"Kawkaban and northern Shibam" a Kawkaban Travel Page by Nansen

This fortified city is placed on the Jabel Kawkaban, at 2850 m high . The city owns to the Al-Mahwit region, a mountanious and beautiful region with the most fertile crops in Yemen. In the valleys or wadis of the region fields are green, and coffee, and qat are grown up.

Kawkaban was builded as a refuge to the people from Shibam, the town placed in Kawkaban´s valley, down of the cliffs. At war, people from Shibam went to Kawkaban in order to be safe from their enemies, getting into the old walls that surrounded the town. Inside the city, there were many waterpools and grain stores, so they could support siege long time.Because of all these things, Kawkaban was so difficult to defeat that it was called Kawkaban “The invincible”. Finally, during war in 1960, Kawkaban was defeated by republicans, and walls and other buildings were razed.