In the last decade, Mecca, Islam’s birthplace, has been the target of some of the world’s largest commercial development schemes. Over one hundred buildings are under construction around the Grand Mosque and will soon replace the historical, architectural, and socioeconomic landscape of this rapidly developing city. Centuries-old fortresses, markets, bookstores, schools, and cafes in this central area of Mecca have been destroyed, no longer there to tell stories of a past that diverges from the one in official memory in Saudi Arabia. Historical artifacts and sites that date back to the time of the prophet Mohammad and his successors have not been spared either, rendering today’s Mecca outside the walls of the Grand Mosque a holy city without an Islamic material heritage. This indiscriminate approach to redevelopment projects in the holiest of Muslim sites is especially peculiar given the micromanagement and close attention that similar development phenomena have received in Riyadh. Redevelopment plans in the political capital are largely premised on safeguarding the city’s historical, archeological and cultural sites. In the last decade alone, the government poured billions of petrodollars into the production and rehabilitation of cultural and archeological sites that circulate the state’s official historical discourse. Where the Saudi government is actively allowing the effacing of one form of historical memory in Mecca, it is strictly enforcing the conservation of its material heritage in Riyadh. While these plans reveal the (excessive) powers of petro-capital and the complex relationship between private contractors and Al Saud’s state apparatus, they also speak to the new importance that historical legitimating mechanisms play in reifying the rule of the Al Saud family. This, in turn, puts into question the ways in which the monarchy has and continues to draw on Islamic discourses for legitimating purposes. By comparing the urban development plans of Mecca and Riyadh, I hope to complicate understandings of Saudi state building that solely privilege ‘PetroIslam’ as the state’s founding, and ruling, ideology. In this paper, I focus on both cities’ cultural roadmaps to bring the role of ‘history making’ to bear on our analysis of Saudi state formation and nation building. By studying the new museums, the Ajyad Fortress in Mecca, and Al Dir’iyya in Riyadh, I draw out the importance of circulating this historical discourse to consolidating state power and reifying images of the Saudi nation.