Rijal Almaa is a village located in ‘Asir Region, Saudi Arabia. It is 45 km (28 mi) from Abha.
Anciently, the village used to be a natural passage that linked Yemen, Makkah, Madinah, and Levant.
It was a regional trade center where goods like household items, spices, grains, food items, perfumes, jewellery, and others, coming from the far corners of the world including India, Egypt, Yemen, European countries, and Africa were exchanged.
But now, Rijal Almaa consists of around 60 multiple-story buildings made of stone, clay, and wood.
The village has a historical significance on the Arabian peninsula as it was here that the Asiri tribes defeated the Ottomans army of 50,000 and forced them to sign a treaty granting Asir independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1825. This agreement was the first of its kind in the Arabian Peninsula.
The village includes several buildings, which consist of several floors, some reaching eight floors, they were made of stones and they also have colored wooden windows.
They also contain inscriptions that appear on the interior walls of rooms. The art used in these inscriptions is known as the “Al-Qatt art”, in which harmonious shapes and colors are usually placed by village women.
In the outer courtyards of the houses, there are some wooden chairs and furnished mats, with shapes colored in green, white, yellow, and red, also present on the windows and wooden doors
The Museum
In the middle of the village, there is a museum called the “Men of the Brightest Heritage Museum”.
The Al Al-wan Palace was chosen as its headquarters because it includes several floors and its construction dates back to more than four centuries, and the palace has gone through renovation works in which the villagers participated in.
The museum displays the village’s unique heritage, antiquities, and collections of manuscripts, tools, and weapons, as it houses more than two thousand antiquities and documents distributed in nineteen sections of the museum.
As the village is open for visitors, people can reach the place through a number of ways including Sawda center, Aqabat Sama, Muhayil Asir, and Hobail.
Recently, a rehabilitation project has been undertaken by The Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities in collaboration with the private sector.
In 2017, the village was awarded the prize of Prince Sultan bin Salman for Urban Heritage.
In January 2018, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) gave Rijal Almaa the right to file for the UNESCO World Heritage Center.
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