Zabid

Zabid lies on the hot Tihama coastal plain and was the capital of Yemen for centuries and one of the great centres of Islamic learning, where the University of Zabid taught law and where algebra was refined. It holds a UNESCO World Heritage listing for a domestic architecture found nowhere else, brick houses whose plain outer walls hide facades of intricate carved and moulded brickwork facing the courtyards. Eighty six mosques survive in a town of modest size. The heat here is the fiercest in the country. The finest brickwork faces inward, so the town gives up little from the street.