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Posted On: October 14th 2026, 04:43 pm
Mountain houses, Wadi Wurayah
The first photo is a reconstructed mountain house in Wadi Wurayah, built about fifteen years ago in the traditional way. The second shows the remains of a similar house inside the park, about a kilometre away.
The houses were constructed from locally sourced materials. The low walls are of rounded cobbles, The roof is a frame of branches covered in thatch. It looks like grass, but is ishbaq, the mountain spurge Euphorbia larica, which grows on the surrounding slopes. Everything came from close by.
These were not permanent homes. Families moved between the coast and the wadi through the year, and a light shelter of stone and thatch suited that kind of life. It could be put up quickly, used for a season and repaired on the next visit.
The roof was always the first part to go. Once a house fell out of use, the thatch rotted or blew away, and the walls slowly slumped inwards. What survives is what you see in the second photo: a ring of stones a few courses high around a cleared earth floor, with a second ring just behind it and a shrub rooted in the wall. Footings like these can still be found in Wadi Wurayah, and they are easy to walk past without noticing.
Wadi Wurayah became the UAE’s first protected mountain area in 2009 and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site managed by the Fujairah Environmental Authority. It is mostly known for its pools, waterfall and wildlife, but people were living in and moving through these valleys long before it was protected.
@ews_wwf
#WadiWurayah #HajarMountains #UAEheritage #VernacularArchitecture #Fujairah
The first photo is a reconstructed mountain house in Wadi Wurayah, built about fifteen years ago in the traditional way. The second shows the remains of a similar house inside the park, about a kilometre away.
The houses were constructed from locally sourced materials. The low walls are of rounded cobbles, The roof is a frame of branches covered in thatch. It looks like grass, but is ishbaq, the mountain spurge Euphorbia larica, which grows on the surrounding slopes. Everything came from close by.
These were not permanent homes. Families moved between the coast and the wadi through the year, and a light shelter of stone and thatch suited that kind of life. It could be put up quickly, used for a season and repaired on the next visit.
The roof was always the first part to go. Once a house fell out of use, the thatch rotted or blew away, and the walls slowly slumped inwards. What survives is what you see in the second photo: a ring of stones a few courses high around a cleared earth floor, with a second ring just behind it and a shrub rooted in the wall. Footings like these can still be found in Wadi Wurayah, and they are easy to walk past without noticing.
Wadi Wurayah became the UAE’s first protected mountain area in 2009 and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site managed by the Fujairah Environmental Authority. It is mostly known for its pools, waterfall and wildlife, but people were living in and moving through these valleys long before it was protected.
@ews_wwf
#WadiWurayah #HajarMountains #UAEheritage #VernacularArchitecture #Fujairah
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