Riyadh exploded from a walled Najd town into a desert capital
Riyadh is Saudi Arabia's capital and largest city, on Wadi Hanifa's east bank in eastern Najd about six hundred metres above sea level. The modern metropolis mainly grew from the 1950s outward from an eighteenth-century walled core and is the peninsula's biggest city.
Roughly five million tourists a year rank it about forty-ninth globally. Chroniclers used the name Riyadh by 1590; in 1745 Dahham ibn Dawwas walled the town and raised a mudbrick palace—the popular source of the gardens name. Ministries, the king, and high courts sit here.
Before it was Riyadh, the site was Hajr, reportedly founded by the Banu Hanifa and capital of Al-Yamama province, whose governors oversaw much of central and eastern Arabia under the Umayyads and Abbasids until it broke away in 866. Hajr later splintered into settlements such as Migrin and Mi'kal. After Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab allied with Muhammad bin Saud of nearby Diriyah in 1744, Ibn Dawwas led the fiercest resistance before fleeing, and the town fell to the Saudis.
Ottoman forces sent by Muhammad Ali of Egypt razed Diriyah in 1818, ending the First Saudi State, and the rival House of Rashid of Ha'il toppled the second in 1891; the Al-Masmak Palace dates from that time. Ibn Saud recovered Najd in 1902 and in September 1932 named his kingdom Saudi Arabia with Riyadh as capital. From 1950 King Saud built the royal district of Annasriyyah and laid out American-style grid neighbourhoods.
Almost a third of the kingdom's factories operate here, firms such as Google and Amazon have moved regional headquarters in, the city counted 7 million people in 2022, and it will host Expo 2030.
Source: Riyadh
