Of Sand and History

The Nefud Al-Kebir (النفود الكبير) is a large sand dune desert in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula. In Arabic its name means ‘The Great Sand Dune Desert’ and it is also known simply as the desert of Al-Nefud (صحراء النفود). It stretches over 290 kilometers from the ancient city of Tayma’ on the west until the city of Hail on the east and is 225 kilometers wide between Hail and Dumat Al-Jandal on the north.  It covers an area of an area of 103 600 square kilometers in the provinces of Hail, Al-Jawf, and Tabuk. From its eastern tip, the Nefud Al-Kebir is connected to the Dahna, a narrow corridor of sand dunes that stretches over 1 300 kilometres and reaches largest sand dune desert in the world, the Rub' Al-Khali.

As the Nefud Al-Kebir is the last large area with sand dunes before Iraq and the Levant it has for long held the reputation of being an impassable and inhospitable desert that kept the Arabian Peninsula out of reach from the rest of the world. But this is a myth. A famous example is found in the book ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by T. E. Lawrence, where he describes a daredevil crossing of the Nefud Al-Kebir in order to attack Aqaba. But Lawrence’s tale is not consistent with the reality of the terrain as there is simply no need to cross the Nefud to go to Aqaba, regardless where you start from.

Instead, the Nefud Al-Kebir played a great role in the history of the Arabian Peninsula and still carries some traces of very old human activity.

​A land of the first Homo Sapiens

In April 2018, researchers from the the Max Planck Institute announced the discovery at Al-Wusta in the Nefud Al-Kebir of an 85 000-year-old phalanx that is so far the oldest directly dated fossil of  Homo Sapien outside Africa and the Levant. It proves that early human dispersal out of Africa was not limited to winter rainfall-fed Levantine Mediterranean woodlands immediately adjacent to Africa, but extended deep into the semi-arid grasslands of Arabia, facilitated by periods of enhanced monsoon rainfall.

​Still in the Nefud Al-Kebir, the team of Michael Petraglia from the Max Planck Institute discovered a couple of years earlier at the site of Al-Marrat a small lithic assemblage that dates back to 55 000 years ago, emphasizing the long term human occupation of the area, at least during humid phases.

​A host of some of the most brilliant rock art in the world

If the climate became dryer from the 5^th millennia, human presence didn’t disappear from the Nefud. Again in Jubbah, some inscriptions in Thamudic and Nabatean scripts that are probably around 2 000 years old show that the Nefud was still crossed by caravans at that time.

Early European explorers also made the crossing the of Nefud Al-Kebir, such as the Frenchman Charles Huber, who went from Hail to Sakaka in October 1883 and made a stopover in Jubbah. During later trips Huber even carved his name on rocks not far from the Nefud Al-Kebir.

​Exploring the Nefud Al-Kebir

When penetrating the Nefud Al-Kebir, the first striking aspect is the vegetation. Indeed, millions of small bushes actually make the progress by car quite tedious, especially when it is necessary to gain momentum for climbing a sandy slope.

A second interesting feature is the shape of the dunes that are quite hilly yet scalable, unlike the steep mountains of sand of the Rub’ Al-Khali. Even the large crescent dunes that reach over 50 meters high are relatively easy to circumvent.

​Another characteristic of the Nefud Al-Kebir is the variety of color of its sand that ranges from the regular beige to red, but also from yellow to white on its edges.

​How to visit the Nefud Al-Kebir

The masterpiece of Arabian Prehistory