Al Bahah

The mountains around Al Bahah have been farmed for thousands of years by the Ghamid and Zahran tribes, who cut terraces into the slopes, dug channels to catch the rain and built stone houses and watchtowers to defend their fields and grain stores. The routes through these peaks linked Yemen with the Hijaz, and caravans carrying incense, coffee and goods from the Red Sea ports climbed the escarpment along paths that are still traceable beside the modern road.

For centuries the highlands were governed locally, with tribal councils and fortified villages, while wider control shifted between the rulers of Yemen, the Sharifs of Mecca and the Ottomans. The area came under Saudi rule in the 1920s as the kingdom took in Asir and the south-west, and the province of Al Bahah was established as a separate administrative region, the smallest in the country, with the town as its capital.

Al Bahah itself was a modest market and administrative centre until roads reached the plateau in the second half of the 20th century. Paved highways to Taif and Jeddah, the escarpment descents to the Tihama, a domestic airport and government investment turned it into a provincial capital and a summer resort for Saudis escaping the heat. Many of the old stone villages around it were left empty as families moved into new concrete houses, and some are now being restored as heritage sites.

Al Bahah's identity is tribal and agricultural. The Ghamid and Zahran confederations dominate the province, and family and tribal ties still organise much of social life, from weddings to disputes. Older men in the villages may still wear a wreath of herbs or flowers on the head in the tradition shared with the mountains of Asir further south, and the jambiya dagger appears at celebrations rather than in daily wear.

Building is the region's most visible art. Houses and towers are made of flat stones laid without mortar, with projecting slabs to throw off the rain and small windows against the cold, and the same stone is used for the terrace walls that step down the mountainsides. Interiors were decorated with painted geometric patterns, a tradition related to Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, the wall painting done by women in the highlands that UNESCO recognises as intangible heritage.

Music and dance at weddings are communal and rhythmic, performed in lines to drums, and poetry competitions remain popular. Honey is more than a product here: beekeeping families are respected, and giving honey is a mark of regard. Hospitality follows the wider Saudi pattern — coffee poured from a dallah, dates, and an insistence that a guest eats — but with a mountain reserve that visitors often notice as formality.

About 90,000 people lived in the town at the 2022 census, in a province of some 339,000 that is the smallest in Saudi Arabia by both area and population. Government employment dominates: the regional administration, schools, the university and the hospital are the largest employers, alongside small businesses, construction and the summer tourist trade. Farming continues on the terraces, though at a fraction of its old scale, and many families keep bees.

The rhythm of the year matters more here than in most Saudi towns. In summer the population swells with visitors from Jeddah, Riyadh and the lowlands, hotels fill, the parks are busy every evening and roadside stalls sell honey, fruit and grilled corn. Out of season the town is quiet, cold at night, and shrouded in mist for days at a time.

Young people leave for Jeddah, Taif and Riyadh to study and work, and many households have members away, returning for holidays and Eid. The province has seen steady investment in roads and tourism, including work on the escarpment routes and on restoring abandoned stone villages, and the debate over how to bring income without losing the forests and the old buildings is a live one locally.

Mountain cooking here is plain, slow and built around grain, meat and honey. The regional speciality is areeka, a dense bread dough kneaded with ghee and topped generously with honey, eaten from a communal dish. Local breads are baked in clay ovens or on hot stones, and porridge-like dishes of wheat with meat and ghee appear on festive tables.

Rice and meat dishes shared with the rest of the south dominate restaurant menus: mandi, meat and rice cooked together over a pit oven; haneeth, lamb slow-roasted until it falls from the bone; and mathbi, meat grilled on hot stones. Grills of chicken and lamb, salads, hummus and flatbread are the everyday alternative, often eaten in the open at a picnic rather than at a table.

Honey is the region's signature. Hives are kept in the juniper and acacia woods and along the wadis below the escarpment, and the sidr and talh honeys of the south-west fetch high prices across the kingdom. The lower slopes and the plain below produce bananas, pomegranates, grapes and figs, sold along the mountain roads in season. Coffee, roasted light and spiced with cardamom in the Saudi way, is served constantly, and qishr, brewed from coffee husks with ginger, is drunk in the warmer country below the mountains.