JEDDAH: For more than 500 years, the remains of the mud-brick city of Diriyah bore mute witness to the resilience, determination and the vicissitudes of fortune of the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. Constructed along a curve on the outskirts of Riyadh, on an oasis that split from the banks of Wadi Hanifa, Diriyah’s mud-brick walls once enclosed a thriving desert city