Day 8
AL QASIM PROVINCE, Burayday, Ha’il – Dec 5, 2021
I started driving at 7 am to see a supposed Tentative WHS in Rafne. It was a very fast 150-180km/hour drive with a following wind. When I arrived at my waypoint, there was nothing but several Bedouin tents in the desert (all with a white propane tank outside). I couldn’t even find this in my list of things to see. This reinforces how important it is to do my research the night before.
The road to Ha’il went south from here for 360 km. It started out as a typical SA dream highway. High winds and sand were blowing across the highway in a nice dune landscape. After a nap for an hour, at 116 km from Ha’il, that road became a one-lane rough dirt/rock road. OMG. It changes through several stages of construction and one has to route find to get back to the right single lane dirt road. I followed a large 4WD, the road ended and turned into pure sand. He foolishly tried to go ahead and was immediately stuck. I turned around. Eventually, a road headed south leaving the construction, wound around and by 85 km from Ha’il turned into a narrow 2-lane paved road that joined a large freeway 65 km from Ha’il. I survived.
HA’IL (pop 1.2 million). It is largely agricultural, with significant grain, date, and fruit production. A large percentage of the kingdom’s wheat production comes from the Ha’il Region, where the area to the northeast, 60 to 100 km away, consists of irrigated gardens. Historically, Ha’il derived its wealth from being on the camel caravan route of the Hajj.
A’arif Castle is on a rocky outcrop on the edge of the city. It is a mud-brick (adobe) fort built over 200 years ago as a combined observation post and stronghold. There is a beautiful view of the city from the main watchtower. It has been recently renovated, construction is all around and can’t be visited. Like most Saudi jobs, it looks overdone.
Qishlah Palace. An impressive traditional mud-brick fortress built in the 1940s in the center of Ha’il. It was used mostly as a barracks. Its two floors have 142 rooms and its 8.5m-high walls have eight large watch-towers and two main gates surrounding a large inner courtyard with old military items on exhibition. Well preserved both outside and inside.
Barzan Souk is in the place where many years ago stood the Barzan Palace of the Al Rashid extended family who governed the area around Ha’il.
Friday Market is a traditional-style souk, held on Friday because it is a national weekend
At-Turathy Restaurant – traditional restaurant in a large historical mud-brick building in Ha’il center. Functions as a half-restaurant, half-museum with a large number of local traditional items used as decorations. The atmosphere, food and floor seating is very traditional.
Ha’il Roundabouts in different parts of the city have large decorative fountains/sculptures of traditional items in the center of the traffic rotaries: Gerba (traditional animal skin canteen), Mabakara (traditional incense burner) with Dellahs (traditional coffee pots) and cups.
Rock Art in the Hail Region. WHS. A lake once situated at the foot of the Umm Sinman hill range that has now disappeared used to be a source of fresh water for people and animals in the southern part of the Great Narfoud Desert. The ancestors of today’s Arab populations have left traces of their passages in numerous petroglyphs and inscriptions on the rock face over 10,000 years of history. Includes two components situated in the desert of the Ha’il Region:
Jabal Umm Sinman at Jubbah. 90 km northwest of the city of Hail, numerous petroglyph panels and inscriptions overlook a freshwater lake. Buy permits to see the rock art sites near Jubbah Oasis at Ha’il Museum. Also, buy at Ateeq Naif al-Shammari’s Jubbah Palace of Heritage Museum just off the main street in the town of Jubbah itself. The rock carvings date from 5500 BC is in an area that is about an hour and a half from Ha’il City by car.
I arrived not knowing about the permits and like all the rest of Saudi WHS, was locked with no signs. SA should lose all their WHS, they are so unseeable. A chain-link fence with 3 strands of barbed wire surrounds the site, in a bunch of eroded sandstone buttes. I walked around the outside and saw a lot of petroglyphs from quite close, mainly camels and few really spectacular. A steel walkway is constructed through a group of rocks.
I drove from here to Al Jawf, another 270 km to make the day well over 1000 km.
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AL JAWF (Sakakah), NORTHERN BORDERS (Arar)
AL JAWF
Dûmat Al-Jandal Historical Oasis in Al-Jawf Region (08/04/2015). Also known as Al-Jawf or Al-Jouf, is an ancient city of ruins and the historical capital of the Al Jawf Province, It has a boundary wall and an oasis that has several ruins.
The ancient city of Duma has been described as “the stronghold of the Arabians” by a Neo-Assyrian clay prism dating from the 7th century BC. It sits at a major intersection of ancient trade routes linking Mesopotamia, and Syria with Arabia.
Pre-Islamic history. The city dates to the 10th century BC and is mentioned first as part of the Assyrian empire dating to 845 BC. At its temple dedicated to Ishtar, a boy was sacrificed annually and was buried underneath an altar.
There was a prosperous Nabataean community. In 106 AD, Dumatha was incorporated into the Roman Empire when Emperor Trajan defeated the Nabataeans and was the easternmost settlement along the Limes Arabicus for over four centuries. In 269 AD, the fortress of Marid withstood the attack in the revolt against the Romans. The ancient oasis town had an annual market fair that specialized in slavery and prostitution.
During Muhammad’s era. Due to its strategic location about fifteen days march north of Medina and about half that distance from Damascus, the city was the object of three raids by Muhammad in 626, 630 (to attack the Christian prince of Duma) and in 631 (to demolish an idol called Wadd worshipped by the Banu Kalb tribe).
Umar Mosque was built in 634-644 across a street from the Marid Fort.
Al Dar’i Quarter is the old quarter that escaped the demolition of the historical market 25 years ago. It has stone buildings and stone lanes between the gardens and water. In 2020, a 35-meter-long triangular megalithic monument dating to VI millennium BC was discovered.
Sakakah (pop 243,000) is the capital of Al Jawf Province. It is an oasis town on an ancient caravan route across the Arabian peninsula. The Saudi government has funded the economically starved region and the city has new government buildings, schools and hospitals so there is much construction in progress. A big ongoing project is the 1,000-bed Prince Muhammed Bin Abdulaziz Medical City which is under construction. The city has three English schools.
Al-Jawf is notable for its abundant agricultural water with 16,000 farms with 200,000 date palms and 12,000,000 olive trees, including Watania Farms, the largest organic farm in the kingdom.
The history of Al-Jawf dates back more than four thousand years with the archaeological sites of Za’bal Castle & Well, Mard Castle just south of Sakaka and the ancient Rajajil standing stones in Sakaka, dating back nearly 6,000 years.
Al Khanafah Wildlife Sanctuary was designated in 1987 and is located on the edge of the Nafud desert covering an area of 19339.0 km². The reserve was listed as designated as a natural reserve in 1987. The reserve is a habitat for a diversity of birds such as lappet-faced vultures, sandgrouse, rock doves and houbara bustard.
Hejaz Railway Tentative WHS (08/04/2015) was a 1.300 km-long Ottoman narrow-gauge railway that ran from Damascus to Medina, with a branch line to Haifa on the Mediterranean. 1,300 kilometres (810 mi). Its main purpose was to establish a connection between Istanbul and Mecca, but because of WWI, construction didn’t pass Medina, to improve the economic and political integration of the distant Arabian provinces into the Ottoman state, and to facilitate the transportation of military forces.
Construction lasted from 1900 to 1908 and opened in 1913. Water, fuel, and labour were particularly difficult to find in the more remote reaches of the Hejaz. In the uninhabited areas, camel transportation was employed not only for water but also for food and building materials. Labor was the largest obstacle and much of this work was completed by railway soldiers, who in exchange for their railway work, were exempt from one-third of their military service. As the rail line traversed treacherous terrain, many bridges and overpasses were built of carved stone and stand to this day. Due to the locals’ habit of pulling up wooden sleepers to fuel their campfires, some sections of the track were laid on iron sleepers.
In WWI, the Hejaz line was repeatedly attacked and damaged during the Arab Revolt, including by the guerrilla force led by T. E. Lawrence.
After the war and years of neglected maintenance, many sections of the track fell into disrepair; the railway was effectively abandoned by 1920. In WWII, the section from Haifa to Deraa at the Syrian border and to Damascus) was operated by the New Zealand Railway Group
Two connected sections of the Hejaz railway are in service: from Amman to Damascus and from phosphate mines near Ma’an to the Gulf of Aqaba. Saudi Arabia completed the construction of the Medina-Mecca line (via Jeddah) with the Haramain high-speed railway in 2018.
Small non-operating sections of the railway track, buildings, and rolling stock are still preserved as tourist attractions in Saudi Arabia, including the Medina Terminus, restored in 2005 with railway tracks and a locomotive shed.
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TABUK PROVINCE
I left El Jawf at 07:45 to drive the 415 km to Tabuk. Finally aware of the speed cameras, I was vigilante, saw all 11, and avoided any tickets despite driving 140-160 the entire way, arriving at 11:45.
About 35 km outside of Tabuk, I was stopped by the police at a checkpoint and held for about 30 minutes. No one spoke English, but after a while, it became apparent what the problem was. About 30 km back, in a very narrow one-lane construction zone, a driver came right up behind tailgating to within a meter. I braked, he did it again, I braked, gave him the finger and he backed off. He must have phoned the police. You can’t give people a finger in Saudi Arabia. They finally let me go but held him. LOL
TABUK
King Abdulazaiz Grand Mosque. With one minaret, the outside is white marble. Inside the prayer hall is a large square with typical plain white walls and a white coffered ceiling. The Mihrab is elaborate with marble, gilt, and mosaics
Tabuk Castle. This small square castle has an open courtyard surrounded by 2-stories of rooms. Free
