AlUla Castle

AlUla Castle is a small stone fort on top of an isolated rocky hill in the middle of AlUla Old Town, in north-western Saudi Arabia. It is also known as Musa bin Nusayr Castle, after the Umayyad commander whom local tradition associates with the place.

Sources suggest that the hill was used as a fortified position from ancient, pre-Islamic times, and that the fort was renewed and rebuilt several times in later periods. The Old Town grew up around it and remained inhabited for many centuries, until its residents moved to modern districts in the second half of the twentieth century. AlUla was a station on the caravan routes and later on the Syrian pilgrimage road.

Visitors climb to the fort by a stone stairway that ends in a small enclosure surrounded by stone walls. From the top the layout of the Old Town can be seen, with its closely packed mud-brick houses and narrow lanes, then the palm groves of the oasis, and beyond them the sandstone mountains that line both sides of the valley.