Daily life in Riyadh during the 1970s

A grounded look at a Najdi capital becoming an oil-era metropolis, where adobe courtyards, planned neighborhoods, ministries, schools, cars, markets, construction sites, and migrant labor shaped ordinary routines.

Riyadh in the 1970s was no longer the compact walled town remembered by older residents, but it had not yet become the vast metropolitan landscape of later decades. The 1972 Doxiadis master plan, new ministries, expanding roads, water and electricity networks, industrial districts, schools, hospitals, and housing projects pushed the city outward from older districts around al-Dirah, al-Batha, al-Murabba, al-Malaz, and the Old Airport Road.[1][2] Daily life was marked by heat, dust, prayer times, family obligations, government paperwork, construction noise, school routines, market shopping, and the arrival of workers and professionals from other parts of Saudi Arabia, the Arab world, South Asia, and Western technical firms.[3]

Housing and Living Spaces

Housing in 1970s Riyadh ranged from old Najdi mud-brick courtyard houses to government villas, concrete block homes, rented rooms, apartment buildings, and labor compounds. In older districts, houses were built for privacy and climate control. Thick earthen walls, few outward-facing windows, roof sleeping areas, courtyards, shaded entrances, storage rooms, and separate spaces for guests helped families manage heat, dust, and social expectations. Rooms were flexible. A sitting area could become a sleeping space after bedding was unrolled, and courtyards served for washing, food preparation, children's play, and evening conversation. Nearby mosques, small shops, and souqs extended the household into a walkable neighborhood.

Newer areas changed the scale and texture of domestic life. Al-Malaz, al-Wizarat, al-Sulaimaniyah, and similar districts used wider streets, plots with setbacks, detached houses, car access, and more regular street grids. Government employees and middle-class families increasingly expected electric lights, piped water, tiled bathrooms, metal doors, ceiling fans, refrigerators, window air conditioners, and enclosed kitchens. Wealthier households occupied larger villas with reception rooms, family rooms, gardens, servants' quarters, and garages, while lower-income residents crowded into older houses or subdivided rented spaces. Building materials shifted toward cement, steel reinforcement, glass, aluminum, ceramic tile, plywood, and painted concrete, though mud brick, palm mats, woven rugs, and wooden doors remained visible in older quarters.

Not all residents shared the same domestic security. Migrant construction workers, drivers, mechanics, shop assistants, guards, and domestic workers often lived in employer-provided rooms, shared houses, workshops, or camps near projects and industrial areas. These spaces were practical rather than private, with common washing, shared cooking, crowded sleeping, and limited family life. For Saudi families, the move from old courtyard houses to planned neighborhoods altered daily habits: errands required cars, children traveled farther to school, women managed larger indoor spaces, and family visiting became more dependent on roads and telephones. Housing showed the city's uneven transition from compact oasis town to dispersed capital.

Food and Daily Meals

Meals in 1970s Riyadh combined Najdi staples with imported foods made easier by oil-era roads, shops, and refrigeration. Households ate rice, wheat bread, dates, yogurt, laban, ghee, lentils, beans, vegetables, eggs, chicken, lamb, goat, camel meat on some occasions, and fish brought from the Gulf or Red Sea by improved transport. Kabsa, jareesh, qursan, marqooq, matazeez, harees, stews, soups, flatbreads, and date sweets belonged to ordinary or festive cooking depending on income and occasion. Coffee with cardamom, tea, dates, incense, and a guest space remained central to hospitality. Families judged respectability partly by the ability to feed relatives, visitors, and neighbors properly.

Shopping took place in souqs, small groceries, bakeries, butcher stalls, vegetable sellers, and later supermarkets that served better-off districts. Al-Batha and older market areas sold rice, spices, cloth, metalware, carpets, dried goods, spare parts, and everyday household items. Refrigerators and freezers allowed salaried families to store meat, ice, milk, and imported foods, but many households still bought fresh bread, vegetables, and small items frequently. Cooking technology varied by income: charcoal and kerosene stoves remained in use, while gas cylinders, pressure cookers, aluminum pots, enamel dishes, thermos flasks, electric kettles, and mixers became more common. Water storage mattered because supply could be uneven, and dust made covered jars, tins, and cabinets useful.

Food labor was strongly gendered inside Saudi households. Women, older girls, and domestic workers washed rice, kneaded dough, prepared spices, cooked large trays, served elders, packed school food, and cleaned dishes, while men and boys often handled market purchases or restaurant meals outside the home. Public eating expanded with offices, construction sites, schools, and migrant workers. Cafeterias and small restaurants served rice plates, beans, bread, tea, curries, grilled meat, sandwiches, and inexpensive meals for clerks, drivers, laborers, students, and bachelors living away from families. Ramadan, Eid, weddings, Friday gatherings, and visits from rural relatives shaped special food routines, while ordinary meals reflected the pressure of work schedules, school hours, prayer, heat, and household budgets.

Work and Labor

Work in 1970s Riyadh was shaped by the city's role as administrative capital and by national development plans that poured money into roads, utilities, schools, hospitals, ministries, industrial sites, and housing.[4] Government offices employed clerks, typists, translators, accountants, drivers, guards, messengers, engineers, teachers, health workers, police, and maintenance crews. Ministries and public agencies generated routines of forms, stamps, queues, personnel files, payrolls, permits, and official correspondence. Education expanded, so teachers, school administrators, textbook suppliers, bus drivers, and cleaners became part of daily urban labor. Hospitals and clinics drew doctors, nurses, pharmacists, technicians, reception clerks, and orderlies into a growing public-service economy.

Construction was highly visible. Workers built villas, apartment blocks, ministry buildings, roads, drainage works, power lines, water systems, schools, mosques, workshops, warehouses, and industrial facilities. Sites depended on engineers, foremen, masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, welders, painters, surveyors, crane operators, truck drivers, cooks, guards, and laborers. Many were migrants under sponsorship arrangements, with work and residence tied to employers. Their routines included early starts, transport by truck or bus, heat exposure, shared meals, remittances, and crowded housing. Saudi skilled tradespeople, shopkeepers, contractors, and landowners also benefited from the building economy, while some households used new income to hire drivers, cooks, cleaners, and domestic servants.

Older forms of work remained important. Souq merchants, gold sellers, carpet dealers, grocers, tailors, barbers, mechanics, watch repairers, carpenters, butchers, bakers, and taxi drivers served neighborhoods that were changing but still locally organized. Families with links to nearby farms, date groves, livestock, or smaller towns continued to move food, people, and obligations between city and countryside. Women's paid employment was limited by gender segregation and family expectations, but teaching, health care, clerical work in female spaces, and school administration expanded as girls' education grew.[5] Household management itself remained a major form of labor, involving food, children, guests, clothing, water, servants, and kinship obligations. The workday was therefore both modern and domestic: typewriters, concrete mixers, and trucks existed beside market bargaining, family errands, and home-based care.

Social Structure

Riyadh's social structure in the 1970s was layered by citizenship, family, tribe, region, religion, wealth, education, gender, occupation, and closeness to state institutions. Established Najdi families, religious scholars, merchants, senior officials, landowners, professionals, soldiers, teachers, artisans, and recent migrants all occupied different positions in the city. Family reputation mattered, and households maintained ties through visiting, marriage arrangements, funerals, Eid calls, business partnerships, and assistance to relatives. The majlis remained central for male sociability, dispute handling, job seeking, and news, while women's visiting networks connected households through hospitality, childcare, marriage, clothing, food, and education.

The oil boom made differences more visible. Some families moved into villas, bought cars, installed air conditioners, sent children to better schools, hired domestic help, and invested in land or contracting. Others lived in older quarters, rented rooms, or depended on irregular wages. Education became a path to mobility, especially for families seeking government employment. Boys' schooling was already established, and girls' education expanded sharply through the decade, though it remained separated and closely supervised.[5] A girl's school attendance could change household routines by adding uniforms, books, transport, homework, and new expectations for teaching or health work, even when marriage and domestic responsibility remained central.

Foreign residents formed another layer of urban life. Arab professionals, teachers, engineers, doctors, and clerks often held skilled posts, while South Asian and other migrant workers were heavily represented in construction, workshops, driving, cleaning, and domestic service.[3] Western consultants and technicians lived in more protected compounds or company housing. Daily cooperation across nationality occurred in offices, shops, hospitals, schools, and building sites, but legal status, sponsorship, housing, wages, and long-term security were unequal. Social life was also shaped by religious norms, gender segregation, prayer schedules, mosque neighborhoods, and public modesty. The city was becoming more diverse, but belonging was still measured through family, citizenship, language, occupation, and access to institutions.

Tools and Technology

Everyday technology in 1970s Riyadh ranged from durable household tools to imported machines and public infrastructure. Homes used water tanks, gas cylinders, kerosene stoves, pressure cookers, aluminum pots, thermos flasks, radios, fans, sewing machines, irons, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, televisions, cassette players, telephones, and window air conditioners according to income and district. Simple tools still mattered: brooms, mats, buckets, hand mills, knives, coffee pots, incense burners, needles, toolboxes, ladders, and repair wire kept households functioning.

Offices relied on typewriters, carbon paper, filing cabinets, ledgers, rubber stamps, telephones, telex machines, calculators, envelopes, and messenger systems. Schools used chalkboards, exercise books, desks, uniforms, textbooks, maps, and examination papers. Construction and repair work used concrete mixers, scaffolding, cranes, trucks, bulldozers, generators, welding sets, drills, pumps, survey equipment, and spare parts. Cars reshaped the city: pickup trucks, taxis, buses, Land Rovers, private sedans, petrol stations, road signs, workshops, tires, jacks, and spare-parts shops became ordinary features of life. Mechanics, electricians, radio repairers, plumbers, and air-conditioning technicians gained steady work because imported equipment needed constant adjustment. Families also kept small stocks of fuses, bulbs, batteries, hoses, and tape. Electricity, paved roads, telecommunications, water pipelines, and street lighting promised modern convenience, but breakdowns, heat, dust, and uneven access kept repair skills essential.

Clothing and Materials

Clothing in 1970s Riyadh balanced climate, modesty, gender rules, occupation, income, and the spread of imported fabrics. Saudi men commonly wore the thobe with ghutra or shemagh, agal, sandals, leather shoes, and bishts for formal occasions. Boys wore school uniforms or thobes depending on age and setting. Saudi women wore abayas and head coverings in public, with dresses, embroidered garments, gold jewelry, perfumes, and henna used in family spaces and celebrations. Tailors, textile shops, and household sewing remained important because garments were fitted, altered, repaired, and reused.

Materials widened with trade and consumer imports. Cotton, wool, silk, nylon, polyester, acrylic knits, synthetic blends, lace, sequins, leather, plastic sandals, and ready-made garments circulated beside locally familiar woven mats, rugs, palm products, and leather goods. Office workers needed pressed clothing, polished shoes, pens, briefcases, and sometimes Western suits. Construction workers and mechanics wore shirts, trousers, coveralls, helmets, gloves, boots, or sandals suited to heat, dust, grease, and cement. Domestic workers, nurses, cleaners, guards, and schoolchildren used uniforms that marked role and employer. Laundry was visible on roofs, courtyards, lines, and balconies, and clothing care involved ironing, mending, airing, and protecting fabric from dust. Dress signaled respectability and community belonging while also adapting to a city of cars, offices, schools, and construction sites.

Daily life in Riyadh during the 1970s was defined by transition rather than by a clean break with the past. Courtyard habits, hospitality, prayer, kinship, and market routines remained strong, while roads, ministries, schools, electricity, migrant labor, and concrete neighborhoods changed the rhythm and geography of the city. Its everyday history lies in the practical work of keeping a household cool, feeding guests, reaching an office or school, repairing machines, finding affordable housing, and maintaining family obligations in a capital expanding faster than older routines could disappear.

References

Al-Hathloul, Saleh. Riyadh Architecture in One Hundred Years. Center for the Study of the Built Environment, 2002.
Menoret, Pascal. Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Kapiszewski, Andrzej. Nationals and Expatriates: Population and Labour Dilemmas of the Gulf Cooperation Council States. Ithaca Press, 2001.
Metz, Helen Chapin, ed. Saudi Arabia: A Country Study. Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1993. https://www.loc.gov/item/93028506/
Al Rawaf, Haya Saad, and Cyril Simmons. "The Education of Women in Saudi Arabia." Comparative Education, vol. 27, no. 3, 1991, pp. 287-295.
Facey, William. Riyadh: The Old City from Its Origins until the 1950s. Immel Publishing, 1992.