leisure: Shaping a nation
Shaping a nation
In bygone years Saudi Arabia was at the centre of ancient trade, transporting spice and silk, predominantly, from North Africa through Saudi Arabia and on to Asia.
The Arabian people were enriched by many different civilisations with the farreaching trade network that extended to South Asia, the Mediterranean and Egypt.
This cultural mix was further enhanced with the introduction of Islam in the 7th century AD, which rapidly spread across the Atlantic Ocean and east to India and China. This was a period of great learning in culture, science, philosophy and the arts, and it was known as the Islamic 'Golden Age'.
To this day, millions of Islamic pilgrims make the journey to Saudi Arabia to the most religious of Islamic sites, the Ka'aba in the Grand Mosque in Makkah (Mecca). These travellers continue to enrich the cultural mix in the Kingdom.
The late King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman formed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 and his sons have since dedicated themselves to preserving Arab traditions and culture.
One of the most upheld traditions of the Saudi people is the extension of hospitality, which every Saudi offers to strangers, friends and family.
The simplest expression of hospitality is coffee and its preparation is a cultural tradition. The Saudi coffee contains cardamom, and sometimes other spices like saffron to give it a golden colour and a sweet taste. It is often served in small cups along with dates and sweets. Another gesture of hospitality is the burning of incense to welcome guests.
Cultural institutions
A variety of institutions have been established throughout Saudi Arabia to preserve the country's cultural heritage, the largest being the Department of Culture at the Ministry of Culture & Information.
This department sponsors a wide range of cultural programmes, including literary and drama clubs, arts and crafts, and folklore classes.
The Department of Culture regularly sponsors exhibitions, literary readings and symposia. It also sponsors Saudi nationals in international art and cultural events.
The Saudi Arabian Society for Culture & Arts, which was founded in 1972, supports rising local talent and provides them with the opportunity to display their art. The society has established a library and information centre, as well as the Kingdom's first cultural centre in Riyadh.
Furthermore, there is the King Fahd Library in Riyadh, which offers one of the largest collections of rare manuscripts on Arabic and Islamic literature, and the King Faisal Foundation, whose annual King Faisal International Prizes includes one for Arabic literature.
The Department of Museums & Antiquities was established in 1974, but today, the responsibility for the many museums throughout the country falls on the Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA).
The largest museum in Saudi Arabia is the National Museum in Riyadh, which opened in 1999. This museum was built to commemorate the centennial of the taking of the Masmak Fortress by King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman in 1902. This single event led to the founding of the modern Saudi state.
Other museums in Riyadh include the King Saud University Museum, which has a display of finds from archaeological digs, and Murabba Palace, with exhibits of traditional clothing and crafts.
Cultural Festivals
The most famous cultural event in Saudi Arabia is the Jenadriyah Heritage & Cultural Festival, which is organised every year by the National Guard. The festival was first held in 1985, and today it continues to attract more than one million Saudis annually that are keen to learn about the traditional culture and crafts of Saudi Arabia.
The event opens with a traditional camel race and is followed by artisan displays, such as pottery, woodwork and weavers. Visitors can also stroll through history in a heritage village, which resides permanently in Jenadriyah, just outside Riyadh.
At the heritage village, visitors can watch blacksmiths smelting iron and hammering out swords and daggers, metal smiths creating traditional brass and copper coffee pots, potters using a traditional foot-powered wheel, tailors hand-sewing cloaks and basket weavers shaping palm fronds.
There are also traditional dancers performing the ardha, the national male sword dance, with singers and poetry recitals. Poetry is considered to be one of the highest expressions of literary art in Saudi Arabia. It has been passed down from the days of the Bedouin where travellers would gather around a storyteller to hear tales of love, bravery, chivalry and war. The Holy Qur'an is revered as the ultimate literary model. Saudi folk music has also been shaped by the nomadic Bedouins and the travelling pilgrims.
Archaeological preservation
Today, the SCTA is also responsible for numerous restoration projects, including the excavation, cataloguing and preservation of historic sites. Further archaeological work is carried out by the Department of Archaeology at King Saud University in Riyadh.
The major restoration projects include the ancestral home of the Al-Saud family in Dir'iyah, the ancient sites of Fau, Madain Saleh, Al-Ula, Tayma, Duma and along Darb Zubaydah, the pilgrimage road to Makkah.
A large number of mosques around the Kingdom have also been restored, including the Holy Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet's Mosque in Al Madinah. In addition, whole villages have been restored including the old Qasr Al-Hokm area in Riyadh, as well as the ancient quarters of Jeddah and Hail
Architecture
The design and construction of buildings in Saudi Arabia have largely been dictated by the climate, geography and resources available.
Historically, builders in the central areas of the Kingdom preferred adobe for its availability, pliability and insulation. This material is a very basic blend of dirt and water, often mixed with straw for strength, and then shaped and dried.
Even today you can still see many homes built with adobe, even in the modern cosmopolitan cities like Riyadh, although they are now in a dire state of disrepair.
In the western parts of the Kingdom stone and red brick were common, while builders in Jeddah used coral from the Red Sea.
Today, contemporary architects look to these traditional building designs for inspiration, combining traditional methods and materials with modern day resources. King Saud University and the King Khalid International Airport are two striking examples of just how well traditional Islamic design and modern structure can be combined.
Further striking examples of Arabic architecture can be found in the Musmak Palace, which was built around 1865 and extensively renovated in the 1980s. It is a square shaped fortified castle consisting of watch towers on all corners and very thick walls. Inside the mud fortress there is a reconstructed traditional diwan (sitting room) with an open courtyard and a fully functioning well. The fortress is now a museum devoted to Abdulaziz.
The Al-Thumairi Gate, in the centre of town, is an impressive restoration of one of the nine gates that used to lead into the city before the wall was torn down in 1950.
Undeniably, Riyadh's most interesting attraction is the ruins of Dir'iyah, which lie 30 kilometres north of the city centre and to the northwest of Al-Riyadh on the bank of Wadi Hanifa. This was the Kingdom's first capital and it is now the country's most popular archaeological site. The reconstructed ruins include palaces, mosques and the city wall.
One of the most synonymous Arabic architectural structures is the minaret, which is also one of the most visible man-made structures in Saudi Arabia. Minarets jut from the skyline of every Saudi urban centre. The reason minarets rise above all surrounding structures is to allow the call to prayer to be clearly heard.
Every mosque has at least one minaret, although two are more common, and larger ones have more, with the Holy Mosque in Makkah boasting 12. Some are simple, while others are elaborately decorated with stone and tiles.
