A couple of weeks after I wrote this review, Saudi Arabia got its first WHS with the inscription of Al-Hijr Archaeological Site (as its nomination called it) - more commonly known as Madâin Sâlih. We were there in 2002 and found it an interesting place. It is set in the desert country of NW Saudi around 250kms from the Jordanian border. This provides a clue to its history:- It is most famously a Nabataean city, built as they expanded out of their home area around Petra and with its peak around 100BC -100AD. In fact its history reaches much further back but the main sites you will see are Nabataean and consist mainly of tombs (over 100!). Its location was well placed on the trade routes to from Syria to the Hadramaut and later for the pilgrimage route from Damascus to Mecca.

Generally its location and remains are less spectacular than Petra (it does however have its own “Mini Siq” passageway between the rocks!) but the tombs are better preserved. They all follow a similar design of a flat facade with a step motif above and a triangular portico above the doorway. Inside are funerary niches etc and some carvings. Apparently one of the unfinished tombs was important in “proving” that the rock carving started “from the top down”. Qasr Farad is particularly impressive being carved into a single rock outcrop and is usually chosen to feature in books/posters (and later reviews here!) about the site. Everything is very spread out but you are not going to arrive here without transport anyway. Most of the tombs (we must have visited5 or 6) have notices in Arabic and English explaining their history and with translations of the carvings. These provide a fascinating insight into the practical concerns of those arranging the building of these impressive structures. I quote from one “May Goddess Dushara …. curse whoever sells, buys, pledges or grants this tomb or takes out any corpses or bones from it or buries anyone other than Kamkam and her daughters and their descendents. Whoever disregards the above written shall be cursed 5 times by the goddess Dushara and pay the priest a fine of 1000 haritha”!!! On which point Wiki has an interesting comment that the locartion is mentioned in the Qur’an as being a cursed place due to the inhabitants turning away from the word. I have deliberately chosen the review photo to show what female tourists (in this case Mrs Solivagant) had to go through to be allowed to travel round Saudi in 2002.... "modestly dressed" as required by the Morality Police (aka "Muttawa" or "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice") - even though she is wondering in the desert!!!

The original T List description indicated that the nearby Hejaz railway sites might be included. But that turned out not to be the case and there seemed no obvious logical reason for them to be connected into a single inscription.  Nevertheless the railway remains were interesting and included a railway shed still containing (restored) old German locomotives from around 1907, together with a station and marshalling yard with rather less well preserved rolling stock.We followed the railway for over a day and there are better, more atmospheric remains elsewhere along its track including some wonderful rusting locos in the middle of nowhere looking as if they had been left untouched since the day that Lawrence of Arabia blew up the track around them – though in fact Lawrence never operated this far south!

The site will also be of interest to those interested in the History of Exploration. Charles Montague Doughty who wrote “Travels in Arabia Deserta” is credited with being the first European to visit it in the 1880s. He stayed in the Turkish fort which was the raison d’etre for there being a railway station here – we used it as a picnic stop away from the midday heat! There was absolutely no "Tourist infrastructure" at the site and we were the only visitors...