Page 54 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

44 Arabian Studies IV
(Plate 15), whose similarities to Bayt al-Mu’ayyad have already
been mentioned. Further afield in Dubai (Plate 14), plaster
ornamental panels occur whose motifs are very close, if not
identical, to those at Samahlj. Enquiries regarding the origin of the
plaster-panel makers and the architects themselves provided only
the vaguest information, although it coincided with the distribution
through the central Arabian Gulf coast area of the plaster
ornament and the house-type. I was assured that the people who
acted as plasterers were specialists in their field as were the
architects, but I was unable to satisfactorily establish whether or
not a plaster-panel maker and an architect might sometimes or
might even usually be one and the same individual. I was also
assured that the plasterers were from al-Baljrayn and that they
travelled from town to town plying their trade: the persistence of
certain motifs in plaster seems to confirm this information, while
the spread of the cube-shaped module upon which the entire
architectural style is based also implies that the architects who
used it travelled from site to site. Whether it is true to assert that
these architects or their building and ornamental styles originated
in al-Babrayn is far more difficult to decide: what is clear, on the
other hand, is that there was a common architectural currency
shared by the towns and villages of the central area of the Arabian
Gulf coast which flourished in the latter part of the 19th century
and probably during the earlier years of the present century.
Today, however, the last craftsmen are abandoning their trades,
young men are failing to adopt the old building techniques and
inherit the skill and building patterns, concrete is replacing coral
aggregate, plaster and wood, and the old buildings themselves are
falling into ruin where they are not being totally eradicated by
urban development. With the loss of buildings like Bayt al-
Mu’ayyad and the other Samahlj houses the record is lost of a style
of architecture which prevailed not only at the end of the 19th
century but presumably much earlier in this area of the Gulf : it is
to be hoped that those houses which still stand might be preserved
from further destruction, and indeed restored as examples of an
important local tradition of building.

Notes

1. J. G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf ‘Oman and Central
Arabia, Calcutta, 1908, 1915 (reprint, 1970), IIB, 1268, gives the variant
form Sam&hij which, he points out, was locally pronounced SamahT.
2. Lorimer, op. cit. IB, 787 ff.