Abha

Abha sits in a basin high in the Sarawat range, in country farmed from terraces cut into the slopes for many centuries. The highlands of Asir were held by settled mountain tribes who built stone and mud tower-houses and fortified their villages, and the area's position between the Yemeni highlands and the Hijaz made it a route for trade and a prize contested by outside powers.

Ottoman forces occupied parts of Asir in the 19th century and met repeated resistance from local leaders, and in the early 20th century the region was fought over by the Idrisi emirate on the Tihama coast, Yemeni rulers and the expanding Saudi state. Saudi forces took control of highland Asir in the 1920s, and Abha became the administrative centre of the province. The border with Yemen was settled by the Treaty of Taif in 1934 and finally fixed by the Treaty of Jeddah in 2000.

For much of the 20th century the city remained a small mountain town reached by difficult tracks. Roads, the airport and the growth of the military city of Khamis Mushait, with its large air base, changed that from the 1970s, and Abha grew into a provincial capital with a university, hospitals and government offices. Domestic tourism followed, as air-conditioning-weary families from Riyadh and the Gulf coast discovered the cool summers, and resort development spread along the escarpment. Since 2015 the war across the Yemeni border has periodically reached the city and its airport.

Asir feels different from the rest of Saudi Arabia, and Abha is where that difference is displayed. The region's best-known art is Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, the bold geometric painting applied by women to the interior walls of houses in bright colours, inscribed on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2017 and now used on shopfronts, galleries and public buildings across the city. Stone tower-houses with projecting slate courses, carved wooden doors and painted rooms are the regional architecture.

Tribal identity is strong, and so are the customs that go with it: long greetings, generous hospitality and formal seating in the majlis. The men of some highland communities, including the people of the Habala area, have worn garlands of herbs and flowers on their heads, a habit that gave rise to the name "flower men" used by outsiders. Weddings and holidays bring out drum dances and lines of men performing with sticks or daggers, and the silver jewellery and embroidered dress of the region are sold in the souq.

Abha has become the cultural capital of the south, with an arts village, exhibitions and a summer programme of concerts and festivals that would have been impossible before the social changes of recent years. Manners remain conservative: modest dress, restraint between men and women in public, and prayer times that pause business through the day.

Abha is the capital of Asir Province and, with neighbouring Khamis Mushait, forms much the largest urban area in the south-west. Abha itself had about 422,000 residents at the 2022 census, and Khamis Mushait is larger again. The two cities have grown towards each other across the plateau, with the airport between them, and many people live in one and work in the other.

Government, the armed forces, King Khalid University, hospitals and schools provide much of the work. Farming continues on the terraces around the city — fruit, coffee, grain and honey, the last of these the region's most valuable speciality — and tourism has become a major employer, with hotels, resorts, cable cars and restaurants built for the summer season. Unemployment among young people is a live concern, as it is across the kingdom.

Life is lived outdoors more than in the hot lowlands. Families picnic in the parks and juniper forests, barbecue on the escarpment on weekend evenings, and fill the dam-side promenades after sunset. Houses are built for cool nights rather than heat, and mist, rain and cold snaps are ordinary events here in a way they are nowhere else in Saudi Arabia. The proximity of the Yemeni border, and the attacks that have reached the city and its airport, are part of the background to daily life.

Asiri cooking is a mountain cuisine, closer to Yemen than to the Gulf. Its signature is areeka, a dense dough of bread or flour kneaded with ghee and eaten with honey, served as a celebration dish and a heavy breakfast. Haneeth and mandi, lamb or chicken slow-cooked with spiced rice in a pit or oven, and mathbi, meat grilled on hot stones, are the festive meals, eaten from a shared platter with the right hand. Marasi'a, a dough dish with honey and ghee, and porridges of ground grain belong to the same tradition.

Honey is the region's pride and its most expensive product, gathered from hives in the mountains and the acacia country below and sold by the comb at roadside stalls and in the souq, with sidr honey the most prized. Coffee is grown on terraces in the mountains of the south-west, and the highland version of the Saudi coffee ritual — pale, cardamom-scented qahwa poured from a dallah — is offered to every visitor, along with qishr, a warming brew made from coffee husks with ginger.

The terraces supply the rest of the table: wheat and barley for flat breads baked on a griddle, prickly pear, grapes, figs and pomegranates in season, and the fruit of the Tihama lowlands below, including mangoes and bananas, carried up the escarpment to Abha's markets. Yoghurt, buttermilk and clarified butter appear in most meals, and alcohol is illegal throughout the kingdom.