Roads of Arabia

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ROADS OF ARABIA
The Discovery of al-Rabadha, a City in the Early Days of Islam
dates to the Qarmatians who devastated and ransacked the town, forcing its population to
flee. Thus ended the story, after three centuries of prosperity, of one of the most famous
Muslim cities on the pilgrimage road. The geographer al-Muqaddasi, years after its destruction,
was appalled to discover there nothing but “brackish water and a place of desolation”.
Then the pilgrimage road deviated from al-Rabadha. Historians and geographers no
longer mentioned it, as if leaving the task to archaeologists to discover its secrets, traces of
its constructions and testimonies of its urbanization. This is why for centuries and up to
very recently al-Rabadha was known (only by name) and ignored.
The traveller and geographer Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah ibn Bulayhid (d. 1975) was the
first who sought to draw attention to it and circumscribe its location, but in vain. This failure
profoundly discouraged scholars. It was only when the author of this essay undertook
his doctoral thesis on the vestiges of Darb Zubayda that interest in the geographic situation
of al-Rabadha was revived. Through examination of the historical, geographic and literary
sources related to this route, valuable information was obtained, that proved very helpful on
the first visit to the site, during which the trajectories and cross roads were followed over a
distance of more than 1,400 kilometres. This inspection took from May 14 to June 11, 1973.
The data assembled concurred with that of the shaykh Hamad al-Jasir who published
an essay in the review al-‘Arab titled: “Al-Rabadha: the location of the site”. A certain number
of Saudi lexicologists also published useful information on the city in the wake of
Shaykh al-Jasir, Muhammad ibn Nasir al-‘Abudi, Sa‘d ibn Junaydil and ‘Atiq al-Biladi.
Al-Jasir thus concluded: “In my opinion the site of al-Rabadha [he meant the city and not
the protected zone] was located between the Abu Salim basin and the al-Nafazi well; I do
not exclude the fact that this well may be one of the many al-Rabadha wells; it could be the
one known in the past under the name Abu Dhar al-Ghifari well and which in the course
of time was distorted”. A scientific survey was performed on a section of the Darb Zubayda.
It includes archaeological sites in the perimeter where the Abu Salim basin is situated,
appearing under this name on the geographic maps of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia; similarly
the natural sites and the extent of the plant covering were circumscribed. This is why
the author of this essay was convinced that al-Rabadha was situated in the area containing
the basin and the nearby existing archaeological vestiges.
The investigation clearly revealed that it was east of Medina, at almost 200 kilometres,
at the foot of the western mountains of Hijaz.
Preliminary prospecting of the site allowed the team to prepare the excavation of this
city while students of the archaeology and museology department were trained under the
guidance of specialists.
The first excavation campaign took place in May 1979.
These were the grounds for selecting the localization of the site of al-Rabadha to start
the excavation:
1. The connection of the place with the rise of Islam and the Prophet’s Companions.
2. The pastoral character of the surrounding region and its bonds with the nascent
Islamic state.
3. The gradual development of al-Rabadha, which began in the early days of Islam and
continued under the Umayyad dynasty until the first Abbasid period, followed by its
destruction and then its disappearance.
4. The historical and geographic sources led to the conclusion that the archaeological
site could offer us useful information about the Islamic civilization; on the one hand, the urban
layout and the architectural piles including houses, numerous industries such as pottery,
ceramic, stone and glass items, and on the other hand, metal utensils, jewellery, inscriptions,
coins and other items produced locally or conveyed from the close or distant capitals
of the Islamic Empire.
5. We also hoped that the results of the archaeological discoveries would provide us
with coherent proof which might correct the numerous data on early Islamic architecture as
well as on the many forms of craftsmanship or ancient scripts, which the rapid changes
affecting the first Islamic capitals such as Bassora, Kufa, Baghdad and Samarra or even al-
Hira (which belonged to the Pre-Islamic period) did not permit us to establish.
6. The archaeological excavations on Islamic sites in Iraq and Syria and resulting interpretations
confronted us with many issues concerning the sources of knowledge and characteristics
of the Islamic civilization.
Fortunately the results of the excavations at al-Rabadha were conclusive. In the twentyfive
campaigns between 1979 and 2003 we were able to gather very significant information
about the urbanism of the city, architectural elements, items in ceramic, glass, stone and
metal, coins, scripts, jewellery and decorative elements.
The population of the city appears to have settled in a rectangular area going from east
to west. There are no visible ruins of the city, save several archaeological mounds of which
the layout is not clearly defined. One of the site’s most visible vestiges is one of the Darb
Zubayda tanks: a circular tank, 65 metres in diameter, 4.70 metres deep, equipped with
a rectangular sedimentation basin measuring 55 x 17 metres and 3.15 metres deep. We
were also able to delimit the cemetery of the old city in the south-west part. Its extension
indicates that the city was quite vast and densely populated. During the first campaign the
excavation brought to light three sites which we named A, B and C, to which we added
two others, D and E. Last, we identified a rather large archaeological mound which we
named “401”. During the excavation we unearthed several architectural works comprising
mosques, houses, palaces surrounded by enclosures and thick walls consolidated by circular
Hélène David, 2010
General layout of the site
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