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Initially, the plan was a three or four day stay in Riyadh - this rapidly expanded to two weeks once we worked out the number of places that we wanted to visit and people we needed to meet. Staying at the Marriott hotel for two weeks did nothing to curb our rapidly expanding waistlines - and my efforts at burning off some of the excess were thwarted by the fact that the gym in the hotel was for men only - at least I tried. Our journey so far had been filled with nothing but positive experiences - everyone we met seemed genuinely interested in the expedition, had great respect for Captain Shakespear and were pleased that we wanted to visit Saudi Arabia. We tried to visit the country free from any pre-conceived ideas - of course, coming from the UK it is strange to see every woman shrouded in black and there are certain regulations in the country that I do not necessarily agree with. It was interesting to hear the opinions of the people that we met - how they feel about the views that the west has of their country, and what changes they would like to see. What struck us is that Saudi Arabia, as one would expect of such a vast country, has an incredible cultural diversity, contains a wealth of archaeological sites, has an amazing variety of landscapes and a fascinating history, in which Captain Shakespear played a part. Our first visit in Riyadh - the King Abdul Aziz Foundation. Our invitation to Saudi Arabia had been arranged through Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz and the Al-Turath Foundation, but the task of organising our visit fell to the King Abdul Aziz Foundation. The Foundation was established in 1972 to 'celebrate the history of Saudi Arabia and to collect, preserve and make available the national historical resources to people inside and outside the country'. The Foundation is now housed in the King Abdul Aziz Historical Centre - a huge complex that took just eleven months to build and opened in 1999, in time for Saudi Arabia's centennial celebrations. The centre includes the King Abdul Aziz Memorial Hall, the Muraba Palace (built in 1938 and formerly the main palace for the Royal court) and the Riyadh Museum.
King Abdul Aziz's belongings, part of the display in the Memorial Hall |
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Inside the Murraba Palace
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As we had expected, the archives at the King Abdul Aziz Foundation proved to be an invaluable source of information - over the past few years, the task of collecting books, documents, letters etc (whether in Arabic, English or any other language) that contain information relating to the Saudi history has been undertaken - and, fortunately for us, the Foundation has a computerised database and it was simply a case of typing in 'Captain Shakespear' and waiting for the computer to churn through the records. And even better, there was someone on hand to work through the list and photocopy the documents - a week later we were presented with a 5 inch high stack of papers, all containing references to Captain Shakespear. Dr Fahd Al Semmari, Secretary General of the Foundation, was on hand to answer our many questions and Khalid Al Nasser did a fantastic job arranging meetings and places to see and ferried us around Riyadh. The staff of the Photographic Archive section have worked on many of the photographs taken by Captain Shakespear and the other early photographers - the resulting photographic exhibition gives a wonderful insight into Saudi Arabia over the past century.
One of Shakespear's best known photographs showing the war banners of Ibn Saud's army. |
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