History

At-Turaif was founded c. 1446 CE when Mani’ al-Muraidi, an ancestor of the Al Saud family, settled the ridge above the Wadi Hanifah and built the first settlement. The site grew slowly as a farming and trading community over the next two centuries, fed by the wadi’s water and date-palm groves. By the early 18th century it had become a local political centre of some importance under successive emirs of the Al Saud.

The pivotal moment came in 1744 CE, when the emir Muhammad ibn Saud entered a compact with the itinerant religious scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who had been expelled from his own town for preaching a strict, reform-oriented interpretation of Sunni Islam. Ibn Saud offered political protection; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab offered religious legitimacy. The alliance proved world-changing. Within decades the First Saudi State had expanded across most of the Arabian Peninsula, with At-Turaif as its capital and Wahhabi religious teaching as its ideological engine.

The First Saudi State reached its maximum extent around 1805 CE, controlling Mecca and Medina and threatening the Ottoman Empire’s claim to custodianship of the holy cities. The Ottoman Sultan dispatched Muhammad Ali, the powerful Viceroy of Egypt, to suppress it. His son Ibrahim Pasha captured and destroyed At-Turaif in 1818 CE, burning the palace complex, deporting the Saudi royal family to Istanbul, and temporarily ending the First Saudi State. The ruins were left to the desert. A Second Saudi State and eventually the current Kingdom of Saudi Arabia arose from the same family and the same ideological roots — making At-Turaif the direct ancestor of the modern state.