The world's largest natural oasis — three million date palms, a UNESCO inscription, and a 4,000-year-old freshwater spring
Al-Ahsa (also written Al-Hasa, locally known by its principal city Hofuf) is the world's largest natural oasis — an 85km² expanse in eastern Saudi Arabia fed by artesian springs that have supported continuous human habitation for at least 4,000 years, now holding around three million date palms producing the majority of Saudi Arabia's dates. The UNESCO World Heritage inscription covers the oasis together with its archaeological sites, historic mud-brick towns, crafts markets, and the still-functioning falaj irrigation network — one of the oldest continuously operating irrigation systems in th…
The Al-Ahsa Oasis was the centre of the ancient Dilmun civilisation that controlled Persian Gulf trade from at least 3000 BCE and is mentioned in Sumerian texts as a mythical paradise land. The oasis was successively ruled by Mesopotamian, Persian, Arab, Portuguese (briefly), and Ottoman empires before becoming part of Saudi Arabia. The 1913 siege of the Ottoman garrison at Hofuf by Abdulaziz ibn Saud — the founder of Saudi Arabia — was one of the key military campaigns that established the Saudi state, with the Ottoman forces surrendering the oasis after a single night. The 1938 discovery of…