ZABID

ZABID, site located centrally across the 50-lan wide coastal plain of the Tihama, in the Republic of Yemen (i4°i2' Nj 43°i9' E). Founded in 820 CE (ah 203) and now a seat of local government, Zabid’s medieval prosperity was the result of irrigable land watered by seasonal floods, good ground water, access to tlie Red Sea, and ease of ground communication along the pilgrimmage routes to Mecca.

Mention of the city’s walls and four gates appears in the commentaries of'Umarah al-Yamani (twelfth century) and al-Khazrajl (fifteenth cenmry). The walls also are emphasized in Ibn al-Mujawir’s thirteenth-century map of tlie city: it shows a concentric wall system, with varying dimensions attributed to different dynasties. Curiously, the city wall with largest circumference is ascribed to the little-known and rather weak eleventli-century Najahid dynasty of Yemen. There has been a tendency for modern commentators to assume that Zabid’s standing gates reflect the medieval configuration of the city (see Chelhod, 1978). Surveys by the Canadian Archaeological Mission of the Royal Ontario Museum, directed by E. J. Keall, indicate tliat the modern gates have no great antiquity (Keall, 1984). In his unpublished diary Glaser located tire pre-Islamic city on a map at a point to km (6 mi.) north of modern Zabid (see map reproduced in Pauly-Wissova, 1968, p. 1315). From the study of sherds found on a large site north of Zabid, the mission’s finds lend credence to Glaser’s otherwise unsubstantiated observation (see Keall, 1983). This site may date back to tlie second millennium bce.

Beginning in 1982, the Canadian mission, guided by 1:50,000 maps, surveyed Zabid and its surrounding area. All of the sites found were Islamic, with the exception of the one north of Zabid and anotlier found in a range of dunes close to tlie coast. Imported Chinese wares furnish vital dates from the tenth to nineteenth centuries. Apart from them, almost all of the pottery is unique to the project: it appears to have little in common with the ceramic finds from the Saudi littoral or the Egyptian Red Sea coast. Petrographic analysis has characterized local production and confirmed the identity of tlie Islamic imports (mostly from Iraq and Iran).

In 1987, tlie Canadian mission designed an excavation program to define the development of the city (see Keall, 1989, 1991). The strata were found to have been badly disturbed by intrusive pits. Extensive damage had been caused by brick robbers who had trenched along wall lines to remove baked bricks. Traces of the original walls were positively revealed by the cobblestone footings that, lacking recyclable value for the robbers, had been left. It has been possible to identify occupation from the ninth century CE to the present. The perimeter wall of the Zabid citadel is a makeshift arrangement from around 1904. A fort was first built there during the sixteenth-century Ottoman occupation.

Outside the citadel, traces of copperworking have been tentatively associated with coin production. The implication is that tlte area was always a government quarter. At a site farther south, the remnants of fourteenth-fifteenth-century domestic buildings were buried beneath tlte berm of a moat—a clear indication tliat tire last surviving city wall was a moderately recent one. East of Zabid, a nintli-tenth-cen-tury workshop produced pottery greatly influenced by contemporaneous Iraqi styles. The clay source was wadi alluvium, which tlte potter had collected by diverting flood water onto tlie site in settling ponds.

North of file city, excavations uneartlied a sequence of buildings, though only sparse floors and foundation trenches survived the brick robbers. Fragments of carved and painted plaster reflect the quality of the structures, which may have been suburban villas set among watered gardens. The sandy conditions prevalent at all stages reflect an environment little different from today’s. Provisions for watering the gardens are indicated by the kind of underground pipes the project unearthed. Two sets of glazed eartlienware pipes were found outside of Zabid, as well as a covered conduit that comes from tlie direction of tlie mountains (see Hehmeyer,