Centuries-old houses major attraction in Balad

Over 300,000 people have already visited several centuries-old buildings here at the Jeddah Heritage Festival, organizers said recently.
The houses of Naseef, Jamjoom, Baeshen, Gabel, Banaja and Zahid are among the most popular and oldest buildings in Balad, they said.
The historical mansion preserving the ancient Hijazi architectural style was built in 1856 as the house of the Baeshen family. It served as a meeting point for scholars, social and cultural figures, and a venue for poetry recitals and literary and community discussions.
The current head of the Baeshen family, Sheikh Aboud Baeshen, said property owners in the area must preserve their old buildings for posterity.
Baeshen said there was also a need to preserve the handicrafts of the past centuries such as carpentry, dyeing and traditional culinary skills.
He said the Baeshen family has played a significant role in the cultural progress of the Kingdom by donating several ancient manuscripts and other historical documents to the King Abdul Aziz Research Foundation and a library that contains many books on history, science and religion.
A part of the house has been allocated for Jeddah’s encyclopedic historical exhibition undertaken by author Abdul Quddus Al-Ansari, he said.
He said the house also has a museum of coins and postal stamps. A part has been made available for night prayers during Ramadan for over 100 years, he said.
Baeshen said builders installed large wooden windows and used a great deal of timber to decorate the walls, which helped move the air around the house. The houses were built next to each other and had curved fronts to cast shade on each other, he said.
The meeting halls of the house have verses of the Holy Qur’an written in beautiful calligraphy by Sheikh Muhammad Tahir Kurdi, calligraphist of the Makkah copy of the Qur’an, and Sheikh Asaad Muhammad Hibal.
The first Baeshen house was built by Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah Baeshen, chief of the commercial community in Jeddah, during the reign of the Ottomans in 1834.
The northwestern part of the house is 150 years old and the Al-Qibali Al-Shimali section is older. Both parts have displays of classical calligraphy and handicrafts.
Another ancient building, Naseef House, which is a museum and cultural center, was the family home of Omar Naseef Effendi, governor of Jeddah. He was a member of a wealthy merchant family. King Abdul Aziz stayed in his house as a guest for a decade after annexing Jeddah into the Kingdom in 1926.
Elders of the city built their homes from purified stone extracted from Al-Arbaeen Lake and modified manually. This was in addition to the timber, which was imported from neighboring areas such as Wadi Fatima, and from abroad.
They also used mud to glue parts together. Builders arranged the building stones over each other, separated by pieces of wood, which helped to balance weight distribution on the walls.