A toll station on the caravan road
Ḥimā lies in the dry, mountainous south-west of the Kingdom, on one of the ancient caravan routes of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits at the oldest known toll station on an important desert caravan route.
The wells of Bi'r Ḥimā are at least 3,000 years old, and they still produce fresh water.
Seven thousand years of carving
UNESCO calls the site an unequalled historical "library on rock". Its six parts may hold more than 100,000 petroglyphs, most of them in pristine condition, covering at least 7,000 years and continuing into recent decades.
Travellers left their words as well as their pictures: inscriptions in Musnad, South Arabian, Thamudic, Greek and Arabic. Cairns, stone structures, burials and ancient wells lie around them, still unexcavated. UNESCO inscribed Ḥimā in 2021.