The Nabataeans are Coming

The volte face has been astonishing. Until 2017, or thereabouts, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was seen as the hallmark of Islamic puritanism, where compulsorily veiled women were forbidden to travel without their male guardian’s permission, shops closed during prayer time, and the ‘religious police’ brandished canes to marshal the faithful into mosques. Pre-Islamic history was the ‘time of ignorance’ (‘jahiliyya’) and tourism, when allowed, was restricted to small groups of well-paid foreign business people and pilgrims visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. But since the ascendancy of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (usually known as MBS) under his father King Salman (who succeeded to the throne in 2015) things have changed dramatically. Women may now drive. Cinemas and concert halls that religious leaders, including the grand mufti, once regarded as sources of depravity are opening, along with ‘entertainment cities’ and American-style theme parks. All are part of Vision 2030, an ambitious programme aimed at weaning the country’s economy off oil. Vast investments are being made in tourism, and Arabia’s pre-Islamic history – once condemned as idolatrous – is central to it.

The Nabataeans

Amid this rediscovery of Arabia’s past, much is being made of the potential of the AlUla Oasis, located in the northwest in the vicinity of Madain Saleh, also known as al-Hijr or Hegra. Madain Saleh was the second city after Petra (now in neighbouring Jordan) created by the Nabataean kingdom that flourished from the late third century BC until it was annexed by the Romans in AD 106. Writing in the first century BC the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus described the Nabataeans as a nomadic tribe of traders who avoided agriculture, fixed dwellings, and wine, while pursuing a profitable trade in frankincense, myrrh, and other spices from Arabia Felix (now Yemen) as well as bitumen from the Dead Sea. As Arabic-speaking nomads who ventured across vast desert spaces, they maintained a culture of secrecy about the origin of their goods, including the coastal ports they frequented, and the locations of cisterns and wells. After becoming a Roman client state they protected the Empire against other Arabian tribes, extending their domain as far north as Syria, clashing with the forces of King Herod before the emperor Trajan took control of Petra and converted their kingdom into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. Nabataean deities included the high god Dushara (whose shrine has been found at Puteoli near Naples) and al-Uzza, one of three goddesses said to have been worshipped in Mecca before Islam.

In 2008 UNESCO awarded AlUla World Heritage status as ‘a major site of the Nabataean civilization’. The site contains an ensemble of tombs and monuments cut into the local sandstone that bear ‘outstanding witness to important cultural exchanges in architecture, decoration, language use and the caravan trade’ linking the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. While Madain Saleh might be less impressive than Petra (which now sees nearly a million visitors per year), its huge tourist potential is clear.

Destination desolation

This poses a problem for the Saudis. Tradition – buttressed by the conservative clerics who dominated Saudi culture before MBS’s ascent – once warned Muslims against visiting Madain Saleh where, according to the Quran, God had struck down its people for idolatry. The British poet and traveller Charles Doughty, who visited Madain Saleh in 1876 as part of a pilgrim caravan, confirmed that the ulama (Islamic scholar-authorities) taught ‘that men’s prayers may hardly rise to Heaven from the soil of Madain Saleh’. The most pious pilgrims refused to drink from the local well for fear of its curses. Doughty wrote that even by the time of the Prophet Muhammad (c.560-632) – who, it is now said, turned his face away while passing the site – its ‘desolate places’ had long passed into legend.

Entering one of Madain Saleh’s caves, Doughty found ‘grave-pits, sunken side by side, full of men’s bones strewed upon the sanded floor’ and noticed ‘a loathsome mummy odour’ that was ‘heavy on the nostrils’. Judging from the latest images available online – some of them shared by historians and other media personalities who have accepted the Saudi state’s invitation to visit and promote the site – the makeover is now complete. The AlUla website shows staged photographs of ‘adrenaline-pumping activities’ such as rock-climbing on sandstone cliffs, monumental contemporary art works, and ‘panoramic walks’ along the streets of AlUla old town, where Western-attired couples ‘walk the streets of history ... along the world’s largest hand-painted carpet’. All this at the place once occupied by the ancient Thamud tribe whose people, according to the Quran, were destroyed by God for rejecting the Prophet Saleh, after whom the Nabataean city received its Arabic name. Crucially, the new offerings at AlUla acknowledge 200,000 years of history; the Saudi state appears to have embraced the Nabataeans.

This embrace has been a slow process. From the 1970s the Saudi government began cautiously introducing archaeology into the nation’s history curriculum, with regional museums permitted to show exhibits from Arabia’s pre-history. Museum captions use the international Gregorian dating system, thereby avoiding references to ‘pre-Islamic’ and ‘Islamic’ periods. Sites such as Madain Saleh became part of the Saudi national heritage rather than a relic of a forbidden jahiliyya past. Taboos against Muslims visiting the cursed site were loosened and in 2011 Madain Saleh appeared in the popular television show History of the Prophets, with presenter Sheikh Nabil al-Awadi relating the story of the Prophet Saleh and the punishment God inflicted on the Nabataeans (known by the Quranic name of Thamudis) against the backdrop of Madain Saleh’s sandstone crags and tombs.

‘Lies and charlatanry’

The new presentation of AlUla has all the cultural hallmarks of Western consultancies. Just as the Scramble for Africa in the 19th century was driven by competition between rival European powers, the 21st-century Scramble for Arabia (or its money) has been driven by competition between rival consultancies such as the McKinsey corporation and the Boston Consulting Group. The impression of sales pitches aimed at the upper end of the Western tourist market is reinforced by images of the AlUla Wellness Center, where visitors may improve their breathing techniques in a ‘full moon sound bath’ by a Nabataean temple, as well as having counselling sessions with a famous Californian therapist and yoga instructor.

Opinions of contemporary Muslim scholars towards the practice of yoga – which also had ancient, pre-Islamic origins – may vary, but that of the respected Hanbali scholar Sheikh Muhammad Saleh al-Munajjid – who studied with Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz (1912-99), the eminent grand mufti of Saudi Arabia famed for his fatwas condemning anyone disputing the geocentric view that the sun circles the earth – is unequivocal. Yoga, al-Munajjid preaches, is a form of idolatry ‘based on lies and charlatanry’ that may appeal ‘to simple minded people who are weak in faith’. Some yoga postures imitating animals detract from human dignity including ‘adopting nakedness and resting on all fours’. He has also criticised the tendency of yoga practitioners to encourage a vegetarian diet ‘for which Allah has not revealed any authority’.

The learned sheikh’s fatwas – his online responses to believers’ questions delivered on his website IslamQA – no longer bear the authority of the Saudi state. Launched in 1996, IslamQA is now banned in the kingdom as only the Dar al-Ifta’ – the official religious establishment under government control – is authorised to issue fatwas.

A less contentious aspect of Vision 2030 is its embrace of art. Madain Saleh has hosted a number of installations as part of Desert X. Its co-curator, the Brazilian Marcello Dantas, sees the show as celebrating the ‘virginity of this landscape in people’s minds ... a new interpretation of a very ancient place with a forgotten history’. One of its most striking installations, by the Kuwaiti artist Monira al-Qadiri, is composed of large-scale bronze sculptures inspired by meteorite fragments found by Harry St John Philby, friend of Ibn Saud, the modern kingdom’s founder, and father of spy Kim Philby, when he crossed the Empty Quarter in 1932.

Object lesson

The transformation of a once cursed site into a tourist destination is part of a broader project – rationalised economically – whereby the kingdom’s role as guardian of Mecca and Medina is being subsumed into a national movement built around the person of MBS. International tourism is intended to wean Saudi society off its dependency on hydrocarbons, while international sport will wean it off Wahhabi puritanism, without challenging the legitimacy of the ruling Saudi clan.

The idolatrous Nabataeans are incorporated into the new national narrative as an object lesson. The direction of travel was indicated in the 1970s by Allamah Tabatabaii, a famous scholar who preached that lessons could be learned from visiting the relics of now vanished ‘kings and rebellious pharaohs’, with their ‘grand dwellings and luxurious thrones’. ‘God has simply left them there for future generations to glean advice from and by which people can see and learn.’ This aligns with the new dogma proclaimed from Saudi pulpits. The crown prince is ‘singularly gifted’. Threats against his reforms threaten international security, peace, and stability. The faithful can now visit Nabataean monuments safe in the knowledge that they form part of the historic fabric of God’s chosen country. And so can international tourists.

Malise Ruthven is the author of Unholy Kingdom: Religion, Corruption and Violence in Saudi Arabia (Verso, 2024).