Where are reed houses found?
Where are reed houses found?
Southern Iraq
Mudhif Houses Giant reed houses made in the marshes of Southern Iraq.
What is the building material of a mudhif?
First constructed in the marshes of what is now southern Iraq over 5,000 years ago, the mudhif is a unique local meeting place constructed entirely of reeds, straw and other natural materials.
What was the effect of destroying the Mesopotamian wetlands in Iraq?
Probable extinction of several plant and animal species endemic to the Marshes. Higher soil salinity in the Marshes and adjacent areas, resulting in loss of dairy production, fishing, and rice cultivation.
What are reed houses?
A mudhif is a special type of sarifa; a structure made from reeds which grow naturally in the marshlands and is used by the village sheik as a guest-house. The number of arches used in a mudhif is dictated by the tribe and family group.
What are houses made of in Iraq?
Reeds, clay, straw, bricks, and wood were the most popular building materials used by builders from this region.
Why did Saddam Hussein drain the marshes?
Saddam Hussein, who accused the region’s Marsh Arab inhabitants of treachery during the 1980-1988 war with Iran, dammed and drained the marshes in the 1990s to flush out rebels hiding in the reeds. The Marsh Arabs have lived in the wetlands for millennia, but are on the fringes of Iraqi society.
How many men does House Reed have?
They are a minor house in the North, perhaps fielding at most 2,000 men, who are effective at guerilla warfare within their own borders but likely ineffective as a fighting force outside of it. Since they didn’t participate in Robb’s war, why would anyone care about them?
What is a Batak house?
A traditional Batak Toba house is a rectangular building on stilts, which can be accessed by wooden steps from the ground. Typical of a Batak Toba house is the steeply rising roof with eaves. The huge roof is in the shape of a saddleback with sharply projecting gables.
What is Mangyan house?
The house is the only encompassing social unit that represents Mangyan Patag society as a whole. However, the house is also a place to live in and to communicate with the ancestors through the spring, which links the sky with the earth and the underworld.
How long does a reed house last?
In the spring, if the marsh waters rose too high, a five-arched raba could be taken down, moved to higher ground, and re-erected in less than a day. With proper care and repair, reed dwellings could last for well over 25 years.
What is Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’?
It was Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’; unique wetlands in southern Iraq where a people known as the Ma’dan, or ‘Arabs of the marsh’, lived in a Mesopotamian Venice, characterised by beautifully elaborate floating houses made entirely of reeds harvested from the open water.
How many Marsh Arabs still live in Iraq?
Only 1,600 of of the nearly half million Marsh Arabs recorded in the 1950s were estimated to still be living in the traditional housing in the new millenium. It was considered a lost culture until a remarkable recovery began to take place in 2003 when local communities began breaching Saddam Husseins’s dikes after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
What happened to Iraq’s wetlands?
After the fall of Saddam’s regime in 2003 following the invasion of Iraq by the United States, the dikes that had blocked water flowing to the marshlands were broken. The same years, a four-year drought came to an end — a coincidence that helped restore the wetlands to 50% of the size it had been in the 1970s.
