Najrān

Oasis, settlement and pre-Islamic tribe of Southwest Arabia (today in Saudi Arabia). It was a major site along the caravan roads linking South Arabia to the Gulf and the Mediterranean.

Najrān (Sab. Nagrān; Gr. Nεγράνων /Nαγαρα; Lat. Negrana /Nagara) is a 40-km-long oasis located along the Wādī Najrān in southwest Saudi Arabia. Najrān is also the name of the main city, and of the tribe who settled there in the early Christian era. The luxuriance of the oasis and its unique location on the caravan roads fostered regional development from the first millennium BCE onwards. The richness of the oasis is echoed in a 3rd cent. Sabaic inscription (Ja 576+577) which mentions 68 settlements, 60,000 fields, and 97 wells. Ammianus Marcellinus counted Najrān as one of the seven chief cities in Arabia Felix (Amm. Marc. Res Gestae, 23.6.47).

When leaving South Arabia, Najrān was the last fertile valley before entering the barren areas of desert Arabia, at the crossroads for caravaneers heading toward the Mediterranean Sea, along the Hijaz range, or towards the Persian Gulf, through the Wādī Dawāsir.

From the 8th to the 6th centuries BCE, the valley of Najrān was the heart of the kingdom of Muhaʾmir, with its capital city at Ragmat (Hebr. Raʿmah – Gen 10: 7, 7; Ezek 27: 22). Around the 5th century BCE, the kingdom of Amīr succeeded that of Muhaʾmir; Ragmat was abandoned in favour of a new capital city, and Zirbān, later called Najrān, was occupied until the early Islamic era. This town is identified with the modern ruins of al-Ukhdūd, on the right bank of the Wādī Najrān.

Archaeological excavations revealed a planned city, consisting of a regular square bisected by a main street into two equal parts (Fig. 1). Surrounded by an extra muros settlement, the town extended over 50 ha. The main deity dhu-Samāwī was worshipped in the temple Kaʾbatan.

Owing to the strategic location of Najrān, neighbouring kingdoms took a keen interest in its control. Coveted by the kingdom of Sabaʾ, the city of Ragmat was burned down during a military expedition. Thereafter, Najrān joined the trade coalition headed by the South Arabian kingdom of Maʿin (4th to 2nd centuries BCE). In 25 BCE, the town was seized by Aelius Gallus’s expedition (Strab. Geogr. 16.4.24; Plin. HN 6.32.160) and a few decades later, Sabaʾ took control of the oasis, a rule which was disputed by Aksum for a short period (ca. 210–240 CE). In 328 CE, in his epitaph found at al-Namara in Syria (Louvre Museum, AO 4083), Maraʾ-l-Qays, son of ʿAmraw king of all ʿArab, said he fought with the tribe of Madhhij “until he struck with his spear the gates of Najrān, the city of Shammar [Yuharʾish, the king of Himyar].” The fate of the inhabitants of Najrān was then intrinsically tied to Himyarite policy.

When the Himyarite kings chose Judaism (ca. 380 CE) and rejected pagan cults, it is likely that the inhabitants of the oasis – under their control – did likewise. Around 450 CE, groups of Najrānites converted to Christianity through contact with the Monophysite milieu of Syria and Nestorians from al-Hīra in Iraq (Robin 2008). The proselytism of the Monophysite community and their connections to Byzantium led to the first wave of persecutions by the Himyarite king Shurihbiʾīl Yakkuf: the beheading of Azqīr, priest of Najrān, reported ca. 475 in the Martyrdom of Azqir (Conti Rossini 1910); the stoning of Paul, bishop of Najrān, ca. 500, mentioned in the Letter of Simeon of Beth-Arsham (Shahid 1971). The second wave of persecutions was conducted by the Jewish Himyarite king Yūsuf Asʾar in 523 CE: the Book of the Himyarites describes a five-month siege followed by the slaughter of many Christians (Moberg 1924). The massacre was fraught with consequences: an expedition carried out by the Aksumite king Kaleb led to the elimination of Yūsuf and the subjugation of Ḥimyar to the Aksumite princes for half a century.

After these events, the inhabitants of Najrān claim to be members of the banū al-Hārith bin Kaʿb tribe, i.e., the descendants of al-Hārith bin Kaʿb (Arethas in Greek sources), after the name of the Christian ruler executed during the Himyarite persecution.

Najrān became an active trade centre again, halfway between Mecca and Yemen, headed by a triumvirate described in the delegation of the Christians of Najrān coming to Muhammad at Medina ca. 631–2 (Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīra al-nabawiyya: 573), which included a governor, a tribal chief, and a bishop.

During the caliphate of ʿUmar, the Monophysites were expelled and settled at Najrāniyya, near al-Kufa (Iraq) (Robin 2008). By the eleventh century, the ancient city of Najrān, today al-Ukhdūd, had fallen into ruins. The main settlement shifted to the left bank of the wādī, where the modern city of Najrān is located. Jewish and Christian communities settled there until at least the early thirteenth century (Ibn al-Mujāwir, Taʾrīkh al-Mustabsir: 209).

Jérémie Schiettecatte

References and suggested reading

Sources

• Amm. Marc. Res Gestae: The Roman history of Ammianus Marcellinus: during the reigns of the Emperors Constantius, Julian, Jovianus, Valentinian, and Valens. Transl. C.D. Yonge, 1911. London: G. Bell and Sons.
• Book of Himyarites: Moberg, A. (ed.). 1924. The book of the Himyarites: fragments of a hitherto unknown Syriac work. Lund.
• Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīra al-nabawiyya: Kitāb sīra rasūl Allah. Das Leben Muhammed’s nach Muhammed Ibn Ishâk bearbeitet von Abd el-Malik Ibn Hischâm aus den Handschriften zu Berlin, Leipzig, Gotha, und Leyden. Ed. by F. Wüstenfeld, 1858. Göttingen: Dieterichsche Universitäts Buchhandlung.
• Ibn al-Mujāwir, Taʾrīkh al-Mustabsir: Y. Ibn al-Mujāwir. A traveller in thirteenth-century Arabia: Ibn al-Mujāwir’s Tārīkh al-mustabṣir, ed. by G.R. Smith (Hakluyt Society Series III, Vol. 19), 2008. Aldershot: Ashgate*.*
• Strab. Geogr. 16.4.24: Seubert, P. 2020. Du Tigre au Nil, la Syrie et l’Arabie de Strabon : édition, traduction et commentaire du livre XVI de la Géographie. PhD Thesis, Paris, Sorbonne Université.

Studies

• Beaucamp, J., F. Briquel-Chatonnet & Ch.J. Robin (eds) 2010. Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles. Paris.
• Conti Rossini, C. (ed.) 1910. Un documento sul cristianesimo nello Iemen ai tempi del re Sharā-bīl Yakkuf. Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche 19: 705–750.
• Robin, Ch.J. 2008. Joseph, dernier roi de Himyar. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 34: 1–124.
• Schiettecatte, J. 2011. D’Aden à Zafar: villes d’Arabie du sud préislamique (O&M, 6). Paris: De Boccard.
• Shahid, I. (ed.) 1971. The martyrs of Najran. New documents. Brussels.
• Zarins, J., A. Kabawi, A. Murad & S. Rashad 1983. Preliminary report on the Najrān/ Ukhdūd survey and excavations. Atlal 7: 22–40.

_{Alternate spellings: Najrân, Najran, Nagrān, Nagrân, Nagran, al-Ukhdūd, al-Ukhdûd, Ukhdud, Ẓirbān, Zirbân, Zurbân, Zirban, Ẓrbn, Ṣrbn, Ngrn}