Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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1. Annasiriyah: The Royal Suburb
The modernization of Riyadh is epitomized in the new urban development programs
during King Saudi's reign. H. St. (1959) hailed King Saudi's zeal for building. During
the King's worldwide travels, he "had acquired a taste for elegant buildings and ornamental
gardens; and it was while he was still crown prince that he sponsored the first real
experiment in the modernization of Riyadh." 29 As noted, he started with the construction
of his own royal estate, a four-acre garden plot called Nasiriyah, three miles to the
northwest of the old city. Soon after, this little estate was expanded "into a hundred-acre
pleasaunce of lawns and flower-beds, tree-lined avenues and bowers of flowering shrubs,
orangeries and orchards...to say nothing of its swimming pools, its tennis courts and other
recreational facilities." 30 To Philby, Nasiriyah represented the first step toward the
"modernization" of Riyadh. It was here that Saud "decided to develop an estate worthy of
his high rank and his progressive views." The walled royal suburb housed scores of
colossal, opulent palaces and 405 villas. It included a large mosque and a fine school
completed with modern facilities. At a later stage a zoo was even added. The bill of
Nasiriyah was exorbitantly high reaching SR 44 million ($11 million), a phenomenal price
for the 1950s.
Considering the context, time and scale of Nasiriyah's development in the history of
the Saudi Arabian urban development, Nasiriyah can be considered as the Saudi Arabian
version of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. With its aberrant
architecture and its wide boulevards laid mostly on a grid street layout, Nasiriyah
profoundly altered the traditional urban order and served as a lasting progenitor, a model
for future emulation in other urban development. The builders of Nasiriyah had sought to
satisfy the King's hunger for modernization and prosperity (Figure 6.10).
2. Al-Malaz: Planned Community for Administrative Purposes
The modern section of Riyadh is best exemplified in the birth of the new suburb, al
Malaz. Following the transfer of government ministries to Riyadh in the late 1950s, the
government sought to attract the Hijazi government employees to Riyadh. At the behest of
King Saud, a 500 acre satellite suburb, al Malaz, was inaugurated four kilometers to the
north of the walled city. Extolled as the New Riyadh, the al-Malaz project was a largescale
housing development encompassing 754 single family houses, 180 apartment units