Welcome to Sanaa, the capital and largest city of Yemen. Standing at an elevation of 2,300 metres, it is the seventh highest capital city in the world, set between the Sarawat Mountains of Jabal An-Nabi Shu'ayb and Jabal Tiyal, considered the highest mountains of the Arabian Peninsula. Sanaa is famous for its Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose multi-storey buildings are decorated with geometric patterns. On its southern outskirts stands the largest mosque in the country. Let us walk through the ancient clay walls and discover the city's gates, mosques and palaces.
Old City of Sanaa
Photo: ai@ce · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsImagine a city that has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years. The Old City of Sanaa is surrounded by ancient clay walls between 9 and 14 metres high, and within them you will find more than 100 mosques, 12 bathhouses and 6,500 houses. Many of those houses resemble ancient skyscrapers, rising several storeys high with flat roofs, elaborate friezes and stained-glass windows. The British writer Jonathan Raban, visiting in the 1970s, said it was like stepping into the middle of a vast pop-up picture book. Don't miss the Salt Market, where salt is sold alongside bread, spices, raisins, copper and antiques.
Great Mosque of Sanaa
Photo: Rod Waddington from Kergunyah, Australia · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsBefore you stands one of the oldest mosques in the world. The Great Mosque of Sanaa is said to have been founded in the early Islamic period, perhaps in 633, although the precise date is unknown. Its builders reportedly reused stones from the Himyarite-era Ghumdan Palace and from a Christian church that once occupied the site. It is the largest and most notable of the more than one hundred mosques in the Old City. During restoration work in 1972, an important archaeological find came to light here: the Sanaa manuscript.
Bab al Yemen
Photo: Jialiang Gao www.peace-on-earth.org · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia CommonsThis is Bab al-Yaman, the Gate of Yemen, the main gate in the fortified wall of Old Sanaa, at the southern end of the walled city. Its present appearance has been dated to the 17th century, and it is the most ornate of the Old City's gates. Travellers heading south once set off from here. One tradition even attributed its original design to the biblical Shem, son of Noah. Step through, and you are immediately surrounded by towering houses of baked brick, waterproofed with lime plaster and lit by stained-glass fanlights. The Great Mosque lies only about 300 yards away.
Al-Saleh Mosque
Photo: Om Eshak · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsOn the southern outskirts of the city rises the largest mosque in Yemen. Al-Saleh Mosque is a modern building, inaugurated in November 2008. It covers 27,300 square metres, and its central hall alone can hold 44,000 worshippers. Unusually, the mosque is open to non-Muslims and is frequented by tourists. After 2017, the authorities in Sanaa renamed it The People's Mosque, and that is the name they continue to use.
Dar al-Hajar
Photo: Dar_al_hajar.jpg : Antti Salonen derivative work: MrPanyGoff · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia CommonsAbout 15 kilometres from Sanaa, in the valley of Wadi Dhar, a palace sits dramatically on top of a rock. Its name, Dar al-Hajar, means Stone House or Rock Palace. It was built in 1920 as the summer retreat of Imam Yahya, ruler of Yemen, on top of a structure built in 1786 for the scholar al-Imam Mansour. The royal family lived here until the North Yemen Civil War. Historians say the palace stands on the ruins of an even older fortress, and today it is a museum visited by locals and foreigners alike.
Lomakuume
