Rijal Alma, a stone village in Asir Province, Saudi Arabia, that was once the capital of the principality of Hala in 1331 A.D., was situated on a trade route connecting Yemen, Makkah and the Red Sea. It was laboriously built from local stone, with some buildings reaching seven stories in height, and accented in gleaming white quartz. The village ultimately fell into disrepair but in an enterprising project was restored and preserved by the local community and won the Prince Sultan bin Salman Prize for Preservation of Urban Heritage in 2006. Some 50,000 tourists descend Mount Suda, either by the cable car we couldn’t take or by the sinuously winding road down the 3,000-meter-high (10,000 foot) peak, to visit this heritage village.

Information is hard to find for this village, but I did come across this interesting article from Arab News http://www.arabnews.com/rijal-alma-set-stone