Al-'Ulā
Al-Ula is an oasis in the Hejaz of northwestern Saudi Arabia, about 350 kilometers northwest of Medina. It lies in a broad valley of sandstone cliffs, canyons, and wadis, where springs and cultivable soil support a dense belt of date palms. The contrast between dry rock and green gardens defines the settlement. Al-Ula is also close to the border between the Red Sea-facing mountains and the interior desert, placing it on north-south and east-west routes that connected southern Arabia, the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
The oasis has been occupied for millennia and appears in the history of the Dedanite and Lihyanite kingdoms. Dedan is mentioned in the Harran Stela, which records the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus campaigning in northern Arabia around 552 BCE and taking Tayma, Dedan, and Yathrib. From roughly the fifth to the second century BCE, al-Ula was the center of the Lihyanite kingdom. Its rulers carved monumental tombs and inscriptions in the surrounding sandstone, and the site became an important market on the incense route that carried aromatics, spices, and luxury goods northward.
The Nabataeans controlled the region until Rome annexed it into Arabia Petraea in 106 CE. About twenty-two kilometers north of the town stands Hegra, also called al-Hijr or Mada’in Salih, with more than one hundred monumental tombs cut into the cliffs. The facades, wells, and sanctuaries resemble the architecture of Petra but show local adaptations to the oasis’s trade networks. Al-Ula declined as a major center afterward, while al-Mabiyat nearby became the regional market in early Islamic times. The walled old town of al-Ula, known as al-Dirah, preserves mudbrick and stone houses beside the palm gardens. The surrounding mountains contain thousands of petroglyphs and inscriptions in Dadanitic, Thamudic, Minaic, and Aramaic, making the region a major archive of ancient Arabian languages. From desert oasis and caravan market to Nabataean necropolis, al-Ula’s history records interaction among mobile pastoralists, settled farmers, long-distance merchants, and successive Arabian states. Jabal Ikmah preserves roughly three hundred inscriptions in scripts including Dadanitic, Thamudic, Minaic, and Aramaic.