Original subtitles

Scalded by the desert sun,

the waters of the Red Sea would cook most corals.

These reefs have had to adapt to survive,

just like the Arabian people.

Over the last 2,000 years,

this desert realm has sparked two eras of enlightenment,

two Golden Ages.

Just to survive in this desert is an accomplishment.

Who would ever think that the seeds of knowledge could sprout here and grow?

Only 80 years ago, most people in Arabia lived in tents

or in houses of coral rock or mud.

But in a matter of decades, all that changed.

Saudi Arabia is now a nation of some 30 million people.

The capital city of Riyadh

and the holy city of Makkah have been transformed.

A modern district has grown up around the Grand Mosque.

Five times each day, Muslims around the world turn towards Makkah to pray.

And in the busy coastal city of Jeddah, educational horizons are widening.

Thanks to the wealth from the oil boom,

Hamzah is one of 80,000 Saudi Arabians studying abroad.

He is a film student at DePaul University in Chicago.

i've lived in the U. S. for seven years, going to school,

but I 'm still really close to my brother, Saleh.

He usually wears the white thawb because it's part of tradition,

and most men wear it every day.

After 9/11, many of my friends in America got the idea that we're all extremists.

And we're not.

As my mom says, we're not perfect.

But we've had a glorious past.

And I can't wait to travel around the country

and make a film about who we are and how we got here.

My first stop was the old section of my hometown, Jeddah.

The houses here haven't changed much since I was a kid.

But it's amazing, all my country is progressing so quickly.

Like many other religions and cultures, we're trying to balance the old and the new.

Tradition and progress.

it's important to maintain the old values,

and I'd like to capture some of that balance on video.

The freedom to change is really important to my generation.

The Arabian Peninsula is not all sand.

We have mountains, valleys and even volcanoes.

I headed into the desert to document a vanishing way of life.

Just like the American cowboy, the Bedouin is a cultural hero.

To survive out here, the Bedouin have to live by a strict code of honor,

based on fierce family loyalty, hospitality and trust.

A true Bedouin kept his word and passed all these values on to his kids,

and to us.

They say camels are sweet-natured, unless they're not.

Camels are designed for the desert.

They have an extra row of lashes for protection, just like sunglasses.

And a third eyelid that works like a windshield wiper.

One thing I never expected to see here was a bunch of baboons,

but I guess it makes sense.

Most of our animals originated in Africa.

Twenty-five million years ago, when the Red Sea formed,

it trapped animals that were originally African.

As lush vegetation vanished and Arabia turned to desert,

these animals adapted.

i went looking for more clues to our past

We only found iron shipwrecks.

But that's what my guide, Housam, looks for.

Every time we 'd find a modern-day ship, we'd find an ancient one, too,

because they hit the same reef.

A long time ago, wooden ships carried all kinds of things,

such as ceramic jugs filled with olive oil.

Archeologists are continuing to find undamaged artifacts,

like this ancient amphora.

Even tiny broken pieces can speak worlds.

All I found were old pottery fragments.

But they led me to a civilization that was completely new to me.

Where were they from?

i contacted the leading archeologist in Arabia.

Dr. Daifallah al- Talhi.

And I think the secrets of Madain Saleh, the secrets of the Nabataeans,

lie underneath a settlement area.

Dr. al-Talhi couldn't date my fragments, but he did something better.

He took me to his research site in the desert.

Dr. al-Talhi studies the early settlers of this region, the Nabataeans.

The Nabataeans created the first Arabian Golden Age, 2,000 years ago.

The first thing you need to have a Golden Age is wealth.

The source of the Nabataeans' fabulous wealth seems unlikely.

Their huge fortunes literally grew on trees, Boswellia trees.

The bark oozes the sap needed to make precious frankincense,

the same frankincense mentioned in the Bible.

The Nabataean traders started at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula,

and carried frankincense north.

From there, the frankincense was shipped to cities

throughout the vast Roman Empire.

At that time, the Romans worshipped over a dozen gods,

in thousands of temples, each perfumed with precious frankincense,

up to 3,000 tons a year.

And the Nabataeans controlled every ounce.

When a trader approached a Bedouin camp, he faced a crucial question,

"Friend or foe?"

The answer could be a matter of life or death.

Hospitality had a purpose.

This Bedouin was collecting the most valuable trade good of all, information.

Because many Bedouins died in battle, women outnumbered men.

The code of honor called for modesty.

it was a tribe's duty to protect widows.

Even today, once you make friends with an Arab, you're friends for life.

Only the luckiest traders made it to the Mediterranean

to sell their precious cargo of frankincense.

Many centuries after its decline,

the outside world had nearly forgotten this ancient kingdom

until the late 1800s,

the era of great exploration by Europeans.

Explorers knew about the spectacular rock city of Petra.

But the other main Nabataean city remained a secret.

Arabia, at the time, was hidden behind a veil of mystery,

off-limits to foreign travelers.

And the Arabian deserts were deadly, sweltering hot and without water.

Nearly impenetrable.

Huge storms of dust and sand could last for several days

and swallow travelers without a trace.

But finally, explorers found the abandoned city of Madain Saleh.

Here, 130 elaborate tombs were carved by the Nabataeans into tall sandstone cliffs.

But how did these isolated nomads become master stonemasons?

From ancient coins early archeologists found at the site,

we know that the Nabataeans had frequent contact

with some of the best architects in the world,

the Greeks and the Romans.

The work of these early archeologists was not easy.

Centuries of decay pervaded the tombs.

Inside this tomb, notches were carved right into the rock walls.

Each one is a coffin.

The Nabataeans helped develop the script that became the modern Arabic alphabet.

Frankincense made this one of the richest kingdoms on Earth.

But when the Romans adopted Christianity and worshipped only one god,

they no longer needed temples for 12 gods.

The demand for frankincense collapsed.

And so did the Golden Age of the Nabataeans.

Dr. al-Talhi told me that after centuries of decline,

Arabia was about to be reawakened by something powerful,

the divine revelations of Prophet Mohammed,

who inspired the whole region with a thirst for knowledge.

Mohammed was born in Makkah around the year 570,

but he lived much of his life here in the city of Madinah.

The Prophet's mosque in Madinah is huge.

Yet you can almost feel his presence here.

The Quran, our Holy Book,

contains God's revelations to the Prophet Mohammed in Arabic.

Just like Christians and Jews, Muslims believe in one god,

the god of Abraham.

And we also revere the biblical prophets, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

The Quran urged followers to read and gather knowledge.

This simple instruction to understand the world

had a huge impact and led to a second Golden Age.

The tribes were unified by their belief in one god.

Once they stopped fighting each other, they became a potent force.

They conquered more territory than the Romans

in about half the time.

While much of Europe lapsed into its dark age,

Islamic scholars translated the works of the ancient Greeks and Hindus.

The first seed of the Golden Age was sown on Arabian soil.

Soon, the new thinking spread from Persia to Spain,

eventually reaching India and Indonesia.

By weaving together many ideas, Islamic scholars came up with algebra.

The foundation of science was strengthened when ibn al-Haytham came along.

his theories of gravity and momentum preceded Isaac Newton's work

by 700 years.

in over 200 books, he revolutionized physics and optics.

ibn al-Haytham built the world's first camera obscura.

he was the first to explain how the eye sees.

And his pioneering work in optics led to telescopes and cameras like mine.

ibn al-Haytham conducted experiments to find out how things really work.

he has been called the father of the scientific method.

in the world's first universities,

hundreds of scholars explored the boundaries of science.

After Jabir ibn Haiyan cooked up chemistry,

Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni

calculated the circumference of the Earth with great precision.

These innovative scholars were the catalyst

that ignited the European Renaissance centuries later.

There has never been anything quite like this Golden Age of Islam,

which lit up three continents for 800 years and changed our understanding of the world.

But invading armies and dwindling trade chipped away at the empire

and led to the slow decline of the Golden Age.

When the empire collapsed,

Arabia lapsed into an age of stagnant isolation.

Well into the early 1900s, Arabia was a patchwork of quarreling tribes,

but one man changed all that.

his name was Abdul Aziz ibn Saud.

With a skillful blend of force and diplomacy,

Abdul Aziz united all the towns and tribal lands

and created the kingdom of Saudi Arabia,

named for his own family.

In the 1930s, when the new king invited the Americans to explore for oil,

they found the largest deposits on Earth, 25% of the world's reserves.

After only 13 years as king,

Abdul Aziz met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt

and formed an alliance that endures to this day.

...Saudi Arabia to a conference with President Roosevelt.

The Saudi Arabian king and American president

discuss mutual problems of trade and relations with Saudi Arabia.

Near Riyadh, I visited the king's ancestral village as it was being restored.

i felt the weight of history in this mud palace.

But in the 50 years that King Abdul Aziz has been gone,

a lot of things have changed.

Nearby, in our capital of Riyadh,

the old ways are getting increasingly comfortable with the new.

The discovery of oil changed not just Arabia's economy,

but the economic balance of the entire world.

Today, oil is our frankincense.

And it gives us a chance to make education our first priority,

much like it was centuries ago.

Recently, King Abdul/ah started a revolutionary university of science,

with the sixth largest endowment in the world.

When I left for the U. S. seven years ago, this was unthinkable.

i photographed the king at the dedication ceremony

where he introduced the faculty,

the best and the brightest from all around the world.

This university will be a think tank of creativity and innovation.

it will emulate the spirit of the Islamic Golden Age of science.

Drawing students from all over the Middle East and around the world,

men and women will study and carry out research side by side.

It's a huge leap forward.

Education is a source of hope for many Saudi women,

like the celebrated poet, Nimah Nawwab.

Poetry here harkens back to our deep-rooted oral traditions.

Because Bedouins moved from grazing area to grazing area,

they couldn't carry books with them.

So our stories and history were memorized and often told through poetry.

Nimah loves horses. They inspire her to write.

The Arabian horse is one of the oldest breeds on Earth.

With their small noses and arching tails, they're magnificent creatures.

Women here are balancing the old and the new.

Over the years, tribal ways of life impose restrictions on women.

As Nimah can tell you, 60 years ago, women rarely attended school here.

But today, more women than men earn college degrees.

We've seen quite a lot of progress.

The king, for example, has recently promoted women

to higher levels of his government.

But for some, the changes are too slow.

We follow a strict code of conduct, especially in public,

when we're expected to convey our modesty by wearing an outer cloak,

known as the Abaya.

But we have more serious and vital issues to address.

Until recently, women were not able

to travel or study without gaining male consent.

While we have a long way to go as women, what gives us hope is our faith.

Muslims don't worship idols or objects. We only worship God.

We pray directly to him and it's not through a priest or anyone.

Near Makkah, this huge tent city offers hospitality

to pilgrims from 160 nations.

For three days, three million pilgrims converge on Makkah

to reaffirm their faith,

during the holy rite known as the Hajj.

it's a lifelong dream for many Muslims.

Here, religion is a family affair.

The Quran states that one time in our lives, we should all try to perform the Hajj.

it is by far the largest annual gathering of people in the world.

Makkah is the heart of Islam.

Over a billion people all across the world

turn to face this spot five times a day when they pray.

The Hajj opened me up to all my fellow Muslims and worshipers.

it just made me more accepting of them and their ideas.

We're told that our sins are forgiven during the Hajj,

so we come out reborn.

Here where the temperature sometimes soars above 120 degrees,

shade can feel like the soothing hand of God.

For Muslims, the Ka'ba or the cube, is a holy magnet.

The very first house of God.

Muslims believe it was built by Abraham, patriarch of the three religions,

Muslim, Christian and Jewish.

Nimah has written something that I really love,

it says that we're all sons and daughters of Adam,

that the three faiths are interlinked.

We walk around the Ka'ba seven times,

and we become one with all the human beings around us.

We touch the Ka'ba because it's the house of God

and we feel close to Him when we touch it.

It's our touchstone.

We feel the flow of the Earth's celestial turning around the sun.

it's a never-ending circle that's continued through the centuries.

Performing the Hajj helps us feel that we are part of one community,

the human community. We're all one.

Surrounded by desert, the corals of the Red Sea

have had to adapt to survive.

Just like the people of Arabia.

i left Makkah and headed home to Jeddah.

After one month of filming,

i was really struck by the relaxed spirit of my hometown.

i love it.

Nimah taught me that words matter,

that ideas can change the culture.

Many women agree with Nimah, including my mom.

i set out on this journey to discover who we are and how we got here.

i came away inspired by the Nabataeans.

They were able to build great things out of nothing.

To survive in the desert, families had to be really close with each other.

And we're still that way today.

i asked my dad for advice on my film

because that's how we do things. All decisions are family decisions.

The strength of our culture is our family.

And from this strength, we'll build our future.

It's much too soon to say

if a third Golden Age could be happening here.

The recent opening of the new university of science and technology

is just a first step.

But four more major research centers are soon coming online,

whole communities devoted entirely to learning

and the exploration of ideas.

The Prophet Mohammed encouraged people to learn,

gather knowledge and explore the world.

i'm starting to see that same spirit take hold here.

And that, more than anything else, gives me hope.

Twice, our ancestors built Golden Ages, and we can, too.

IGS Ripped,corrected & Converted to SRT by: win-32-hichem