Shibam - Ancient Mud Skyscraper City

In the heart of Yemen’s Wadi Hadramaut, a cluster of ancient mud skyscrapers soars above the desert floor-a beacon of mankind’s adaptability to the most formidable of environments. At the edge of a desolate expanse of desert known as the Empty Quarter, the 16th-century Walled City of Shibam remains the oldest metropolis in the world to use vertical construction. Once a significant caravan stop on the spice and incense route across the southern Arabian plateau, in the 1930s, British explorer Freya Stark dubbed the mud city “the Manhattan of the desert” due to its density of highrises, a characteristic unseen in Western cities at the time, especially given the structures’ age and their creation without the aid of professional architects or engineers.