11/1/2023 0 Comments Sahary alula![]() 106, had controlled the profitable trade routes that crossed the Arabian Peninsula from east to west and north to south, creating a vast desert kingdom. until the Roman invasion of Arabia in A.D. Like Petra, it had been built by the Nabataeans, a people who, from about the fourth century B.C. ![]() There, Doughty discovered evidence of a settlement that had clearly thrived in antiquity, but which had been all but swallowed by time and sand – the ancient city of Hegra. For protection, he joined “the great Damascus caravan,” travelling in the company of the faithful, bound south along the old pilgrim trail for Makkah and finally arrived at Mada’in Salih “after three weeks’ tedious riding." Undeterred, Doughty “resolved to accept the hazard” of visiting the monuments at Mada’in Salih. This, he learnt, was a lonely water-station “of the Damascus yearly pilgrims’ caravan, in their long desert way to Madinah and Makkah lying some few days’ journey southward from Ma’an, but difficult to be reached, at other times, for danger of the wild Bedouins.” In his book “Travels in Arabia Deserta,” published in 1888, Doughty recalled that at the settlement of Ma’an, some 30 km southeast of Petra, he heard of “other Petra-like sculptured cliff-monuments, bearing many inscriptions,” at a distant place called Mada’in Salih. Petra in modern-day Jordan, the “rose-red city half as old as time” as it would be immortalized by a British poet in 1845, was already well known in the West, having been “discovered” in 1812 by Johann Burckhardt, a Swiss traveler.īut in 1877, in the shadow of the Hijaz Mountains Doughty was to stumble upon a lost city of the dead, rich with rock-carved tombs and monuments, wholly unknown in the West. AlUla” Al-Imam and a local storyteller show us two of the old cities. The opening up of Hegra and the AlUla Valley, in antiquity a vital artery of trade and a cultural melting pot, restores a missing chapter in the history of the region and the entire world, bringing full circle a tale that, until now, has been only half told.Īmr Al-Madani, the CEO of the Royal Commission for AlUla, speaks about AlUla as an ancient crossroads, while Ahmad “Mr. In 2020, the archaeological sites of Hegra will be reopened to the public, which got its first glimpse in many years through last year’s first Winter at Tantora festival, a spectacular celebration of art, music and heritage that will draw the world once again to AlUla from Dec. ![]() ![]() ![]() The unveiling of the spectacular rock-cut tombs of the ancient city, after more than a decade of one of the most intensive archaeological investigations ever undertaken, is part of an initiative to transform the dramatic landscape and heritage of the wider AlUla region into one of the world’s greatest cultural tourism destinations. Like its famous northern twin, Petra, Hegra was created by the Nabataeans, a mysterious people whose Arabian empire of trade flared briefly but brightly more than 2,000 years ago. Now, as the new Saudi Arabia increasingly opens its doors to the outside world, the Kingdom is poised to share with that world one of the great forgotten treasures of antiquity. Few have been privileged to visit the ancient city of Hegra, hewn from the rocks of the Hijaz in northwestern Saudi Arabia two millennia ago and lost for centuries in the mists of time. ![]()
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