Al-Hijr, Houses or Cemeteries?
We are in front of a residential neighborhood that looks like any other neighborhood in the world.
One hundred and thirty-five facades. Only thirty-five wrote on them.
Personally, I do not have any problem with the Nabateans.
They did not bury anyone in this house.
Let us see the secret that has been revealed.
An architecture that blends classic with realism.
Some of the artistic engineering works in Al-Hijr
show that the sculptor left abstract, expressive, and even cubist touches.
Before tackling the history of architecture in this region of the Arabian Peninsula,
Eid Al-Yahya decided to start with sociology,
then, he went to address the orientalists on the vast theater in Al-Hijr.
Orientalism is the science of the orient,
and the orientalist is the one interested in the orient.
All Western scholars from French,
Dutch, English, and German schools,
as well as those who studied the Orient, its arts, antiquities, and languages
came from different backgrounds. - Al-Ula, Northwest of Saudi Arabia
The first thing was to serve their country and patriotism,
and because they fed their country with studies
at a time when the Arab world was living in the dark
since the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate and also the Umayyads in Andalusia.
The Arab world was living in the dark, while the Western world was starting to grow
after referring to sociology, which is anthropology.
They relied on the school of an Arab Muslim scholar, Ibn Khaldun,
the first founder of sociology.
However, at that time, the Arabs did not care about Ibn Khaldun’s science because they were starting to go down the abyss,
and the West took this science and developed it.
Inventions and the industrial era in Europe was based on sociology.
Everything was based on the study of identity, language, and the homeland.
For this reason they came to us after they finished what they had and studied us,
but they studied us according to their curriculum
and their era which, is the colonial era in the nineteenth century
and the beginning of the twentieth century.
What grabs our attention while in Al-Hijr, Petra, or around the monuments of Iraq?
In Al-Hijr, specifically, in Saudi Arabia,
in all the regions of Saudi Arabia and also Petra,
those who studied all the monuments that we see,
and the first Westerners who studied them in the nineteenth century
wanted to attribute every style of architecture in it
to the Greeks, Romans, or Assyrians.
They do not want to attribute something local to the people of the Arabian Peninsula
for ideological, doctrinal, and political reasons. This is the problem.
Now, in al-Hijr, as a clear example,
these houses were for daily use,
and the Nabataeans later reused them after 2,700 years
to bury their dead.
The most important point now is that
this architectural style of decoration, crowns,
legendary symbols date back to the ages of the Thamud.
It dates back to ancient times, and from there, it migrated to the rest of the world.
When orientalists come and are convinced that it only belongs to the Nabateans,
they want to cut the extension of the Arab,
artistic, architectural, linguistic, artistic, and creative identity. They say
that this world in the Arabian Peninsula and the local people
imported all these arts
from the Greeks, Romans, Pharaohs, and Assyrians.
This is a great systematic error.
The facades watch the wide horizon,
and others are shy in their far corners.
The most controversial are those opposite, which form a semi-circular chain
that share a single courtyard and an imaginary gate.
This group is known as the neighborhood of Al-Hijr.
In Al-Khuraymat, we are in front of a residential neighborhood like any other neighborhood in the world;
Houses facing each other, whose locations have been carefully chosen
to be a residence for people to visit each other and neighbors to talk together.
It is not a cemetery.
However, before we enter we will show you a first model for a Thamud house
untouched by hands.
The Nabateans have not buried anyone in it.
Perhaps, they bought it later from its owners after the Thamud after thousands of years,
but they left it as is.
It is a clear model indicating that this is a residential neighborhood.
Let us see the Thamud house that we call the model in Al-Khuraymat,
or in Al-Khuraymat neighborhood.
We entered house number 84.
There is no tomb inside. It has not been used yet.
It has been left since it was built and carved during the days of the Thamud, in my opinion,
and I might be right or wrong.
After them, people from different nations came to the Nabateans who took over Al-Hijr,
two hundred years BC,
and they did not make a single change.
A wonderful house has a slope outward.
If you pour water, it will go outside for cleaning.
The door opens and closes and is controlled from the inside.
A person may come and ask,
why do they have the ability to open the door also from outside?
We would answer them with no,
they do not have this ability. All the world heritage, palaces, fortresses, and walls that have doors
from thousands of years to a hundred years ago,
are closed and opened from the inside only for safety purposes.
Opening the door with a key from outside, or with a card like hotels
was not possible in the past.
If they wanted to open it from the outside,
they should have turned the door ring.
All the houses in Al-Hijr have an inner ring.
It is clear that they are closed and opened from the inside only for those who are inside.
When they go out to graze or perform their daily affairs, even though they used to live in extreme luxury, they
would leave the door ajar.
Even in Baghdad and Damascus in the old days;
They used to open the gates since dawn, and when the sun went down,
they closed the gates of all the city.
Those who come from outside cannot enter, and this is known throughout history
even in the Islamic and Arab eras, whether strong and rich,
they close the gate of Baghdad, and no one can hence enter.
They sit outside until the morning, or the guard opens the gate.
Rock formations that seem to float without roots,
looking like sand petrified under the influence of a conspiracy carried out by the sun over time.
It is Al-Hijr that historians documented its history with the Nabataeans,
which are the Arabs coming from the heart of the Arabian Peninsula,
to the Levant and the Hijaz.
Women had a high status, as they had the right of ownership, inheritance, and work.
Their kings were known for their humility and generosity.
The Nabataean kingdom flourished and became famous until the historian Theodore Sicilian
said that they did not submit to anyone, and no one was able to control them.
Personally, I have no problem with the Nabataeans.
On the contrary, the Nabataeans were Arabs who came from Uyun Al-Jawa and the northern region of Al-Qassim.
They went to Petra and took it from the Edomites,
and after 300 years, they descended to the south and took control over Al-Hijr
before the Romans came and eliminated the Nabateans.
The Nabataeans had eliminated the Lihyanites in that period as well.
However, the problem is that the orientalists and those who headed towards them, and it is normal for every person to have a method,
when they attribute this decoration and these delicate architectural arts,
such as balconies, columns, crowns,
mythical symbols, flowers, and roses,
whether in Petra or in Al-Hijr,
they attribute them to other nations such as the Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans.
This means that they are stripping the Arab civilization from any art,
and that they are only imitators. This is the problem.
Therefore, in the Red Mountain group in the facade number 113,
we found a secret that was revealed, thank God.
The issue is not only about the doors that close
and open from the inside and the houses that originally do not have cemeteries,
and the Nabateans did not use them as cemeteries,
and not only that there are 35 panels from 135 facades,
meaning that only 35 wrote on them. They did not indicate to whom each tomb belongs.
They were not originally used as tombs,
but here is evidence that the Nabataeans did a work that you can say is disgraceful
from an architectural point of view, as they cut the wings of the eagle
to make the frame for the painting, on which nothing was originally written.
They did not bury anyone in this house.
Let us see this secret that was revealed.
Here, the Nabati, who wanted to draw a painting
missed the timing. The engineer here made a mistake in timing.
He started digging the frame from the top,
so it became close to the eagle's two wings, which were in the form of a triangle at the end.
After making the left and right frames, he
noticed that the panel is short. So, what did he do?
He had to cut the eagle’s wings, and the cutting is very clear.
Not only that, he had to cut the head and neck and
part of the chest and smooth them.
Not only the sabotage that happened a hundred years ago
or when guns first appeared in Saudi Arabia
when they shoot or target the head of a falcon or an eagle.
No! This actually happened during the days of the Nabataeans, 200 BC.
They cut off the head, neck, and part of the eagle’s chest.
The eagle has a known symbolism
that it is the most powerful bird. It was later used in the culture of Mesopotamia
and in Egypt in the Egyptian civilization
because Thamud was before the Mesopotamian civilization and before the civilization of the Pharaohs.
As in most ancient civilizations,
Al-Hijr was also not without colors when it was carved.
According to archaeological research, these carved mountains
were during their youth years colored and painted with natural materials.
Eid Al-Yahya left the stick aside to recover what man had done to mix colors
to color the facades of Al-Hijr.
Al-Yahya came back to put forward the idea that the Nabataeans
transformed these facades from houses into burials.
A wonderfully decorated Thamud house that was covered
with dyed and thick gypsum mortar
painted red with the well-known red ocher
that was used since the stone ages.
Iron oxide is taken from sandstone,
and the sand is then grinded because it becomes like powder, and they mix it with water and dye with it.
We sometimes find facades dyed with a black color. The same process is followed;
They grind charcoal and mix it in water,
and they paint the gypsum with it, and gypsum will absorb it,
or the sandstone will absorb it, so it stays forever.
Photographic scene based on research data
Personally, I believe, and I might be right or wrong, that the Nabataeans
are who changed the features of Al-Hijr and the beauty
of these beautiful ornate houses.
They changed them into tombs because they found it the best place to bury their dead.
They did not leave many houses and many decorations.
They came to these houses that existed before
and put in them all what they owned.
Look at facade number 14,
which has the Liliaceae. This flower is not imported from abroad
and imitated by other civilizations.
It is from this environment, and it sprouts in the spring.
It might be dead now.
It sprouts from time to time, and this is a characteristic of the plants of the Arabian Peninsula.
We can also see two statues for Abo El-Hol;
A lion and a female head that, of course, were sabotaged, but the body is clear.
In Al-Khuraimat we find Abo El-Hol, and here we find Abo El-Hol as well.
It is repeated and known as a symbol of the house.
The house is closed and opened from the inside,
and there are bedrooms.
The Nabateans came and dug burials in the bedrooms.
Yes, they buried bodies here.
Look, they dug a place for the painting
despite the large number of people buried here. This cemetery has the highest number of buried people.
However, they did not even find the time to write, as they usually did,
that this is the grave of so-and-so, and whoever touches it will be punished and cursed.
Imagine that they did not even write on it. Writing will only take a day or two, but they did not write anything.
So how could they be the ones who built this building from the beginning?
A complete, decorated, smooth
and dyed building with red ocher because we see the rest of the dye until now.
This is also one of the examples that prove that the Nabateans came to Al-Hijr only 200 B.C
at a time when the Arabian Peninsula was desertified
and life became hard.
It is true that they controlled the trade route, but I do not think that during the two hundred years
they spent in Al-Hijr, they built or carved all these great facades
with their decoration because this is a very short time.
It existed before them in my opinion, which might be right or wrong.
The seventh journey did not end in Al-Hijr,
and in its coming days, moments stop in front of distorted eagles,
columns, flowers, and windows.
Each of these carvings on the walls of the mountains,
has a relationship with man, nature, and legend.