Burza Pash Roof (Kashmiri Birch-Bark Roof)

Burza pash (also written burz-push or burze pash) is the traditional earth-covered roof of the Kashmir Valley. Burza is the Kashmiri name for birch bark, taken from the white birch (burza kul), which today grows mainly between about 3,100 and 3,600 m (10,200-11,800 ft) in places such as Gulmarg and Sonamarg. For centuries many roofs in Srinagar were built with birch bark and earth, and in spring they turned into strips of flowering meadow. Shingles and then corrugated metal sheets have largely replaced it.

Construction

The roof was a close relative of the Scandinavian sod roof. Builders laid wooden planks over a frame of deodar (Himalayan cedar) poles, covered the boards with overlapping sheets of birch bark, and spread earth over the bark. The earth layer was about 3-4 inches (75-100 mm) thick. The thick layers of bark formed the waterproof surface, and the soil on top held them in place and insulated the house.

Heavy Kashmiri snowfalls were a real danger to a soil roof. Householders reached the roof through an opening called woabb to clear it, and paid snow-clearers, sheen mohniev, went round after each fall.

Flowering roofs

Seeds blown or dropped by birds, and bulbs planted deliberately, grew in the soil. Travellers and officials who wrote about the valley, among them François Bernier in the 17th century and Walter Lawrence in The Valley of Kashmir, described roofs covered with flowers. Local accounts list red tulips (gul-e-lala), irises in purple, white and yellow, crown imperial lilies and narcissus (yemberzal); around Baramulla flax (alish) was common. Some owners grew herbs or vegetables on the roof.

Birch-and-earth roofs were used on the houses of middle-class and wealthier families, and on shrines and mosques, including the Jamia Masjid, the old Hazratbal shrine and the Khanqah-e-Maula in Srinagar. Poorer households used simpler thatched roofs of grass and reeds.

Decline

Most houses and shrines built in Srinagar in the 18th and 19th centuries had burza pash roofs, and many homes kept them until about the late 19th century. Some owners then changed to wooden shingles, and shingles in turn gave way to cheap imported corrugated galvanised iron (CGI) sheets, a change that began in the British period and accelerated with modernisation. Critics point out that metal roofs make houses hotter in summer, whereas the earth roofs insulated well. The best-known surviving burza pash roof is on the Madin Saheb shrine at Hawal in Srinagar, perhaps the only public building in Kashmir whose birch-bark roof still flowers; it is in need of repair.