Unearthing AlUla’s Old Town - Part 1: In the Footsteps of Explorers

Explorer Journal by Charles Phillips. 2023. Written for the Royal Commission of AlUla’s website: The Living Museum.

Overlooking AlUla’s Old Town

Nestled within a fertile oasis valley in northwest Arabia, is a labyrinth of around nine hundred ancient dwellings. They surround a large rocky outcrop crowned with the remains of a walled fortress that once kept watch over this valley. Built with mud and stone, some of these abandoned houses still have their roofs, many do not. These are the enchanting remains of AlUla’s Old Town which I have come here to explore.

Having travelled throughout the Middle East, this is my first encounter with AlUla, a place I'm deeply excited to experience. For the historically and culturally curious, there are endless reasons why one would want to visit AlUla. Situated in a wide valley that was historically known as Wadi al-Qura, the ‘valley of villages,’ this natural corridor played a pivotal role in connecting diverse civilisations, from ancient Rome and Greece to the ancient kingdoms of southern Arabia and beyond. Traders and pilgrims traversed this route, etching stories into the very stone beneath their feet.

The Old Town, established in the 12th century CE, sits in a lineage of ancient cities, each a chapter in AlUla’s story, each a centre for civilisations gone by – the city of Dadan for the Dadanites and Lihyanites, the city of Hegra for the Nabataeans and Romans, and the city of Qurh for early Islamic traders. All three are within a twenty kilometre radius of AlUla’s Old Town. While these cities are now buried, serving as archaeological sites today, the thing that makes the Old Town unique is that it is still a living, breathing site that can be visited.

I want to explore this ancient place and reimagine what it was like when people lived here. To do so I am going to attempt to retrace the footsteps of famous explorers who passed through here throughout the centuries. Can I conjure up these images of the past as I wander through the Old Town and see the same details that they did? I want to compare these images with what’s happening today and learn about the contemporary restorations that are making the Old Town a place for travellers to visit once again.

Past Explorers

First I must introduce my two central characters. They are perhaps the two most interesting explorers who visited AlUla’s Old Town in days gone by. The first is Ibn Battuta, a famed and celebrated Muslim traveller who visited in 1326 CE as part of a pilgrimage from Damascus to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. Born in Tangier, Morocco he spent the formative years of his adult life travelling all the way from North Africa to China. He described the Old Town as “a large and pleasant village with palm gardens and water springs.” More from him later.

Our second character is a curious English explorer named Charles Montagu Doughty. He visited in 1876 and provides the most vivid written account available of what life was like here. A contemporary of Lawrence of Arabia, he spent two years travelling throughout the region which he recorded in his book Travels in Arabia Deserta.

He tells tales of sitting down with the Sheikh of the Old Town for dinner who invited him to rest in his house for the night. He then got stranded here, staying for several days. He will be a big part of our story.

A renovated street in the Old Town

Layal the Rawi

I am here today in the Old Town on a tour so I also have a third person to introduce: Layal Alqadi, a young Saudi woman and a local storyteller or ‘Rawi.’ Layal's family once called this place home, and she is now a torchbearer of its stories, narrating its history to newcomers like myself. Like the other Rawis I met in AlUla, I can see that Layal is passionate about what she does, and her enthusiasm is infectious. She embodies a trend I have observed throughout the country, reflecting the transformative impact that tourism is having in creating new opportunities for Saudi Arabia's younger generations.

Among families such as Layal’s, there isn’t much written documentation about the history of the Old Town. To get a sense of the past, historians have had to lean on the writings of foreign explorers like Doughty and rely on their observations. But I am hoping Layal can provide a different perspective, or at least fill in some of the gaps in these written accounts. She brings a different, arguably more important, source of knowledge: oral history. AlUla has a culture of oral history, wherein knowledge is passed down from generation to generation through storytelling. I feel privileged to be able to hear some of these stories from Layal today.

A Defensive Maze

Guided by Layal, we take our first steps into the Old Town. The first thing that strikes me is that this is a maze! You could easily get lost here. I turn to Layal, thankful that she is here to orientate us. The town has a series of narrow alleyways that snake through it, and we have entered one of them. From here I can see that the houses are interconnected and tightly packed in. They sit side by side, sharing the same walls and there’s lots of shade within the alleyways due to an overhanging storey above.

Layal explains that the town was intentionally designed in this way, with the outermost houses serving as a defensive wall against outside invaders. Anyone who entered would have easily become lost or trapped. The townspeople had much to defend. They were guardians of three highly sought after resources: water, food and a strategic location. It is not surprising that others may have wanted to capture this highly fertile valley.

Layal explains that the 900 or so houses here were divided into different neighbourhoods, with five town squares, and at one point 14 gates! In the past travellers, pilgrims and visitors could enter via these gates which were opened in the morning and closed each evening. Doughty seemed to think the town was smaller in his time than it is today. Climbing up one of the cliffs above, he remarked: “I have seen all the houses together to be about four hundred.” I imagine it was even smaller in Ibn Battuta’s time but perhaps life between these two eras may not have been so different.

The Old Town’s Maze-like Layout

A Tight-Knit Community

We enter one of the partly restored houses, and Layal explains their layout. Most have two storeys, with the first level built from stone and the upper level from mud bricks. The people of AlUla were known for their hospitality. They designated the lower areas of their homes as spaces for meetings and gatherings, where they could welcome guests and serve coffee. This area was known as the majlis. Goats and other animals were sometimes kept on the ground floor as well. I imagine what it would have been like to sip coffee next to a goat!

The room we are in doesn’t have any windows. It must have been quite dark when people lived here. The upstairs level was where the bedroom and kitchen was. When Doughty was here he was fortunate enough to stay in the upper room of the Sheikh’s house. He describes how the walls of the room “were hanged with little flails of fine palm-straw ware, gauded [adorned] with ties of scarlet and small sea shells.”

Walking back outside, Layal explains that the overhanging level above many of the alleyways is what’s called a tayyarah. In Arabic this can translate to aeroplane or flying. The tayyarah had an additional room inside and was an extension to a house. Households had to ask their neighbours permission to build these extensions, and as a gesture of goodwill would often name them after the neighbour. I learn that around 100 years ago, at the beginning of the 20th century, the town had a population of around 3,000-4,000 inhabitants. Seeing the rooms where people lived, I imagine it must have been a tight-knit community given that everyone lived so close together, sharing spaces in a communal way.

A ‘tayyarah’ (overhanging level)

Talking Traders

No one lives here today, so this is where Doughty can help us reimagine what it would have been like to walk through the streets when they were full of life. Wandering through the town 150 years ago, he remarked that the alleyways were very clean but dark (due to the overhanging rooms above) and that: “At every door is made a clay bench (…), where householders and passengers may sit friendly discoursing.” Rather than an open market, he noted that goods were sold on street corners which included “small wares of the daily provision” after sunrise and “mutton and goat-flesh at half-afternoon.” He was allowed to wander freely in the streets to record his observations and he chatted to many people. “Among the next benchers I sat down; the people were peaceable and spoke friendly with me.”

It seems he enjoyed his time here. He talked of hearing “the cheerful knelling of a coffee-pestle” and of public coffee-rooms where “any stranger (…) is welcome.” He recalls how the people told him “you are safe in a town of Islam. At el-Ally is good company and all that one may need is at hand.” ‘El-Ally’ was the name he used for the town.

Ancient Locks

Layal stops us at two doors – one with an aged wooden lock and one with a new lock of the same design using the same materials. She does this to indicate to us the level of detail that those restoring the Old Town are following. I learnt that the locks are of an ancient design, similar to those used in ancient Egypt and Assyria thousands of years ago. They are called wooden pin locks. They work by taking a bolt (a wooden block) and feeding it through a bracket on the door and a bracket on the wall (also both made of wood). As the bolt is fed through, three small pins within the bracket fall into three corresponding holes in the bolt, which lock it in place. The owner of the house would have had a large stick-like key with three upward pointing teeth on one end. These would correspond to the size and arrangement of the pins. The owner would insert this near the back of the bracket on the door to lift the pins and open the door. Doughty was similarly enchanted by these locks, describing them in detail and how some of the townspeople had keys that were made of metal, not just wood.

A traditional lock on an Old Town home

Dadanite Inscriptions

As we walk onwards, Layal points out a large stone in one of the walls which has an ancient inscription on it. This is one of the stones that was taken from the ancient archaeological site of Dadan, three kilometres to the north. It is thought that many of the stones from that site were used to build the Old Town. It is just a small indication of how interconnected AlUla’s different sites are. More of these inscriptions can be seen dotted around the town.

Ever curious, Doughty reports: “I walked unheeded in the streets of el-Ally and transcribed the inscriptions (…) which I found ofttimes upon building stones, or to which any friendly persons would lead me.”

Seeing these stones, I am reminded of just how old this place is. I learn that there are different tales about the origins of the Old Town, and that ongoing excavation work is trying to determine the date of earliest occupation. It is known that at least some of the site was in use before the 12th century. The fort atop the rocky outcrop in the centre of the Old Town is thought to date back to the 10th century CE for example. Doughty recalls one tale he was told about the origins of the town. A group of 40 North African pilgrims, journeying from Makkah and Madinah, found ruins here from a former settlement. Pleased with the solitary setting, their leader struck the ground where water suddenly appeared. He also placed his staff in the ground which miraculously took root and grew into a palm tree.

A Dadanite Inscription

Up to the Fort

Next we venture upwards, meandering up to the top of the fort. Steps wind up this solid rocky outcrop taking us 45-metres high. It is an enjoyable climb as the stonework has been freshly renovated. At the top there are spectacular views of the town and the surrounding landscape. Looking down, it is even more apparent from here the degree to which the town is one enormous maze. And it is interesting from above to see the state of repair and disrepair of the houses. I can see that some of the tops of the walls have been smoothed over with a new protective layer of mud. Others are much more exposed and you can see how they have been deteriorating – a crumbling and an unravelling of ancient material.

To the west of us are some of the valley’s prominent cliffs. They look down on us as we look up to them from below. The rock is lined with layers of reddish brown and higher up there are flat vertical surfaces imbued with a dark volcanic hue. Ancient lava fields once flowed here which Doughty details at length in his book. Looking east, I immediately get drawn in by the vast expanse of the seemingly endless oasis; an army of palm trees running up the valley from south to north. The oasis is the reason everything that is here exists. It is what would have supplied the food and water for both residents and the camel caravans passing through. I imagine it is what the Old Town’s inhabitants would have been endlessly grateful for. Just as Ibn Battuta described it, it is indeed very “pleasant.”

Within the oasis, directly opposite us, my eyes start to scan a large open patch with the ruinous remains of a series of mud brick walls. They are very spread out. Layal explains that these are the remains of the summer houses. The Old Town’s inhabitants would move to these dwellings during the summer in order to be closer to their crops and enjoy the shade of the trees. The houses here are in a much poorer condition than those of the Old Town. Some seem to have almost disappeared into the ground completely.

AlUla’s Oasis

A Pilgrimage Stop

It is here at the top of the fort that I look to the roads in the distance going both north and south and wonder about the pilgrim travellers of the past who came through here. What would they have made of the Old Town and what was it like when they were here? 700 years ago, Ibn Battuta came here as part of a mighty journey from Damascus to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. He was on the Hajj pilgrimage, and AlUla was an important stop on this route. He journeyed via camel caravan – a series of camels carrying passengers and goods – and the journey from Damascus to Medina took around 40 days! In his writings he notes that pilgrim caravans would pause here for four days to stock up on provisions and wash their clothes.

“The people of the village are very trustworthy” he says, and the pilgrims before beginning their onward journey to Medina, “leave behind them here any surplus of provisions they may have, taking with them nothing but what is strictly necessary.”

When Ibn Battuta was here, I imagine how this would have been a bustling place of cultural exchange between all sorts of interesting people traveling along the pilgrim and trade routes. He talks of Christian merchants from Syria coming here to trade goods with Muslim pilgrims. Yet the north-south route wasn’t the only one that passed through here. AlUla is strategically placed at a crossroads of ancient trade routes. Some merchants and traders would arrive from the west along a route that came from the Red Sea. Others would come from the east along a route originating in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq).

In Doughty’s time, it seems Syrian traders were still making the journey here to sell goods. “There were lodging at el-Ally two Damascus tradesmen (…), that come down with clothing-stuffs for the Beduins in every pilgrimage.” Attesting to the town’s assortment of inhabitants, he encountered a whole mix of people in the Old Town. He met a young man who had been a conscript soldier in southern Arabia but deserted and came to live in AlUla. There was a man whose father had moved here from Egypt and whose family background was Christian. He heard about a squadron of Syrian cavalry sent to protect the forts on the pilgrim roads who had stayed at the Old Town, and he travelled with blacksmiths from the oasis city of Tayma who would regularly come to stay at AlUla. “They came about this country once a year, and sojourned [stayed] three months tinkering at el-Ally.”

Remains of summer houses in the oasis

Restorations

As we descend from the fort, it is time to learn about what is in store for the next chapter of the Old Town’s history – the one that is yet to be written – and the efforts to bring a new generation of travellers here. I am curious as to what mysteries await us in the ruined parts of the Old Town that we are about to see, and what I can learn about the restorations taking place. What will new life be like in the town as people begin to come back here and perhaps even live in part of it once again? Join me to uncover what the future holds and discover how the past is as important as ever…

Continues with Part 2.