YEMEN UPDATE
YEMEN
REVIEWS
- Minaret Building
and Apprenticeship in Yemen
- by Trevor
Marchand
- Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001,
285 pp.
-
- Reviewed by Cynthia
Myntti
-
- [Yemen
Update 44 (2002)
-
-
- Trevor Marchand, a Canadian architect
turned social anthropologist, has produced an important book based
on his PhD dissertation at the School of Oriental and African
Studies at London University. In 1996-97 Marchand worked in
San‘a as a building laborer, and the insights gained from
this experience in participant-observation serve as the core of
the book.
-
- The published works linking the
disciplines of anthropology and architecture - still remarkably
few in number - tend to focus on either the social factors in
domestic design or symbolism in monumental and vernacular
architecture. Marchand takes a different and valuable tack: he
is interested in the way traditional building knowledge is
transferred from master to apprentice. Unlike modern design and
construction training, the aspiring traditional builder in Yemen
learns without academic lectures or expert drawings to reflect on.
Instead, it is through the very process "of making" that personal
capability is tested and expertise is gained.
-
- After introductory chapters on Yemeni
society and the minaret in mosque architecture, Marchand organizes
the heart of the book into three chapters: Foundations, Making it
above Grade, and Completing the Dome. This organization compares
explicitly the vertical inside-out construction of the minaret
with the stages of occupational proficiency (from laborer or
shaqi to master or usta), and also with the stages of
religious learning (submission or islam, faith or
iman, and paramount understanding or ihsan). These
parallels are illuminating and also provocative; the implication
is that the path to mastery requires remarkable discipline and
aspiration, and only a select few ever reach the
pinnacle.
-
- The book contains a rich description of
how the minarets that have made San‘a famous in architectural
circles are actually constructed, and Marchand provides clear and
elegant architectural drawings and numerous photographs to
illustrate his main points. He ends with the intriguing
speculation that democratic trends in the country run counter to
the opaque and authoritarian system that produces master builders
in the traditional construction trade, and that these social and
political currents, rather than changes in taste, offer the
greatest threat to its survival.
-
- The book's defects are minor in
comparison to its many strengths, but they are irritating
nonetheless. The book contains a number of mispellings and the
references in the preface are not cited in the bibliography, signs
that the book may have been published in haste and with undo care.
The intermittent discussions of cognitive theory, while
appropriate to a thesis, are nearly incomprehensible and detract
from rather than add to the book. Finally, as one who is
currently moving in the reverse direction as Trevor Marchand (I am
an anthropologist studying architecture), I believe he overstates
the difference between traditional apprenticeship in the building
trades and modern architectural education. An increasing number
of architectural schools have in their curriculum what are called
"design-build" projects. My Yale classmates and I are about to
embark on the most important stage of our architectural training,
building a house in our community, where we will learn by "making"
just like the builders of Yemen.
