Umm Jirsan Cave

History

The cave. It is a lava tube of about 1,481 m, in three parts. It reaches 12 m in height and 45 m in width. It lies about 125 km north of Medina, in the Khaybar volcanic field.

The excavations. A team led by Mathew Stewart, Huw Groucutt and Michael Petraglia published its results in April 2024 (in the journal PLOS ONE). People occupied the cave several times between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago. Charcoal, herding engravings (cattle, sheep, goats, dogs) and tools of obsidian, flint and basalt were found there. Human remains from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age show that diet shifted toward cereals and fruit, with oasis farming. A 2021 study shows that striped hyenas lived there for about 7,000 years. The cave lies on a path lined with tombs that links two oases.

Harrat Khaybar. It is a volcanic field of about 12,000 km². Its last eruption is dated around 650 AD, give or take 50 years. Jabal Abyad (2,093 m) is a dome of pale rock; Jabal Bayda is a nearby white cone. Jabal al-Qidr is a cone of black scoria, listed as a geological heritage site by the IUGS in October 2022. The RCU presents them as “the white volcano and the black volcano”.

The stone structures. Around the oases of Khaybar and al-Haʾit, thousands of stone structures can be seen from the air. There are mustatils, Neolithic rectangular enclosures (around 5000 BC). There are “kites”, gazelle traps: about 917 were recorded in 2014. There are also pendant tombs, cairns and keyhole tombs. These structures date from the 6th to the 3rd millennium BC. They are part of the Saudi nomination placed on the UNESCO Tentative List on 23 January 2023 (ref. 6636).

The visit. In November 2022, the RCU announced that the cave would soon open to visitors. Access is supervised and should be checked before setting out. The lava field can be visited by 4x4 with a guide. In 2023-2024, the RCU offered helicopter flights over the volcanoes and the mustatils.

What is certain and what is not

• Certain: human occupation of the cave 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, according to the published excavations (PLOS ONE, 2024); the dating of the last eruption around 650 ± 50; the listing of Jabal al-Qidr (IUGS, 2022); the inclusion on the UNESCO Tentative List (2023).
• Uncertain: the conditions of access to the cave, to be checked with the RCU before each season.
• This site has no link with the Battle of Khaybar. No text of the sira mentions it.

Sources

1. Stewart M., Groucutt H., Petraglia M. et al., PLOS ONE, April 2024; Griffith University News, 22 April 2024.
2. SPA, November 2022 (RCU initiatives in Khaybar).
3. Wikipedia (en), “Harrat Khaybar”.
4. UNESCO, Tentative List no. 6636, “Prehistoric Stone Structures in Saudi Arabia” (23 January 2023).
5. Asharq al-Awsat (en), 11 November 2020.