Museum guides are often thought to be as dry as the dust of the exhibits they guard. Their lives, spent in the past, take on the dullness that often tends to attach itself to history. Nasser Al-Arifi, director of the Masmak Museum, is an exception to the stereotype, an enthusiast who is happy to share his enthusiasm with visitors.
As he points out the treasures around him and is keen that every nuance is understood, his vitality is contagious. A comprehensively busy man, he oversees the restoration and refurbishment of the exhibits in the beautifully restored fort that stands both at the center of Riyadh and Saudi history. Looking at the modern city around this oasis of calm and antiquity, it is hard to appreciate that the enormous difference has only taken just over one lifetime to achieve.
The huge mud walls of the museum stretch in an approximate rectangle with a squat cylindrical 18-meter tower at each corner. Built in 1895 by Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Rasheed, the mud walls are over two meters thick in places; indeed the name of the fort, which academics agree derives from Al-Samaka, “thickness”, are pierced with gun-slits and windows that give multiple fields of fire to the defender and render them almost impregnable, but only almost.
On Jan. 15, 1902, by a combination of stealth, guile and courage, Abdul Aziz Al-Saud and forty of his men took the fort by storm, routed the defenders and symbolically established the Saudi state. Since then the fort has been used as a warehouse and a prison, but it is the symbolic importance of its capture that places it at the center of the history of the modern Saudi state. A visit to the fort brings vividly to life the raw courage of the attackers. The west-facing sole entrance door is a massively built structure 3.6 meters high and 2.6 meters wide. In the center is a tiny wicket door, designed to admit one person at a time, head first. Any unwelcome intruder could be decapitated or shot with ease as he entered. Yet it was this door that the attackers breached.
A few centimeters to one side, buried in the palm and Athal wood planking is a tiny piece of metal, easy to miss. It is the spear-tip that snapped off when Abdulaziz attacked the fort, throwing his spear at the wicket door as defenders attempted to close it. In a real sense, visitors can put themselves in touch with history.
In 1979, when the fort had deteriorated badly and was literally falling apart on its weak foundations, the municipality of Riyadh stepped in and began renovations. By 1982, with the renovations well under way, the building was handed over to the Directorate General of Antiquities.
Following a recommendation by Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz that the building be turned into a museum, the museum had by 1994 developed productive educational and logistical relationships with the Riyadh Development Authority and the Ministry of Education.
Since 1995, it has been a focus of interest by schools and colleges in the Kingdom and has attracted researchers and scholars alike as the fort combines all the elements of the Najd architectural style.
The restoration and maintenance work continue. The mud-brick structure, though substantial, needs constant attention to maintain it in its original condition. Mud and plaster facings have been re-applied and the exposed palm beams and laths that support the upper floors need regular attention. Some of the rooms in the fort have been turned into galleries; others have been left exactly as they would have been in the early days of Abdulaziz’s tenancy. The Majlis, with its Najd fireplace, coffee making equipment and niche with a collection of coffee pots, looks as if it has been left only recently. The mosque is ready for prayer. In a central courtyard stands the well, still with the original segmented pulley mechanism and a fragment of rope. Ten meters down, water still glistens in the shadows, much as it has done since the fort was built in 1895. The well was a vital factor in the ability of the fort to maintain the military garrison housed there and its ability to withstand siege.
That is the result of the careful restoration and the will of the government and curators to preserve the roots of Saudi history to allow future generations to feel and touch it, not just simply to learn about it as a dry academic subject.
In the baking sun of the Riyadh summer, there were only three or four visitors. At the height of the tourist season, the general flow of tourists is away from this particular tourist attraction.
With the planned development of tourism in the Kingdom and the drive by the National Museum in Riyadh to encourage schools, students and tourists to visit the milestones in Saudi history, the Musmak fort museum is upgrading its displays with explanatory videos and adding to its collections. The display cabinets of antique firearms, swords and edged weapons evoke a shudder from visitors, as these weapons were used in earnest in the battles that raged around Riyadh at the turn of the 20th century.
To speculate on lives ended by the swipe of a curved saber or the smoky roar of an early cartridge rifle brings the casual viewer very close to the bloody reality of history.
For historians and cultural tourists, it is a site that caries tremendous interest. You don’t just have to study history in books when you can feel, touch and live it.
Pause for a moment and put a fingertip on the piece of dull metal embedded in the door of a mud fort and connect with the passion and determination of a brave young giant of a man whose energy, transmitted through the hurling of a spear, founded a state and carried a Kingdom into the 20th century.
