Qualla: Taif

Taif: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. When summer temperatures on the Red Sea coast push past forty degrees Celsius, Taif is running fifteen cooler. The city sits at 1,879 meters on the slopes of the Hijaz Mountains, part of the Sarawat range, and since long before it was called the unofficial summer capital of Saudi Arabia, it was called the Garden of the Hejaz. Wheat, vines, and fruit orchards once ringed the old walled town. The goddess al-Lat was worshipped here, the lady of Taif, before Islam reached this high plateau. Today 563,282 people live in the city, and every spring three hundred million roses bloom, and 500 kilometers of Highway 15 connect the mountain to the kingdom that rose up around it.

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Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Taif: Wajj and the Wall

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Siraj ahmed rashadi, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before Taif was Taif, it was Wajj. The older name survives in the Valley of Wajj, a feature of Arabian and Islamic geography that sits within the governorate. Taif literally means the circulated or encircled, after a wall the Banu Thaqif built around the pre-Islamic town. The Tha...

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Image: User:Siraj ahmed rashadi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Taif: Ottoman and Egyptian Hands

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pass276, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 17 July 1517, the Sharif of Mecca surrendered the keys of Mecca and Medina to the Ottoman Sultan Selim I. Taif went with them. The city stayed Ottoman for nearly three centuries until 1802, when forces allied with the House of Saud retook it and went on to take Mecca and Medin...

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Image: Pass276 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Taif: The Ta'if Massacre

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danda, CC BY-SA 3.0. In July 1916 Abdullah, eldest son of Sharif Husayn ibn Ali, arrived at Ta'if with seventy men. Ghalib Pasha, the Ottoman governor of the Hejaz, dismissed him as too small a force to worry about. Abdullah secretly built his army to 5,000, cut the telegraph wires, and took the offe...

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Image: Danda | CC BY-SA 3.0

Taif: Becoming Modern Saudi

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sajith Erattupetta, CC BY 4.0. Saudi Arabia's first public power generator was set up in Ta'if in the late 1940s. The city had been medieval when the Saudis took it. It became one of their showcases. In 1965 King Faisal inaugurated the 54-mile mountain highway between Mecca and Ta'if, the famously steep and sc...

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Image: Sajith Erattupetta | CC BY 4.0

Taif: Roses, Attar, Souq Okaz

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tom and Linda Anderson, Public domain. The agricultural identity has held. Ta'if cultivates grapes, pomegranates, figs, roses, and honey, and the rose oil produced here has earned UNESCO recognition as intangible cultural heritage. The historic Souq Okaz, the pre-Islamic poetry market that was once one of Arabia's mos...

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Image: Tom and Linda Anderson | Public domain