Al-Uyayna
Al-Uyayna
A Hanifa-wadi town, birthplace of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in 1115/1703. From here, after Uthman ibn Muammar withdrew protection in 1157/1744, he went to Diriyah and the pact that founded the First Saudi State.
Plan your visit
Practical information verified separately from the historical record.
Before you go: Check with the operator or a local guide before departure; field access details have not yet been verified.
Why visit?
Without Uyaynah the da'wa is reduced to Diriyah, and its first political test in Najd is lost.
Al-Uyaynah sits on Wadi Hanifa, some thirty kilometres northwest of Riyadh; its springs explain the name. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab ibn Sulayman al-Tamimi was born here in 1115 / 1703, in a family of judges, then travelled for learning to the Hijaz, Basra and al-Ahsa before returning.
Ibn Ghannam and Ibn Bishr are the backbone of the Najdi account: Uthman ibn Muammar first backed the shaykh — domes were pulled down, votive trees cut, a hadd carried out that stirred Najd — then withdrew under pressure from Ibn Dawwas in Riyadh and the Bani Khalid of al-Ahsa. In 1157 / 1744 the shaykh left for Diriyah, to Muhammad ibn Saud, and the bay'a of support was sworn. Uyaynah is the birthplace and first trial; Diriyah is the state. Mixing the two blurs twelfth-century Najdi politics.
Ibn Muammar’s palace and the mud ruins mark a local amirate older than, and later tied to, Diriyah. The spring photographed today is a municipal work on the old water, not the eighteenth-century lining. A general view of palms and village is a fair frame; not every ruin in the wadi is the shaykh’s majlis.