Manfuha
Manfuha
A Yamama town on Wadi Hanifa, south of walled Riyadh. Yaqut ties it to al-A'sha; al-Qibli Mosque (1100 AH) is the standing fabric; Philby’s 1918 plan still draws it as a separate settlement.
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?
Joins gazetteer and verse to the wall of Riyadh and then to the capital, without inventing a grave or dressing a night street as the old town.
Manfuha is an old Yamama settlement on Wadi Hanifa, جنوب walled Riyadh. Twentieth-century growth absorbed it into the capital. It is not a modern popular quarter; it is a named village in Yaqut and in pre-Islamic verse, later a southern neighbour of Riyadh’s wall.
Yaqut (d. 626 AH) records Manfuha as a well-known Yamama village of Banu Qays ibn Tha'laba, where al-A'sha lived and, he says, was buried. He gives two etiological reports: settlement after Musaylima because the village lay outside Mujja'a's treaty with Khalid; or a land-grant (nafha) from Ubayd ibn Tha'laba of Banu Hanifa. Al-A'sha’s line on qa' Manfuha is cited in the same gazetteer. The grave is a lexical notice, not a surveyed shrine.
The standing historic building is al-Qibli Mosque, جنوب the quarter. Tradition dates the foundation to 1100 AH / 1689 CE, names it from its position relative to old Manfuha, and places it next to the old amirate palace. Abd al-Aziz ordered a rebuild in 1364 / 1945; it was restored in 1414 and included in the Mohammed bin Salman Historic Mosques Programme (about 804 m² after works). The palace is not presented as a standing monument.
After 1319 / 1902 the southern wall of Riyadh had a small pedestrians’ gate called Ar'ir or Manfuha. Philby’s 1917–18 plan labels Manfuhah as a separate cluster جنوب the town.
The mud town and walls were demolished in the expansion. Al-A'sha Street is a commemorative name. The earlier night photograph in this record is a modern road.