SALVAR LA HISTORIA

Mientras la guerra amenaza a millones de yemeníes, historiadores y arqueólogos

Workers in Yemen's capital Sanaa rebuild a 350-year-old mud brick residence owned by the Al Jerafi family. The city, controlled by Houthi rebels since 2014, is the target of airstrikes by a coalition force led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. An attack in 2015 damaged the Al Jerafi home, which has been in the family for 150 years.

STANDING AND AT THE BOTTOM of a dusty wadi, I lift my face to gaze at the massive structure above me: rows of precision-cut stones, perfectly laid without cement some 2,500 years ago, stretch 50 feet into the faded sky. of the desert.

To call this ancient marvel of engineering a mere dam is almost dismissive. When the High Marib Dam was built in what is now Yemen, its earth and stone walls encompassed an area nearly twice the size of the Hoover Dam. The colossal locks that still stand were part of a sophisticated system that controlled the flow of seasonal rains from Yemen's highlands to the parched eastern desert, feeding agricultural oases on 9,600 hectares of wasteland. . In the midst of it all, an economic center prospered: Marib, the capital of Saba, the Arab kingdom best known for its legendary leader Belkis, immortalized in the Bible and the Koran as the Queen of Sheba.