Ajwa Al Aaliya Dates

Named-farm Ajwa from Madinah's Al-Aaliya basalt belt

Al-Aaliya (العالية) is the elevated southern farm belt of Madinah — the district rising through Quba and Al-Awali onto the black basalt of ancient lava fields — and within a variety already defined by a single city, it is the one district the Madinah trade itself ranks first. The market prices that opinion: Aaliya fruit is the reference against which all other Ajwa is discounted. The difference is physical and consistent. Aaliya-grown fruit runs darker — an even jet black without brown patching — smaller and tighter in the hand, softer in the flesh, with a noticeably finer, denser wrinkle than valley-grown Ajwa, and the flavour carries the restrained sweetness and faintly mineral depth the trade attributes to the basalt soils. Farm plots in the district are small, long-held and rarely sold, harvest is short, and total output is a modest fraction of overall Ajwa volume — the scarcity is agronomic, not manufactured. Grading uses the standard Ajwa variables, count per kilogramme (typically 90–120, since the fruit is smaller), moisture and skin condition, but the controlling specification is the farm itself: genuine lots are bought against named farms and pack-houses inside the Aaliya boundary. CBIL contracts the grade with SGS or Intertek certification of count, moisture, foreign matter and infestation alongside farm-level traceability, Saudi phytosanitary documentation and Halal certification, with the district named in the origin papers rather than only on the carton.

Whether the Aaliya premium pays depends entirely on whether your customer knows the word. In Madinah retail the district's fruit holds around SAR 50 per kilogramme while respected mid-market varieties such as Safawi and Sagai trade in the low twenties — roughly double for the district name — and standard Ajwa sits between the two. That premium survives export only where the end buyer recognises Aaliya by name: top-end religious gifting, luxury Ramadan hampers, corporate gifting into Gulf and South Asian diaspora markets, and speciality retailers serving an informed Muslim clientele. Sold to a customer whose vocabulary stops at 'Ajwa', the district is invisible and standard Madinah Ajwa is the correct buy — that boundary is the whole difference between this page and our main Ajwa line. Verification is stricter here than anywhere else in the date trade because the fraud is double-layered: non-Madinah fruit sold as Ajwa, and valley Ajwa sold as Aaliya. Contract against named farms, require the district on the origin documents, buy in or near harvest season while farm-direct lots remain identifiable, and benchmark every offer — genuine Aaliya at standard-Ajwa money is not a discount, it is a label. Volumes are gift-trade volumes: 400–800 g boxes and 1–3 kg presentation formats dominate, part-container orders consolidated with other date lines are normal, and reefer carriage at 0–5 °C is non-negotiable for fruit this soft. For Ramadan programmes, allocations are fixed at harvest.