Al-Muhdhar Mosque Minaret

Tarim, in the Wadi Hadhramaut, is a town of scholars and mudbrick towers, and around 1914 it acquired the tallest earthen structure in the world. The Al-Muhdhar Mosque itself is centuries older; the minaret is a modern addition, a square shaft of sun-dried brick rising some fifty metres and finished in white lime, with the stair wound inside the thickness of the wall. Published accounts name the builder as 'Awad Salman 'Afif al-Tarimi, a local master already practised in clay lattices and domes, working under the supervision of the scholar Abu Bakr bin Shihab. That attribution is what makes the building unusual here: Hadhrami earthen architecture is normally catalogued as anonymous vernacular, and the pool that results is poorer for it. Nothing about the construction is imported — the material was dug nearby and the labour was Tarimi.