the hats that the woman wear, can nearly compete with the skyscraprs of Shibam.