Roofing in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a mountainous, landlocked country of cold winters, hot, dry summers and frequent earthquakes. Its traditional houses are built of earth, with two main kinds of roof: the flat mud roof carried on timber beams, found across most of the country, and the mud-brick dome, or gunbad, which dominates the villages of the western plains around Herat. In Kabul, newer concrete houses now stand beside these older forms.

Climate and hazards

Much of the country is arid, and earth is the most widely used traditional building material. Winters are harsh, especially in the highlands, and earthen roofs need regular repair to survive snow and rain. Earthquakes are frequent: Afghanistan's traditional builders developed techniques such as walls of bricks laid diagonally to improve performance, and in early October 2023 a series of four strong earthquakes destroyed many earthen houses in Herat province.

Roofing history

Earth construction in the region has a very long history. In the Herat area, the skills of building mud-brick domical vaults are said to go back about 2,300 years. Elsewhere, the flat timber-and-mud roof is the usual traditional house roof. In Kabul, newer concrete houses contrast with traditional timber-framed buildings such as those of the Murad Khani quarter of the old city, whose traditional building methods are documented by the Turquoise Mountain organisation.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

Flat timber-and-mud roof. Timber beams span the walls and form the base of the roof. On these, builders lay woven willow branches (in Kabul often brought from Zabul) or bamboo (from Jalalabad and Mazar-e Sharif), then a layer of mud (ghoragel). On a single-storey building the top is finished with mud plaster; otherwise the walls of the next storey rise from it. Carved timber panels may be fixed under the beams as a ceiling, catching dust that falls through from the roof. Because of the harsh climate, these roofs need maintenance twice a year, before and after winter.

Gunbad (mud-brick dome). Around Herat, rural houses are roofed with domical vaults (gunbad) or jack arches of sun-dried mud brick, finished with mud plaster (kah-gel). The domes use special adobe blocks thinner than ordinary bricks and are built using at least six recognised techniques, the most common being chahar swarak. Thick "load walls" carried up to about one-third of the dome's height resist its outward thrust. An opening at the top of the dome, also called badgir, ventilates and cools the room. Walls are of cob (pakhsa) or adobe (khasht-e-kham), sometimes with stone.

After the 2023 earthquakes, many Herat families again chose domes for new building because the materials and skills are cheap and widely available. A UNDP-supported retrofit tested on a damaged house involved tying the walls together with wire-mesh bands, filling cracks with gypsum or clay-gypsum mortar, fixing wire mesh to both faces of the dome, linked by 4 mm (0.16 in) galvanised wires through the joints, and rebuilding the load wall and plaster.

Roofing today

Domes remain the usual roof of rural houses around Herat, and concrete construction has spread in Kabul.

Notable roofs

• Herat domed villages: clustered mud-brick gunbad houses around shared courtyards.
• Murad Khani, Kabul: old-city quarter of traditional timber-framed buildings.

Local roofing terms

• gunbad (Dari): dome or domical vault
• ghoragel: mud applied to a flat roof
• kah-gel: mud plaster
• pakhsa: cob wall
• khasht-e-kham: adobe (sun-dried brick)
• badgir: ventilation opening at the top of a dome
• senj: brick infill set diagonally within a timber frame
• chahar swarak: the commonest dome-building technique around Herat

Sources and gaps

National housing statistics and information on building regulation, modern roofing materials and domestic roofing manufacturers in Afghanistan: published information is limited.