Al-Ula

al-Ula (Arabic: ٱلْعُلَا‎, romanized: al-ʿUlā), officially AlUla, is an ancient Arabian oasis city and governorate located in Medina Province, Saudi Arabia, 350 kilometres (220 miles) northwest of the city of Medina. Situated in the Hejaz, a region that features prominently in the history of Islam as well as several pre-Islamic Semitic civilizations, al-Ula was a market city on the historic incense trade route that linked India and the Persian Gulf to the Levant and Europe. From an archaeological perspective, the immediate vicinity contains a unique concentration of precious artifacts, including well-preserved ancient stone inscriptions that illustrate the development of the Arabic language, and a concentration of rock dwellings and tombs that date from the Nabatean and Dedanite periods that coincided with Greco-Roman influence during classical antiquity. Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hegra (also known as al-Hijr, or Mada'in Ṣalih), is located 22 km (14 miles) north of the city, in al-Ula governorate. Built more than 2,000 years ago by the Nabataeans, Hegra is often compared with its sister city of Petra, in Jordan. Meanwhile, the ancient walled oasis city of al-Ula, locally known as al-Dirah, situated near the oasis's palm grove that allowed for its settlement, contains a dense cluster of mudbrick and stone houses. al-Ula was also the capital of the ancient Lihyanites (Dedanites). The Jabal Ikmah epigraphs and petroglyphs are located in the mountains around al-Ula. In 2023, they have been inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register. Dating back to the second half of the first millennium BCE, they played a significant role in the evolution of Old Arabic languages and dialects. Carved in sandstone, these nearly 300 inscriptions are written in the pre-Nabataean Arabic languages Aramaic, Dadanitic, Thamudic, and Minaic. Today, the city of al-Ula is within the Governorate of al-Ula,...