Page 51 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

Bayt al-Mu’ayyad 41
were at their worst, the inhabitants of Bayt al-Mu’ayyad would
have moved upstairs to the more ventilated upper room to gain
relief from the climate through the breezes caught by the numerous
upper-storey windows.7

Resting-places in the open air in Bayt al-Mu’ayyad. Bayt al-
Mu’ayyad is provided with a number of resting-places in the open
air, situated both in the courtyard and, far more publicly, outside
the enclosure. These, like the more open upper-storey rooms, were
used in hot weather, but when sunlight had passed off and the day
become cooler.
Within the courtyard of Bayt al-Mu’ayyad there are three low
platforms in front of rooms A, E and J, and although virtually
invisible today, there was originally a further platform in front of
room F: the symmetry which I have already mentioned with
respect to the general design of Bayt al-Mu’ayyad is thus main­
tained in the arrangement of these platforms, known as liwan. The
liwan measure approximately 9x3 m., including a hard cement­
like frame which buttresses the packed earth surface of each
platform. Each rises 10-15 cm. above the surface of the courtyard
itself and was originally approached by a flight of three- steps, but
such is the disintegration of the liwan today that only the steps to
the liwan in front of room A are still visible. The liwan provided
the inhabitants of the house with a place to sit in the open air and
in the relative privacy of the courtyard of Bayt al-Mu’ayyad. Each
platform would have been covered with matting or carpets for
people to engage in the usual social activities of Arabia, conver­
sation, coffee or tea drinking, and under certain circumstances, the
smoking of tobacco. The number and positions of the liwan is
apparently related to the need for shade: thus, in the morning
sunlight, the eastern liwan would have fallen in the shade of the
eastern wing of the house, while in afternoon and early evening,
the western liwan, shaded from the descending sun by the west
wing of the house, would have been used instead.
Another place for sitting outside Bayt al-Mu’ayyad is the
dichchah (dakkah), a low bench 0-55 m. high and 0-6 m. deep, built
of coral aggregate and plastered, running along the outside of the
eastern wing of the main building and along the eastern end of the
northern wall as far as the darwazah. The dichchah, like the liwan,
served as a place for sitting in the open air in the late afternoon
and evening when it would have been shielded from the setting sun
by the buildings of Bayt al-Mu’ayyad. However, the presence of
the dichchah against the eastern, seaward wall was dictated not
only by the need for shade in the afternoon, but also for the