All Articles with the tag #History

Two Saudi schoolgirls with backpacks walk down a street in the historic Al-Balad district of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Schools in the 1970s: Chalk, Crowds and Change

This takes me back to my school days in Jeddah, when classrooms were modest but filled with curiosity, and education in Saudi Arabia was just beginning to take shape.

Aug 19, 2025

Stone-columned courtyard with arched walkways and a bookshelf, evoking an Abbasid-era setting where women’s intellectual and cultural roles unfolded beyond royal courts.

The Forgotten Elite

Who counted as “elite” in Abbasid society? Not just queens and concubines, argues Reem Alrudaini, a Kuwaiti scholar who is rethinking women’s roles in Islamic historiography. Her work invites Arab societies to reconsider how gender, knowledge, and influence shaped cultural legacy—and why those narratives still matter.

Jun 28, 2025

From Dunes to Rivers — and Back Again?

A wide view of Al-Asfar Lake (Yellow Lake) near Al-Ahsa in eastern Saudi Arabia, surrounded by desert terrain and sparse vegetation, showing the contrast between water and arid land.

May 8, 2025

An old Saudi Arabian one-riyal banknote displaying Arabic text, an intricate border, and a detailed architectural illustration of a government building. The banknote includes handwritten serial numbers and official signatures.

From Coins to Clicks: Saudi Arabia’s Payroll Shift

For much of the 20th century, salaries in Saudi Arabia were a tangible affair—literally. Workers at Aramco once received their wages in sacks of silver riyals, a practice now preserved in the Aramco Community Heritage Exhibition. These archival images capture a time when financial transactions were physical, and payroll was a manual process, reflecting the Kingdom’s economic transformation.

Feb 21, 2025

Jeddah's historic architecture, showcasing its role as a cultural melting pot shaped by centuries of migration and trade along the Red Sea.

Jeddah’s Historic Role: Lessons in Integration from Ulrike Freitag’s "A History of Jeddah"

German historian Professor Ulrike Freitag, director of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, spoke to SaudiTimes in her latest book “A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’’ published in February 2020. Speaking about a historical melting pot like Jeddah in days, when immigration, tolerance, and togetherness are more than ever central issues in worldwide discussions beyond countries’ borders and people’s mind, is of special significance.

Dec 29, 2020