NYT talks of a "2,500 year old Islamic cultural heritage site"

From the NY Times:

A 2,500-year-old Islamic cultural heritage site in Yemen’s capital was obliterated in an explosion early Friday, and witnesses and news reports said the cause was a missile or bomb from Saudi Arabia-led warplanes. The Saudi military denied responsibility.

The top antiquities protection official at the United Nations angrily condemned the destruction of ancient multistory homes, towers and gardens, which also killed an unspecified number of residents in Al Qasimi, a neighborhood in Sana’s Old City area.

“I am profoundly distressed by the loss of human lives as well as the damage inflicted on one of the world’s oldest jewels of Islamic urban landscape,” said the official, Irina Bokova, the director general of Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Given that Islam is less than 1400 years old, how can there be a 2,500 year old Islamic cultural heritage site?

UNESCO's website gives background:

Inhabited for more than 2,500 years, the city was given official status in the second century BC when it was an outpost of the Yemenite kingdoms. By the first century AD it emerged as a centre of the inland trade route. The site of the cathedral and the martyrium constructed during the period of Abyssinian domination (525-75) bear witness to Christian influence whose apogee coincided with the reign of Justinian. The remains of the pre-Islamic period were largely destroyed as a result of profound changes in the city from the 7th century onwards when Sana'a became a major centre for the spread of the Islamic faith as demonstrated by the archaeological remains within the Great Mosque, said to have been constructed while the Prophet was still living.

...The houses in the old city are of relatively recent construction and have a traditional structure.

Ah, so the city is 2500 years old but the Muslims destroyed the original buildings. The layout is Islamic and the more modern structures respected the style of the older ones.

It is not clear that the buildings destroyed were ancient at all.

Sanaa is indeed a very nice example of Islamic architecture, but it sure isn't a 2,500 year old example of that.



(h/t abeleehane)