Photos taken in 1962 of these ancient cisterns. Wikipedia gives a lot of information, some of which is copied below:
“Regarding the original construction of which nothing is accurately known…” There is indeed little hard evidence and there are few reliable sources of information about the Tanks. One favored hypothesis is that
Himyar, a pre-Islamic Arabian kingdom that ruled parts of Yemen from 115 B.C. to 525 A.D., started to build water tanks in the area that eventually became the Cisterns of Tawila. The Himyarites are known to have employed water-catchment tanks in other areas under their rule. The proposed Himyaritic origins of the tanks may help explain a recessed, rectangular area in the Coghlan tank that, according to the Director of the site, could have been used in pre-Islamic times for
animal sacrifice (a ritual that the Himyarites were known to perform for a variety of occasions, including drought).
[1]
The Tanks were mentioned in some manuscripts after the coming of
Islam to Yemen in the 7th century A.D. “Aden has Tanks that store water when the rain falls,” wrote
Al-Hamdani in the 10th century.
[2] Al-Makdsi, writing three centuries later, also recorded the presence of wells and cisterns in Aden.
[3] By the time of the
Rasulid dynasty (1229-1454 A.D.), the Tanks had fallen into disrepair. However, the Rassulids recognized the utility of the Tanks and began to restore them.
[4] This restoration has led some to claim that the Rassulids built the Tanks, thereby obscuring what are, in all probability, the far more ancient origins of the Tanks. After the Rassulids, the Tanks once again fell into disrepair, damaged by flooding and neglect and filled with the rubble of successive floods.
Cisterns of Tawila 1962
Cisterns of Tawila 1962
Cisterns of Tawila 1962
Cisterns of Tawila 1962
From Wikipedia
Visitors at the Cisterns