Hafar Al-Batin

Hafar al-Batin (Arabic: حفر الباطن Ḥafar al-Bāṭin), also frequently spelled Hafr al-Batin, is a city in the Hafar al-Batin Governorate, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. It is located 430 km north of Riyadh, 94.2 km from the Kuwait border, and about 74.3 from the Iraq border. The city lies in the dry valley of the Wadi al-Batin, which is part of the longer valley of the river Wadi al-Rummah (now dry), which leads inland toward Medina and formerly emptied into the Persian Gulf. In the 1st century after hijrah or 638 CE, Hafar al-Batin was just a route in the desert that pilgrims passed through traveling to Mecca for Hajj. At that time, there was no water available in this land, so the pilgrims travelled from Iraq to Mecca on a long route without water. During the reign of Uthman (644 - 656 CE), many pilgrims complained about the lack of water, and Abu-Musa al-Asha'ari, a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad responded by digging new wells along the route in the al-Batin valley. The name of Hafar al-Batin (Arabic: حفر الباطن, "the hole of al-Batin Valley") is derived from this.[citation needed]. It was part of Kuwait before the Uqair Protocol of 1922 in which it was given to Saudi Arabia.[3] The Saudi Arabia Ministry of Housing announced in August 2020 that they would be including Hafr Al Batin in its program to increase residential ownership by its citizens. The ministry will be providing 759 plots in Hafr Al Batin alone.[4]