Qasr Al Farid, Hegra, Medina Province. December 2017.
The second city of the Nabateans
There are always some travel "holy grail" places. They come on the list and drop off the list. Angkor Wat, Cambodia used to be hard to get to and now it is a place of package tours. The buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan simply no longer exist. The otherworldly mountains of Torres del Paine, Chile only show themselves a few days out of each month. Guilin, China's scroll-painting-like hills, used to be only for Chinese tourists. Madain Saleh, outside of Al Ula, Saudi Arabia is one such place. When I visited, it was just coming on the grid and travel information was anecdotal at best.
First of all, what about the name? Madain is Arabic for "cities", but who was Salih? The following excerpt explains. Take note that most stories of the Quran have Biblical parallels, but the legend of the Prophet Salih is uniquely Islamic.
(Backstory) The nasty people of Thamud, having become idolators, were sent the Prophet Salih by God to guide them away from their wickedness. Salih's repeated attempts to save them and his show of miracles were met with verbal and physical abuse and only made these heathens more brazen. A miraculous she-camel was sent from God out of a cleft in the mountain....
So they killed the she camel and insolently defied the Commandment of their Lord, and said: "O Salih! Bring about your threats if you are indeed one of the Messengers (of Allah)." So the earthquakes seized them and they lay dead, prostrate in their homes. Then he (Salih) turned from them, and said: "O my people! I have indeed conveyed to you the Message of my Lord, and have give you good advise but you like not good advisers." (Ch 7:73-79 Quran)
All were destroyed before they realized what was happening. As for the people who believed in the message of Salih (PBUH), they were saved because they had left the place.
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Ibn Umar narrated that while the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was passing by Thamud's houses on his way to the battle of Tabuk, he stopped together with the people there. the people fetched water from the wells from which the people of Thamud used to drink. They prepared their dough (for baking) and filled their water skins from it (the water from the wells). The Prophet of Allah (PBUH) ordered them to empty the water skins and give the prepared dough to the camels. Then he went away with them until they stopped at the well from which the she camel (of Salih) used to drink. He warned them against entering upon the people that had been punished, saying "I fear that you may be affected by what afflicted them; so do no enter upon them."
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/projects/lrc/arabic/women_deceit/texts/Prophet_Salih/
To this day, most Saudis will not set foot in the place. As I mentioned when writing about Diriyah [see: Diriyah], rumor has it that UNESCO was keen on protecting Madain Saleh from destruction by the fanatic "religious police" who held sway in Saudi for over 30 years. The status was granted and the site was given tacit royal protection. Given the level of fanaticism of the religious right, it might have been unneeded. The religious zealots were terrified to go inside. The prophet Mohammed said point blank (read above), "don't go there" - so they didn't!
We have all seen the treasury building of Petra, Jordan in a variety of films. Petra was another travel "holy grail" for many years and now is a simple bus ride from Amman. The builders of Petra were the Nabateans (400 BCE- 100 CE):
Nabateans were Arabian nomads from the Negev Desert who amassed their wealth first as traders on the Incense Routes which wound from Qataban (in modern-day Yemen) through neighboring Saba (a powerful trade hub) and on toward Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea.
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Following annexation by Rome in 106 CE, Petra and other Nabatean cities such as Hegra steadily lost their hold over the Incense Routes and their control over the region generally. The rise of the Syrian city of Palmyra as a center of trade diverted caravans from the Nabatean cities which then declined in wealth and prestige. The emperor Aurelian's destruction of Palmyra c. 272 CE came too late to resuscitate the Nabatean economy, and by the time of the Arab Invasion of the 7th century CE, the Nabatean Kingdom had been forgotten.
I visited ancient Hegra (Madain Saleh) twice. Once on my trip to Tabuk [see: Tabuk] with AM and a second time with brothers AQ and SQ on the Black and White Volcanoes adventure [see: Black and White Volcanoes]. The first trip, AM and I drove down from the north along the Hejaz Railway [see: Hejaz Railway] line actually having no idea if the place would be open nor if they would let us inside. So new was the opening that we had received all kinds of conflicting information about it. As it turns out, even on a Friday late morning, the place was open and only required us showing our IDs for an easy entry. The entrance showcased one of the old Hejaz Railway stations and a small museum. Interesting that the Ottomans by building a train station there didn't show much fear of the "warning" not to enter Madain Saleh as conveyed by tradition.
Madain Saleh was virtually EMPTY. AM was a sport and we did the main loop in his car and saw the most iconic tomb, Qasr Al Farid, pictured above. We did get out of the vehicle and explore on foot a bit, too. Honestly, we were both ill-prepared simply because there was little information about the place (even on the internet at that time). We missed a lot, but I didn't care (and didn't know). I was so excited to go and AM indulged me by going to a "forbidden" place. He told me the whole time it didn't bother him, but I wondered....
Fast forward a few years and after the Black and White Volcanoes, brothers aQ were up for more adventure and we followed the Hejaz Railway, this time up from the south, and stopped at Madain Salih. That tour was complete because AQ had done all the research and reading in advance. How did I not know this guy was going to turn out to be successful in life? While my first visit had been in the morning, the second was in the late afternoon and the light was much better for photos. It was a magical visit.
The monumental structures, by the way, are tombs. Nothing is left of the actual city. Inside the tombs are just small, rock cut rooms which held the bodies (long gone due to grave robbers). By the advent of Islam, Hegra had been forgotten and became the stuff of legend. Its people were "cursed" by God and even their great stone houses (read: the tombs) could not protect them from God's wrath. It set me to thinking what other places I had visited where the "history" told about the place simply had no bearing on reality.
Now, of course, Hegra is off the "holy grail" list as Saudi Arabia has tourist visas and is actually promoting the place. When I saw it though, it still was a place very few had ventured...