Traditional house with large wooden door; the smaller door in the middle for people, while the larger door is opened only to allow animals to pass through.
Wooden shuttered window.
A traditional "guest house," a building form that is rapidly disappearing. Each of the major families, or clans, of the village used to have such structures where men could gather, particuarly if there were outside guests. By the 1980's only two remained.
A massive new city-style building at the heart of the village, where the main road intersects with the bridge over the drainage canal to the eastern half of the village. The lower story eventually became a tea house and shops while the upper stories are apartments
Traditional house plan with one floor below for humans, and a "half floor" above used for raising rabbits, chickens, ducks, and other animals.
Traditional mud-brick home with dried wheat and rice stalks on the roof for use as fuel in baking bread
Mud-brick house with storage silos for grain on the roof.
Traditional "one-and-a-half-floor" house viewed from the side.
A new "red brick" house (painted yellow). Since the price of factory-produced red brick was constantly going up, families would buy a thousand or more whenever possible and store them in piles in the street.
Traditional mud-brick out with small wood shuttered windows.
One of the earliest red-brick homes built in the village, with decorative wooden balcony.
"Filigree" pattern created from mud-bricks covered with a dung and straw mixture (jilla).
Patties of animal dung drying on a mud brick wall for use as fuel later.
Decoration on a traditional house -- the "filigree" pattern is created with mud bricks coated with a mixture of dung and straw (jilla). The protrusions in the wall are the ends of the roof beams.
The ends of roof beams covered over with dung and straw (jilla) used to protect the mud brick from rain.
Shrine of a powerful local Sufi saint, in the graveyard at the edge of the village.
House with a covered shelter for animals alongside; many houses have such structures behind and attached to the main structure.
Mud brick houses can be painted, often for special occasions such weddings or the return from pilgrimages, but the paint usually wears away over the winter due to the intense rain storms from the Mediterranean.
The entrance to one of the two surviving "guest houses."
Red brick being stored for a future home.
A unique tradition in the village of al-Bakatush was the creation of "masatib Ramadan" (Ramadan porches), decorations over the external mud-brick benches (s. mastaba, pl. masatib) of the houses topped with a Ramadan bride ('arusa), or in this case two. Young boys try to kidnap the "bride" by prying her off the wall and then parade her through the village alleyways, ending up at the threshhold of the village headman's mosque where the earthen figure is crumbled and scattered about. Families playfully try to defend their "brides" from being kidnapped by shouting at the boys and menacing them with stick or rocks. For a complete description, see "Feathered Brides" Muqarnas: Journal of Islamic Art and Architecture, Vol. 11 (1994): 166-178.
Ramada mastaba with one "bride" ('arusa)
The entryway to the village headman's mosque (masgid il-'umda) where the Ramadan mastaba figurines are brought and then crumbled and scattered.
Ramadan mastaba before the "bride" ('arusa) has been attached on the first day of Ramadan.
Ramadan mastaba with one "bride" ('arusa)
A double Ramadan mastaba
Ramadan mastaba
A dovecot or "pigeon tower" (burg hamam) for raising pigeons, a major source of protein in the village diet. They are often the most striking architectural feature of a village, especially when seen from afar.
Pigeon towers are found in a wide variety of different forms and styles
Shrine of a powerful local Sufi saint, in the graveyard at the edge of the village.