Well… we have run out of “big” ideas of things to do. Originally we were going to leave early today, but our method of transportation (cryptic, huh?) didn’t have any tickets available for the next few days, so we will be in Riyadh a bit longer. Let’s see what we can get up to!

So, we leave the hotel and walk north. Apparently there is supposed to be a museum in this direction, let’s see if we can find it. First, we will show our ignorance. There’s so much water left over from the rain. We know that we have now seen it with our own eyes in Khasab, Abu Dhabi, and now Riyadh… but it’s still hard to process all of this rain in deserts! But, like we said, it’s our own ignorance, hehe.

Well, you’ve seen this part of the city before because we’re off towards Al Faisaliyah Tower!

But, first, we need to actually find directions as to where we want to go. We have zero clue. All we saw was this come up when we searched for “museum Riyadh” online, but the directions weren’t 100% clear, so we have to do some searching. So we sit outside of the King Fahad National Library to see if we can find some directions.

After you’re done looking at the actual library, look at the little cars that the kids can use. These are everyyyywheeeere at all of the plazas in different cities. And, can you see the little “vehicle” that looks like a tricycle? Those seem like they would be amazing. The kids just whizz around on those, super super fast, and just do burnouts all day. Must be so fun!

But anyway, back to the main event, looking for something to do.

Since we’re not sure where to go or what to do, we will jump on a trend and ask ChatGPT for suggestions of what to do. We weren’t very hopeful, and we were right not to be. We asked ChatGPT what to do in Riyadh and it only came up with the zoo and the national museum. Not very helpful. We try to narrow down the search around the library, and it says there is a museum in the library. Cool, maybe it’s like Doha! In we go.

So… seems like we were lied to. We went inside and asked the information desk where the museum was, the guy at the counter looked at us so confused. He asked if we worked in Saudi Arabia or just visiting, we said we were visiting, he told us the library was upstairs. We went upstairs, nothing there either.

Maaaayyyyybe the application was referring to those shelves you can see at the bottom of the picture? But how do we see that…? No idea. Seems like this didn’t work out so well, but we saw another building/library that we had never seen before.

Well, back outside and time to walk towards our actual objective.

We walked a bit further than the library, past a mall, and then we were lost. We knew that the museum was somewhere around here, but no idea where. At one point we were so lost that we asked some valets for the mall. One of them had no idea what we were talking about, but the other one did immediately. He told us to follow him and took us right to the front door. Welcome to the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies!

Well………. nope. Not the place. We went in and came up to these turnstiles (you can make them out in the picture above). They wouldn’t turn. Luckily a young lady was coming out at that exact moment and she told us we needed to swipe our pass to get in. Well… we don’t have one, obviously. We explained what we were trying to do and where we wanted to go, and then security came. They talked among them and then they told us we were in the wrong spot, the museum was upstairs. Great, we unknowingly tried to break into a building in Saudi Arabia… Ha. At least the young lady spoke perfect English and could send us on our way.

Can you see a difference between the first entrance and this entrance? This entrance even seems more “low-key” than the first. No real indication that it is a museum or anything. Are we in the right place? We walk in and someone comes out from behind a desk in the entryway. We ask if this is the museum and they welcome us in. Finally made it and we can start our “investigations”.

The museum was not a big one, but it was definitely packed with a lot. Since it is part of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, you can already imagine what type of things I will see while inside the museum, and you would most likely be right.

This is the first thing you see as you walk in, pages from Alfaisal’s Quran. These were done by Muthana Abdulhameed Hamad Alubaidi. They even had a little book there explaining who he was and the masterpiece in front of us. He is a famous Arabic calligrapher from Iraq who has a PhD in Islamic Art and has been studying at the Iraqi Calligraphers Association since 1983. A real master. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he is such a master of the art of calligraphy that the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies has been supporting him to complete a copy of the Qur’ān (spelling on the sign) which, as the sign says, is the culmination of any Arab Muslim calligrapher.

Then you continue along the first floor.

The rest of the first floor has many artifacts and other Qur’āns. We can only show a limited number here, the rest will eventually go up on the Instagram page (shameless self-plug).

The first is a porcelain tile from the Qajar Period in Persia (13th century AH/19th century CE); the second are “home decorations” in the style of the Mughal and Qajar dynasties; the third is pottery from (top to bottom) the Arabian peninsula (1st-3rd century CE), Northern Iraq (13-14th century CE), and Syria (8-9th century CE); and finally the love story of Majnun and Layla from Persia (13th century AH/19th century CE).

A good start to the museum.

Then it was up the stairs to a very interesting room, all books! This floor went through the different periods of Islamic printing. It was super interesting and there were A LOT of books on display. We stopped at each one, looked at them, and they each had a description. On top of that, there was an interesting video explaining how the Center worked to maintain and restore different books. It was a very short, but very interesting video.

So, onto some examples of the books. This will be short and sweet (we think!). We are aaaalmost randomly selecting the books we show you, because in reality there are just way too many interesting books to properly show them all.

The first book we will show you is the Hamburg Qur’ān. This is the second edition of the Qur’ān to be printed in Europe in 1694. It was originally believed to be the oldest until an even older edition was discovered in the possession of Franciscan Friars. This book has many interesting features. The first is that the man who printed it was a Protestant theologian who wrote a forward in this Qur’ān in Latin stating that he didn’t want to spread Islam within the Protestants, he just wanted to learn more about Islam and the Arabic language. And even more interesting… the book has A LOT of errors in it. A LOT. So when the Arab world saw it, they thought that it may be a problem with the new technology of the printing press, so they ignored it for many more years.

This is one of (if not the) oldest book we saw in the collection, Fiqh Al-lugah. It is a book about the Arabic language and morphology that was written in the year 400 AH/1009 CE. This copy is the oldest copy in the world.

This book, Al-‘ibar wa Dīwān Al-mubtada wa’l-habar (9th century AH/15th century CE), is “one of the most significant books on history and analysis of human societies. Not only is the book interesting, but we also chose to highlight it because of the author, Ibn Khaldun. He is considered one of the most important Arab thinkers and historians to have lived and also wrote a book called Al-Muqaddima (The Introduction) where he “set out new methodological principles and cultural insights so that historians could more accurately convey the significance of past events.” He is also important because of the way he analyzed societies to try to determine the patterns of the rise and fall of these societies. His work is regarded as the starting point of many fields of academic inquiry, especially sociology. So that is what we learned in the museum itself, but a quick search of his name on the internet yields so much more information and it seems that he is/was very important for many, many fields of the social sciences. Very cool. This is the type of stuff my partner (and I) likes to learn, things neither of us had ever even heard of before.

And finally we will choose this book, hadīt Naww, a book about the history of Western India from 1142 AH/1730 CE. We chose this one just because of the map that is on display.

And with that, we’re done our time at the museum. We were delightfully surprised by the museum. When we walked up to it we didn’t think it was very big, and the reviews online said you could see everything pretty quickly. It wasn’t a long museum at all, but we were there close to an hour looking at the interesting pieces. Well worth the stop if you ever find yourself in this part of Riyadh.

And as we leave the museum, how could we not take pictures of Al Faisaliyah Tower at night, we just had to.

And, as you can imagine by us trying to enter those first doors and being unsuccessful, this is an entire complex here. And where there are Islamic studies, there has got to be a mosque. Interestingly (for us) we found that many mosques in the countries we have already visited on this trip are trying to emulate the architecture and style of the past when they create new mosques. Well, not here in Riyadh. We thought this mosque seemed pretty futuristic.

Well, we have to start going back towards the hotel since it’s getting late. The other day when we were in this area we had skipped over the Mode shopping mall, but today we will walk through it just to see what it’s all about. From the outside it seemed pretty fancy. And with an entryway like this… it seems pretty fancy from the inside as well!

And they even had a little gallery in the main area for you to enjoy art while you shop through the “Most Elegant Shopper Award” winner.

Okay, time to start walking! We leave the same way we came, by the King Fahad National Library. Still looks nice in the dark. And it is still filled with families and kids zooming around in these cars.

But that’s it. We start the long walk back to the hotel away from this “downtown” area. Although the walk isn’t the shortest, it was nice and calm. My partner just weaved in and out of different streets as he looked at the map for the shortest distance back to the hotel.

We finally made it after quickly stopping to pick up some much needed food. We will show you this great takeout. First off, it was delicious. But we are mostly showing you so that you can notice the other things that we aren’t used to back home. The takeout comes in a bag and inside of the bag comes your meal (obviously), cutlery (only if you ask), a bag of vegetables and lemon, and finally a plastic tablecloth. It was great. We just laid the plastic out to protect our eating surface and ate. We think that the reason we don’t get cutlery and we get a plastic tablecloth is because traditionally people would eat while sitting on the floor while using their right hand / bread as the utensil. At least that’s what we have observed so far while in restaurants. We could be terribly wrong. But, regardless, it was absolutely delicious! Good night from Riyadh!