AL-QASABA
MONUMENT
مجسم القصبة · دوار القصبة، أبها
An open story
of Asir.
The qasaba — the round watch and storage tower of the Asir highlands — returns to the city as a landmark at a busy junction on King Faisal Road. It is built the traditional way: hand-laid khalab mud courses, each protected by a projecting raqf slate ring that throws the rain clear, on a basalt base and three dry-stone terraces. Around it, a fragment of a qasaba wall with an old rifle and a granary with grain sacks tell of watch, harvest and home.
All studies, the site layout, design development, the technical drawings and the BOQ (bills of quantities) for this project were prepared by Mohamed Bider for AMSY Group, with the visualisations and the night-lighting concept.
- Site survey & layout options
- Tower design & studies
- Technical drawings
- BOQ — bills of quantities
- Lighting concept
- Visualisation
Tower above the plinth, tapering from Ø 4.98 m to Ø 3.37 m — 13.98 m overall.
Raqf slate courses at 0.60 m, each casting its own shadow ring at night.
Stone terraces, Ø 12.60 / 11.25 / 9.90 m, in granite and Abha basalt.
One warm light temperature — grazing uplights, a lit door, glowing openings.
On King Faisal Road.
The monument stands in the main island of a large junction on King Faisal Road in Abha, seen by every driver on the main road and from the plazas on either side.
- 1Al-Qasaba junction (approximate)
- 2Abha city centre
- 3King Faisal Roundabout
- 400 m walking radius
- Site
- Junction on King Faisal Road (دوار القصبة), Abha
- Client
- Asir Region Municipality (أمانة منطقة عسير)
- Islands
- Main island ≈ 750 m², side islands ≈ 160 and 175 m², medians ≈ 240 m²
- Status
- Approved concept (Layout 2), 2026
From junction
to landmark.
Drag the slider: the junction as surveyed by drone, and the same view with the approved layout — the qasaba on its terraces, the fragment and the granary on the islands, grasses and basalt in the medians.
ExistingProposedStudies.
The tower and its junction studied from the site layout to the build-up, the slate-course rhythm, the sightlines and the night lighting. Select a study.
Materials
& colours.
Everything comes from the mountains around Abha: basalt and granite for the base and terraces, khalab mud for the shaft, raqf slate for the rain courses, tamarisk and juniper timber for floors, roof and door, limewash and jute — and native grasses on basalt gravel.
The qasaba,
visualised.
The landmark through the day — from the morning traffic to dusk and night, when the slate courses draw shadow rings up the tower.
Details.
Up close: the grain sacks of the granary, the old rifle at the qasaba fragment, the slate courses over the mud and the warm glow of the tower at night.
Client: Asir Region Municipality. Design and delivery: AMSY Group. Sources: Al-Qasaba Monument design studies, Layout 2 and detailed BOQ (2026), drone survey September 2026.
All studies, the site layout, design development, the technical drawings and the BOQ (bills of quantities) for this project were prepared by Mohamed Bider for AMSY Group, with the visualisations and the night-lighting concept.