Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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mosque and the large area of houses around it were leveled. On their ground a new, larger
mosque was built of concrete, with two tall minarets. The old palace of Imam Turky was
replaced by a huge complex comprising housing and law-courts, offices for the governor
of Riyadh and audience chambers for ceremonial occasions. Modern shops were erected
lining the streets converging on the new center and radiating from it. The old, unassuming
clay houses were dwarfed by new, pretentious high-rise buildings. Other mud houses
were gradually demolished to make way for vehicular roads, as well as for concrete and
masonry buildings. The scene of the demolishing activity was recorded by H. St. Philby
in April, 1960. He wrote to a friend
I spent my 75th birthday watching the bulldozers knock down half of my
property for a new road through the town. The house itself has been spared,
though deluged with dust, but all the courtyard, guest rooms, garage and
servants quarters are gone. I am not going to move.... 31
A road program was undertaken to link al Murabaa palace, Nasiriyah, and the new
airport, along with the railway station by a wide two-way boulevard, divided by a central
line of flower beds. The traditional walled city's narrow, crooked streets were looked
upon as an anachronism, therefore an impediment to progress. Its unsuitability for the
modern era was made obvious by increasing motor traffic. In general, "the resulting
physical patterns of development are no longer 'incremental' and irregular, but rationalized
to exigencies of the new technological order" (Brown, 1980).
King Saud's aplomb in the country's power hierarchy meant the rising significance of
Riyadh, his ancestral headquarters, thus the restructuring of the Country's national urban
network. Historically, the Western region of the Arabian Peninsula is the birthplace of
Islam and the ground of the two Holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. It has been
considered the heart of the Muslim world. Nevertheless, as we saw, Riyadh was adopted
permanently as the nation's capital, following King Abdul-Aziz's victorious conquer of
Hijaz in 1926, leaving titular significance to Jeddah and Makkah despite their previous
epithets as administrative and religious capitols. In 1953, Riyadh's status as the seat of the
Saudi government was further enhanced by the government's decision to transfer the
government ministries and other agencies to Riyadh from the cosmopolitan Jeddah, the
littoral commercial center on the Western coast and gateway to Makkah. An imposing row
of modern buildings to house the new ministries and the growing military apparatus,
including a staff college and military hospital, was built by the government on the road