But I also wanted to see what Saudi Arabia has emerged from. So, I visited the Turaif District in ad-Dir’iyah, north-west of Riyadh. Its traditional mud-brick architecture literally transports you back to this beautiful Kingdom’s past through old streets, heritage landmarks and unique natural beauty. Located on the banks of the Wadi Hanifah, it is a world-class cultural suburb, housing museums in its old buildings. It is a Unesco World Heritage site. According to Unesco, the property, founded in the 15th century, was the first capital of the Saudi Dynasty and bears witness to the architectural style of the Najd region that existed in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. Its political and religious role expanded in the 18th and early-19th centuries. The citadel at at-Turaif acted both as the centre of the temporal power of the House of Saud and as the spiritual home of the reformist Salafiyya movement in Islam that swept Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Sunni world.
On a visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) earlier this month, I was struck by how traditional modernity can be. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, but the contradiction is only apparent. After all, what is traditional today was modern once, and what is modern today will become traditional one day. The point is to anchor fleeting tradition in the modernity of the moment so that culture continues to contour the development of the nation.
My work took me to Riyadh, where the future is clearly visible in the present. Highways and skyscrapers, two of the markers of modernity, define Saudi Arabia’s capital city. I saw the construction of houses and office buildings on a scale so massive that the modernisation of Singapore in the 1970s came to mind immediately.
