Al-Ḥajr

Al-Hajr stands in the Wadi Hanifa country at the heart of Najd, the site of modern Riyadh. It was founded, according to tradition, by the Banu Hanifa, and as Hajr it was the capital of al-Yamama, whose governors ruled most of central and eastern Arabia under the Umayyads and Abbasids. After al-Yamama broke from the Abbasids in 866, the Banu Ukhaidhir moved the capital to nearby Kharj, and Hajr entered a long decline. In the 14th century Ibn Battuta still called it the main town of al-Yamama.

Hajr later split into separate hamlets and estates, chiefly Migrin and Mi'kal, though its old name lived on in local poetry. The name Riyadh, 'gardens', for these oasis towns is first recorded by a 17th-century chronicler describing an event of 1590. In 1737 Dahham ibn Dawwas, a refugee from Manfuha, seized power and built one wall around the scattered oases to make a single fortress town. After Muhammad ibn Saud of Diriyah allied with Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in 1744, Ibn Dawwas led the most determined resistance, allied with forces from Kharj, Al-Ahsa and the Banu Yam of Najran, but he fled and Riyadh capitulated in 1774. After Egyptian forces razed Diriyah in 1818, Turki ibn Abdallah made Riyadh the seat of the second Saudi state in 1823.