Najran

Najran was one of the great oases of the incense road, the caravan route that carried frankincense and myrrh north from southern Arabia. The walled city whose ruins survive at Al-Ukhdud controlled the water and the trade, and inscriptions from the site record the South Arabian kingdoms that competed for it. By the early 6th century Najran held a prominent Christian community, which was destroyed in a massacre carried out around 523 by the Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas; tradition links the event to the "People of the Ditch" mentioned in the Qur'an, and the name al-Ukhdud means the trench.

The oasis accepted Islam in the lifetime of the Prophet, and a delegation from Najran is recorded as negotiating terms with him at Medina. In the centuries that followed the area lay between the powers of Yemen and central Arabia, ruled for long periods by Yemeni imams and by local tribal leaders, with its Ismaili community forming a distinct strand of its society.

Najran passed to the Saudi state after the war with Yemen that ended in the Treaty of Taif in 1934, and the border was finally settled by the Treaty of Jeddah in 2000. The Emara Palace, built in the 1940s, was the seat of the governor as the modern province took shape. Roads, an airport, a university and irrigation schemes transformed the oasis from the 1970s, and the city spread along the wadi. Since 2015 the war across the border has repeatedly reached Najran, with shelling that has at times closed schools and the airport.

Najran's culture belongs as much to southern Arabia as to the kingdom's centre. Tribal identity is strong — the Yam confederation is the largest group — and most of its people are Ismaili Shia Muslims, with their own religious tradition and places of gathering, among them the Khushaiwa compound and its Mansura mosque, the spiritual centre of the Sulaymani branch of Ismailism.

Dress marks the region out. Men wear the wrapped waistcloth and often a curved dagger, the janbiya, in a decorated belt, along with the flat-wound headcloth of the south; women's clothing is embroidered with the bright geometric patterns of the border country. Weddings and holidays bring drum dances and lines of men performing with swords or daggers, and poetry recited or sung at gatherings remains a living art.

The architecture is the other signature: rammed-earth and mud-brick houses of several storeys, their parapets crenellated and window frames painted white, built for cool interiors and defence. Heritage programmes have restored a number of them, and new buildings in the city often borrow the style. Manners are conservative and hospitality formal — coffee poured from a dallah, dates and a shared meal eaten with the right hand — and guests are received in a majlis. Photography of people, homes and anything military calls for care.

About 381,000 people lived in Najran at the 2022 census, the capital of a governorate of some 592,000, and the city sprawls along the wadi rather than gathering into a centre, so journeys of twenty or thirty kilometres between districts are routine.

Farming remains important in a way it is not in most Saudi cities: dates above all, with citrus, fodder crops and livestock in the walled gardens of the valley, watered from wells and from the floods held by the dam. Government offices, the armed forces, the border authorities, Najran University and local industry provide much of the paid work, and a share of residents have family ties across the border in Yemen.

The day is shaped by heat and prayer times: early starts, a long afternoon pause and a busy evening in the markets and cafés. Families picnic in the parks and along the dam in winter, and the cooler nights are spent outdoors. The border war is part of everyday life here, with shelling and drone attacks that have at times closed the airport and schools, and with a heavy military presence on the roads to the south. Water — falling groundwater and the uncertain rains that feed the wadi — is the other steady local concern.

Najran eats the food of southern Arabia. Haneeth, lamb slow-roasted until it falls from the bone and served over spiced rice, and mandi, meat cooked in a pit oven with rice beneath it, are the dishes of celebration and of the city's grill houses; mathbi, meat grilled on hot stones, belongs to the same family. Kabsa, rice with chicken or lamb, dried lime and baharat, is the everyday meal, eaten from a shared platter with the right hand.

Dates are the produce of the oasis and the sweet of every occasion, served with qahwa, the pale cardamom-scented Saudi coffee, and boiled down into syrup for pastries. Bread is baked flat on a griddle or against the wall of a clay oven and eaten with ghee, honey or stewed beans. Areeka, the dough kneaded with ghee and honey that is the speciality of the Asir mountains to the west, is eaten here too, and honey from those mountains is sold in the souq at high prices.

Qishr, brewed from coffee husks with ginger, is the warming drink of the south, shared with the Yemeni highlands across the border, and sweet black tea is drunk through the day. Buttermilk and yoghurt accompany rice dishes, and citrus and vegetables from the wadi gardens fill the markets in the cool season. Alcohol is illegal throughout the kingdom.