The craft of stone masonry and the use of palm trunks and fronds have brought the old wells back into the spotlight in the Al-Jawf region, as a local resident recreated the details of the old wells that the residents relied on as their primary source of water in their daily lives, using elements from construction from his surrounding environment and at no cost.

Among the wells, “Qalib Salma” stands out; it was built to teach future generations about the local people’s methods of extracting water and how they coped with the conditions of life in the past by securing drinking water and irrigating ancient farms.

In an interview with the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Ahmed Al-Arfaj, an expert on folk heritage, explained that the well was constructed using sandstone, palm trunks, and palm fronds. It consists of the “al-mari” —the channel that distributes water on both sides of the well—the “maqam,” which serves as the basin for collecting water after it is drawn from the well, and the ”kharsa,” a circular stone used to control the water channels and close them when not in use, in addition to the main tools at the wellhead, namely the ”rasha” and the "mahala," which are used to control the bucket rope that is lowered to the bottom of the well to extract water.

He explained that in the past, locals relied on wells to extract water using livestock such as camels and cows in a process known as "al-sani" —a process of pulling water up with ropes using animals to raise it to the wellhead—all the way to the use of generators, which began appearing in the 1980s and contributed to the mechanization of water extraction.

The Salma Well, located in the Al-Laqayit neighborhood of Sakaka, stands as a symbol of the social heritage of the Al-Jawf region and attracts daily visitors of various nationalities who come to learn about and see these ancient wells firsthand.