Jeddah is a city that has been inhabited for over a thousand years. At its centre was commerce with pilgrims and traders from around the Muslim world bringing their wares and trading them here. Some even settled here.

For a lot of us, it’s actually hard to imagine what the city was like during the early years of the oil boom or even before it. These photos can perhaps help you with just that.

The narrow lanes of old Jeddah used to look so wide back then

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A post shared by اكتشف جدة Discover Jeddah (@discoverjeddah) on Jun 15, 2017 at 6:37am PDT

An image from 1949 of the Baghdadi House

This is a painting depicting Jeddah in the 1800s

This used to be Al Baik’s first logo

There used to be no barrier between us and the sea back then

This was before there was a thing called a drone

Jeddah’s oldest mosque – Masjid Al Shafei

School buses were just like those in America

Not exactly from the black and white era, but nonetheless a gem to frame on your wall