Prince Sultan addressed the gathering at the center during his visit. Below is the text of the speech:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to be here with you this afternoon. I am honored to have the opportunity to address this venerable forum at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, which enjoys the patronage of many notables, among them the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah. I am also humbled by the roster of luminaries who have preceded me at this podium. HM The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz have both been major supporters and patrons of the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies.
Oxford University's association with Arabia is long-standing. It has for many years brought together distinguished international experts on the antiquities of the Arabian Peninsula. Indeed, many Saudi Arabian academics have participated in these exchanges to great scholarly benefit.
The recently completed gallery named after HRH Crown Prince Sultan of Saudi Arabia in the Ashmolean Museum is further testimony to the strong ties between our two cultures. All this reflects a shared desire to promote the understanding of Islam's culture and heritage.
I will be speaking about archaeology and heritage today, although I am by no means an expert; nonetheless, I will be touching on these subjects from an overarching trans-historic view.
I come to you from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a country widely acclaimed as the cradle of Islam, for its economic standing, and for its role in the international community of nations.
As the seat of Islam, Saudi Arabia is the home of the two holy cities of Makkah and Al-Madinah. Islam is the central fact of our society. It is the basis for the Kingdom's profound responsibilities towards the Islamic world and the rest of humanity.
The Kingdom is also recognized for the abundance of its human and natural resources, and its strategic geographic location. It is an economic powerhouse, as the leading regional economic engine and the world's primary oil supplier. We are a substantial contributor to the world's economy and a member in the G-20, the twenty most significant economies of the world.
Our international relations - the political dimension - arises from our well-recognized, positive role in the world community, our active participation in regional and world affairs, as well as our diligent work in discharging our humanitarian responsibilities. These three dimensions, religious, economic and political, define much of what Saudi Arabia is seen to embody today.
I am here to present another defining dimension, often overlooked by Saudis and non-Saudis alike. It is central to our very being and arises as a natural extension from our history.
Our cultural dimension is little known outside the circle of specialists in the field of Arabia's ancient civilization and pre-Islamic and Islamic heritage, preserved, among other treasures, in antiquities and heritage sites.
It is timely that we identify and present this defining cultural dimension to the world, now as Saudi Arabia increasingly occupies a central role in world religious, economic, political and cultural affairs with ever-growing responsibilities and obligations. It is also imperative that we, as a people, recognize our responsibility as custodians of a great religion and civilization.
The Kingdom's culture is rich and deeply rooted in its history. Its tangible cultural legacy, the focus of our topic this evening, is preserved in antiquities and urban heritage. These provide continuity in our society, bonding Saudi Arabia's past with its present, and, most importantly, its future; antiquities are the seeds in the evolutionary continuum that is the civilization of the Arabian Peninsula.
Although we are identified with the Islamic tradition and its values, we must consider that Islam did not arrive into a vacuum; rather, it was founded over existing layers of civilization, and flourished in a culturally disparate society. The nature of society at the time was fluid and mobile, with the Makkah pilgrimage and Okaz market providing a focal point in western Arabia of an expansive network of communications and transportation, facilitating the rapid spread of Islam, much like the effect of the Internet today.
Out of the many kingdoms that existed in Arabia, there arose a cultural and social unity that coalesced into one civilization. Islam brought with it a system of values that informs everything we do and that characterizes us. Islam acknowledged the great civilizations of Arabia, and respected the great religions that preceded it, while consolidating the existing noble Arab values. This, perhaps, is most evident in the adoption of a pre-Islamic religious ritual which was to be the fifth pillar of Islam, the Haj.
It has recently become the responsibility of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, which I chair, to safeguard and showcase the cultural heritage of the Kingdom as one of the country's defining dimensions. We recognize that in order to be worthy of celebration by our own people and to the rest of the world, our antiquities and traditional architecture must become national treasures in the same way as any of the other resources with which our country is endowed.
We are developing a deep sense of responsibility to rediscover and protect our national antiquities. Our antiquities are a part of the world's heritage as well as an essential part of Saudi Arabia's national identity.
Because this cultural legacy, the fourth dimension, constitutes the cultural essence of Saudi Arabia, I am proud to delineate to you today some aspects of the Kingdom's cultural heritage.
Geographically and historically, Arabia is located at the crossroads of a multitude of civilizations and cultural crosscurrents. This setting of our ancient past is reflected in the inter-relationships of Saudi Arabia in the modern world; geography and history naturally compel us to play a central role in world and in human affairs today.
Contrary to widely held impressions, Arabia has never been completely isolated. Our national antiquities demonstrate this fact. The prevalent evidence shows that humans inhabited Arabia as far back as one million and two hundred thousand years ago. Prehistoric sites like Shuwayhityah in the north, are widely scattered across Saudi Arabia, representing various ages.
Eventually, starting in the fifth millennium BCE, Arabia forged long-range relationships exceeding its boundaries, in later eras reaching Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt and the Mediterranean civilizations. Meanwhile, these activities led to the creation of an oasis economy and ultimately to the development of major trade centers in Arabia. Whether we look at the monuments associated with the ancient incense trade, or at the antiquities that arise from the annual pilgrimage, Arabia appears always at this crossroads of civilizations. This has been the case for many centuries.
Nowhere is this legacy more evident than at our first UNESCO World Heritage site, the great Nabatean city of Madain Saleh (200 BCE-106 CE). The great tomb facades constitute one of the most remarkable monuments of the ancient world. Madain Saleh is visible testimony to Saudi Arabia's past as a crossing point.
Another major antiquity at which our archaeologists have worked is the ancient city of Tayma' (1200 BCE). Its great defensive walls were built over many centuries as a result of the gradual development of the Tayma' oasis into a center of trade. Indeed, so important was Tayma', that for a period in the 6th century BCE it served as the capital of the Babylonian Empire during the reign of King Nabonidus (7th century BCE).
In the midst of the Nafud dunes of northern Saudi Arabia is the extraordinary landscape around Jubbah (7000-BCE to the present) with its many rock engravings, unique in the country. We are in fact contemplating submitting the Jubbah antiquities to UNESCO for consideration as a World Heritage site.
Another remarkable archaeological discovery in Saudi Arabia is the Qaryat Al-Fau (300 BCE-400 CE), excavated over many years by archaeologists from King Saud University. To scholars of Arabian archaeology, Al-Fau was an entirely fortuitous discovery and caused a major re-assessment of Arabian antiquities in the pre-Islamic centuries, during the age of the kingdom of Kindah.
Its large bronze sculptures, its extraordinary array of paintings and its magnificent edifice inscribed in bronze show the sophistication of life in Arab cities. Those towns had emerged along the web of ancient incense routes from Yemen across the Peninsula.
The advent of Islam was to change the relationship of these thriving civilizations with the surrounding world. From being a peninsula on the fringe of the Roman, Byzantine and Sassanian Empires, Arabia became the center of an ever-growing Islamic focus.
In addition to Islam's effect on the social and political fabric of Arabia, it marked a most profound turning point in the continuing evolution of Arabian civilization, launching the culture on a new and distinguished trajectory.
With time, facilities specifically designed to serve the pilgrimage were built along the routes from Egypt, Yemen, Syria and the Islamic east. Some of the most important of Saudi Arabia's antiquities are associated with the pilgrim roads.
The most impressive of these routes is Darb Zubaydah (7th Century BCE), a great monument to Islamic piety built by the 'Abbasid Khalif, Harun Al-Rashid and his learned wife Zubaydah. As a work of engineering and social organization, Darb Zubaydah is one of the most impressive of Islamic antiquities in Saudi Arabia.
The history of the written word in Arabia is also bountiful. Many people in Arabia's ancient past were literate, as is witnessed by thousands of inscriptions in ancient languages and in Arabic that are scattered across the Peninsula.
As the pilgrimage to Holy Makkah was purified and made universal by Islam, so too was the Arabic language elevated into the language of the Qur'an, thus underlining the continuity of Arabic civilization, even across the Islamic era
Thanks to the long-term development of archaeology in our universities, we now have the human resources to work effectively and to mutual benefit with international archaeological teams. As a result, 14 international teams are already at work at sites across the country with our own Saudi archaeologists. This would have been beyond our capacities a decade ago.
The unification of Arabia under the first Saudi state (1744-1818) marks another turning point in our history; it extended the boundaries of the state to include most of the Arabian Peninsula. Intimately associated with this unification, the town of Al-Dir'iyya, the historic capital of the state, is one of the largest surviving towns in the Kingdom, that embodies the traditions of desert mud and stone architecture. Al-Dir'iyya is now being restored and has been proposed as a world heritage site, concurrently with other important locations.
The awakening to the importance of this heritage dimension that I have delineated impels us towards tangible actions to protect our heritage, such as the Royal Proclamation promulgated in 2008 to identify, protect and maintain Islamic sites in the Kingdom. In addition, a program for the rehabilitation of ancient mosques was started in partnership with the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Al-Turath foundation.
Under the patronage of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities has very recently (May 23-28, 2010) organized the First International Conference for Urban Heritage in the Islamic Countries, in which it hosted hundreds of participants representing more than 40 countries and international organizations, and hundreds of specialists and speakers, the largest ever organized in the Kingdom. The event was used to educate millions of students and officials across the country about the importance of the national built heritage.
On the international level, we have begun to showcase our antiquities and culture in a series of national and international exhibitions, of which the first is the Saudi Archaeology Exhibition at the Louvre in mid-July 2010, which will eventually tour other museums around the world.
We are seriously investing in the cultural education of our people, and cultivating a sense of ownership within communities and the young generations for them to embrace their heritage. We believe it is essential to foster an atmosphere of understanding and pride of our heritage within the country as a critical component of our national identity, establishing new museums, both of general interest and thematic, including the Museum of Qur'an in Madinah, and restoring historic buildings associated with the Saudi state, that will be converted into cultural and educational centers for our communities.
Working jointly with the Ministry of Education, we are introducing teachers and their pupils to antiquities sites, museums, and built heritage, and raising awareness among policy makers, regional and municipal, opinion leaders, and the public at large, focusing on the importance of our heritage as a major part of Saudi Arabia's cultural identity, and their role in protecting it.
Programs to rehabilitate historic town centers, traditional villages, and markets are already under way all over the country, and government financial facilities are being extended to those who want to restore and invest in their heritage buildings.
We have also made considerable progress in establishing archives on the history of the Kingdom. A number of major archives of written materials and photographs have now been collected by the King Abdul Aziz Foundation and Library, the King Fahad Library and Al-Turath Foundation.
These initiatives and projects have the added benefit of generating economic value and employment in the developing tourism sector and engaging local communities in the protection of their heritage, and re-igniting interest in the colorful traditional crafts of the country, another area of living arts we have engaged enthusiastically across the Kingdom.
Our heritage is considered a national asset for the tourism initiative, because we recognize that sustainable tourism is potentially a significant source of employment and a major development engine, a means by which our heritage can be protected and used proactively to become the attraction for social interaction between communities.
As I mentioned at the outset, our identity is often projected on our Islamic, political and economic dimensions. I hope that I have made a case for recognizing our fourth dimension, which is intimately interwoven with the other three.
As we take our rightful place in humanity's future, our younger generations must learn to appreciate their heritage and realize their true identity and the role they must play in the betterment of mankind, insha'Allah.
We firmly believe that the role Saudi Arabia is playing now, and will be playing in the future, is not contrived nor invented in a vacuum; rather, it arises from our natural place as heirs to a procession of great civilizations, and the custodians of Islam's holiest sites.
We recognize our responsibility, as we continue to prepare for the great challenges that await us.
Saudi Arabia today is undergoing a massive development program that is led by a brave, visionary, far-sighted king. King Abdullah is charting new directions for the Kingdom, and building on the great accomplishments of his predecessors.
The current development as envisioned by the king is transformational; it is massive and bold, yet it stems from a deep understanding of our heritage, our values and sense of identity, and is in line with the development that was launched by His Majesty the late King Abdul Aziz, the founder of today's Saudi Arabia, to modernizing and developing, while maintaining the values that provided the foundation for the unification of Saudi Arabia.
Along with our well recognized and cherished role as the custodians of Islam's holiest places, and the vast human and natural resources with which we are endowed, our heritage is recognized as a critical asset and a central part of our drive to modernize and prosper.
Our country's unification re-established the social harmony and unity of Arabia; now, the revival of our heritage sites and villages will contribute towards crystallizing this unity. Indeed, the unification of modern Saudi Arabia was not only physical, but a unification of a people with shared values and a common history and destiny.
Thank you.
