Shaharah Bridge
Interesting facts
- Arabic accounts date the start of the bridge to 1323 AH, or 1905, and say it was finally opened in 1908 after about three years of work.
- The cost is recorded as roughly 100,000 French riyals, the coinage then circulating in Yemen and an enormous sum for a mountain village.
- Estimates of the gorge beneath the arch vary widely, from about 90 metres in some sources to more than 300 metres in Arabic accounts.
- According to one local account, the bridge was meant to be easy to break, so the village could cut itself off if Ottoman troops attacked.
- The two summits it joins are known as Shaharat al-Amir and Shaharat al-Fish, the latter crowned by its own fortress east of the village.
- In 1905, the very year the bridge is said to have been begun, Ottoman forces besieged Shaharah again and failed to take it.
- Shaharah's three gates carry the names Bab al-Nahr, Bab al-Nasr and Bab al-Saraw.
- The village produced the poet Zaynab bint Muhammad al-Shahariyyah, who died in 1702 and holds a respected place in Yemeni literature.
- Long before Imam al-Qasim, the amir Dhu'l-Sharafayn Muhammad ibn Ja'far had already made the mountain town his capital.
Why it is worth it
Shaharah Bridge is a single limestone arch thrown across a sheer gorge high in the mountains of northern Yemen, at an altitude of about 2,600 metres. It is only some 20 metres long and 3 metres wide, yet the drop beneath it is measured in hundreds of metres, and stone stairways climb away from either end into the rock. The bridge links two summits, Jebel al-Emir and Jebel Faish, and before it was built the only way between them was a long and dangerous descent to the bottom of the ravine and a climb up the other side, impossible for livestock and heavy loads.
Its date is disputed. Some accounts place the work in the 17th century, built by a local lord to join two villages; others attribute it to 1905, under Imam Yahya, saying it took about three years and cost a large sum for the time. Local tradition names the builder as a master mason called Usta Saleh, and holds that the strain of finishing a structure people thought impossible drove him mad. The bridge has been nicknamed the Bridge of Sighs, and it appears on the reverse of Yemen's 10-rial coin.
It belongs to Shaharah, a fortified mountain village about 2 km away as the crow flies, perched on the summit of Jabal Shaharah, a spur of Jabal al-Ahnum. Shaharah has three gates and old stone houses with a cistern. Mentioned by the 10th-century geographer al-Hamdani as a mountain fortress, it was a seat of Zaydi learning and one of the strongest refuges of the western highlands during the Ottoman wars of the 16th and 17th centuries; the Ottomans took it only once, in 1587. The Zaydi imam al-Mansur al-Qasim made it his capital and died here in 1620, and its congregational mosque is attributed to him.
Getting there
Shaharah lies in Amran Governorate, roughly 100 km north-west of Sanaa. The nearest city in the region is Hajjah, about 53 km away, and the nearest airport is Sanaa International Airport (SAH), about 95 km in a straight line. The final approach to the village and the bridge is by steep mountain track.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Shaharah Bridge is an arch bridge in Yemen. It was constructed in the 17th century by Usta Saleh Al-Soudi to connect two villages at the top of two mountains in Shaharah District, Amran Governorate, northern Yemen. Shaharah Bridge is a stone arch bridge and crosses a canyon 300 feet (91 m) deep; it is 65 feet (20 m) long, and 9 feet (2.7 m) wide, and is situated at an altitude of 2,600 metres (8,500 ft). The bridge is the only path to Shaharah, some 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) away as the crow flies, the town it is named after. It is one of the most famous bridges and tourist attractions in Yemen.
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