Riyadh & the Najd

The Najd — the name means "highland" — is the plateau at the heart of Arabia, enclosed by the Nafud in the north and the sand belts of the Dahna to the east. For millennia it was a land of Bedouin tribes and small oasis towns. The Hail region's rock carvings record hunters and herders thousands of years ago; the Tayy tribe of the Ha'il mountains produced the pre-Islamic poet Hatim al-Tai, still the Arab byword for generosity; and the old district of al-Yamamah, around today's Riyadh, fought the early Muslims at the Battle of Yamama in 632.

Diriyah, in Wadi Hanifa, was founded in the 15th century, and in 1744 its emir Muhammad ibn Saud allied with the preacher Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Their first Saudi state spread across Arabia until an Ottoman-Egyptian army under Ibrahim Pasha besieged and destroyed Diriyah in 1818. The second Saudi state moved its capital to nearby Riyadh, but in 1891 it fell to the rival Al Rashid dynasty of Ha'il, rulers of the Jabal Shammar.

In 1902 the young Abdulaziz Ibn Saud retook Riyadh in a night raid on the Masmak fort, then won Qassim from the Rashidis and finally took Ha'il in 1921. Riyadh became the capital of the kingdom proclaimed in 1932, and oil money turned a walled mud town into a sprawling modern city; ministries and embassies moved there from Jeddah, and today it is at the centre of Vision 2030, with Diriyah rebuilt as a heritage showcase.

The Najd sees itself as the core of Saudi identity. Najdi Arabic, with its Bedouin roots, is the prestige dialect of the kingdom's rulers, and Nabati poetry, the ardah sword dance with drums and chanted verse, falconry and camel culture are all strongest here. The religious reform movement of 1744 grew from these towns, and the region has long been known as a bastion of religious conservatism.

Najdi architecture is distinctive: thick mud-brick walls, crenellated parapets pierced with triangular openings, and palm-trunk ceilings, a style now quoted by Riyadh's new government buildings and the restored lanes of Diriyah. Hospitality follows strict forms in the majlis, where pale, cardamom-heavy Najdi coffee is poured in small measures with dates.

The calendar has changed fast. Riyadh Season has brought concerts, boxing and theme districts to the capital since 2019, while older events carry on alongside, such as Buraidah's date festival and the Hail Rally.

Riyadh, with about seven million people, is the kingdom's largest city and its political and financial centre, stretching for tens of kilometres along ring roads and highways. Qassim's two main towns, Buraidah and Unaizah, are farming and trading centres, and Ha'il is a smaller agricultural city at the foot of the Aja mountains.

The capital's economy runs on government, royal courts, banks and the head offices of state companies, with the King Abdullah Financial District as its new business quarter; construction for Expo 2030 and the 2034 football World Cup keeps cranes busy. Qassim and Ha'il grow dates, wheat, vegetables and fodder, much of it on circular fields irrigated from deep aquifers — a model under pressure as groundwater falls.

Life is car-based and nocturnal for much of the year: offices and schools start early, the afternoon heat empties the streets, and families head for malls, cafés, parks and desert camps after the evening prayer. Weekend outings to a tent in the sand, with a fire, coffee and a grilled lamb, are a Najdi institution in winter. Traffic, housing costs and the pace of change under Vision 2030 are the everyday talking points in Riyadh.

Najdi cooking is plain, hearty and built on wheat, dates and meat. Kabsa, spiced rice with lamb or chicken, is eaten everywhere, but the older specialities are wheat dishes: jareesh, cracked wheat slow-cooked with meat and topped with fried onion; margoog, a stew of meat and vegetables with thin pieces of dough cooked in the sauce; matazeez, similar but with thicker discs of dough; and qursan, thin bread topped with meat, vegetables and broth.

Dates are central to the region's diet and pride. Qassim is famous for sukkari, a soft, golden, very sweet variety, and Buraidah's market trades dozens of others, eaten fresh, dried or pressed into paste. Kleija biscuits are the signature sweet of Qassim and Ha'il, and hanini, dates mashed with bread and ghee, is a winter breakfast. Luqaimat, fried dough balls in date syrup, appear at Ramadan.

The drinks are Arabic coffee, lightly roasted in the Najdi style and spiced with cardamom and sometimes saffron, sweet black tea, and laban, a salty buttermilk. Camel's milk is still drunk fresh in Bedouin camps and sold in the cities.

Riyadh's historic core is compact: the Masmak Fortress, where the 1902 raid took place, the National Museum and the Murabba Palace in the King Abdulaziz Historical Centre, and the old souqs around Deira. The modern city is seen from the sky bridge of the Kingdom Centre tower. Diriyah, on the city's north-western edge, holds At-Turaif, the ruined and restored mud-brick citadel of the first Saudi state, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the Bujairi quarter's restaurants facing it across Wadi Hanifa.

The Edge of the World lies about 100 kilometres north-west of Riyadh, where the Tuwaiq escarpment ends in sheer limestone cliffs above a vast plain; the drive in crosses desert tracks and the views are best at sunset. In the same direction the restored mud-brick village of Ushaiqer shows what Najdi towns looked like before oil, and after rain the rawdas, desert meadows such as Rawdat Khuraim, turn green.

In Qassim, Buraidah's date market is one of the largest in the world, and Unaizah keeps heritage houses and a museum of local life. Ha'il has the Airif fort on its hill and the Qishlah palace, and the Aja and Salma mountains rise nearby. Jubbah, in the red sands of the Nafud north-west of Ha'il, has thousands of rock carvings of camels, ibex, cattle and human figures on Jabal Umm Sinman; with Shuwaymis, it forms the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Rock Art in the Hail Region.