Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
around the qat market, is a much more staid but no less rewarding place to explore. The
stone houses, designed in a style unique to Ibb, are typically four to five storeys high, with
facades decorated with geometrical friezes and circular
qamiriya
(usually moon-shaped,
stained-glass windows).
In the middle of the old town,
Al-Jalaliya Mosque
dates to the time of the Ottomans. The
fortress
perched on the hill nearby is, sadly, closed, but you can get good views of the town
from
Jabal Rabi
, around 700m from the town centre.
Sleeping
There are a couple of basic hotels in the market area. They're all as cheap as chips, but
much less appetising. It's much better to stay out on the road to Al-Udayn, on the edge of
town, where there are a bunch of cleaner, quieter and far superior hotels. The
Al-Riyad Hotel
(Al-Udayn St)
was always a popular one out here with foreign tourists.
WORTH A TRIP
JIBLA
Situated 8km southwest of Ibb, Jibla is stunningly placed at the summit of a hill. The town served as the capital
for much of highland Yemen under the Sulayhid dynasty in the 11th and 12th centuries, and was particularly pros-
perous under the benevolent and impossibly long-named Sayyida al-Hurra Arwa bint Ahmad as-Sulayhi. For-
tunately this mouthful was quickly reduced to plain old Queen Arwa, but by the time of her death at the age of 92,
she had proved she was anything but plain. By building numerous schools, roads, bridges and mosques, her
policies of investing the kingdom's treasury in projects for the good of the average person mean that she's still re-
membered fondly today as a 'Little Sheba'.
It was thanks to this investment in education that the town gained a reputation as a centre for Islamic learning,
and even today the annexe next to the
Queen Arwa Mosque
(admission by donation) serves as a madrassa. The
crumbling
Dar as-Sultana Palace
is worth checking out though due to the dangerous state of the semi-collapsed
building you cannot enter. If it's still open the Queen Arwa Museum contained some lovely annotated
manuscripts belonging to the queen and her father. Finally, Jibla has attained local fame for its excellent
qat mar-
ket
.
TOP OF CHAPTER
Ta'izz
04 / POP 467,000
Ibn Battuta, the great 14th-century Arab traveller, once described Ta'izz as 'one of the
largest and most beautiful cities'. It's still large - Yemen's third-largest city - but for
beauty you need to look a little harder. The city has suffered heavily from unplanned urb-
