The model of a local construction and renovation project at the Diriyah Gate Development Authority (DGDA) headquarters in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia on December 7, 2022. MAYA SIDDIQUI / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
The decor of the palaces of Al-Turaif, with their high sand-colored openwork walls, typical of Najd architecture, has become a must-see for Saudi families and foreign visitors on the outskirts of Riyadh. After a photo stop overlooking Wadi Hanifa, tourists flock to the narrow streets of the historic city of Diriya, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to delve into the history of the Al-Saud dynasty since it was founded in the 18th century, his first emirate.
The site, which will reopen to the public at the end of 2022, not only serves as a showcase for the kingdom’s tourism promotion campaign, which Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, known as “MBS”, has launched as part of his grand Vision 2030 reform programme. It is the cornerstone of the national novel that MBS seeks to write solely about the Saud family, in the extension of the work begun some thirty years ago by his father, King Salman, an 87-year-old single-family ruler became passionate about history.
In this new story, the royal dynasty emancipates itself from the protector figure of Sheikh Mohammed Ben Abdelwahhab, the Muslim theologian with whom the Emir of Diriyah, Mohammed Ben Saoud, sealed the so-called alliance of “the saber and the Chahada”. (the Muslim creed) in 1744 to conquer the Arabian Peninsula. Apart from a manuscript he wrote, Sheikh Abdelwahhab does not appear anywhere in Diriyah. His silhouette is only drawn in shadow alongside that of the Emir in a museum video.
For generations, historians and writers have told Saudi schoolchildren that the pact between the two men was the founding event of the first state. By a February 22, 2022 decree signed by him, King Salman invalidated this narrative and relegated Wahhabism to a minor role in the kingdom’s history. The sovereign placed the founding of the state seventeen years earlier, in 1727, the year of the accession of the Emir of Diriya, and invited the Saudi nation to celebrate “Foundation Day” on FEBRUARY 22.
“Exclusive Hypernationalism”
“Under King Salman we are moving from state to nation. “It’s centralizing this great anarchic country around Riyadh and ‘dewahhabizing’ it to build the nation because Salafism is anti-national,” said historian and diplomat Louis Blin, a former French consul in Jeddah.
This distancing from Wahhabism is at the heart of Vision 2030, the modernization plan of his son, the kingdom’s strongman. The abolition of the religious police, the emancipation of women, the opening of the country to entertainment and tourism, and the reappropriation of pre-Islamic heritage are the visible face of this transformation aimed at freeing society from the clutches of this doctrine. ultra-strict islamic.
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