The volte face has been astonishing. Till 2017, or thereabouts, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was seen because the hallmark of Islamic puritanism, the place compulsorily veiled girls had been forbidden to journey with out their male guardian’s permission, retailers closed throughout prayer time, and the ‘spiritual police’ brandished canes to marshal the devoted into mosques. Pre-Islamic historical past was the ‘time of ignorance’ (‘jahiliyya’) and tourism, when allowed, was restricted to small teams of well-paid international enterprise folks and pilgrims visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. However for the reason that ascendancy of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (normally generally known as MBS) underneath his father King Salman (who succeeded to the throne in 2015) issues have modified dramatically. Girls could now drive. Cinemas and live performance halls that spiritual leaders, together with the grand mufti, as soon as considered sources of depravity are opening, together with ‘leisure cities’ and American-style theme parks. All are a part of Imaginative and prescient 2030, an formidable programme geared toward weaning the nation’s financial system off oil. Huge investments are being made in tourism, and Arabia’s pre-Islamic historical past – as soon as condemned as idolatrous – is central to it.
The Nabataeans
Amid this rediscovery of Arabia’s previous, a lot is being product of the potential of the AlUla Oasis, situated within the northwest within the neighborhood of Madain Saleh, also referred to as al-Hijr or Hegra. Madain Saleh was the second metropolis after Petra (now in neighbouring Jordan) created by the Nabataean kingdom that flourished from the late third century BC till it was annexed by the Romans in AD 106. Writing within the first century BC the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus described the Nabataeans as a nomadic tribe of merchants who averted agriculture, mounted dwellings, and wine, whereas pursuing a worthwhile commerce in frankincense, myrrh, and different spices from Arabia Felix (now Yemen) in addition to bitumen from the Lifeless Sea. As Arabic-speaking nomads who ventured throughout huge desert areas, they maintained a tradition of secrecy concerning the origin of their items, together with the coastal ports they frequented, and the areas of cisterns and wells. After changing into a Roman consumer state they protected the Empire in opposition to different Arabian tribes, extending their area as far north as Syria, clashing with the forces of King Herod earlier than the emperor Trajan took management of Petra and transformed their kingdom into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. Nabataean deities included the excessive god Dushara (whose shrine has been discovered at Puteoli close to Naples) and al-Uzza, one among three goddesses mentioned to have been worshipped in Mecca earlier than Islam.
In 2008 UNESCO awarded AlUla World Heritage standing as ‘a serious website of the Nabataean civilization’. The positioning accommodates an ensemble of tombs and monuments minimize into the native sandstone that bear ‘excellent witness to vital cultural exchanges in structure, ornament, language use and the caravan commerce’ linking the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Whereas Madain Saleh may be much less spectacular than Petra (which now sees practically one million guests per yr), its big vacationer potential is evident.
Vacation spot desolation
This poses an issue for the Saudis. Custom – buttressed by the conservative clerics who dominated Saudi tradition earlier than MBS’s ascent – as soon as warned Muslims in opposition to visiting Madain Saleh the place, in line with the Quran, God had struck down its folks for idolatry. The British poet and traveller Charles Doughty, who visited Madain Saleh in 1876 as a part of a pilgrim caravan, confirmed that the ulama (Islamic scholar-authorities) taught ‘that males’s prayers could hardly rise to Heaven from the soil of Madain Saleh’. Essentially the most pious pilgrims refused to drink from the native properly for concern of its curses. Doughty wrote that even by the point of the Prophet Muhammad (c.560-632) – who, it’s now mentioned, turned his face away whereas passing the location – its ‘desolate locations’ had lengthy handed into legend.
Getting into one among Madain Saleh’s caves, Doughty discovered ‘grave-pits, sunken facet by facet, filled with males’s bones strewed upon the sanded flooring’ and seen ‘a loathsome mummy odour’ that was ‘heavy on the nostrils’. Judging from the most recent photographs accessible on-line – a few of them shared by historians and different media personalities who’ve accepted the Saudi state’s invitation to go to and promote the location – the makeover is now full. The AlUla web site exhibits staged images of ‘adrenaline-pumping actions’ equivalent to rock-climbing on sandstone cliffs, monumental modern artwork works, and ‘panoramic walks’ alongside the streets of AlUla outdated city, the place Western-attired {couples} ‘stroll the streets of historical past … alongside the world’s largest hand-painted carpet’. All this on the place as soon as occupied by the traditional Thamud tribe whose folks, in line with the Quran, had been destroyed by God for rejecting the Prophet Saleh, after whom the Nabataean metropolis acquired its Arabic identify. Crucially, the brand new choices at AlUla acknowledge 200,000 years of historical past; the Saudi state seems to have embraced the Nabataeans.
This embrace has been a gradual course of. From the Seventies the Saudi authorities started cautiously introducing archaeology into the nation’s historical past curriculum, with regional museums permitted to point out reveals from Arabia’s pre-history. Museum captions use the worldwide Gregorian relationship system, thereby avoiding references to ‘pre-Islamic’ and ‘Islamic’ intervals. Websites equivalent to Madain Saleh turned a part of the Saudi nationwide heritage reasonably than a relic of a forbidden jahiliyya previous. Taboos in opposition to Muslims visiting the cursed website had been loosened and in 2011 Madain Saleh appeared within the widespread tv present Historical past of the Prophets, with presenter Sheikh Nabil al-Awadi relating the story of the Prophet Saleh and the punishment God inflicted on the Nabataeans (recognized by the Quranic identify of Thamudis) in opposition to the backdrop of Madain Saleh’s sandstone crags and tombs.
‘Lies and charlatanry’
The brand new presentation of AlUla has all of the cultural hallmarks of Western consultancies. Simply because the Scramble for Africa within the nineteenth century was pushed by competitors between rival European powers, the Twenty first-century Scramble for Arabia (or its cash) has been pushed by competitors between rival consultancies such because the McKinsey company and the Boston Consulting Group. The impression of gross sales pitches aimed on the higher finish of the Western vacationer market is strengthened by photographs of the AlUla Wellness Heart, the place guests could enhance their respiration methods in a ‘full moon sound tub’ by a Nabataean temple, in addition to having counselling classes with a well-known Californian therapist and yoga teacher.
Opinions of up to date Muslim students in the direction of the observe of yoga – which additionally had historical, pre-Islamic origins – could fluctuate, however that of the revered Hanbali scholar Sheikh Muhammad Saleh al-Munajjid – who studied with Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz (1912-99), the eminent grand mufti of Saudi Arabia famed for his fatwas condemning anybody disputing the geocentric view that the solar circles the earth – is unequivocal. Yoga, al-Munajjid preaches, is a type of idolatry ‘primarily based on lies and charlatanry’ which will enchantment ‘to easy minded people who find themselves weak in religion’. Some yoga postures imitating animals detract from human dignity together with ‘adopting nakedness and resting on all fours’. He has additionally criticised the tendency of yoga practitioners to encourage a vegetarian eating regimen ‘for which Allah has not revealed any authority’.
The realized sheikh’s fatwas – his on-line responses to believers’ questions delivered on his web site IslamQA – now not bear the authority of the Saudi state. Launched in 1996, IslamQA is now banned within the kingdom as solely the Dar al-Ifta’ – the official spiritual institution underneath authorities management – is authorised to difficulty fatwas.
A much less contentious side of Imaginative and prescient 2030 is its embrace of artwork. Madain Saleh has hosted quite a few installations as a part of Desert X. Its co-curator, the Brazilian Marcello Dantas, sees the present as celebrating the ‘virginity of this panorama in folks’s minds … a brand new interpretation of a really historical place with a forgotten historical past’. One in all its most placing installations, by the Kuwaiti artist Monira al-Qadiri, consists of large-scale bronze sculptures impressed by meteorite fragments discovered by Harry St John Philby, pal of Ibn Saud, the fashionable kingdom’s founder, and father of spy Kim Philby, when he crossed the Empty Quarter in 1932.
Object lesson
The transformation of a as soon as cursed website right into a vacationer vacation spot is a part of a broader mission – rationalised economically – whereby the dominion’s function as guardian of Mecca and Medina is being subsumed right into a nationwide motion constructed across the particular person of MBS. Worldwide tourism is meant to wean Saudi society off its dependency on hydrocarbons, whereas worldwide sport will wean it off Wahhabi puritanism, with out difficult the legitimacy of the ruling Saudi clan.
The idolatrous Nabataeans are included into the brand new nationwide narrative as an object lesson. The course of journey was indicated within the Seventies by Allamah Tabatabaii, a well-known scholar who preached that classes could possibly be realized from visiting the relics of now vanished ‘kings and rebellious pharaohs’, with their ‘grand dwellings and splendid thrones’. ‘God has merely left them there for future generations to glean recommendation from and by which individuals can see and be taught.’ This aligns with the brand new dogma proclaimed from Saudi pulpits. The crown prince is ‘singularly gifted’. Threats in opposition to his reforms threaten worldwide safety, peace, and stability. The devoted can now go to Nabataean monuments secure within the information that they kind a part of the historic cloth of God’s chosen nation. And so can worldwide vacationers.
Malise Ruthven is the writer of Unholy Kingdom: Faith, Corruption and Violence in Saudi Arabia (Verso, 2024).
