Page 271 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Seven

Bringing a new feature to the town—the wind-tower
house
These houses were built by masons, who, like a certain Ustad
Muhammad,12 stood in a line of sons who had learnt from their
fathers how to design and construct houses in order to minimise the
discomforts of heat and humidity on the coasts of the Gulf. The
majority of people on the Arab coast usually lived in palm-frond
houses which were cooled by the breeze; those who had to live in a
fort or tower used the upper levels to catch the wind during the hot
summer months. The influx of people from the Persian coast
introduced the wind towers to the ports of the Trucial States. In the
Bastakiyah every compound had at least one, while in the other
quarters of Dubai, Dairah and Shindaghah, this feature was readily
introduced by those inhabitants who could afford to build more
elaborate houses.
Wind lowers on two-storey buildings rise about fifteen metres
above the ground; the upper part consists of four concave inner walls
with pillars, arches and often intricate plasterwork to continue the
square shape of the tower. Wind from any direction is caught on the
concave walls and funnelled down through a chimney to a room
beneath, where all occupants of the house seek this breeze for relief
from the heat of the summer. Other features of a typical house in the
Bastakiyah of Dubai were, as is usual in Arab compounds, an inner
courtyard surrounded by rooms, roofed verandas open to this
courtyard, and rooftop areas which were screened and walled on the
outside, and, in the two-storey houses, galleries overlooking the
courtyard. The building materials were, for the foundations, saruj, a
mixture of red clay from Iran with manure, dried and baked in a kiln;
lumps of coral; slabs of limestone; and plaster for decorative screens
as well as for overall finishing. Chondel wood from East Africa, palm-
frond matting, mud and straw were used for roofing.
The expansion of the Bastakiyah, which grew to contain well over
fifty compounds for large extended families, can be seen as a symbol
for the changing emphasis in the economy of Dubai as well as for the
new cultural and social influence and as a new dimension to the
social structure of the City State.13
In the following paragraph a description of some aspects of the
physical environment which obtained in all quarters of Dubai is
given in an attempt to convey a more complete picture of life in Dubai
in the difficult two and a half decades from 1930 to 1955.

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