The ministries of Interior, Agriculture and Commerce are planning to help farmers use part of their land to create a quiet rural atmosphere away from the bustling cities for tourists, according to a report in Al-Hayat on Sunday. Tariq Khan, Acting Executive Director of Tourism and Antiquities in Taif, said the project is aimed at creating recreational sites for tourists and vacationers “away from urban areas and the noise of the city. Coordination with farm owners is being carried out in this regard”, he said. Those owners who approve this tourism investment project will be given membership of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities and their farms will be equipped with the means to create a quiet rural atmosphere for visitors, he said. The studying stage will be finished in September, he said, and expects the project to be implemented next year. Tourists will then have the extra option of spending time in the countryside. In a matter related to tourism in Taif, Abdulaziz Al-Amri, Director of Shubra Historic Museum, said the south of Taif governorate comprises several heritage villages that are distinguished by their stone buildings and multi-floor forts. These villages are located in mountainous and elevated areas, and each one has at least one fort built at the highest point of the village, he said. The buildings of the villages were built in the local traditional manner with polished or flat stones, with the interior walls sometimes finished with plaster or clay mixed with straw fiber, and sometimes left without any further finishing. “The forts are built with small, medium and large stones, sometimes (in some buildings) placed in regular horizontal rows and sometimes irregular rows,” he said. He added that the width of the walls ranges between 80 and 120 centimeters and doors are mostly smaller than those of normal houses “for defensive purposes. Defense may also be the reason there are no stairs in forts, and if some forts have stairs they would be to the first floor only, while higher floors are reached through openings in the ceilings of lower ones.” These defensive forts are at the highest points of villages, he said.
