Dar al-Hajar

Dar al-Hajar, the "Stone House", grows straight out of a pillar of rock in the green valley of Wadi Dhahr, its storeys stacked on the crag so that it is hard to tell where the rock ends and the building begins. Seven floors follow the natural shape of the outcrop, the lower ones in black basalt and the upper ones in fired brick. It is one of the most recognisable buildings in Yemen and served as a residence of the imams of Yemen.

The site has a long and layered history, and the accounts of it vary. Tradition holds that an ancient fortress stood on the rock long before Islam. The present palace is usually traced to the late eighteenth century, when Imam al-Mansur Ali bin Abbas had his minister Ali bin Saleh al-Amari, a scholar known for his learning in architecture, astronomy and poetry, build him a summer residence here around 1786. In the twentieth century Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din, who ruled from 1904 to 1948, restored it as his own summer retreat around 1920, adding upper floors and the mafraj, the reception room at the top of a Yemeni house where guests gather. He also built a small mosque beside the palace. The royal family used it until the civil war of the 1960s, after which it became a museum.

The approach climbs through a stone-paved passage past an ancient tree that local tradition says is some seven centuries old, and the mafraj on the north side looks down on a circular basin built of black basalt. Wadi Dhahr itself has long been a place of orchards, known for grapes, peaches and quinces. In 1974 the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini used the palace as a setting for his film Arabian Nights.

Getting there

Dar al-Hajar stands in Wadi Dhahr, about 15 km northwest of central Sanaa, Yemen. Sanaa International Airport (SAH) is about 11 km away in a straight line. The valley is reached by road from Sanaa.