Tayma

This was not the first time traveling through the desert, but I had high expectations of my destination. I was going to Tayma, a town that filled my heart with anticipation.
Tayma is the hometown of the famed Arab lover ‘Majnoon’ Kais. His story, strongly reminiscent of that of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, recounts his love for Layla. She is a member of a tribe with who Kais is at war. As I am a romantic, this love story always appealed to me.
Tayma has now developed into a small city, which is visited by archaeologists from around the world. It is located in the middle of the desert, like an oasis. It’s distinct well, Bir Haddaj, once belonged to Kais and is thought to be around 2500 years old. According to the legend he was born here, and his house is still standing amidst the ruins of old Tayma. It tells the story of its famous owner, who sacrificed his life for his true love.
After driving 1,000km north of Jeddah, past Madinah to Tabuk, and then another 264km southeast I expected a lot of Tayma.
A small city was in front of me with modern houses and small buildings. Where were the old houses, where was the old village? My heart was drowning. We needed some rest, so we drove our car to a restaurant. Tayma is not only an ancient village where the famous Arab lover was born. It was also a place on the edge of the Nefud desert, where traders came en route between Madinah and Dumah.
On the outskirts of Tayma, ancient buildings still remain to tell the story of their residents. Most of them have small rooms and are made up of mud and stones.
Tayma has excavated traces of boundary walls around three sides of the old city. These had been built in the 6th century BCE. Remains of the wall have been preserved up to quite a length. At some places, the walls are still up to 8 meters high. Rectangular towers are part of the city wall. Corridors and staircase still can be seen on the interior side of the wall. Sand has accumulated on both sides of the wall.
Between the outer and the inner wall of the boundary walls, there is a large enclosure with rooms at its corners, probably dating to the early Islamic period. The rectangular stone chambers were probably used as tombs. One of these constructions contained objects of wood and ivory as well as the carbonized remains of grapes and barley.
To the east of the chambers an extended complex with rooms plastered with stone slabs has been discovered, together with a corridor, which once may have served as access to the structures. Further graves, probably of the Nabatean period, have been discovered in the remains of the outer wall. The chambers of these graves are just like the chambers we can see in Madain Saleh.
A large stone door closes off each of these chambers. In spite of robbery and heavy damage, it was possible to identify the burials as collective internments (up to five individuals per grave). At the back, there were two small stone cists with an individual child burial. The excavated grave complex belongs to the Iron Age.
The City Museum is located in the modern part of Tayma. It’s quite an amusing museum with a large collection of ancient stones with figures and writings carved into them and statues, which gave a brief account of the history of Tayma’s civilization. Even thousands of other inscriptions of pre-Islamic Thamudic script have been found in the area and are stored in the museum.