Hofuf

Hofuf grew as the chief town of al-Hasa, the great eastern oasis, where artesian springs made settled farming possible on the edge of the desert. The surrounding country was settled long before Islam, and the Abd al-Qays tribe of the oasis was among the first in Arabia to accept the new faith; the Jawatha mosque north-east of the town is the earliest known mosque in eastern Arabia. In the 10th century the oasis was the base of the Qarmatians, whose state governed from al-Hasa and raided far beyond it.

In later centuries the oasis passed between Yemeni and Iraqi powers, local dynasties and the Bani Khalid tribe. The Ottomans held it in the 16th and 17th centuries and returned in 1871, ruling from Hofuf and leaving the fortress of Qasr Ibrahim in the form it keeps today. In 1913 Ibn Saud took the town from the Ottoman garrison, a step that gave the young Saudi state its first outlet towards the Gulf and the farmland to feed it.

The oil discovered at Dhahran in 1938 transformed the whole province, and Hofuf changed with it: the railway from Riyadh to Dammam arrived in the 1950s, the old mud-brick city outside the walls gave way to concrete districts, and irrigation schemes reorganised the palm groves. In 2018 the Al-Ahsa oasis was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a cultural landscape, and heritage work has since concentrated on the fortress, the souq and the old quarters.

Al-Ahsa keeps a distinct identity within the Eastern Province. Its people, known as Hasawis, include both Sunni and Twelver Shia communities, the latter concentrated in parts of the town and in several oasis villages, and religious calendars run side by side, with Ashura observed alongside the wider Islamic year.

The oasis is known across the Gulf for its crafts. Al-Ahsa is known for the tailoring of the bisht, the fine cloak worn over the thobe on formal occasions and embroidered with gold thread, still made in workshops near the souq. Palm fronds are woven into baskets, mats and household goods, and pottery has long been made in the oasis villages. Poetry and the Gulf styles of drumming and song are strong here, and the region has produced many well-known Saudi writers and musicians.

Everyday manners are those of the wider kingdom, made a little more formal by a settled, conservative farming society: greetings are extended, hospitality is offered as Arabic coffee with cardamom and a dish of dates, and the men's majlis remains the place where visitors are received. Prayer times pause business several times a day, and the working week runs from Sunday to Thursday. Public life is more relaxed than it was a decade ago, with concerts and festivals now held in the oasis, but modest dress and restraint in public remain the norm.

About 730,000 people live in Hofuf, and more than a million in the Al-Ahsa governorate as a whole, which takes in Al-Mubarraz and a ring of villages through the palm groves. The two main cities have grown into each other, so that much of daily life crosses between them for work, school and shopping.

Farming still matters here in a way it does not elsewhere in the province: dates above all, with millions of palms, alongside Hasawi rice, vegetables and livestock. Government departments, King Faisal University, hospitals and schools employ many residents, and a large number commute or work rotations in the oil industry at Abqaiq, Dhahran and Jubail, which lie within reach by road. Foreign workers, many from South Asia, make up a substantial part of the workforce in farming, building and shops.

The day begins early and pauses through the worst of the afternoon heat, then opens again in the evening, when the souq, the cafés and the parks fill. In summer, families picnic in the palm groves and around the springs; in winter they camp at the desert edge to the south. Water is the long-running concern: the natural springs that gave the oasis its life have declined under pumping, and irrigation now depends heavily on wells and treated supply, while the city's growth continues to press on the groves.

Al-Ahsa's cooking is Gulf food with an oasis accent. Machboos, spiced rice cooked with chicken, lamb or fish, is the standard main dish, and the local version is often made with Hasawi rice, a reddish grain grown in the oasis. Muhammar, rice sweetened with date syrup and spiced, is eaten with fish, and harees, wheat and meat pounded to a smooth porridge, appears in Ramadan and at celebrations.

Dates are the oasis's signature. The khalas variety grown here is among the best known in Arabia, sold fresh in season and dried the rest of the year, pressed into blocks, stuffed with nuts, boiled down into dibs, date syrup, and folded into pastries. Every meal ends with dates and Arabic coffee, qahwa, pale and bitter with cardamom, poured from a long-spouted dallah into small handleless cups.

Breakfast may be balaleet, sweet vermicelli with saffron and cardamom under a thin omelette, or eggs with flat bread, cheese and honey. Bakeries turn out flat khubz from wall ovens throughout the day. The large South Asian population has added biryani, curries and samosas to the everyday menu, and the fish of the Gulf coast, above all hamour, reaches the town's restaurants fresh enough to be grilled whole and served on rice.