Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia by Rosie Bsheer

Author:Rosie Bsheer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Arabian Peninsula, Social Science, Middle Eastern, Islamic Studies, Middle East, Political Science, World, History
ISBN: 9781503605183
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2020-09-14T21:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 13. A general view of the Grand Mosque on the second day of Eid al-Adha in Mecca, November 17, 2010. Source: Reuters/Mohammed Salem.

FIGURE 14. The other side of the Development of King Abdulaziz Endowment Project (DOKAAE) in Mecca. Source: Photograph taken by author, 2010.

FIGURE 15. A Saudi Binladin Group construction site across from the Grand Mosque in Mecca showing the depth of destruction. Source: Photograph taken by author, 2010.

The DOKAAE’s planners claimed that once the initial project investment and expenses were recovered, the endowment’s revenues would provide for the maintenance of the Grand Mosque, as endowments were meant to do.47 Many within Mecca’s contracting industry and the Mecca Development Authority were skeptical of these claims. Instead, they believed that contrary to sharia, the endowment’s revenues would go to the SBG, members of the ruling family, and other investors; only a fraction would be diverted to the maintenance of the Grand Mosque. The endowment model that DOKAAE followed has not been made public, so it is difficult to comment on its financial infrastructure. More evident in such a project is how the nature of twentieth-century Saudi power has blurred the line between private and public sectors in Saudi Arabia. This was apparent not only in funding for DOKAAE provided by both the ruling family and the privately owned Binladin corporation, but also in the nature of the endowment’s ownership, future returns, and planning. Indeed, Mecca’s megaprojects bring to the fore questions on the divide between political rulers and economic elites, as well as between those members and the state itself. Rulers have long exploited this fine line to justify their political and economic transgressions and abuse of power.

In early 2002, SBG began clearing ground on Mount Bulbul to commence construction work on DOKAAE. The Ajyad Fortress, an eighteenth-century Ottoman military site that once defended the Grand Mosque against invading forces, stood there (Figure 16). The fortress was one of the endowments that the Turkish government had inherited from its Ottoman predecessors.48 Mecca Province’s then governor Prince Abdulmajid ibn Abdulaziz Al Saud (r. 2000–2007) denied rumors widely circulating in 2001 that neighborhoods surrounding the Grand Mosque, such as Ajyad, al-Shamiyya, Harat al-Bab, and Misfila—which Muhammad Ismail actively sought to preserve less than a decade earlier—would be demolished or significantly altered.49 Yet in a feat of major secrecy in 2002, SBG demolished the fortress. The whole of Mount Bulbul—two million cubic meters of rock—fell to the force of dynamite to make way for the 1.5-million-square-meter development project.50 According to a Meccan historian:

Only a year after Abdulmajid denied these rumors, the Saudi Binladin Group started working on the Ajyad site. And then one day, the contractor announced that the Ajyad Fortress would be destroyed and barely hours later, began demolition work, not giving people any time to react. There was a lot of confusion at the time, because no one actually knew when the destruction would begin. I asked my father, who lives there, to visit the site right after Binladin’s announcement. He did, and confirmed that very little of the fortress was left.

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