In Al-Balad, the historic center of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the chirping of sparrows mingles with the call to prayer from the 800-year-old minaret of the Al-Shafi’i mosque, as it has for centuries. But change is very much afoot. Workers in hard hats and high-visibility vests are busy at work on the coral stone buildings, cordoned off by aesthetically pleasing green temporary fences. A growing community of Saudi artists is moving into these narrow lanes, bringing modern energy to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Most of the buildings here date back between 200 and 300 years, when Al-Balad was the main entry point for Muslim travelers arriving by sea on their pilgrimage to Mecca. In recent years the district has hosted Ramadan-related events, the Red Sea International Film Festival, and the Balad Beast EDM festival. Three heritage houses, each more than 100 years old and named for the family that formerly lived in them, have been converted into small boutique hotels, the first of their kind in Al-Balad.
One of these is the Bait Jokhdar, which is accessed through an ornately carved wood door. The house has one of Al-Balad’s most striking architectural features: the roshan, a traditional Arabic box balcony that’s crafted from intricate wood panels called mangours and designed to let in light, provide privacy, and, in some cases, showcase the status of the building’s owner. But as oil money reinvented the kingdom, those responsible for maintaining these former symbols of wealth and power moved out of Al-Balad, taking their expertise with them. However, according to Ahmad Angawi—the founder of Al-Balad’s Zawiya 97, a cultural organization with a focus on art, design, and education—traditional crafts in Al-Balad are being revived, in part due to programs from the Ministry of Culture to support them.
An artist himself, Angawi established Zawiya 97 in 2019, though his connections to Al-Balad go back much further. His father, the renowned architect Sami Angawi, had an office here, and the young Ahmad spent his childhood surrounded by artisans and craftspeople. In partnership with the Ministry of Culture, he coordinates cultural programs and art spaces to encourage Jeddah’s creatives to move back here.
One of the talents Zawiya 97 has championed, the fashion designer and artist Reem Abdulghani, worked as an embroidery designer for Roberto Cavalli in Florence, headed the fashion department at Riyadh’s Raffles Design Institute, and launched her own namesake label. A meeting with Angawi led her to discover that the 100-year-old house in which she now works had once belonged to a branch of her father’s family.
Next door is Hassan Mohammed, who moved his studio into Al-Balad in December 2021. He creates vases, sculptures, and lamps from reclaimed wood—some from trees being trimmed back around the neighborhood—and gives workshops. On the wall of his studio is a poem his father composed to celebrate the beauty of Mohammed’s work. “There’s a lot of creative potential in Saudi Arabia, and we need more incubator spaces like these,” Mohammed says.
