Lecture 7: Village architecture in Jordan

Village Architecture in Jordan
(Hmud Village, MA’IN, Um-El-Kunndom)
Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz
Arch. Dania Abdel Aziz/ Lecture 7 1
4/6/2022
University of Jordan Year 2015/2016
Summer Semester

Hmud Village
‫حمود‬
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The Site
• It is located 15 kilometers northeast of Karak and 5.5 kilometers east of
“King’s Highway”. Hmud and it’s neighboring village of Smakiyeh, marks
the eastern edge of the fertile land of Moab Plateau.
• The land east of Hmud is arid with rough topography that contains little
fertile soil. The rough topography is caused by many small valleys that
zigzag and proceed northeast to meet Wadi El Mujib.
• Moving from west to east, the village of Hmud can be found on the side of
the deep valley, Wadi Hmud.
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Importance of its location
The location of Hmud is significant, as the last eastern examples of stone
architecture can be found, before the beginning of the desert. It represents the
end of the semi-nomadic agricultural land and the beginning of the Bedouin
land.
Rich basalt stone can be found in large amounts on the surface of the flat land.
Limestone and flint are found in visible layers at the sides of the valleys which
were used to build the village.
At the sides of the valleys, naturally shaped cantilevered layers of rock
provided ceilings and human shelters for shepherds.
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The Village
• The best view of Hmud is from the east, where the village appears as a one-
piece complex made of cubes that are similar in size and orientation. The
roofs of the houses are of similar height in each edge of the topography.
Moving downwards, the only two-story structure built of traditional
material can be seen. It is the last house in southeast Hmud, and was built
in 1921.
• The exterior appearance of the built structures in the village is a contrast of
white limestone and black basalt stone (the available materials surrounding
the village). This also helped the houses to blend in the natural landscape.
• Concrete houses are hardly present in this village. They were built later on
in the direction of the west, closer to the agricultural land.
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The House
• The house in Hmud represents an impressive example of a traditional Jordanian
house. The mukhtar of the village used to live here, and Khalaf Khalil Al
Halaseh is most likely the last mukhtar (1950s), and therefore the house was
named after him.
• It still contains mud furniture and built-in shelves that are in excellent condition.
• The size of the house is relatively small in comparison to the average size of a
typical Hmud house.
• The house is located in the middle of the complex and isn’t significant in its
exterior; it is built using basalt and limestone.
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• The house sits on the western side of a rectangular
courtyard that has two small rooms on the northern
side, the side of a large house on the east side and
an opening to the walkway on the south.
• It contains a grain storage unit made up of 6 bins
from mud and hay, called “Sandug.” It is
ornamented with abstractions of plants and crosses.
• The interior of the house contains two arches,
acting as seperators between the zones.
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The Church
• The Church in south of Hmud, built in 1910, is purely Jordanian and it’s
floor plan doesn’t contain any sign of Western characteristics. It might be
the only church in Jordan that is similar to village houses, without imposing
foreign forms, ornaments, materials or scale.
• It is probably the first built structure in Hmud, as people used to live in tents
that time.
• It has no courtyard or defined piece of land around it. A graveyard is
approximately 100 meters to its east.
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• The construction is similar to village houses, made up from limestones and
basalt. Its plan is almost rectangular with 4 thick arches that span the
shorter distance to carry the roof (which is made of wooden beams).
• It has only one entrance, located in the north side.
• The interior of the church is filled with colorful objects and vintage electric
chandeliers that hang from the ceiling.
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MA’IN ‫ماعين‬
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The site
• Located at The western edge of the Balqa plateau where it rises slightly
before it drops steeply into the Jordan Valley, and on one of the highest
hills that form this edge sits the village of Ma’in.
• The land between Ma’in and the northern end of the dead sea is extremely
rough and composed of a series of small steep valleys running mostly east
t west, and strips of cliffs and escarpments.
• Seven kilometres southwest of the well-known town of Madaba, Ma’in is
historically valuable as an area rich in Mosaic floors form the fifth century
A.D From the Pottery samples gathered from Ma’in evidence of earlier
occupations of the site dates the original site attraction as early as the
eighth century B.C.
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The Village
• In the highest part of the village the first houses were built by the Christian
Haddadin family before the end of the 19th century.
• The rest of Ma’in is composed of mostly new structure that set the direction of
growth towards the west.
• On the highest level of the village, foundations for the houses have been dug into
the hill so that the building rest on rock beds.
• The more houses dug, the higher the higher the excavated earth piled up between
them. The results in some of the houses having their height underground.
• One of the advantages of this situation, other than efficient thermal insulations is
easy access to the roof which may be reached by a small ramp, the “Hammaleh”
located at the back of the house.
• The Hammaleh is wide enough to allow
large amounts of grain and hay to be
brought to the top of the house and then
fed into special storage bins through small
openings in the ceiling.
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• One of the most interesting aspects of the architecture of this village is the
antiques located in almost every house, most of them as two figures placed n
the upper courses.
• These statues called the “king” and the “queen” are made out of marble that
was probably imported.
• Attention was given to the details of the figures costumes; but their heads are
missing.
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Courtyards
• The upper neighbourhood is an interesting example of a complex organized
around a neighbourhood.
• What makes this complex worthy of consideration is the variety of building
techniques that it displays.
• This part of Ma’in offers 4 types of structure: the typical Jordanian
rectangular house with arches carrying the ceiling; square rooms with cross
vaults; a stable with a barrel vault; and rooms of the 1930s, with steel “I”
beams.
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Key to roofing system
1. Steel I beams
2. Arches (one or two)
3. Cross vaults
4. Barrel vaults
5. Hammaleh
6. Subterranean chamber that could be an old grave
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• The courtyard is surrounded with different structures that show the gradual
growth of the complex.
• The yard is subdivided into 3 smaller parts by walls of man’s height, with
only gateways at the southern part of the complex.
• Old structure can be identified from the overlapping of the roofs; their
exterior walls often seem to penetrate the newer structure to become part of
their interior finish. The older structure represent the biggest houses with 2
arches inside.
• These houses, placed facing each other on the eastern and western sides of
the courtyard, represent the model for the Ma’in house. Connected by 3
rooms that were added later. With the way the ceilings were cross vaults it
indicates builders were from the west bank , since they are rare in Jordan.
• The structure with the barrel vault is a stable, not being part of the
perimeter courtyard and towards the inside means it was added later
• Spaces with low Barrel vaulting and small sizes 3-6 meteres are used to
shelter animals.
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• The one house in the courtyard is well
kept even with a part of its roof
destroyed.
• The entrance is simple rectangle with
a square opening above it, these are
the only openings the house had
before part of the roof fell.
• The front wall, where the door has an
unusual shape. It gains height towards
the middle above the door, instead of
a rectangular elevation, the upper
edge takes part as an arc.
• The connection between Hmud village and Ma’in
is strong through the interior.
• As in Hmud the interior of Ma’in house are rich in
their what storage bins
• The sandug of Main house has fewer decorations.
The house
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• While some interiors have no ornamentation,
the placement of the sandug with green interior
creates a special situation; it places under the
second arch of the house.
• Total separation is achieved by he fact that the
sundog has an addition on top of the bins that
doubles its height. the addition is for storing
woven items and bedding, one of them called
“Matwa”
• Only one opening, large enough to
accommodate the human body, allow access to
the space behind the mud unit, This space is
dark an finished with unpainted mud plaster;
provides room for hay and for storage.
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The plan of the house
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Um-El-Kunndom Village
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The Site
• The site is not a village but a complex consisting of a two-story house and a
large stable. Built during the middle of the 19th century, it’s the farmhouse
of the Bisharat family.
• This is site is 22 kilometers north-northeast of Ma’in, and it is
approximately 800 meters above sea level.
• The land west of Um-el-Kunndom is relatively rugged but more arable.
• The hills are limestone covered with red soil; along the hillsides, grooves
run westward towards the Jordan Valley.
• The hill on which the complex is situated has a number of caves and
cisterns which might have played a major part in the choice of the site.
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The Site
• There are no natural mountainside springs nearby, but traces of antiquities
indicate that the site was settled during eras long in the past.
• Caves and cisterns are some of the few architectural traces that are almost
indestructible; they provide shelter and water for new settlers arriving to
revive a site.
• After that, when settlers constructed rooms above the surface of the earth,
caves were then used for storage and for keeping animals.
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The Site
• In winter, people lived in caves, and in summer, they moved to goat-hair
tents.
• Bedouins do not live in caves.
• There used to be Palestinian peasants living in caves that were plastered
and furnished.
• Both caves and cisterns were used for storing wheat and straw.
• Cisterns were also used for storing rainwater since water was hard to get.
• The cisterns that were close to mansion was for the use of the owners, it
was filled with snow each winter and because of the good insulation of the
earth, the water would stay cool for months.
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The Architecture
• The complex is divided into three parts: the mansion, the reception
room with the gate, and the stables.
• The mansion is a rare example of sophisticated traditional
architecture, and it is one of the most properly restored and
maintained structures of its period in Jordan.
• The mansion belongs to Mamdouh Bisharat.
• Other examples of its type, mansions that were mostly constructed
by masons from Palestine during the last century, are found in Es-
Salt.
• These houses, unlike the typical fellahi house,
were constructed by skilled builders who
were specialized in cross-vault construction,
a building feature typical of the West Bank.
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The Architecture
• No wood is used as a structural material; all parts were
made of masonry under compression.
• The mansion in Um-el-Kunndom, whose parts were
constructed at different times, shows no exterior
ornamentation.
• The stonework in all four elevations is rough, especially
on the first floor, the older section of the house.
• Windows have no detailed frames.
• To enter the first floor, one may use either the doorway
in the west elevation or the east elevation, both lead to
the main central room, which is a long rectangular space
with a barrel-vaulted ceiling.
• The two doors set a strong east-west axis with an
accurate orientation to the sun that, at a certain time of
the year, sets with orange rays that enter from the
western doorway, exit from the eastern one.
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The Architecture
• Similar to the Liwan house of Samad, where a barrel vault is also placed
between two cross-vaulted room. Um-el-Kunndom house is larger in scale
and more like two liwan houses put together.
• The two rooms north of the middle room are connected to it with only one
door that is lined up with another doorway leading outside, the third and
least dominant entrance of the house.
• These two rooms are connected with an arch wide enough to allow the two
spaces to be experienced as one.
• These two rooms were used for storing grain, which explains the exterior
door and the lack of large windows.
• Both parts of this space have cross-vaulted ceilings. The eastern part has
only two small windows, no niches. The western part of the space has the
two doors, no windows, and three niches.
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The Architecture
• The other two rooms south of the middle one are the oldest and most
interesting. Both are connected to the central room and to each other, but
only the door of the western room is presently utilized.
• This room, in the southwestern corner of the house, is the oldest. It seems
to have been originally constructed with three doors and no windows; when
the rest of the first floor was added, what might have been a door to the
west was converted to a window.
• The fact that is the only perfectly squared room in the house suggests that it
is of earlier construction than the other rooms.
• In this room, the two doors and the window, are identical in shape and
dimensions with segmental arches and frames and sills treated as if the
openings were leading to the outside.
• The floor of this room is higher than the rest, causing one to step down one
or two steps when exiting.
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The Architecture
• On the southeastern corner of the first floor is
the most beautiful interior, not only in this
house, but possibly in any surviving traditional
architecture of nineteenth century in Jordan.
• This rectangular room has two barrel vaults,
with four vertical walls well framed in the shape
of an arch.
• The room has perfect proportions.
• The aesthetics of this room were a result of the
limitation of material that accepts only pure
compression, and the aesthetics of a strict
mathematical solution.
• One more room on the first floor, and addition
to the western elevation of the house, protrudes
outside the main mass of the structure and has
an exterior entrance. It is now used as a kitchen,
a function that might have been the same in the
past.
• Next to the entrance of the kitchen is a water
cistern called “Bir El-Thalj”, because it was
filled with snow during winter.
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The Architecture
• The second floor can be reached by a steep staircase in the central room.
• On the second floor, there is a terrace that can be accessed through a
wooden door. Half of the Balqa can be seen from this terrace.
• There are 3 identical bedroom on the second floor. These were the latest
added, exhibiting a different method of construction than that used in the
rest of the house.
• From outside, the walls are made of smoothly hewn, even stones. These
walls are bearing and relatively lighter. Almost half as thick as those of the
first floor.
• A unique construction system was used to roof these rooms where steel
beams were placed. This type of construction represents a transition
between the all compression vault and the modern two way concrete slab.
• It marks the beginning of the rejection of local building technology. Steel
put an end to the structural use of the arch, not only in Jordan, but
everywhere.
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The Architecture
• The doorways of these three bedrooms have segmental arches with unusual
keystones that were only seen in the Ottoman building in Kufranjeh.
• There is another room on the second floor that rises a few steps above the
level of the rest, this room a water reservoir with the only square domed
ceiling in the house.
• The madafeh consists of two parts. A gateway and a large room, both
spanned with cross vaulted ceiling.
• Stables were vital and were used for measuring local economy of the site.
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References
• Khammash, Ammar. Notes on Village Architecture in Jordan. Lafayette,
Louisiana. University of Southwestern Louisiana.
4/6/2022

Lecture 7: Village architecture in Jordan

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