One of the largest ancient heritage sites in the world, (Al-Ula, KSA), fragments dating back 4000 BC

[ArabianEmpires&Caliphates]

Saudi Arabia recovers 52,000 illegally taken priceless artifacts

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Updated 02 December 2019
LOJIEN BEN GASSEM
December 02, 2019

• Most of the national heritage artifacts that have been returned came from the US, says Dr. Nayef Al-Qanoor
• The recovery is the result of a campaign over more than 30 years organized by the SCTH

RIYADH: The Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) has recovered thousands of illegally taken antiquities.

SCTH is encouraging citizens and residents inside and outside of Saudi Arabia to hand over national antiquities. This is so the items can be displayed in museums and exhibitions to highlight their historical value, since they represent essential evidence for the study of civilizations that once prevailed in the Kingdom.

SCTH has formed a special committee to work on the inventory of lost artifacts and recover them in coordination with the authorities at the Saudi ministries of interior and foreign affairs.

These efforts resulted in the return of about 32,000 national artifacts from outside the Kingdom, and about 20,000 national artifacts from within it, according to the SCTH website.

Dr. Nayef Al-Qanoor, director general of the Registration and Protection of Antiquities department in SCTH, said that the archaeological survey is considered the pillar of archaeological works in the Kingdom. The search began with a small group of Saudi researchers.

FASTFACT

The priceless items recovered include arrowheads and stone tools, a 1,000-year-old clay pot, basalt grinding stones, a neo-Babylonian seal stamp and Roman-era glass bracelets.

“It has initiated since the 1980s the establishment of an organization responsible for the antiquities of the Kingdom and the enactment of laws and regulations to protect national cultural property,” Al-Qanoor told Arab News. “Since that time, that organization began to inventory and document national antiquities from within the Kingdom and abroad that have been taken illegally.”

Al-Qanoor said that SCTH has missing antiquities that are documented and registered on their database.

There is a red list on the commission’s website of stolen national and cultural property with a picture and a description of each item and when it was stolen.

He said that SCTH is working in cooperation with its partners to track down the antiquities. “Most of the national heritage artifacts that have been returned came from the US,” he said.

Al-Qanoor said that there is a joint cooperation agreement between the commission and Saudi Aramco “in returning national antiquities that were taken out of the Kingdom illegally.”

The antiquities were voluntarily returned from American citizens who worked in the Kingdom in the 1960s or from their relatives in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Others have also voluntarily returned national antiquities from France, Britain and Canada.

Marian Ferguson collection. (Supplied)



Al-Qanoor said that SCTH honors those who returned the antiquities.

Arthur Clark, assistant editor at AramcoWorld and editor of the twice-yearly magazine Al-Ayyam Al-Jamilah, became involved with the Antiquities Homecoming Project through Saudi Aramco’s King Abdul Aziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran in late 2011.

“The center launched the Antiquities Homecoming Project in cooperation with the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage to encourage Aramco retirees and family members to repatriate archaeological antiquities that they had collected during their years in the Kingdom,” Clark told Arab News.

Aramco’s Houston-based subsidiary publishes Saudi Aramco’s magazine for retirees, Al-Ayyam Al-Jamilah, of which Clark is editor. “Through the magazine, we reached out to annuitants around the globe for help in locating objects of national historical interest,” he said.

Clark has worked with Ithra in its cooperative agreement with SCTH arranging for antiquities to be returned to Saudi Arabia.

Clark said that he had helped to return hundreds of antique pieces. “They range from hundreds of arrowheads and other stone tools from the Empty Quarter desert to a 1,000-year-old clay pot from Al-Ahsa in the Eastern Province, basalt grinding stones from Mada’in Saleh, and a neo-Babylonian seal stamp and Roman-era glass bracelets, also from the Eastern Province,” he said.

The center launched the Antiquities Homecoming Project in cooperation with the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage to encourage Aramco retirees and family members to repatriate archeological antiquities that they had collected during their years in the Kingdom.

Arthur Clark, Assistant editor at Aramco World and editor of twice-yearly magazine Al-Ayyam Al-Jamilah

Clark said that he is not an antique collector but likes to view antiquities on-site in the Kingdom or in its museums. “My work in contacting retirees and family members has turned up many ‘unexpected antiques’,” he said.

According to Clark, “each piece is fascinating.”

“One of the most intriguing (antiquities), because of its age (and the journey it made), was a clay bowl found near Jubail by Marian Ferguson, who lived in Dhahran with her husband Kenneth and their son Ken from 1953-1970,” he said.

Daniel Potts, a highly regarded scholar of Arabian archaeology, said that it was almost certainly a Mesopotamian bevel-rim bowl dating to 3400-3000 BCE “and, if so, the first one to turn up in the Eastern Province.”

“Another notable ‘find’ was what looks to be a bead-drilling tool — perhaps the first of its kind— found in the Eastern Province and donated with other artifacts by retiree Mark Goldsmith,” Clark said.

Al-Qanoor said that the removal of antiquities from the Kingdom took place before the establishment of an official body concerned with national heritage. “These events were at a time when there was not full knowledge of the importance of national heritage, which led to some of them exiting the country illegally,” he said.

Al-Qanoor said that all shops with heritage antiquities in the Kingdom are subject to regulations. There was continuous monitoring of these markets, and the commission worked with their owners from the perspective of sustainable partnership.

He said that all returned antiquities pieces come back via official channels and underwent a series of procedures before they are restored — checking the authenticity of the piece and if it belongs to the civilizations of Saudi Arabia.

BACKGROUND
• The Antiquities Homecoming Project dates back to a donation in 2001 of a 2-foot stele covered with Greek letters found in 1968 by Tom Barger, Aramco’s CEO, in Mada’in Saleh. It is part of the T.C. Barger Collection at the National Museum in Riyadh. Barger’s son, Tim, said his father, a geologist, ‘read anything he could find about the archaeology of Arabia and collected about a dozen significant pieces.’

• When Tom Barger retired in 1969, he placed the stele and nine other artifacts he had discovered in the Semitic Museum at Harvard University until arrangements could be made to transfer them to the Kingdom.

• More than 40 donors, including some with indirect connections to the company (Saudi Aramco), have returned antiquities since 2011.

“This is followed by the initiation of formal restoration procedures in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other partners,” Al-Qanoor said.

He said that most of the items returned are in their original and intact condition. Some have suffered minor fractures and have been treated by the Department of Restoration of the Heritage and Museums Sector.

Mohammed Al-Maghthawi, a Saudi expert in early Islamic inscriptions, has discovered more than 3,000 early Islamic inscriptions and has read, studied and linked many of them to historical sources.

He contributed to the discovery and registration of three archaeological sites on the old caravan route called the path of the prophets and was registered on the National Archaeological Register.

Al-Maghthawi handed in three pieces of early Islamic inscriptions from the 7th and 8th century AD and received an award from Prince Sultan bin Salman, former president of SCTH, for his discoveries.

“The Kingdom has many archaeological and historical sites, inscriptions and drawings that are not found in any other country. We are working with SCTH under the regulations and instructions to preserve this valuable national heritage,” he said.

Hamdan Al-Harbi, an expert in the historical antiquities found in the villages crossing prophets pathway and migration (Hijrah) and caravans between Makkah and Madinah, found tombstones from a village underground, and was the first to see many of these historical tombstones when a flood swept through part of the village in 1992.

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1592496/saudi-arabia

Insane number but not surprised.

 

[HAIDER]

Related articles:

Discovering Saudi Arabia's hidden archaeological treasures ​

Mada'in Saleh remains a blank page on the archaeological record, closed off by geography, politics, and religion – but this stunning region is about to throw open its doors to the world

• NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE
• Thursday 7 June 2018 18:12

Mada'in Saleh, the archaeological site with the Nabatean tomb from the first century ( All photographs by Nicholas Shakespeare )
​

Out of the windy darkness a fine sand was blowing across the road from Medina to Al-Ula. Flat desert on either side, a few lights. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta passed this way on camel back in 1326, and wrote of its emphatic wilderness: “He who enters it is lost and he who leaves it is born.”

Before mass tourism ruined them for a second time, I’d travelled to the so-called “lost” cities of Petra, Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat. My destination tonight was the isolated sandstone valley eulogised by Charles Doughty, the first European to enter it in 1876, as “the fabulous Mada’in Saleh which I was come from far countries to seek in Arabia”.

The prospect of following in Doughty’s flapping shadow gave me a jolt of anticipation that I hadn’t experienced since my twenties. Doughty’s classic book Arabia Deserta was championed by his friend TE Lawrence, who later used it as a military textbook, as the greatest record of adventure and travel in our language.

It begins with Doughty trying to smuggle himself into Mada’in Saleh in the guise of a poor Syrian pilgrim. Even up until recently few Europeans have visited this cradle of forgotten civilisations, which, though designated a World Heritage Site in 2008, remains a blank page on the archaeological record, closed off by geography, politics, religion.


“Visitors last year from abroad? I can say zero,” my guide Ahmed tells me.

The temples of Mada'in Saleh near Al-Ula have survived for almost 3,000 years

This is set to change. Last July, under the impetus of Saudi Arabia’s progressive new Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, or “MBS” as he is popularly known, a Royal Commission took charge of Mada’in Saleh and its surrounds – “the crown jewel of a site that the country possesses,” says one of the archaeologists recruited to excavate it.

In December, public access was halted; first in order to survey what actually is there, next to develop a strategy for protecting it, and then to open up Mada’in Saleh to the outside world. My advance visit is aimed at providing an amuse-bouche, as it were.

In the bright morning sunlight, Ahmed escorts me through locked gates, past the German-built railway-line linking Damascus with Medina, which Lawrence bombed (“there are still local tribes which call their sons Al-Orans”), to the celebrated Nabatean rock tombs.

Doughty first heard about these in Petra, 300 miles north. Fifty years earlier, an awe-struck British naval commander had gazed in disbelief at Petra’s imperishable Treasury, murmuring, as many continue to do: “There is nothing in the world that resembles it.” He was wrong.

If a little less rosier than her sister city, Mada’in Saleh shares her capacity to stagger. Out of the flat desert, one after another, the ornate facades rise into sight, 111 of them, carved into perpendicular cliffs up to four storeys high, their low doorways decorated by Alexandrian masons in the first century AD, with Greek triangles, Roman pilasters, Arabian flowers, Egyptian sphinxes, birds.

“This is a twin to Petra,” Ahmed says. Except that in Petra we would be bobbing among crowds.

Tour guide Ahmed is descended from a long line of imams

Standing in reverent silence, with the valley to ourselves, I recall how the Victorian artist who supplied the first images of Petra to the world, David Roberts, responded to that other city. “I turned from it at length with an impression which will be effaced only by death.”

These tombs were carved for the Nabatean tribes who ruled this region for 300 years until the Romans annexed them in 106AD. Semi-nomadic pastoralists who had settled and grown wealthy, the Nabateans controlled the lucrative spice route from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

Then, like the civilisations they’d replaced, the Dedanites, the Lihyanites, the Thamuds, they galloped off into obscurity. Their tombs were looted: the acacia doors plundered for firewood, the marble statues melted to make lime for plaster, the porphyry urns smashed.

All that survives of their caravan city, Hegra, is a flat expanse behind a wire fence: “her clay-built streets are again the blown dust in the wilderness,” Doughty wrote.

The same desolation holds true for the still more ancient Biblical city of Dedan, situated on the lip of an oasis a few minutes drive way. To visit both sites is to gain the sense of a narrative even now being worked out. Until the 20th century the story of these civilisations was scrawled on the rocks in Nabatean or Thamudic script. Ahmed leads me between two steep cliffs to the oldest inscription, written 6,000 years ago.

Saudi Arabia's hidden archaeological treasures

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Tombs in Mada'in Saleh were decorated by Alexandrian masons in the first century with Greek, Roman and Arabian symbols

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The ancient Biblical city of Dedan is situated on the lip of an oasis

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Cliffs formed out of red and black sandstone have eroded into crazy, hallucinatory shapes such as elephants, mushrooms, and seals
Nicholas Shakespeare

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Ancient Dedan inscriptions. Holes in the rock floor denote a sacrificial spot from the time of the Dedanites
Nicholas Shakespeare

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A street in the old town of Al-Ula

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Mada'in Saleh, the archaeological site with the Nabatean tomb from the first century
Nicholas Shakespeare

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Ahmed comes from a long line of imams descended from a grand tribal judge who arrived c1400 in Al Ula’s 'old town'
Nicholas Shakespeare

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The cliffs in the distance: out of the flat desert, one after another, the ornate facades rise into sight, 111 of them, carved into perpendicular cliffs up to four storeys high
Nicholas Shakespeare

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The temples of Mada'in Saleh near Al-Ula have survived for 3,000 years
Nicholas Shakespeare

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'Charles' is scratched on the oat-coloured mud wall not by Charles Doughty but by Prince Charles (in 2015, with his key)
Nicholas Shakespeare

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Al Gharamil

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Mada'in Saleh tombs

Below, a square hole in the rock floor denotes a sacrificial spot from the time of the Dedanites. Ahmed could be speaking of the cavity in the historical record when he says, “They were making sacrifices to one god, Dhu-Ghaibat, which means ‘the one who is absent’.”

Out in the desert, the wind has chiselled its own mysterious deities and hieroglyphs. The scene is stunning. In Petra, which forms part of the same massif, David Roberts threw away his pencil in despair at being able to convey it, believing that the ruins “sink into insignificance when compared with these stupendous rocks”.

It’s hard to disagree. Cliffs formed out of red and black sandstone have eroded into crazy, hallucinatory shapes: elephants, mushrooms, braying seals. If they were transcribed into music, it would be Wagnerian.


They make you believe in mountain gods, I tell Ahmed, who smiles. “I never try smoking weed, but when I hear someone react, I feel like that. It makes you high, naturally.”

For sheer high spirits, no one yields to the British archaeologist I meet that night. Jamie Quartermain is part of an international team employed since March to survey these sites.

A surveyor who pioneered the use of drones, Quartermain says: “We’ve been wanting to get involved here, but Saudi has been a closed shop, a completely untapped reserve."


"The perception is that it’s big, open desert. When I tried to find out anything about it, there was essentially one book. The discovery that there are so many archaeological sites is a big shock for most people. It was a big shock for me.”

Advised by the Royal Commission to expect 450 unexcavated sites, Quartermain estimates the truer number between 6,000-10,000. “The survival of the archaeology is remarkable, some of the best condition remains I’ve ever seen. We’re not finding it close to the surface, it’s above surface, well and truly visible.”

Ancient Dedan inscriptions. Holes in the rock floor denote a sacrificial spot from the time of the Dedanites

Deploying a drone, he has begun creating a three-dimensional textural surface of the area. Already, what he has found is ground-breaking. “You can see all the archaeology jumping out and biting you on the bottom.”


When, aged 20, I visited Petra, sleeping in one of the caves, I talked to the head of the Bdoul tribe, allegedly descendants of the Nabateans, who told me: “We have a saying that the more wealth you have, the more brain cells you need to be able to cope with it.

What impresses about MBS’s plan for Mada’in Saleh is his determination to use his nation’s resources to avoid the pitfalls of Petra.

“Wadi Rum is pretty disastrous,” says Chris Tuttle, an American archaeologist seconded to the project. Tuttle spent many years excavating in Petra. He saw at first hand the ruinous impact of tourism, both on the ruins and the local community.


By contrast, in Al-Ula, the local town for Mada’in Saleh, there has been a concerted drive to educate the locals, giving scholarships to 150 children, but also to attract experts armed with the latest methodol

One reason for the blankness on Saudi Arabia’s archaeological map, says Tuttle, has been the resistance of conservative religious leaders to question their history. “You don’t need to study the past when you’ve been given a manual from God.”

Suddenly, a multi-thousand-year-old story has become an open book, not a closed one, and the revelation it contains could be a complex of sites more significant even than Petra. My guide Ahmed Alimam is a perfect representative of Al-Ula’s past and future. He comes from a long line of imams descended from a grand tribal judge who arrived c1400 in Al Ula’s “old town”


Abandoned in 1983, the year of Ahmed’s birth, this haunting labyrinth of mud houses and twisting streets replaced Dedan and Hegra. It was built using stones from those cities. They can be seen fortifying the occasional doorway.

Ahmed leads the way down an empty street to the house where his parents used to live – collapsed beams, upturned crates. He shows me the mosque, erected over the spot where the Prophet Mohammed stopped in 630AD, and with a goat bone drew in the sand the direction of Medina; Ahmed’s uncle was the last imam.

And a modern inscription: the name “Charles”, scratched on the oat-coloured mud wall not, as momentarily I’d hoped, by Charles Doughty, but by Prince Charles (in 2015, with his key), and below it the Islamic translation.


During the Islamic period, Al-Ula, or El-Ally as Doughty knew it, became an important station on the haj road south, and marked the last place where Christians were permitted to travel. Ibn Battuta described how pilgrim caravans paused here for four days to resupply and wash, and to leave any excess baggage with the townspeople “who are known for their trustworthiness”.

“I hope we are still doing our best to be like that,” Ahmed says. “You can try, if you want, to leave something.”

The only thing I left behind after my four days here was an urge to come back.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...y-alhijir-petra-charles-doughty-a8373686.html

I wish I could join this archeological expedition. Mada in Saleh is one god damnnnn amazing and magical place. Direct from Holy Quran.

 

[ArabianEmpires&Caliphates]

I wish I could join this archeological expedition. Mada in Saleh is one god damnnnn amazing and magical place. Direct from Holy Quran.

Welcome any time.

Almost 200.000 foreigners have visited KSA in the last 2 months on a tourism visa. So many positive changes that it is hard to believe at times. What was once shunned away (glorious ancient history of the land) is now protected and promoted by the state.

 

[Rukarl]

Welcome any time.

Almost 200.000 foreigners have visited KSA in the last 2 months on a tourism visa. So many positive changes that it is hard to believe at times. What was once shunned away (glorious ancient history of the land) is now protected and promoted by the state.

Do you have numbers of foreign passport holders of Persian origin visiting KSA ?

 

[HannibalBarca]

Welcome any time.

Almost 200.000 foreigners have visited KSA in the last 2 months on a tourism visa. So many positive changes that it is hard to believe at times. What was once shunned away (glorious ancient history of the land) is now protected and promoted by the state.

Hope it will not end up as Petra... I'm not for opening Mass Tourism for such incredible sites... They will lose all their "Hidden/Legendary beauty"...
Or enjoy it now when it's empty...

 

[ArabianEmpires&Caliphates]

Do you have numbers of foreign passport holders of Persian origin visiting KSA ?

No idea. Sorry. But with the largest Iranian diaspora being located next door in the UAE, some might have visited. With pilgrims soon being able to travel freely across KSA, many might visit. I know that you have Saudi Arabian Shias visiting Mashhad and I know that Iranian Arabs are visiting KSA, GCC countries and Iraq. Baloch from Iran also often have migrated to the GCC, Oman specifically.

Hope it will not end up as Petra... I'm not for opening Mass Tourism for such incredible sites... They will lose all their "Hidden/Legendary beauty"...
Or enjoy it now when it's empty...

Not a fan of mass tourism either but I am happy that KSA is openin g up om that front. Helps create jobs, breaks barriers, gives KSA a better name and contributes to the opening up of KSA. Dakar Rally is next.

BTW there are always positives and negatives but if foreign tourists visiting KSA will change their perceptions and afterwards help bridge gaps between people, this is positive. Main thing for me though is job creation, economic gain, positive exposure and people being surprised/shocked positively (since expectations are probably low due to mostly bad publicity in the West), and th many heritage sites being taken care.

Anyway those who hate KSA, Islam, Middle Eastern people and the Middle East, would probably not travel to KSA anyway.

I wish I could join this archeological expedition. Mada in Saleh is one god damnnnn amazing and magical place. Direct from Holy Quran.

 

[HannibalBarca]

No idea. Sorry. But with the largest Iranian diaspora being located next door in the UAE, some might have visited. With pilgrims soon being able to travel freely across KSA, many might visit. I know that you have Saudi Arabian Shias visiting Mashhad and I know that Iranian Arabs are visiting KSA, GCC countries and Iraq. Baloch from Iran also often have migrated to the GCC, Oman specifically.



Not a fan of mass tourism either but I am happy that KSA is openin g up om that front. Helps create jobs, breaks barriers, gives KSA a better name and contributes to the opening up of KSA. Dakar Rally is next.

BTW there are always positives and negatives but if foreign tourists visiting KSA will change their perceptions and afterwards help bridge gaps between people, this is positive. Main thing for me though is job creation, economic gain, positive exposure and people being surprised/shocked positively (since expectations are probably low due to mostly bad publicity in the West), and th many heritage sites being taken care.

Anyway those who hate KSA, Islam, Middle Eastern people and the Middle East, would probably not travel to KSA anyway.

Let's hope things goes nicely.
My uncle got a House in Makkah, that is unused for years... I may find a time to visit KSA someday.

 

[Ahmet Pasha]

Yeah MBS been trying to diversify and boost tourism like UAE.

Habibis do love money man.

 

[ArabianEmpires&Caliphates]

Yeah MBS been trying to diversify and boost tourism like UAE.

Habibis do love money man.

Tell me who does not and which state does not? Did not stop 10’s of millions of your compatriots seeking greener pastures in KSA and elsewhere.

 

[Ahmet Pasha]

Was juss saying bro calm down.

Tell me who does not and which state does not? Did not stop 10’s of millions of your compatriots seeking greener pastures in KSA and elsewhere.

Except that KSA has one of the most extensive, oldest and largest ancient heritage sites in the world. The Al-Ula complex being an example. KSA is also almost 40 times larger than KSA and home to much greater diversity be it landscspes, cultures, regions, contrasts etc.

Large parts of KSA are as authentic as Oman and Yemen if one is seeking to discover Arabia. UAE has ancient heritage sites as well but can obviously not compete with KSA.

 

[HannibalBarca]

Yeah MBS been trying to diversify and boost tourism like UAE.

Habibis do love money man.

Diversifying and boosting your economy a bad thing?
And you can't compare UAE Tourism and KSA tourism... I don't want to me mean to our Emirati brothers but it's a bit shameful to compare man made Tourism to the great potential Historical/Archaeological Tourism of KSA...

 

[Ahmet Pasha]

Just saying man. Habibis are good at making money and then using it.

Diversifying and boosting your economy a bad thing?
And you can't compare UAE Tourism and KSA tourism... I don't want to me mean to our Emirati brothers but it's a bit shameful to compare man made Tourism to the great potential Historical/Archaeological Tourism of KSA...

 

[ArabianEmpires&Caliphates]

Was juss saying bro calm down.

KSA has some of the most extensive, oldest and largest ancient heritage sites in the world. The world’s leading archaelogists can confirm. See the articles posted in this thread. More amazingly KSA is at the same time one of the least Explorer regions in the world.

The Al-Ula complex being an example. KSA is also almost 40 times larger than UAE and home to much greater diversity be it landscspes, cultures, regions, contrasts etc. You can find almost every landscape in KSA from the tropical/lush mountanious South, to snowy mountanious Tabuk in the North during winter to volcanic central Hijaz dotted with 100’s of amazing extinct volcanoes, to the tropical mostly pristine 2000 km long Red Sea coastline, 1500 islands (volcanic, mountanious, tropical, desert, most Islands in the region by far) to the Mighty rub al-khali with the tallets sand dunes in the world and many lakes, steppes, all types of Desert (mountain, sandy, Rocky, volcanic) to 100’s of Grand Canyon like valleys, 1000’s of wadis, some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, ancient heritage sites, ancient and old traditional villages, modern vibrant cities, Makkah, Madinah, numerous large mountain ranges etc.

Also look at KSA’s geography. Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Oman, Palestine, Yemen, the rich small GCC countries, Iran, Pakistan not too far, Horn of Africa not too far (Ethiopia has great potential) and even Eastern Libya is not far away from Northern Hijaz. Let alone Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon close. So you can explore many other countries very close by. So the location is good.

Large parts of KSA are as authentic as Oman and Yemen if one is seeking to discover Arabia. UAE has ancient heritage sites as well but can obviously not compete with KSA but has things that KSA cannot offer (Dubai, much better tourism infrastructure, experience).

Personally I hope that KSA follows in the footsteeps of Oman, Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco than neighbours Egypt and UAE where there is a lot of mass tourism.

Just saying man. Habibis are good at making money and then using it.

That has been the case for millenia. Arabs were always a trade nation that engaged in business with the ancient world. Young generation are much less wasteful and not everyone is drawning in money. Another ridicolous stereotype.

Was juss saying bro calm down.

 

[ArabianEmpires&Caliphates]

 

[HAIDER]

No idea. Sorry. But with the largest Iranian diaspora being located next door in the UAE, some might have visited. With pilgrims soon being able to travel freely across KSA, many might visit. I know that you have Saudi Arabian Shias visiting Mashhad and I know that Iranian Arabs are visiting KSA, GCC countries and Iraq. Baloch from Iran also often have migrated to the GCC, Oman specifically.



Not a fan of mass tourism either but I am happy that KSA is openin g up om that front. Helps create jobs, breaks barriers, gives KSA a better name and contributes to the opening up of KSA. Dakar Rally is next.

BTW there are always positives and negatives but if foreign tourists visiting KSA will change their perceptions and afterwards help bridge gaps between people, this is positive. Main thing for me though is job creation, economic gain, positive exposure and people being surprised/shocked positively (since expectations are probably low due to mostly bad publicity in the West), and th many heritage sites being taken care.

Anyway those who hate KSA, Islam, Middle Eastern people and the Middle East, would probably not travel to KSA anyway.

Not everyone can understand these ruins.... you need " eye and sense " to feel and understand. its easy to walk by these ruins ...otherwise people shouldn't waste time and go London for shopping.