PAID CONTENT FOR ROYAL COMMISSION FOR ALULA
More than two millennia ago, AlUla’s verdant oasis nurtured the
growth of sophisticated and innovative cultures.
Arabia’s deserts have always been peopled landscapes, rich with human
and natural diversity. People have lived in and around them, people have
journeyed across them, and people have found water sources within them
to sustain life.
That is how it is in the AlUla valley, a green oasis of citrus and palms
set amid desert cliffs of sandstone in northwestern Arabia. Here, ancient
civilizations flourished from at least the Iron Age (first millennium BCE)
onwards. Archaeologists working on the neighboring basalt plateau of
Harrat Uwayrid have discovered tools such as hand axes made of local
stone, leading Azhari Mustafa Sadig, archaeology professor at Saudi Arabia’s
King Saud University, to suggest “that the plateau was occupied by hunter-
gatherers as early as the Paleolithic age, more than 200,000 years ago.”
Nomadic hunter-gathering shifted into farming as people took advantage
of the AlUla valley’s natural resources to settle. They began harnessing water
flows within the oasis for agriculture, while continuing to herd sheep, goats,
and other livestock. According to archaeologist Abdulrahman Alsuhaibani,
by 2,600 years ago the oasis hosted the growth of Dadan, a “powerful capital
city” with an economy fueled by farming and long-distance trade.
Ruled by a dynastic succession of kings from a power base within the
AlUla valley, Dadan soon rose to prominence in the region. As Alsuhaibani
confirms, the city’s centralized structure of governance was strong and
stable enough to deploy resources on defense, with inscriptions testifying
to the presence of “guardians” posted to Dadan’s frontiers.
Movements of people along routes of trade were bringing new
commodities northwards, such aromatics including frankincense, a resin
formed from the sap of a tree native to southern Arabia and the Horn of
Africa. Trade of frankincense formed a huge part of Dadan’s economic
success. Farmers in distant southern Arabia would harvest vast quantities
of the resin for transport northwards to markets around the Mediterranean
and elsewhere. They dealt with traders, who then carried the frankincense
on journeys that sometimes lasted months at a time to reach Dadan,
where it was transported onwards. The profits they generated—and the
tolls charged by the people of Dadan—formed the bedrock of the region’s
prosperity for several centuries.
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