Šibām

Shibam rises above Wadi Hadramawt as a dense cluster of tall mudbrick houses enclosed by a fortified wall. Some of these houses reach seven storeys, their narrow streets and squares arranged within a compact plan. Palm groves and fields surround the town, watered by the seasonal floods of the wadi. Its position made it a stopping place for caravans crossing the southern Arabian plateau.

The settlement has roots in pre-Islamic times, and its Friday mosque and fortress preserve much older traditions than the tower houses. In 1532–33 a great flood destroyed part of the earlier town. Shibam was rebuilt on raised ground, its closely packed houses rising within the walls. A dam upstream helped break the force of later floods. Thick walls of sun-dried brick, made from the earth of the valley, formed dwellings that combined the needs of family life with defence in a region contested by rival groups.

Shibam prospered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as Hadrami merchants travelled and traded abroad. The wealth and standing of its families found expression in their homes, whose height gave the city its striking silhouette above the floodplain. The surrounding fields, the flow of floodwater and the mud used for building tied the town's architecture closely to the valley that sustained it.