Tribes, Flags and Forts

Eastern Province and Nejd Province, Saudi Arabia

“From there we traveled next to the town of al-Yamamah, also called Hajr, a fine and fertile city with running streams and trees inhabited by diffferent clans of Arabs, most of whom are of the Bani Hanifa, this being their land from old.”

Not far from here at a place called Dira’iyah, the ancestors of al-Saud established a stronghold sometime in the 15th century that eventually became seat of the First Saudi Empire.  In 1744 Mohammed ibn Saud formed an alliance with Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, a fiery preacher who considered the tribesmen at best remiss in their loose adherence to strict interpretation of the Koran, and at worst to have reverted to polytheism.

The mud-brick fortress of Dira'iyah, ancestral home of Al-Saud family.

The combined forces of the two men led to a subjugation of most of the local tribes and an implementation of Wahhabi principle which was based on the Hanbali canonical school, the strictest of the four schools of Sunni Islam. In 1802 the Saudi-led Wahhabis captured Mecca and not only destroyed some saints’ tombs, the visitation of which they felt was idolatrous, but turned away the hajj caravans as infidels and idolaters. The Ottoman Sultan, nominally in charge of the region and hence the pilgrims, was suitably affronted at this insult and an army was duly dispatched under Ibrahim Pasha, son of the Egyptian viceroy, to sort things out. The war lasted 6 years at the end of which in 1818 Abdullah al-Saud was defeated and sent to Constantinople where he was executed, Dira’iyah was destroyed, and the remnants of al-Saud family ended up in Riyadh, a few miles to the south.

Dira'iyah; typical painted door from Nejd province.

In 1843 Faisal al-Saud managed to eject the Ottoman forces from Nejd province, but on his death in-fighting over the succession paved the way for a Turkish alliance with the powerful al-Rashid family from Hail in the northern Nejd. Bitter rivals, they ousted al-Saud from Riyadh and ruled Nejd from 1891 until 1897. Al-Saud meanwhile had gone to Kuwait where a new, principled and charismatic leader would emerge in the form of Abdul Aziz ibn Abdul Rahman al-Saud, the eponymous founder of modern Saudi Arabia. 

The Palm tree, the Camel and Black Gold

Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia

So bearing in mind that I have now jumped from the west coast of Saudi Arabia to the east, while Ibn Battuta had just come from Bahrain........

“We then traveled to the city of Qutaif, a fine large city with many date palms, inhabited by different clans of Arabs who are extremist Rafidis, and display their recusant heresy openly, without fear of anyone. Their muadhdhin says in his call to prayer, after the two words of witness, ‘I witness that Ali is the friend of God’, and after the two bidding formulas, (‘Come to prayer, come to salvation’) he adds, ‘Come to the best of works’. He also adds after the final tabkir (‘God is most great’), ‘Muhammed and Ali are the best of mankind; whoso opposes them has become an infidel."

Poor old Ibn B, warming once again to his theme of contempt for the Shia - 'Rafidi' being a derogatory term. Qatif is still a Shi’ite town as is much of the Eastern part of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman, although the Omanis are Ibadis while Bahrain and Saudi Arabia practice ‘Twelver’ Shi’ism as in Iran. (More on the Ibadis later.) The additional phrases in the call to prayer (adhan) that Ibn B is so contemptuous of are standard Shi’ite formulas for the call to prayer. The Sunni call to prayer is;

Allahu Akbar (God is most great) 4 times

Ashadu an la ilaha illa Allah (I testify there is no god but God) 2 times

Ashadu an na Mohammedan Rasul Allah (I testify Mohammed is his Prophet) 2 times

Hayya ‘al as-salah (come to prayer) 2 times

Hayya ‘al al-Falah (come to salvation) 2 times

Allahu Akbar (God is most great) 2 times

La ilaha illa Allah (There is no god but God)

The dawn prayer adds, “As salatu khayrun min an-nawm”, (It is better to pray than to sleep) after ‘come to salvation’. The five daily prayers are fijr (dawn), dohr (midday), ‘asr (mid-afternoon), maghreb (sunset), ‘asha (late evening). Prayer times were set by traveling times; the dawn prayer (1) was when the camel caravans would set out before the extreme heat of the day forced them to rest when the sun was at its height (2), farmers and fishermen would return home for the day mid-afternoon (3), maghreb prayer (4) when a shadow is the same length as an object, and the last prayer of the day at 'asha (5) when cameleers would stop to eat for the evening. Having said this, the Islamic 'day' (as in Judaism) starts in the evening, thus the Maghreb prayer is in fact the 'first' prayer.

Juwatha Mosque - third holiest site in the country where the Prophet Mohammed is said to have prayed.

Saudi Arabia - The Enigma; Love, Marriage, Divorce

Saudi Arabia

The Saudi Flag; On a background of green, the color of Islam, is the Shahada, above an unsheathed sword, both in white.

After driving south to Medina we flew to Jeddah, so the missing parts of Ibn Battuta’s journey will be written about on another visit.   Ibn Battuta visited Saudi Arabia many times because he kept coming back to perform the Hajj.  It is my intention, as was it his most of the time, to avoid backtracking - he did not always succeed and up to now I am not doing much better.  It is quite incredible just how difficult it is to follow him exactly. After visiting the Western part of Saudi Arabia he went to Iraq and western Iran. He then came back through Iraq and what is now eastern Turkey and north-eastern Syria to Saudi Arabia for another Hajj before going off to Yemen, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Oman, south-eastern Iran, Bahrain, the eastern part of Saudi Arabia, Mecca and yet another Hajj.  I have already been to Yemen and as I am in Saudi Arabia, I am going to write about the Eastern province now. Furthermore, I am going to combine Ibn B’s first and second journeys to Iran into one visit -  visas and passports are an expensive and time-consuming business, all of which he was spared. 

A Poisonous Wind and The Shadow Clock

Tabuk to Al- Ola, Saudi Arabia

“After a march of two days, we halted at Dhat Hajj, a place of subterranean waterbeds with no habitations then on to Wadi Baldah....then on to Tabuk......it has a spring which used to yield a scanty supply of water, but when the Apostle of God went down to it and used it for his ablutions, it gave an abundant flow of running water and continues to do so to this day. ........ The huge caravan encamps near the spring referred to and every one slakes his thirst from it. They remain here for four days to rest ..."

Ibn Battuta had just crossed what is nowadays the Jordan/Saudi Arabia border.  It is difficult nowadays as you drive down modern highways in air-conditioned vehicles, your supply of bottled mineral water stored in the cooler, to appreciate just how perilous an undertaking the hajj pilgrimage was, until relatively recently. Aside from the necessity of a source of clean water, there was a constant fear of bandits who preyed on the caravans, and the rugged lava terrain itself which had to be traversed. In 1655, the Ottomans built a fort in Tabuk over what had been a 10th century building, near an oasis, source of the spring to which Ibn B refers. As they did with a string of forts up and down the pilgrimage route, they built a large reservoir outside the fort walls.

The Turkish-built fort at Tabuk