What is a tradition? What is modernity? Something new and modern when it starts later becomes a tradition when it is repeated often enough. As such, we have different types of traditions, cultural, or religious … We might imagine a lady who decided to use particular colours and motifs in her weaving, out of personal taste or limitation of supply in threads, which might have later given birth to the specific patterns of a specific tribe, becoming their traditional patterns. On a religious level, the first time the Prophet of Islam emptied the Kaaba of its idols, and prayed in a specific manner, might have been seen as very modern and un-traditional acts … Before becoming part of the traditional imaginary and acts of islam. During our trip throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, such an example of transition from modernity or change into tradition was given to us by Princess Lulwa bint Faisal regarding the education of girls in the country: she affirmed that having educated girls had become part of tribal customs, although this had not always been the case - at least, when her mother implemented modern-style education for girls, it was not part of their traditions.

When talking about the dichotomy tradition/modernity in the Middle East, falling into orientalist tropes is easy, when this dichotomy actually concerns the world over. Western countries might have had more time to adapt to what is commonly understood as modernity than KSA, but not always by much. I always have in mind the example of my grand-parents who have lived a good part of their lives in a small village in the French countryside with no running water or electricity, and my grandfather being the first one of the village to buy a car. My own mother was 15 years old when they first got a TV, the elders at the time talking about the “devil entering their homes.” The case was not much different here, both from what I gathered from my previous readings and from my interactions with people here - albeit with a possibly more rapid evolution, resulting in almost futuristic places that have no real French equivalent, such as Ithraa in the Eastern province… Or on a more anecdotical level, in some of us being surprised by an elder bedouin fishing his iPhone out of a pocket from his camel’s saddlebags.

Most of the time, when one says “tradition” in the Arabian peninsula, some of the things that comes to mind to a westerner like me is “desert” and “bedouin”, while modernity evokes modern buildings and skyscrapers such as Dubai’s. KSA does not entirely break from this rule, as it does have never-endings deserts and some iconic and very modern buildings and complexes. However the cities we have visited seemed somehow understated as compared to their Emirati counterparts, with generally low buildings and houses, surrounded by walls and only very lightly decorated on the outside. The desert and extreme temperatures are still the real enemy, as if buildings and cities need mostly protection from outdoors, as they always have, keeping the fancy decorations for indoors.

Regarding the “traditional desert” part, Mada’in Saleh in al-Ula is the perfect example of the Saudi counterpart to what Jordan is known for: the other part of the antique Nabatean kingdom, with its southern capital in Hegra, surrounded by vast plains and mountains such as found in Wadi Rum, although on a bigger scale. Though this site is what initially attracted me in visiting this particular Saudi region, I was surprised by the existence of other archeological sites echoing my previous readings, such as the side of the antique kingdom of Dadan, that I thought survived only by mentions in old texts. Our guide mentioned the particular god the pagans of the time revered in this kingdom, called Dhu al-Ghayba (“The Absent One”) - named this way because this god had the particularity of not being represented … Which reminded me of an important aspect of the islamic credo, whereby Allah is never represented.

This site also showed how traditions are alive on a more prosaic level: palm trees are farmed around it as they were 2,000 years ago precisely during the times of the kingdoms of Dadan and Ma’în (in pre-islamic Yemen), as per the findings of archeology, and people pursue this activity to this day, as we could witness all along the roads we took. Only very recently are people also employed in tourism, as great numbers of locals train as guides and learn foreign languages, some of them we have met. But in the end, is it really so different from what their ancestors did on the trade routes throughout Arabia, meeting and guiding foreign merchants along the trade routes?

However tourism is a very recent activity in thousands of years of traditional life: our driver and our guide mentioned that some of the elders were a bit wary of such change, although most of the people did not act differently than any of the bedouins or villagers I have previously met in Jordan and their experience with decades of tourism, as if receiving foreigners and their peculiar looks was part of their lives. As our guide said, hospitality is part of their traditions and there is no reason this should be changed by tourism. Except for some elders not used to such changes, our guide regarded his people as perfectly ready to welcome anyone, with only a small amount of change needed, such as their need to learn the foreign languages of their non-arabophone visitors.

Along our road-trips in Al-Ula, some elements appeared to me as striking in both their traditional aspects and their humbleness, such as a small mosque near a palm tree farm, made of mud walls and a roof of dried palm leaves - a mosque you could imagine coming straight away out from the Prophet’s time. In the same way, we were later to witness another such example: one of the people we met, a man bringing us camels to ride, went aside at sunset and stood in the middle of a patch of sand beyond the cars and started calling the adhan (call to prayer), before leading the prayer of whoever was willing to join. No megaphone, no mosque, not even a single mat: they prayed on the sand they stood on.

Another nice surprise, on a personal level, was finally seeing the real places and natural elements, of which I came across only by name during my years of reading Arabic literature, such as legends attached to particular places in Arabia, or even on a more detailed level, specific elements found as far as pre-islamic poems, such as the motif of the bitterness of the ‘Handala’ fruit: during our driving to the ‘Dancers’ (mountains), I noticed in different places a plant carrying what looked like small watermelons entangled in green nets of vegetation running on the ground, as if dropped here and there by someone, while our driver was giving us the names of every plant we encountered. This is how I finally could put an image on the “bitterness of the Handala fruit” encountered numerous times in my readings.

Some of these living traditions of the desert was what our host Faisal had in mind when we discussed my topic, however I was able to see traditions everywhere in the country. The diversity of traditions in buildings for example can be briefly seen in the National Museum in Riyadh, but it is one the ground that it is most obvious: al-Ula really appeared to me as the natural continuation of southern Jordan, even in the particular dialect of Arabic used by the locals, while Jeddah was obviously imprinted by very different traditions and a different dialect, as did Riyadh in yet another way …. A traditional diversity that was also reflected in the food.

Traditions then are also to be found in cities, in the ‘heart of modernity.’ Within the city context, most of what I was hearing from the people we met during this trip was then rather negatively connoted in regards to traditions. Whenever the word ‘tradition’ or ‘custom’ was mentioned, it was seen as negative and often opposed to religion, as our interlocutors were keen on making a difference between these two intertwined elements. In this discourse, traditions are typically seen as outdated and to be discarded (such as gender segregation in public spaces), while religion and its ethics are seen as having to be upheld and encouraged. This was the case of the talk given by Abdul-Mohsin al-Omran, keen on making this differentiation and presenting young Saudis coming back from their studying abroad and feeling estranged because of traditional ways. To him, the government’s Vision 2030 is meant to harmonise this, and ‘update’ the last 30 years of a certain mentality regarding work ethics and customs, while maintaining the core religious identity of the country - and such was the opinion of many of our other interlocutors, men and women. Within this vast reform project, the lift of an entrenched custom, the ban on women’s driving, was also seen by some of the speakers we met as facilitating half of KSA’s population to go to work - something which resonated to my ears with a very traditional picture I had in mind from my previous readings. Indeed I had read that even before and during the ban, far from the cities where this ban was strictly enforced, bedouin women were already known to sometimes drive cars and trucks, as they were needed as much as the men for work and could not be spared (such as bringing back wood for fires from the desert). As such, full circle is made on the modernity/tradition dichotomy.

On other aspects, I could see a blend of traditions and modernity, whereby traditional elements are materially “updated” by modernity, while keeping the same purpose as before, such as numerous mosques built with an architectural style purposefully modern (and not neo-ottoman or neo-persian as is quite often the case elsewhere); traditional clothes and shoes made of modern materials (thobes, sandals, etc); people offering coffee in hotel entrances or festival entrances, with a plastic dallah and little paper cups …

On a macro-level, most of our visits and discussions suggested that modernity was brought by the richness of oil and the growing numbers of the population, however the visit to Masmak Fort reminded me that contrary to what many might think, modernity started well before oil, in a way, when in 1932 King Abdulaziz unified the Kingdom: carving a modern nation state out of several tribal confederations and zones of influences - ending long eras of traditional tribal strife.

However it is sometimes hard to distinguish between tradition and religion in everyday life and society. Such is the case of the veil, as many women wear it while others do not. One day, I noticed Munirah putting on hers on during our visit of KFRCIS, and one of the students asked her whether it was because we were in an official building. She answered, “Not really, it is more about keeping with tradition,” where many in the west would have seen it a purely religious sign (as it is always interpreted so in the west nowadays - forgotten is the past when western men and women had to cover their heads in public). To me, the veil was an example of the overall traditional aspect of modesty found in most Middle-eastern countries, where men and women are traditionally expected to appear ‘modest’ in their clothing and attitude. Although this value is upheld in islam, it seems to me that it has culturally permeated beyond its borders. 

Interestingly, I found that this was true in KSA more than in other countries, as women are required to wear abayas (though not the veil)… As much as men are expected to wear thobes and equally wear a shmagh on their heads. Although the dress code might not be required as strongly of men as it is of women, the overall visual aspect of the country was strikingly equalitarian to me, both genders wearing non-revealing clothes, with a ‘yin-yang’ colour tinge to it: men in white, women in black - which is itself a sign of modernity, as museums showed us that people used to wear garments of different colours and cuts in older times. Though the clothing aspect is one of the great debates of the moment in some countries such as mine, it makes me happy to see that the world over is not completely westernised in that aspect - and that people, like KSA or India for instance, do use their traditional clothes - whatever modernising cuts, colours, or requirements might appear overtime, keeping with the constant evolution of the tastes and needs of their wearers.

On the other hand, the great majority of our interlocutors attributed all positive ethics, values, and behaviours to islam (i.e.: family inducing a high sense of security, hospitality and its obvious appreciation of it by foreigners, etc). Is hospitality a tradition or a behaviour stemming from religion? Like the veil, I would say both, and in this sense, any tradition - religious or otherwise - that is positive and lived as such, should be kept and upheld, as it is what make a people alive and unique. The current change that is underway seems to mean to maintain these values and traditions, within a new and updated configuration with the modern world - on the local and international levels.

As noted by all of our Saudis interlocutors, many of these changes have been very swift over the last few years regarding the keeping or letting go of some traditions, such as going from full segregation enforced by law in public spaces to mild segregation or no segregation at all, a choice now left to each person and business. Based on my readings of and around Saudi society and culture over the 20th century prior to my visit, I did not expect so much change: concerts, events, even in Dir’iyyah, the birthplace of the first Saudi state, a place I always read about as overly conservative. Saudi citizens themselves are surprised by some changes, by the absence of religious police for example. It took some time, according to many of our interlocutors, to realise their new freedom. This state-led change in Saudi society also resonated to me with previous reforms led by the Saudi government, during the 60’s and 70’s with the generalisation of modern education encouraged by King Faisal and Queen Effat, an era also mentioned by several of the speakers we met, who presented the current changes as connecting back to this previous impetus.

In the end, regarding the relationship between traditions and modernity, my impression is best summarised with a pop-culture reference and an anecdote during this trip: when sending my family photos from my different visits in the kingdom, both from the desert and places such as Ithra’ and KAUST, and telling them about everything I saw, my sister responded, commenting: “Well, it seems Saudi Arabia is Wakanda, it’s not in Africa after all. The underrated country that was closed off somewhere, that everybody thought as only backwards and traditional… And then they decide to open up to the rest of the world - and it turns out to be way better than anyone expected!” Funnily enough, she did not even know that ‘Black Panther’ was actually the first movie publicly shown in Saudi cinemas when these were re-opened in 2018…

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Louise Gallorini is a PhD candidate in the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, in the department of Arabic and Near Eastern languages. Although her field is classical Arabic literature and religious studies, she is also interested in modern Arabic literature, culture and the artistic scene in general. Originally French, she lived in Jordan, Oman, and Lebanon for her studies, and finally got the chance to visit the n°1 country on her list, Saudi Arabia, thanks to the Gateway KSA student program.