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Ha'il is a city in north-western Saudi Arabia, lying between the Aja and Salma ranges of the Shammar Mountains, and is the seat of Ha'il Province, with 498,575 people in 2022. It is largely agricultural, producing grain, dates and fruit, and a large share of the kingdom's wheat comes from the irrigated lands of the province.
Ha'il grew rich on the camel caravan route of the Hajj and was the capital of the Emirate of Jabal Shammar under the Rashidi dynasty from 1836 until 1921, when Ibn Saud took the city. Travellers such as Georg August Wallin, Lady Anne Blunt and Gertrude Bell described the court of the Rashidi emirs.
The city is known across the Arab world as the home of Hatim al-Tai, the model of generosity. Its mud-brick forts of A'arif and Qishlah recall its past, and the rock art of Jubbah and Shuwaymis in the surrounding desert became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.
A'arif Fort stands on a hill in the heart of Ha'il, visible from all over the city, and is thought to have been built around 1840 as a lookout. Built of mud brick on 440 square metres and enlarged under the Rashidi emirs, it was later used to sight the Ramadan crescent and fire the Ramadan cannon.
Qishlah Palace is a mud-brick fortress in central Ha'il built in 1941 under King Abdulaziz after a year and a half of work. Its walls run 241 by 141 metres with eight towers 12 metres high, and its two floors hold 143 rooms around a courtyard, with fine gypsum decoration on its walls.
The Barzan Towers are the surviving towers and walls of Barzan Palace, begun in 1808 and completed by the Rashidi emir Talal bin Abdullah, which once stood 21 metres tall. Ibn Saud had it destroyed in 1921, and the 12-metre towers beside the Barzan Grand Mosque were restored in 2025.
Tuwarin Palace is the last building of the old village of Tuwarin, in a valley of the Aja mountains about 65 kilometres northwest of Ha'il. It is linked with Hatim al-Tai, the poet famed across the Arab world for his generosity, whose grave lies beside it near the spot where he lit fires for guests.
The rock art of Jubbah covers the eastern flanks of Jabal Umm Sinman, 90 kilometres northwest of Ha'il, which rise 450 metres above the Nafud by an ancient lake bed. Its panels span 10,000 years, from ibex revered by early farmers to camels and Thamudic script, and were listed by UNESCO in 2015.
Jabal Umm Sinman rises beside the oasis town of Jubbah in the heart of the Nafud, north-west of Ha'il, named for its shape, like a camel with two humps kneeling on the ground. Seen from some 70 kilometres away, it guided travellers across the sands, and its rocks carry Thamudic carvings.
Fayd, 92 kilometres southeast of Ha'il on the road to Qassim, was a main station of the Darb Zubaydah, the pilgrim road from Kufa to Mecca, lying halfway between the two. It flourished in the early Islamic era and keeps its walls, the Kharash palace, large cisterns and over 45 old wells.
The Adi ibn Hatim al-Tai Mosque in eastern Ha'il is named after the son of the famously generous Hatim al-Tai and opened in March 2014, a few kilometres from his fire site on Jabal As-Samra. Its minaret rises 44 metres, the prayer hall roof stands 8 metres high, and it holds 1,000 worshippers.
Jabal Aja is a range of red granite about 100 kilometres long rising west and southwest of Ha'il, cut by straight valleys and reaching between 900 and 1,550 metres. Its protected area of some 200,000 hectares shelters about 355 plant species, many of them relicts, and is a stop for migrating cranes.
Jabal As-Samra rises east of Ha'il, and tradition says that Hatim al-Tai lit a fire on its summit, known as the Mawqida, to guide travellers to his home. The Rashidi emirs used it as a lookout over the eastern plains, and today a road climbs to a park on its flat top with wide views over the city.
The Al-Musamma Mountains, known in old times as the Mahjar range, run from Jabal al-Arqub in the south to the edge of the Great Nafud in the north and belong to the mountain chains of the Ha'il region. Pre-Islamic poets like Bishr ibn Abi Khazim and Zayd al-Khayl al-Tai named them in their verses.
The Nafud is a great desert of brick-red sand north of Ha'il, 290 kilometres long and 225 wide, known for violent winds that build huge crescent dunes. A fossilised human finger found here in 2016, about 85,000 years old, is the earliest evidence of modern humans outside Africa and the Levant.
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Log in to add photosPhoto: saudipics, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
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