Diriyah

Diriyya (Arabic الدرعية, DMG ad -Dir ʿ iyya ) is now a north-western suburb of Riyadh with 33 213 inhabitants ( 2004). The original settlement is located on the Wadi Hanifa and consists of low Lehmgebäuden, which are worth visiting uninhabited and as a kind of open-air museum. The original inhabitants were traders and Wadibauern.

Diriyya regarded as the nucleus of Wahhabism and home of the Al Saud family. You can call Diriyya as a kind of predecessor city of Riyadh.

Settlement structure

The term originally referred to the entire, partly walled Wadioase. This consisted of several settlement centers. With today's might and European concepts you the location as north to south about 4 kilometers long river valley stretched describe, with several villages, manor houses and the urban center of at- Turaif. The Wadiboden is covered with Dattelgärten and other plantings, while the settlement is pressed against the occasionally steep slopes. At- Turaif, the last oasis center, located on a wedge-shaped outcrop on the western slope of the wadi. The entire oasis was surrounded on the plane in which the Wadi nick ( and on which the present riad is located ), by walls with single watchtowers. The Darischah tower is still relatively well preserved. Today's open-air museum Diriyya includes only the core of at- Turaif who owned a city wall.

History and Development

Diriyya was founded in 1446. In the 15th century it came in Najd to many relocations and more intensive use of the oases. Ibn out, the chief of ad -Dir, a clan of the Bani Hanifa from Hadschr wanted to use the Wadi better and invited him in 1446 to the related strain of Murada from the neighborhood of al - Qatif on the Persian Gulf, to settle here. They founded the settlements Mulaibid and Ghasiba on the eastern bank of the wadi and called the new place Diriyya that. , All settlements included some who were at the approximately four kilometers of the wadis that lay between the two places

Ghasiba was the first capital of the Murada " wadi oasis" in the Wadi Hanifa Diriyya. The southern Najd was later but first of al - Uyaina ( in the north west of Wadi al - Dschubaila ) from controls. Made in the late 1680s Muqrin 'm Marchan at- Turaif on the western shore to the main town of Wadi Diriyya. From 1725 onwards dominated Diriyya under Muhammad ibn Saud ( 1735-1765 ), the founder of the first Saudi state, the southern Najd.

At the eastern Wadi River opposite of at- Turaif is the place Budschairi, where the family of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab - (1703-1792) resided after they had been driven out al - Uyaina. After 1745 this was more important than the Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Saud, who resided in at- Turaif, the reform movement of the Wahhabis joined and in 1744 with the Imam Muhammad bin Abd al - Wahhab made ​​a pact. The Al Saud brought the bulk of the Arabian peninsula under their rule and advanced into the Hijaz, where they conquered Mecca in 1806.

In at- Turaif the Imam Saud ibn Abd al- Aziz I. completed ( Imam 1803-1814 ) the Salwa palaces. The most famous architect this time was in Diriyya Ibn Hazam.

The Ottoman Sultan wanted to limit the new power on the Arabian Peninsula and had Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt make a campaign by the Najd. The commander of the army was Ibrahim Pasha, son of Muhammad Ali Pasha.

The oasis was attacked in 1818 by Ibrahim Pasha, and fell after six months of siege in September through an opening in the north after previous attacks on at- Turaif from the south through Wadi Scha'ib Safar did not lead to success. The most important members of the clan of Saudis were jailed and deported or executed in part.

The following year Diriyya was completely destroyed, and the districts at- Turaif and Ghasiba remained until now in ruins ( in the 1960s, there were attempts to settle in at- Turaif and up to the 1990s was one of the early palace Sa'd and the Qasr Nasr restored).

The Town of Diriyya located about two kilometers east of the Wadi Hanifa. The development is predominantly two storeys.