Zahraa Magdy

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Arabian Peninsula remained a mystery to orientalists, avoiding adventure in the desert sands, and today 3,700 tourist sites have been identified.

Saudi Arabia is focusing its attention on discovering new sites that belong to pre-Islamic times, and which the residents of the surrounding villages have preserved to know the value of these sites, according to Kawa News.

1- The Saudi National Museum
In the mid-sixties, with King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud taking over the leadership of the kingdom, Saudi Arabia began to rediscover its past, and prepare a national museum for archeology and ethnography, to map the history of Saudi Arabia. After 12 years of work, tens of thousands of websites were registered, and the results of the research were published in the Saudi Journal of Antiquities "Atlal".

Pre-Islamic heritage was presented in a museum for the first time, beginning about a million years ago and by the ancestors of modern man, right up to before the modern era. The Saudi National Museum is located in the city of Riyadh, and it currently contains 3,700 antique and heritage pieces distributed in eight halls, including the Hall of the Arab Kingdoms, the Pre-Islamic Age, the Prophet's Mission, and the Hajj Hall, according to the official website of the museum.

2- Al-Duryia city
Al-Dir'iyyah is located 20 kilometers northwest of Riyadh, and it was the nucleus of the first Saudi state with the transfer of Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab in 1157, but its end was bloody when it was besieged in the year 1818.

The entire city was constructed using straw and dried fronds, escaped from many violent storms, and its sides are filled with mud brick architecture, and the paths lined with palm trees, and is one of the most exciting historical sites in Saudi Arabia, but it is unknown.

The city includes a mosque belonging to the first founder of the first Saudi state, Imam Muhammad bin Saud, and Al-Tarif neighborhood, which is an example of Saudi architecture, and is registered in the list of world heritage sites since the year 2010, and has a palace of Salwa and ten other palaces, and a mosque and bath Al-Turaif where the princes of the Al Saud were settling According to the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage.

Archaeologists advise not to visit during the day in the summer, when the temperature reaches 50 degrees Celsius. For more fun, you can enter these clay buildings, but be sure to light a candle with you, because the place is dark inside, and avoid walking in the middle of the rooms because the floors are not stable. And if you go up the stairs to the top you will enjoy a wonderful view of the entire city.

3- Madaen Saleh
It is the Saudi Petra and the first Saudi site designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It is scattered on the sands of the desert, 131 graves carved in individual longitudinal rocks over an area of ​​about 12 square kilometers. The region is full of rocks that stand independently, and were the result of geological disasters that formed in the first centuries, and adjacent to it is Hurrah Arouid, a volcanic land that complements the beauty of the scenery.

Madain Saleh is located in the west of Saudi Arabia, and it was an ancient stable people of Thamud, who carved their houses in the rocks, and they slaughtered the camel of the Prophet of God, Saleh, on a rock still found in the palaces. It was part of the Kingdom of the Lahians and then the Nabataeans in the first century B.C., and flourished at their hands and became their military region.

4- Dadan appointed kingdom
Madain Saleh is adjacent to a very small Mamluk guard fort or miniature castle on the same site, built during the sixteenth century to protect the pilgrims' route. In the vicinity of the place there are two other archaeological sites, one of which was the city of Dadan, which was founded in the sixth century BC, and most of it is buried under the rubble, and the second is rock tombs raised above the city and distributed on the slopes, and the tombs are topped by many sculptures of sitting black, and those tombs go back to the century The second BC.

Dadan city attests to the artistic and architectural cultural contribution, and it was the crossroads of trade between East and West, and the link between civilizations because of its location, which mediates trade routes between Greece and the Levant, southern Arabia, and Al Ula and Egypt.

The Dadan Kingdom was built from carved stone, which is a feature of that era. Many of the sculptures that were discovered in the nearby Khraibeh Mountains have now moved to the surrounding area. The city also includes the Mahlab camel temple and the lion's tomb carved over the mountains, and these sites still retain their full details due to the scarcity of tourists heading to them.

Dadan Kingdom is built of carved stone (networking sites)

5- Historic Jeddah "Al-Balad"
The historical Jeddah region joined the World Heritage List in 2014. Its history dates back to pre-Islamic times, but its first historical events took place during the reign of Caliph Othman bin Affan, who installed it as a port for Mecca in the seventh century AH, to become one of the most important cities on the coast of the sea Red, the portal of the Two Holy Mosques.

Jeddah "Al-Balad" includes a huge number of monumental buildings, the most prominent of which are historic mosques with a distinct architectural style for the Red Sea basin, such as the Othman bin Affan Mosque, the Shafi’i Mosque, the Al-Basha Mosque, the Akash Mosque, the Al-Muammar Mosque, the Hanafi Mosque, the historic city wall, and various markets From the markets of the rest of the cities.

Hussein al-Kurdi, one of the Mamluk princes, built the historical wall of the city, to include six towers and six gates. The city is also famous for its historical lanes, the most important of which is the Mazlum, the Levant, and the Carinthia.