Madein Saleh

I promised more posts to come from our Neoproterozoic field trip. Obviously review of the geology of the Neoproterozoic section of Saudi Arabia isn't suitable fare for this blog. But our visit to Madain Saleh most certainly is.

The Saudi calendar (the lunar hijra calendar) begins when Mohammed made his exodus from Medina to Mecca in the seventh century (or was it the other way round? No matter. Like Joseph Smith and the Mormons, he and his followers were driven out of one city and took refuge in the other.). Ruins of civilizations that predate Mohammed, or ruins of contemporaneous but non-Islamic civilizations, are not highly regarded in KSA. Often they are deliberately destroyed. The few exceptions are ruins that were well documented by westerners in the 19th century.

One of those places is Madain Saleh, a collection of Nabatean tombs carved into sandstone hills north of Al Ula. In fact, I was very surprised to learn that Madain Saleh is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If not for a fence surrounding the site and a guarded gate, it would have been long trashed by now.


The Nabateans were the dominant culture in this part of the world about 2000 years ago and in fact their script, language, and many customs led directly to the pre-modern Arab tribes. They are the ancestors of the Arabs. They established and controlled trade routes between Africa and Eurasia.

The Nabateans built the famed city of Petra located in Jordan. There was almost certainly a city associated with Medain Saleh but the purpose of Medein Saleh itself was for the tombs. The city probably lies under Al Ula (11 km to the south) because the faults controlling the wadi provided reliable sources of clean water and humans have been in the Al Ula area for many thousands of years. There are in fact some suspected Nabatean ruins within Al Ula that would support this.

There are no signs or placards or maps or informative handouts in Medain Saleh. The site is quite large and requires a car to get around. You drive up to a cluster of tombs, get out and look around, take some pictures, then drive to the next cluster. I had to do some research at the library when I got back home just to make sense of what we were seeing.

Me burning up in the evening sun. This is a very famous tomb. It stands all by itself carved out of a single erosional remnant. The modern ground surface is probably close to or just a little bit below the ground surface at the time the tomb was carved.

Geologists will stand around and have involved discussions about anything.

Some of the tombs face east, some face west, so we made two visits to the site, one in the afternoon and the second one in the morning.

There are 131 tombs, some cisterns and water diversion devices, and what are probably meetings places for large groups. Everything is carved out of the sandstone of the Cambrian Saq Formation.

This large room had benches carved around the edge.

The passageway to the left of the large room was decorated with several niches and the lowermost meter or so of each wall was carved with the distinctive notch marks used inside many of the tombs.

The passage led back to this natural amphitheater with a central pool or water catchment area and obviously man-made channels used to divert water to it.

Another view of the water pool area at the front of the amphitheater.

Detail of the niche above the pool. You can see the tooled notches and some of the same motifs that show up on the oldest tombs.

What I found just as interesting as Medain Saleh itself was the reaction to it by the two Saudi geologists along on the field trip. Since Medain Saleh has been known about for quite some time, and it is too big for casual destruction or sweeping under the rug, there has long been a need for the fundamental Islamicists to "explain it away", to remove any sort of historical sense of the place and tuck it tidily into an Islamic mystic past.

Many of the tombs are decorated with amazingly detailed falcons or eagles (long knocked headless), and urns or plants (palms?) on either side. The floral medallions were present on quite a few tombs. Often the devices at the tops of the columns, usually square as on this tomb, reminded me of wheat or sheaves of grass. Note the small plaque above the falcon. Some tombs have writing in this space, on others it has been defaced.

Detail of the floral medallions.

So the myth of the "Prophet Saleh and the Pregnant Camel" came about. You can read a couple of versions of that myth here and here. (By the way, PBUH means Peace Be Upon Him. Perfect for the texting generation. Who says Islam can't keep up with the times? As long as we are talking 14th century times, it is truly a trend setting religion.) The upshot is that Medein Saleh represents a place of "pain and punishment" to the highly superstitious Saudis. On the bright side, that myth tended to keep them out of the place, which may have contributed to its continued existence.

A particularly large and elaborate facade on this tomb.

One of the young geologists who makes an effort to pass himself off as particularly pious refused to accompany us on the first visit, claiming he was "tired." On the second visit, he did come with us on the bus but he refused to step foot out of it. He ended hunched down in the seats so he didn't even have to see out the windows. The other Saudi geologist did get out and walk around with the rest of us but it was clear that he believed that there was no connection whatsoever with the Nabateans and modern Arabs. He related the pregnant camel myth to us. I tried not to be rude, but it was so obviously a whitewash job by Islamicists who can't stand the idea of any "Arabs" existing prior to Mohammed. The easiest way to deal with the Nabateans is to wipe them off the face of the earth with a "miracle."

A cluster of tombs.

Some of the tombs were used for more than one person. You can see more burial niches in the floor of this one. Sorry, nothing for scale but take my word for it that a modern human would never fit into these. The notching all over the surfaces is man made.

The older tombs are easy to identify as the decorative motifs are different, the facades are smaller and less elaborate, and they are more heavily eroded. The tomb on the left caught my eye right away--that is a face up there, the only human representation that I saw. (We can't discount that suggestion the falcon/eagles might have had human heads and that's why the superstitious Islamicists defaced them--not one falcon had a head left on it.)

Look at the very cool face between the floral medallions! I was utterly amazed that it had not been shot or chipped off.

Two old tombs.

Another old tomb. You can barely make out the shapes of the columns on the facade.

At first, I thought the place dry and lifeless. But once I began to notice the detail of the decorational motifs, and particularly once we found the cistern and the amphitheater, I began to get a feel for the deep historical meaning of Medein Saleh. I could begin to understand why the Nabateans chose this place for the tombs of their important citizens.

Can you visit Madein Saleh? Not easily. You would be escorted the entire time you were in the Kingdom (we Aramcons call that IK, in Kingdom; when we go on leave, we are OOK, out of Kingdom). You would have to make all travel arrangements through a pre-approved travel agent, traveling in their vehicles and staying in pre-approved hotels. And even though Saudi Arabia says they want to encourage tourism, tourist visas are extremely difficult to get.

This was a chance of a lifetime and I am lucky that I got to see it.