Saudi Arabia’s
heritage treasures

Petra, the ancient rock-carved city in modern-day Jordan, is famed throughout the world for its monumental ruins, left behind by the lost civilization of the Nabataeans. But Petra tells only half the story of this mysterious people whose empire of trade at its peak 3,000 years ago dominated Arabia for about two centuries.

Now, as Saudi Arabia opens up to global tourism, the world is invited to travel 500 kilometers south from Petra to discover the wonders of Hegra, its sister city, carved from the rocks in a remote valley that was once at the crossroads of international trade. 

Some 200 kilometers inland from the Red Sea, Hegra is situated on a large plain southeast of the Hijaz Mountains, studded with hills of sandstone, isolated or grouped together to form massifs that have been dramatically sculpted by northwesterly winds, which have blown through the region every spring and early summer for millennia. 

Of the 100 or more tombs carved into the rocks of Hegra, the majority are adorned with decorated facades while a third carry Nabataean inscriptions. (Saudi Ministry of Tourism)

In addition to creating the monumental canvases upon which the Nabataeans carved their story, the winds have also formed strange and evocative shapes, such as the three-story rock 10 kilometers northeast of the modern town of AlUla, sculpted over millions of years to resemble an elephant.

Most of the monuments and inscriptions visible at Hegra date from the first centuries BCE to about 75 CE, but shards of pottery and other objects found recently at the site suggest that human settlement there began possibly in the third or second century BCE.

The earliest known historical reference to the Nabataeans was written in about 311 BCE by Hieronymus of Cardia, a Greek general and contemporary of Alexander the Great who took part in a series of failed attempts to defeat them.

Hegra, a place of superstition avoided by the Bedouin, was later known as Madain Saleh — or the city of Saleh — a place associated with an account in the Qur’an of a vain attempt by the Prophet Saleh to convert the Thamudi, a tribe in the AlUla Valley, from their idolatrous ways. 

Archaeologists believe that it was the perception of Hegra by the Bedouin as a cursed place, unsafe for settlement by the living, that over the centuries has helped to preserve much of its fabric.

Hegra was “discovered” in the 1880s by the British explorer Charles Montagu Doughty, the first Westerner to visit the site. In his book “Travels in Arabia Deserta,” published in 1888, he recalled stumbling upon the lost monumental necropolis — a carved citadel of the dead, hewn out of the towering sandstone rock faces that surrounded the site of an old city.

British explorer Charles Montagu Doughty, the first Westerner to reach Hegra, recorded his impressions of the Nabataean tombs in his book “Travels in Arabia Deserta,” published in 1888. (Getty Images)

“Little remains of the old civil generations of el-Héjr, the caravan city,” Doughty wrote. “Her clay-built streets are again the blown dust in the wilderness. Their story is written for us only in the crabbed scrawlings upon many a wild crag of this sinister neighbourhood, and in the engraved titles of their funeral monuments, now solitary rocks, which the fearful passenger admires, in these desolate mountains.”

There are more than 100 monumental tombs carved out of the rocks at Hegra, dating from about the first century BCE to 75 CE. Of the four main necropoles, Qasr Al-Bint, the site of 31 tombs, is visually the most dramatic, both from a distance and up close. The exterior facades of many of the tombs feature carved monsters, eagles, and other small, sculpted animals and human faces. 

As at Petra, many of the tombs feature spectacular carved facades. However, unlike at Petra, many carry Nabataean inscriptions, in some cases naming the dead and offering a unique insight into the lives of the people who once called Hegra home.

Carved monsters, human faces, eagles and other small sculpted animals decorate some of the tombs at Hegra. (Saudi Ministry of Culture)

In addition to the rock tombs, more than 2,000 other burial places are scattered across the site.

Thirty-one tombs dating from 1 to 58 CE are carved into Qasr Al-Bint, one of the spectacular necropoles at Hegra. (Getty Images)

Close by is the Jabal Ithlib — at 100 meters, the highest sandstone outcrop on the site. Here there are no tombs, but this was nevertheless a religious area, studded with niches, altars and sacred stone carvings, many of which bear inscriptions. Hewn out of the interior of the rock is a “triclinium,” a three-sided room where worshippers would have gathered for ritual meals.

Carved monsters, human faces, eagles and other small sculpted animals decorate some of the tombs at Hegra. (Saudi Ministry of Culture)

Little can be seen today of the homes of the Nabataeans at Hegra. Made from sun-dried mud bricks, they have long disappeared beneath the sands, although geophysical surveys carried out between 2002 and 2005 revealed tantalizing evidence of underground structures. Parts of the city wall can still be made out.

Hegra is situated in a large plain studded with sandstone outcrops. The most impressive of these is Jabal Ithlib, an ancient religious site home to a series of sanctuaries, niches and altars carved out of the rock. (Royal Commission for AlUla)

Since Doughty’s visit, Hegra has been little known outside of academic circles. But now the ancient trading center has been awakened from a 1,600-year slumber. After one of the most exhaustive archaeological investigations ever carried out, it is once again welcoming visitors from around the world as the heart of a spectacular tourism development, focused on culture and heritage, that is restoring the AlUla Valley to its ancient status as a global destination.

“Hegra was my introduction to Saudi Arabia,” said architect Simone Ricca, a heritage conservation expert who helped prepare Saudi Arabia’s successful application to have the city listed in 2008 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In all, Ricca went on to work on the nominations for four of the Kingdom’s UNESCO sites.

“I visited for the first time in 2006,” recalled Ricca, co-founder of Paris-based RC Heritage consultants. “Thanks to a pioneering effort by the Saudi antiquities department to survey and protect the country’s sites in the early 1980s, there was a protective fence around the site. But there was no one there then. 

“It was an incredibly fascinating experience. I had been to Petra, and I had been living and working in the Middle East for a few years, but I didn’t know much about Saudi Arabia.”

Ricca had seen a photograph of one of Hegra’s tombs hanging on the wall of a UNESCO office but never imagined he would go there. Then one evening, with the rocks and the desert lit by the light of a full moon, he did.

“It was so exciting,” he said. “I had this feeling, admittedly naive, of discovering something. I know it is stupid and childish. But part of my work is the privilege of visiting places that are not yet well known, and this was incredible.”

Hegra features a stunning collection of well-preserved monumental tombs dating from the first century BCE. The site, which features some 50 inscriptions of the pre-Nabataean period and cave drawings, is also home to dozens of ancient water wells. It was these, tapped by the Nabataeans’ innovative hydraulic expertise, that in antiquity transformed the AlUla Valley into a thriving oasis, a vital artery of caravan trade in incense and spices from Yemen and India.

Farming continues in AlUla today, just north of Hegra, where modern farms rely on the same underground water supplies that sustained the Nabataeans and even continue to use some of the old wells.

Mystery surrounds the origins of the Nabataeans, a people who for 400 years commanded a vast kingdom that in size and scope foreshadowed that of Saudi Arabia and whose written language was one of the final steppingstones in the evolution of Arabic. There is no mention of them in any written source before they first appeared in the account by Hieronymus of Cardia in 311 BCE. 

Although most of the tombs at Hegra were carved and used between the first and early fourth centuries, occupation of the site dates from about the fourth century BCE. There is growing evidence that the Nabataean presence at Hegra may have continued in some form well into the fourth century, but their grip on the region and its profitable trade routes was ended suddenly in 106 CE, when the whole of their territory was overrun by the legions of Emperor Trajan and subsumed into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea.

Inside one of Hegra’s many tombs. One, at Jabal Al-Ahmar, dates to 60 CE and was built for “Hinat daughter of Wahbu ... and for her children and her descendants forever ... In the twenty-first year of King Maliku, King of the Nabataeans.” It was found to contain the remains of more than 80 people. (Royal Commission for AlUla)

Until the recent archaeological investigations at Hegra and throughout the wider AlUla Valley, there was no evidence to suggest that Rome’s influence in Arabia had extended much further south than the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea. But the discovery of a fortified Roman camp on the southern boundary of the ancient city is just part of the astonishing story that has emerged over the past decades, thanks to the work of a joint Saudi-French archaeological team whose trowels have swept away the sands of time that had obscured the world heritage treasure that is Hegra for two millennia.

The discovery, said Ricca, had redrawn the map of the Roman empire.

“No one knew that the Roman presence extended so far south in Arabia. The discovery of the fortress has added to the understanding that ancient Saudi Arabia was not an isolated place but part of the wider world.”

The AlUla Valley is home to a second fort, a reminder of another empire that came and went in Arabia. Between 1744 and 1757, the Ottomans built a fortress there to protect travelers on the old pilgrim route from Damascus and beyond to Makkah, which passed through the valley. The fort was built near the well of Bir Al-Naqa, where pilgrims travelling along the Syrian pilgrimage route also used to halt on their way to and from Makkah.

Nearby is a railway station, a stop on the Hejaz railway that was built by the Ottomans and ran 1,300 kilometers from Damascus to Madinah. Work began in 1901, and the railway opened in 1908, but it fell into disuse after the First World War, during which it was repeatedly attacked by the Arab warriors of the Hejaz who rebelled against Ottoman rule. Their exploits, fighting alongside the British liaison officer T.E. Lawrence, were immortalized in the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia.

Hegra is also home to a station and the remains of the old Hejaz railway, built by the Ottomans to transport pilgrims from Damascus to Madinah. Opened in 1908, it was abandoned after being repeatedly attacked during the First World War. (Getty Images)

The remains of carriages and locomotives, blown off the tracks during the war, can still be seen in the desert. The restored station complex at AlUla now houses a museum and facilities for visitors.

In the words of the UNESCO document, the Hejaz railway “is historically important for both Arab and Turkish history as it marked the beginning of Arab autonomy and the end of the Ottoman Empire.” 

Although not part of the UNESCO listing, other fascinating sights await visitors to the AlUla Valley. Some 20 kilometers south of Hegra are the ruins of the old town of AlUla, a complex of narrow passageways and now mainly roofless buildings, made of mudbrick and stone. Finally abandoned in the 1980s, this ghost town of some 900 tightly packed houses was for hundreds of years a bustling waypoint on the pilgrimage route to Makkah.

On its doorstep is the ancient city of Dadan, situated on the edge of a lush oasis of palm trees, where inhabitants of the old town would go to escape the heat during the summer months. The stone-built capital of the Dadan and later Lihyan kingdoms is believed to date back to between the late ninth and early eighth century BCE.

In 1326, the famed Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta journeyed through old AlUla town by camel. His reflections on the hospitality of its inhabitants are recalled on a modern sign on the town’s ancient watchtower.

AlUla, he wrote, “is a large and fine village with orchards, dates, palms and water. The pilgrimage caravan stays there for four days to resupply and wash. Pilgrims leave any excess belongings they might have with the townspeople who are known for their trustworthiness and only take with them what they need.”

The abandoned city of AlUla occupies a significant place in the story of Islam. It is believed that in 630, the Prophet Muhammad passed through the town on his way from Madinah to the Battle of Tabuk.

Although it is not clear when the town was first built, it certainly dates back to the 13th century and was inhabited until 1983, the year the last family left for the new and modern town of AlUla nearby.

The whole of Hegra’s past is now playing a vital role in the future of the AlUla Valley. The Royal Commission for AlUla, established in 2017, worked in partnership with Afalula, the French Agency for AlUla Development, which was founded in Paris in July 2018 with the mission “to support its Saudi partner in the transformation of the AlUla region into a worldwide cultural and touristic destination.”

In an interview in February 2019, Amr Al-Madani, CEO of the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), described the plan for AlUla as “one of the Kingdom’s flagship projects,” designed “to promote the heritage of this region, to transform AlUla into one of the country’s cultural capitals.”

It was the vision of the commission and its French partner that AlUla would be transformed into a “living, open museum,” complete with a unique network of museums, archaeological sites and luxury hotels.

In addition to the treasures of Hegra, AlUla offers visitors resorts, hotels and other world-class facilities. About a 45-minute drive from Hegra is the Sharaan Nature Reserve, a 925-square-kilometer territory within AlUla county that features some of the region’s most striking rock formations and desert habitats, and is home to several luxury resorts.

Elsewhere is the Maraya Concert Hall, a giant mirrored cube designed by Studio Gio Forma. In addition to its role as a concert venue and exhibition center, Maraya, which means “reflection” in Arabic, is a mesmerizing piece of art in its own right, its mirrored walls designed to create a visual extension of the breathtaking AlUla landscape.

The protected site of Hegra lies within the AlUla Valley, which is being developed as a major cultural tourism destination, featuring resorts, festivals and the spectacular Maraya Concert Hall, the world’s largest mirrored building. (Royal Commission for AlUla)

Art and cultural initiatives are central to AlUla’s vision, as typified by the annual Winter at Tantora festival. The festival, which derives its name from a sundial located in the old town of AlUla, was staged for centuries by the locals to mark the changing of the seasons. In December 2018, it returned, greatly magnified, with a series of concerts over eight weekends featuring world-class musicians, revealing the destination of AlUla to the rest of the world. The RCU also commissioned artists to create public artworks inspired by AlUla.

As it shone in antiquity, so the AlUla region and its architectural treasures are now part of a bright future, for Saudi Arabia and the wider world.

“AlUla is an opportunity for the entire globe,” said Al-Madani. “It is a site for the development of knowledge, not just for Saudi Arabia but the entire international community.”

Just as the caravans of antiquity once came to trade in this land, so AlUla, ancient Hegra reborn, is once again attracting travelers from all corners of the world.

The challenge for the casual visitor to Al-Ahsa is, quite literally, to see the forest for the trees. There are, after all, more than 2.5 million palm trees in the world’s largest and almost certainly oldest oasis. And, with the UNESCO World Heritage site composed of no fewer than 12 separate elements, scattered over a total area of 85-square-kilometers, at first glance this “serial cultural landscape,” which “preserves material traces representative of all the stages of the oasis history, since its origins in the Neolithic to the present,” defies quick and easy appreciation.

For Panaiotis Kruklidis, an Italian architect specializing in cultural heritage who, in 2015 and 2016, was part of the team of experts drafted in to prepare the nomination document that saw the site listed in 2018, the key was to seek a higher perspective.

“We certainly understood the details of the oasis, the organization of its individual plots, but we still couldn’t grasp its overall magnificent size,” he recalled.

“We only discovered it on the day when we decided to climb Jabal Al-Qarah, the hill in the center of the oasis that was probably sacred to the first inhabitants of the place, who had settled among its caves.”

From this vantage point, “it was finally possible to admire the greatness of the oasis as a whole.”

An aerial view of part of the oasis taken in 1965. (Saudi Aramco)

With maps and notebooks in hand and gazing down on the vast geometry of palm groves, gardens and waterways, the team was “able to follow the intricate water system, the lifeblood for every element of the oasis, made up of springs, channels of clean water and drainage.” For Kruklidis, the patterns evoked “the natural geometry of leaves, made up of main and secondary veins.”

Sketches from the notebook of Panaiotis Kruklidis, an Italian architect who helped to prepare the document nominating Al-Ahsa as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Then, Kruklidis and his colleagues set about exploring the oasis at ground level and quickly discovered the beauty of a place in which some scholars believe the date palm was first farmed by human beings.

Al-Ahsa is associated with the Dilmun civilization that flourished in the third millennium BCE in what is now eastern Saudi Arabia. It has also been identified by some archaeologists as the possible site of the near-mythical Sumerian paradise — the garden of the gods where, some 4,800 years ago, the legendary hero King Gilgamesh of Uruk sought the tree of life. The archaeological remains of Uruk, another World Heritage Site, are situated east of the Euphrates River in what is today southern Iraq, some 750 kilometers northwest of Al-Ahsa.

“We decided to ‘get lost’ in the great oasis and entered a private garden, which stood out for the considerable height of its palm trees,” recalled Kruklidis. The first thing they noticed was “the care with which a passionate farmer had maintained his garden. The ancient knowledge of traditional methods, handed down from generation to generation, reflected the charm of myth and time.”

Evening was approaching and the low light that filtered through the palms, casting long shadows and dancing on the surface of the water, began to throw details into sharp relief. Kruklidis, part of whose role was to document key elements of the oasis with drawings, was struck by “the variety of colors of the fruit on the trees, the background of a fragile and fragrant green and the light playing on the water, recalling the labyrinthine waterways and fountains of a distant and almost mythical period.

“It was like seeing the garden of the gods, still standing in Dilmun’s time.”

Kruklidis had no difficulty believing that “it was probably from here that the idea, the image, of the terrestrial paradise, as we know it, developed.”

Heritage conservation expert Simone Ricca, who worked on the nomination documents for four of Saudi Arabia’s UNESCO sites, including Al-Ahsa, said the oasis is “the most complex site to conceptually understand and to grasp.”

Listed by UNESCO as “an evolving cultural landscape,” it is “the product of the interaction between man and nature. Oases are not a natural feature, they are manmade, so they are a perfect example of this concept of a cultural landscape.” 

The palm groves at Al-Ahsa are, according to the UNESCO nomination document, “among the largest at the global scale.” They also preserve the historical characterstics of systems based on “traditional techniques remained unchanged...for thousands of years.” (Saudi Ministry of Tourism)

Occupied for at least 8,000 years, Al-Ahsa has seen and survived the rise and fall of great powers over the ages, enduring and outliving all comers, including the Chaldeans, the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great and the Roman and Ottoman empires.

Importantly, and unlike many UNESCO sites that are little more than fragmentary ruins frozen in time, Al-Ahsa has been continuously occupied and continues to thrive and evolve.

“Even the new drainage and water-management systems that have been created since the 1980s are part of this evolving concept,” said Ricca.

“What is amazing is that we still have two and a half million palm trees there, and we also have almost 2 million people living in Al-Ahsa.

“This interaction is intellectually challenging and interesting. For the tourist, it might not be visually so obvious to grasp, but it is central to this concept of the evolving cultural landscape.”

The UNESCO property includes three oases fed by a system of dozens of ancient springs and wells, three castles, the traditional palm-grove village of Al-Oyoun, the historic Qasariyah Market, the Jawatha Mosque, two protected archaeological sites and the 21-square-kilometer mangrove-fringed Al-Asfar Lake, a large and historic body of water into which the waters from the Eastern Oasis drain via an 18-kilometer canal. Al-Asfar has become a unique natural ecosystem and in 2019 was declared a national nature reserve by Saudi Arabia.

A bustling marketplace at Al-Ahsa Oasis, captured in this 1937 photograph by Geraldine Rendel, the wife of a British diplomat and the first European woman to be received in public by Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia. (Middle East Center Archive, St Antony’s College, Oxford)

The largest of the 12 components is the Eastern Oasis, a roughly crescent-shaped concentration of dense palm groves and gardens over 38-square-kilometers, extending 9 kilometers from north to south and 12 kilometers east to west and watered by an intricate network of canals. At its center is the rocky outcrop known as Jabal Al-Qarah, the summit of which affords stunning views of the surrounding sea of green. To the northwest is the 20-square-kilometer Northern Oasis, which shelters a number of historic villages.

Al-Ahsa lies between the rock desert of Al-Ghawar to the west and the sand dunes of the Al-Jafurah desert to the east. It owed its settlement in antiquity and its continued existence today to the plentiful water provided by the springs of Al-Ghawar, a region that in modern times has provided Saudi Arabia with another natural bounty. Just as Al-Ahsa is the largest oasis in the world, so Al-Ghawar is the world’s largest oil field.

For centuries, the oasis of Al-Ahsa has been under threat from the shifting sands of the Al-Jafurah desert, pressing in from the north, east and south. According to the UNESCO nomination document, “the sands surrounding the oasis, due to the periodically strong north, north-west and southern winds, are mobile and have been encroaching upon the cultivated land and endangering the oasis for many centuries.”

For the past thousand years, humans have had to fight to preserve the oasis, part of which nevertheless “has been covered by an active sand dune field advancing southward, along a 12 km large front.” This dune has “notably covered earlier settlements and gardens north of Al-Qarah, in the area of Jawatha, an important historic settlement of Al-Ahsa Oasis at the dawn of Islam.”

Witness is borne to the historic threat poised to humankind’s dogged but always tentative foothold on existence in the desert oasis by excavations at the Jawatha archaeological site to the north of the Eastern Oasis.

Today, the site is covered entirely with sand, beneath which evidence has been found of ancient agricultural activity, irrigation techniques, long-lost settlements and the course of a vanished river.

Pottery finds from the Ubaid period, dating back roughly 7,000 years, also suggest the Al-Ahsa region may have been among the first in eastern Arabia to have been settled by humans.

Other pottery remains discovered at the site, from Dilmun shards dating from about 2,700 years ago and Greek and Roman ceramics to early Islamic pottery, testify to Al-Ahsa’s long and profitable existence as a major trading center.

Even in antiquity, as the UNESCO nomination document notes, Al-Ahsa was known as “the most famous and largest oasis in the world,” celebrated by Greek, Roman and medieval Arab scholars and travelers.

According to “Geographica,” an account of the then-known world by the Greek historian Strabo, published in 7 BCE, ancient Al-Ahsa was connected to Mesopotamia — modern-day Iraq — by trade in spices, aromatics and dates. The inhabitants, he wrote, carried their cargoes “on rafts to Babylonia, and thence sail up the Euphrates with them, and then convey them by land to all parts of the country.”

Alive and well today, thanks to large-scale anti-desertification initiatives and the re-organization of water distribution techniques, including the creation of a new network of canals since the late 1960s, Al-Ahsa is living history.

In the words of the nomination document that won Al-Ahsa recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the ongoing story of the evolution of the oasis, the origins of which coincide with the very beginnings of agriculture, “explains how very ancient human communities were born and worked, and it enables us to understand the techniques, procedures and principles permitting the establishment of harmonious and balanced relationships between human presence and land management.”

Al-Ahsa continues to supply dates to a global market. But perhaps its most valuable export is the example set for both the present and the future by its thousands of years of stubborn and ingenious existence in the face of great environmental odds.

Today, in the words of the UNESCO citation, “all over the planet entire ecosystems are at risk of collapse. Oases can show us how to better handle the interaction with the environment by improving its resources without depleting them. Climate change, the collapse of ecosystems, cataclysms, the end of civilization, are conditions that the people of the desert have already faced many times.” 

Al-Ahsa, it says, “is an extraordinary example of evolution through time of an oasis landscape,” and one that has invaluable lessons for life on earth — and beyond.

The techniques honed over centuries, “for the creation of fertile soils — for agricultural production, water management, recycling, energy saving, survival in the desert — constitute an example of good practices for the entire planet, providing knowledge applicable to the new frontiers of human diffusion to extreme environment —  including extraterrestrial ones.”

In April 2020, London rare-books dealer Peter Harrington offered for sale a collection of engineering plans that told the story of the modernization of Jeddah’s water supply, a long-overdue upgrade to a creaking Ottoman system ordered in 1947 by Ibn Saud to improve the quality of life for pilgrims arriving in the city.

Among the papers was a map made by the British engineering company Balfour & Sons, which had been contracted to carry out the work. The map had been drawn up for the everyday purpose of recording the routes of the newly laid water mains.

This 1947 map, a technical record of Jeddah’s newly installed water system, shows the layout of the old town shortly before its walls were torn down to make way for the city’s rapid expansion. (Peter Harrington Rare Books, London)

But today, as the last known illustration of the layout of the old city of Jeddah, complete with the great defensive wall that once encircled it, the map has acquired the status of a rare and historically priceless artifact.

Within months of the completion of the drawing, work had begun on the demolition of the old wall, parts of which dated back to the 16th century, and the four gates that had controlled access to the city through hundreds of years of turbulent history.

By 1947, in addition to benefiting from an increase in the number of pilgrims following the end of the Second World War, Saudi Arabia was in the grip of its first great oil boom. Jeddah, since 647 the gateway port to Makkah and always an important town for seaborne trade on the Red Sea, was thriving and expanding rapidly.

A service station in Jeddah in 1952. By then Saudi Arabia was in the grip of the oil boom that would transform the Red Sea port and the entire country. (Getty Images)

“Until 1947, Jeddah was still surrounded by its wall, and it was a really small place, less than one-square-kilometer, with a few suburbs in the south,” said architect Simone Ricca, a heritage conservation expert who helped to prepare Saudi Arabia’s successful application to have the city listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

“It was a seasonal city, living through the arrival of pilgrims, many of whom would stay a few months in the city. Because of that, houses were built with floors that were rented out to pilgrims, and this helped create the special architecture we see today in the old town.”

By 1956, with the flow of oil money funding modernization and expansion programs across the country, Jeddah had burst its bounds and, in under 10 years, had swollen to ten times its size a decade earlier. 

By the end of the 1970s, Jeddah Islamic Port had been built on reclaimed land, cutting off the old town from the sea, and the population of the city had risen to close to 1 million.

But despite Jeddah’s rapid expansion, thanks to the dedication of many individuals and organizations determined to conserve the historic heart of the city known fondly to Jeddawis as Al-Balad, the old town somehow managed to survive. In 2014, it became the third historic site in Saudi Arabia to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as being of “outstanding universal value.”

Jeddah has been linked inextricably with the Hajj ever since 647, when Uthman ibn Affan, a companion of the Prophet and the third Rashidun caliph, designated it as the gateway port for pilgrims traveling to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah.

For hundreds of years, pilgrims bound for Makkah arrived in ships that anchored off Jeddah’s shallow harbor, putting ashore in small wooden dhows, or sambouks, to seek lodgings, food and supplies in the houses and souqs lining its narrow, bustling streets. When the time came, they set off on foot or on camel to travel the 70 kilometers to the holy city.

The original Bab Makkah, the eastern gate through which generations of Muslims passed at the start of their spiritual journey of a lifetime, is no more. But as though still protected by the long-vanished walls behind which they once stood, the streets, souqs and buildings of the old town preserve the memory of a vanished way of life even as they echo with the vibrancy of the modern city that surrounds them.

Urban archaeologists believe that the layout of the old town, and perhaps even the architectural style of Jeddah’s buildings, probably dates to at least the 16th century, but Jeddah’s origins can be traced back much further. Archaeological finds in the area, including ancient inscriptions in wadis east of Jeddah, suggest it may have been occupied since the late Stone Age, more than 3,000 years ago.

Minarets rise above the city walls of Jeddah in this engraving of the city, published in 1851. (Getty Images)

Thanks to its roles as both a major trading center and as the gateway to Makkah, Jeddah became a melting pot, influenced by the customs, food, skills and products brought by traders and pilgrims from across Africa and Asia, many of whom chose to settle in the town.

In the words of the UNESCO nomination document, the result was “a unique cultural ensemble,” and the surviving cityscape of Historic Jeddah is the product of “an important exchange of human values, technical know-how, building materials and techniques across the Red Sea region and along the Indian Ocean routes between the 16th and the early 20th centuries.”

As such, it represents “a cultural world that thrived thanks to international sea trade, possessed a shared geographical, cultural and religious background, and built settlements with specific and innovative technical and aesthetic solutions to cope with the extreme climatic conditions of the region.”

Always the most important, largest and richest of the Red Sea settlements, today Jeddah’s old town is the last surviving example of an otherwise vanished social and architectural urban style, “an extraordinary pre-modern urban environment where isolated tower houses, lower coral stone houses, mosques, ribats, souks and small public squares compose a vibrant space, inhabited by a multicultural population, that still plays a major symbolic and economic role in the life of the modern metropolis.”

The most distinctive manifestations of that style are the roshan tower houses, some 300 of which survive. A product of economic and environmental circumstances, this style of architecture began to emerge during the second half of the 19th century as a direct by-product of the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which boosted Jeddah’s role as an important port linking East and West.

Two of the roshan tower houses that are unique to Old Jeddah can be seen in this 1939 photograph. (Getty Images)

As Jeddah’s merchants grew more and more prosperous, they built higher and more elaborately decorated houses reflecting their new position and wealth. Some houses reached as high as six or even seven stories. Built tall to capture breezes wafting in from the sea, the stairwell or lightwell at the center of many houses, left open to the sky, was designed as a ventilation shaft that allowed hot air to escape upward, increasing airflow inside the building.

“During the hot summer months, residents of a traditional Jeddawi home would sleep in the mabeet, the sleeping quarters on the top floor of the home, with large windows and slits to allow good ventilation,” said Ahmed Badeeb, a resident of Jeddah and a conservationist who was part of the Saudi team that successfully presented Jeddah’s case at the 38th session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in Qatar in 2014.

Old Jeddah’s homes, he said, were built from locally available and imported materials and were “designed and engineered in a manner that would ensure longevity and handle the climate.” Coral limestone was taken from the nearby Red Sea reefs and then crushed and mixed with mud or clay from lake beds to create bricks.

The finished buildings were then whitewashed using an insulating substance Jeddawis called al-norah, made from heated limestone mixed with mud, which helped to keep the insides of buildings cool during the blisteringly hot summer months.

The traditional Jeddawi home, Badeeb said, “was constructed around one large main base pillar known as fahl al-daraj, around which the stairs would be built, with rooms off to the sides. 

“Each level was designed according to its function. At the entrance of the home, the diwan was where guests were received and was designated specifically for men. The back area of the house was where the women of the household, children and help usually stayed.”

Many homes had a majlis, “an area similar to the diwan but located on the second floor, with wooden seating areas and pillows pushed toward the walls and the large roshan window at the far wall overlooking the outside streets and alleys.”

The rawasheen (plural of roshan), elaborate wooden bay windows that front many of the surviving houses, served several roles, creating a cool and private place for sitting and sleeping and a sanctuary where women could watch the world outside without being seen from the street. The design of the roshan was so effective at creating cross-ventilation that clay water pots were placed in them to be cooled in the shade and the airflow they created.

Tower houses, with their original elaborate screened bay windows, or rawasheen, are among the most striking features of Jeddah's historic quarter. (Shutterstock)

“It’s difficult to pinpoint where the roshan originated from, as Jeddah was home to many different cultures,” said Badeeb. “The ventilation system would help keep homes cool during the day, and the intricate designs helped to break up the searing heat of the sun’s rays.

“Residents would also be able to peer out through the holes while ensuring their privacy. People outside weren’t able to see whoever was looking out.”

Thanks to imports of timber, mainly hardwoods from Asia and Africa, wood played a vital part in the evolution of Jeddah’s homes, from the development of the roshan to the use of a technique known as takleel, in which wooden beams were used to strengthen brickwork, allowing some houses to be built up to six or seven stories high.

The use of timber is also evident in the large and beautiful doors that grace many of the old buildings. Originally signs of wealth and prestige, they are made from solid wood, often teak, and decorated with elaborately carved panels acknowledged in the UNESCO nomination as examples of “some of the finest carpentry and decoration in Arabia.”

Elaborately carved wooden doors, made from timber imported from Asia and Africa as Jeddah rose to prominence as a major trading hub, decorated the houses of wealthy merchants in the old city. (Shutterstock)

Jeddah’s listing in 2014 as a World Heritage Site has helped to reinforce the conservation efforts over the years of successive mayors of Jeddah and many individuals who, like Badeeb, were born and raised in Al-Balad and were determined not to let it die.

“When the city grew up out of its walls, it was easier and cheaper to build outside on barren land,” said Simone Ricca. “But the historic families of Jeddah were still very much attached to their old buildings, and so although they moved out, they kept the family mansions and the city retained its active soul, as it does to this day.”

Conserving Old Jeddah has not been an easy task, said Badeeb, whose old family home in the Mazloom quarter is still standing. “It took a lot of effort and time by families who inherited their homes from their fathers and grandfathers. The area was lost for a while as the urban development of Jeddah flourished and turned into the sprawling city it is today and, for a long time, houses were neglected and (occupied) by expatriates as Jeddah’s families moved out.”

The UNESCO document notes that “until the early 1950s, extended Saudi families and long-established Yemeni, Indian and East Asia trading families inhabited the old city houses. Following Jeddah’s spectacular growth prompted by increasing pilgrims and oil revenues, the local residents left their traditional abodes to move to newly built suburbs.”

The old city houses, it added, were now “mainly occupied by a high proportion of single, male foreign workers who rent a room, or part of a room, from Saudi landlords.”

Badeeb attributes the saving of old Jeddah in part to conservation initiatives launched by a series of governors of the province of Makkah, started by Prince Majed bin Abdul Aziz and continued by his successors Prince Abdul Majeed bin Abdul Aziz and Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, supported by some of Old Jeddah’s families.

Ricca also highlights “the choices made by the mayor of Jeddah, Dr. Mohammed Said Farsi, who while developing a modern city also decided partially to preserve part of the old city.”

A trained architect who became mayor in 1972, Farsi oversaw a five-fold growth in the city’s population by the mid-1980s and was widely known as the father of modern Jeddah. It was, as an obituary published upon his death in 2019 noted, “remarkable that in the midst of creating much-needed infrastructure, Dr. Farsi found time to create a city that was as beautiful as it was functional, with a carefully preserved historic centre.”

Nestling in a bend of the Wadi Hanifa, just 10 kilometers northwest of the mighty Kingdom Center tower at the heart of the bustling modern metropolis of Riyadh, can be found the remains of an earlier capital.

This is At-Turaif, a breathtaking collection of mudbrick palaces, houses and mosques, encircled by a mighty wall, which in the 18th century became the beating heart of the First Saudi State, established in the oasis of Diriyah in 1744.

Together, in the words of the UNESCO nomination that saw At-Turaif inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2010, these constitute “the pre-eminent example of Najdi architectural style, a significant constructive tradition that developed in central Arabia … and contribute to the world’s cultural diversity.”

Diriyah itself, offering fertile land and plentiful water supplies, had been settled in 1446 by forebears of the House of Saud. When they migrated to the Wadi Hanifa from their original settlement at the original Diriyah, near modern-day Qatif on the Gulf coast, they brought the name of their old home with them. 

The mudbrick district of At-Turaif bears the scars of Diriyah’s heroic but ultimately doomed six-month resistance against Ottoman forces in 1818. (Historical Diriyah Development Program)

Today, some of the buildings at At-Turaif, bearing the scars of a proud but ultimately doomed stand against the might of the Ottoman war machine in 1818, are in ruins.

Others, including Salwa Palace, the home and seat of government of the third Imam of Diriyah, Saud Al-Kabir (or Saud the Great), on which work began in 1750, are sufficiently intact to remain imposing. 

The entire site, however, recognized by UNESCO as being of “outstanding universal value,” is precious to the Saudi people, not only as the birthplace of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but also as a symbol of the rise and triumph of the house of Al-Saud over seemingly impossible odds.

At-Turaif did not simply fall into disrepair, a victim of neglect or changing fashions. This is a ghost city, battered and blasted by Ottoman cannon during a heroic siege of Diriyah in 1818 that ended in a wholesale massacre.

During the lengthy siege, captured defenders were beheaded and their heads, or sometimes just their ears, were sent back to Cairo for bounty.

When Diriyah finally fell after a valiant six-month defense, many Saudis were exiled, tortured or executed on the orders of Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian general who had led his forces in a two-year campaign against the Saudis at the bidding of the Ottomans.

Imam Abdullah, the last ruler of the First Saudi State, who surrendered At-Turaif to the invaders only when the suffering of his people had become too much for him to bear, was taken in chains to Constantinople, where he was executed.

Before they withdrew from Najd, the Egyptians laid waste to Diriyah, destroying buildings and fortifications and cutting down every date palm. In 1819, the town was visited by a British army officer, who reported that “it is now in ruins, and the inhabitants who were spared, or escaped from the slaughter, have principally sought shelter in Riyadh.” 

Within months of the Egyptians’ withdrawal, Saudi survivors began to rebuild the city, but in 1821 it was destroyed for a second time by another Ottoman expedition to the area.

Undeterred, the Saudis rose again, this time under the leadership of Imam Turki bin Abdullah Al-Saud. In 1823, he drove out the Ottomans and, with Diriyah and At-Turaif in ruins, chose the nearby intact garrison town of Riyadh as the capital of the Second Saudi State.

Saudi Arabia’s path to statehood was still strewn with barriers. In 1834, Imam Turki was assassinated and years of civil war ended only when his son, Faisal bin Turki bin Abdullah, returned from captivity in Egypt and restored Saudi authority. Following his death in 1865, however, the state was once again riven by in-fighting, until in 1891 it was overthrown by the rival Rashidi dynasty.

Among the Saudis who sought refuge in Kuwait was a young boy, aged about 16. Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman bin Faisal Al-Saud, the son of the exiled ruler of Riyadh, was destined to become better known to the world as Ibn Saud.

The story of how he led a small band of warriors to recapture Riyadh in 1902, restoring the House of Saud, was told by Gertrude Bell, the British political officer in Iraq, in a report written for London in 1917.

A photograph of the ruins of At-Turaif taken in 1917 by the British agent Harry St John Bridger Philby, who settled in Jeddah and became an advisor to Ibn Saud. (Diriyah Company)

“With a force of some eighty camel riders,” she wrote, “Abdul Aziz swooped down upon Riyadh, surprised Rashid’s garrison, slew his representative and proclaimed his own accession from the recaptured city.” 

So was the modern state of Saudi Arabia conceived, but it would not be an easy gestation.

Ibn Saud and the growing band of Bedouin tribes that began flocking to his banner repelled a series of attacks on his territory, first by Ottoman forces and then by the Hashemites of the Hejaz.

Gradually, though, Ibn Saud expanded the territory under his control, until in 1924 his forces seized Makkah, driving out the Hashemite Sharif Hussain. Ibn Saud united the kingdoms of Najd and Hejaz as one, and on Sept. 23, 1932, proclaimed the foundation of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

As the capital of the new Saudi state, Riyadh thrived. During the 1970s, Diriyah would rise again, as a new city on the outskirts of the metropolis, but after 1818 the royal quarter of At-Turaif, abandoned behind the remains of its shattered walls, was never occupied again.

For UNESCO, At-Turaif is blessed with many attributes that justify its recognition of “outstanding universal value,” among them the remains of a large number of palaces, built at different times by successive rulers.

Several buildings and the city wall have been restored, to give some idea of how the entire site might have looked during its imposing heyday. 

The protected historic quarter of At-Turaif is at the heart of a project to transform Diriyah into a global cultural destination celebrating the birthplace of Saudi Arabia. (Historical Diriyah Development Program)

The site as a whole, unified by the striking colors and textures of the clay and limestone building materials obtained from the bed of Wadi Hanifa, reinforced with timber from the tamarisk tree, “is an urban and architectural monument presenting the culture and lifestyle of the First Saudi State, direct ancestor of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

“The number of palaces that have been discovered until now in At-Turaif district is 13,” said Badran Al-Honaihen, the site’s culture and heritage manager.

“Most of the palaces belonged to members of the royal family during the First Saudi State. Three imams lived in Salwa Palace, which is the most important palace in the center of the district, over 10,000-square-meters and overlooking a beautiful view of Wadi Hanifa.” 

Architectural details unique to Saudi Arabia’s Najd region can be seen on the carefully conserved walls of Prince Saad bin Saud Palace. (Diriyah Company)

Salwa Palace, a complex of seven buildings on which work began in about 1750, is the largest palace in the entire Najd region. Alongside it can be seen the remains of the Bait Al-Mal, the state treasury, built between 1803 and 1814 during the reign of Saud Al-Kabir.

At-Turaif, added Al-Honaihen, is also home to Imam Mohammed bin Saud’s mosque. “The imams of the First Saudi State used to pray there, and it was the scene of many political incidents during that period.” It was also one of the most important mosques in the region, and at one point “the number of worshipers who used to go there exceeded 3,000, which shows how large the First Saudi State was during its glory days.”

In its time, the mosque was also “one of the most important schools of knowledge and education, with lessons in jurisprudence, Shariah and calligraphy.”

Maintaining such buildings, made from mudbricks and susceptible to erosion by rain, is an ongoing task.

“The mudbrick buildings of At-Turaif have been there for more than 250 years and have survived erosion, brutal invasion by the Ottoman Empire and many other problems,” said Al-Honaihen.

This, he added, is a lesson in sustainability reliant on materials taken from the local environment, and one that has been learnt afresh by modern craftsmen who were trained “to work with mudbricks and focusing on sustainability, whether by using the stones and soil from the wadi or by using the local plants and trees that were used to create such tall buildings as Salwa Palace.”

The ruins, said architect Simone Ricca, a heritage conservation expert who helped to prepare Saudi Arabia’s successful UNESCO application for At-Turaif, “have been preserved with attention paid to the traditional building techniques.”

Equally important is the damage wrought by the siege of 1818, another tacit reminder of the Kingdom’s heritage. “The site is, of course, important historically as the birthplace of Saudi Arabia,” he added, “but it is also a quite extraordinary mudbrick village,” reflecting a unique architectural style and know-how.

“The height of the facades of the palaces are very impressive, among the highest mudbrick structures we have. As such they convey the capacity of these materials to create architecture that represented power.

Unique architectural details found throughout At-Turaif include triangular ventilation openings, part of an ingenious early air-conditioning system designed to create airflow and lower temperatures inside the buildings. (Diriyah Company)

“It is very impressive, and the skill shown in At-Turaif is quite unique at the national level.”

A typical Najdi design on a door in Diriyah’s Bujairi district, opposite the royal quarter of At-Turaif. (Shutterstock)

For Ricca, At-Turaif and the Diriyah cultural development that has sprung up around it are the ultimate expressions of Saudi Arabia’s determination that its historic sites should thrive by playing a viable part in the modern world.

“From the beginning, Saudi Arabia has had this vision that these sites should be adapted to cater to visitors’ needs, and that they represent an opportunity for development,” he said.

“With this approach, the sites are preserved according to UNESCO guidelines and they are demonstrated to be assets that can generate income as well as memories.”

In the late 1970s, the British author and historian Robert Lacey, who lived in Saudi Arabia for two and a half years, visited the ruins of At-Turaif, which he found “almost as the Turks left them a century and a half ago.”

“The palm trees grew again after Ibrahim Pasha had departed, but their leaves shade a ghost town,” he wrote in his 1981 book “The Kingdom.”

“There is the palace where the Al-Saud entertained in their glory 400 or 500 Bedouin every day. Nearby is the stud where, it is said, 300 of Arabia’s finest horses were stabled. There are mosques, shops, watchtowers, homes, the busy structure of an entire metropolis, all open to the sky and eerily vacated like a sand-blown Pompeii.”

The Saudis, he added, “left the shell of their old capital behind them, an enduring reminder of the frontiers of the possible.”

Today, as the centerpiece of the ambitious Diriyah mega-project, At-Turaif is once again at the frontiers of the possible.

“This is not a theme park,” said Jerry Inzerillo, who, as group CEO of the Diriyah Company, was charged with creating at Diriyah “the world’s largest cultural and heritage development.”

At-Turaif, he said, “is a sacred site and in order to protect it we are positioning it as a jewel in a necklace.”

That necklace is the large and vibrant community and major tourism destination that has grown around At-Turaif, transforming Diriyah into a living cultural center, complete with universities, homes, multiple hotels, restaurants, museums, galleries and other cultural attractions, in which ultimately tens of thousands of people will live, work and relax.

When complete, Diriyah is expected to attract 25 million visitors every year, from Saudi Arabia and overseas.

Inzerillo, who as president of Kerzner International gave the world such attractions as the Atlantis in Dubai and the One & Only chain of resorts, anticipates no problem in establishing Diriyah, with At-Turaif at its heart, as one of the world’s must-visit destinations.

“I’ve spent a lot of my career making famous places where there was no authenticity, nothing much to work with,” he said. “I had to use fantasy, create make-believe places such as Atlantis to capture people’s imagination.

“I would suggest to you that that’s a much more difficult exercise than it is when you’re dealing with authenticity and the richness of the many historical and cultural sites that Saudi Arabia has, such as at Diriyah. So, my job now is really just one of creating exposure, of spreading the word.” 

As they become more widely known around the world, he believes, the Kingdom’s UNESCO sites “will become to Saudi Arabia as the Acropolis is to Greece and the Coliseum is to Rome.

“We’re not naive,” he added. “We know there are a lot of pre-existing stereotypical attitudes or ideas about what the Kingdom is.

“But it’s our job is to welcome people here, to say come and see for yourself the beautiful Nabataean tombs of AlUla, visit Historic Jeddah, the ancient rock art of Hail, the palm groves of Al-Ahsa and Diriyah — and you will be astounded.”