The trip to Saudi Arabia is surprising and full of emotions and mysteries. Our vehicle took us to the hill of Namar wadi, south of the capital Riyadh, so that the city appeared from afar as a sea of light in the middle of night, in the sprawling Najd desert.
The city was decked out in all its finery for a momentous occasion in the country’s history. It is the celebration of the “Foundation Day,” which marks the day when Imam Mohammed Ibn Saud established in 1727, the first Saudi state in the city of Dariya (northwest of Riyadh).
Riyadh is also looking to the future, as it is in the eyes of the Saudis a “renaissance” that began in recent years, when the young Crown Prince Mohammed Ibn Salmane announced the ambitious Vision 2030.
Hundreds of cars are crowded at the entrance of the valley, their owners want to reserve a place on a platform in front of the artificial lake, which extends for more than two kilometers, and is surrounded by mountainous rocks of the valley on both sides, to become the city’s most famous tourist attraction. Tonight is a date with the “Foundation Operetta,” where the Saudis will sing for history.
Young men and women account for most of the participants, dressed in traditional nomadic costumes, equipped with the latest cell phones. The mix of Bedouin and modernity was evident in their eyes as they interacted with the musical and cheered the light shows that recounted the history of their state’s founding.
The story goes that the Banu Hanifa settled in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula during the fifth century A.D., nearly two centuries before the Prophet’s mission, and established the kingdom of Al-Yamamah, which later became part of the first state. The Banu Hanifa are the ancestors of the Al-Saud family.
When the Islamic caliphate left Medina, it moved to the Levant, then to Iraq, and finally to Astana, the centrality of the Arabian Peninsula plunged into eras of “instability and weakness.” A native of Banu Hanifa named Mani Ibn Rabi’a Al-Muridi went from Hijaz, to the land of his ancestors in Najd, where he founded the city of “Al-Dariyah” in 1446, thus becoming the grandfather of the Al-Saud.
The city was transformed into a small emirate, where the sons of Al-Muridi succeeded each other for almost three centuries, until Imam Mohamed Ben Saud took power and transformed the small emirate in 1727 into a state that protected the convoys of pilgrims, merchants and preachers. He had launched the project of unifying the Arab tribes, and built the first wall of Dariyah, the capital of the first Saudi state.
The state project went through many stages, until it became what it is today, as it faced at first the complexities of the regional situation, when its capital was destroyed in 1818 by the Turks, but King Abdelaziz Al-Saud returned at the beginning of the 20th century to unite the tribes again, and succeeded in dealing with the turbulent international situation. In 1932 he announced the unification of the Najd, Hijaz and the rest of the regions under the banner of the “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
At that time, the state entered an era whose main mission was to serve the two holy places of Islam (Mecca and Medina) with the oil fields in the East as its main resource.
According to these relatives, King Salman Ibn Abdelaziz, who took power in January 2015, has a great interest in history, and Saudi intellectuals consider him an important reference in the history of the Arabian Peninsula. And it is this historical awareness that led him to sign a royal decree last month to celebrate February 22 of each year as “Foundation Day,” in order to link the Kingdom’s present to its early past, in the words of a Saudi preacher, amidst an exhibition in the form of a “people’s market” set up at the Riyadh Museum.
The young preacher stood in the middle of the crowd, dressed in a white robe, topped with a brown veil and a black headband, carrying a book in the form of an old manuscript, moving with great lightness, eloquently speaking the Najd language, quoting proofs and reciting poems, in a clear simulation of the atmosphere of the markets of several centuries ago.
In the market exhibit, Saudis embody their past and shape their lives at the establishment of their first state in the early 18th century. Women are seen spinning wool and making embroidered garments. In one of the stores, a young man, dressed in his grandfather’s clothes, sits making stone art and reconstructing the details of a life he did not live, but has resurrected from collective memory.
In the middle of the “market place,” young men dressed in light-colored clothes, and holding shining silver swords, dance to the rhythm of drums. This is the “Ardah” or the dance that embodies the war in the history of the Saudi state, as the sword has a great place in this history, so much so that it has become an emblem of the state and part of the national flag, with a certificate of unification.
In another corner of the square, a groom is celebrated by his peers with drums. They sing and dance with great joy, and in another corner men recite melodies that delight and amaze at the same time, it is the “Daha” from the north.
This is how Saudi Arabia has been working for years to bring joy into the hearts of its citizens, as an important part of Crown Prince Mohammed Ibn Salmane’s vision of a Kingdom that is undertaking major social transformations, with promising economic projects that are bringing the largest country in the Middle East into the post-oil era.
But the young prince seems to have big dreams, and he relies on young people to make them come true, especially when he tells them the story of his country well rooted in history and with a civilization that converges with many others in the world
“Saudi Arabia is changing fast” is the expression used by all the Saudi officials and intellectuals we met, during our coverage of the foundation day activities. They are unanimous about the change and its speed, a change embodied in the city of Riyadh, which has a population of over seven million people and is growing very rapidly.
Riyadh has recently become a destination for Saudi artists as cultural clubs are popular and young entrepreneurial ventures have proliferated, turning into a vast market that international companies are seeking to enter, including service, transport and delivery companies and others.
In the heart of Riyadh, at the intersection of King Fahd Ibn Abdelaziz Avenue and Abdelmalik Ibn Marouane Boulevard, we visited the headquarters of the Saudi Fund for Development, a building made of glass and concrete slabs painted with rocky marble. At the entrance, we were greeted by a young Saudi woman who speaks Arabic and English. She is the Fund’s communications officer. She oversees a team of engineers, all Saudi, who gave presentations on the Fund’s work in all regions of the world and its contribution to promoting Saudi Arabia’s position globally.
During the year 2020, the Fund financed nearly 300 development projects in various parts of the world, with a whopping amount of more than $21 billion. Most of this funding went to Africa and Asia. More importantly, the funding went beyond the two continents to include 84 countries around the world.
The Fund’’s headquarters resembled a United Nations agency, with paintings of children, women and men of various colors, races and peoples hanging from its legends.
The Saudi Fund’s ambition is to change their lives, from Indonesia to Mauritania, Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Jordan and Algeria.
The young Saudi woman concluded her presentation by insisting on her institution’s slogan: “We thrive together.”
HA/fss/abj/APA