An old city of the north
Tayma lies south-east of Tabuk city, among the dunes of the Nafud, in the Tabuk Region. Its oldest monuments reach back to the Neolithic, around 12,000 years ago, and through the Bronze and Iron Ages it grew into one of the important cities of northern Arabia.
Inscriptions from the 8th and 6th centuries BC record that a Babylonian king made Tayma the capital of his kingdom. Writing survives here in cuneiform, Thamudic, Aramaic, Nabataean and Islamic Arabic. One Aramaic stela was taken to France in 1884 and is now in the Louvre as the Tayma Stone.
Walls, palaces and a well
The town wall, begun in the 6th century BC, runs for about 10 km and stands between 2 and 10 m high. The walls of Qasr al-Radhm, from the first millennium BC, still stand, while Qasr al-Bajidi, square with round corner towers, is the first Islamic palace found in Tayma and dates to the Abbasid era.
At the centre is Haddaj Well, long a major stop for pilgrims on the old Hajj road, with Qasr al-Emara, begun in 1917, beside it. Palms still dominate the farms, with grapes, pomegranates, figs and olives, and finds are shown at the Tayma Museum.