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At-Turaif District
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How it came to be
Ad-Dir'iyah is an oasis town in the Wadi Hanifah, north-west of Riyadh. It seems to have been created in the 15th century, when a better climate brought newcomers from the coast, and it reached a first peak in the 16th century. In 1720 Saud Bin Mohammed of the Al Muqrin drove out a rival clan, took the chieftainship and became the founder of the House of Saud.
In the 18th century the second imam, Mohammed Bin Saud, embraced the reform preached by Sheikh Mohammad Bin Abdul Wahhab and in 1745 made it the moral and legal basis of his state. By 1785 the dynasty controlled all the towns and oases of the Najd, and in 1803 it extended its power to Mecca. The citadel of at-Turaif, with the Salwa palaces at its heart, became a capital built in the mud-brick style particular to the Najd.
Alarmed, the Ottomans struck back from Egypt: Ibrahim Pasha invaded the Najd in 1816-18 and besieged and took ad-Dir'iyah, which was sacked in 1818-19 and again in 1821. When Imam Turki restored the power of the House of Saud in 1824, he chose Riyadh as the new capital. The ruined at-Turaif was bought by the Department of Antiquities in 1982 and inscribed in 2010.
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