An-Nafūd

The Nafud covers an oval depression in northern Arabia with an area near 65,000 square kilometres. Brick-red sand is heaped into large crescent dunes, separated by rocky tracts and shallow hollows. Sudden winds can erase tracks and alter the surface within hours. Only one or two rains normally arrive in a year, so vegetation remains sparse away from wells and runoff channels.

At the western margin, springs and wells support oases that grow dates, barley, vegetables and fruit. These cultivated islands supplied pastoral groups and travellers moving between the Hejaz and central Arabia. To the southeast, the Dahna forms a long corridor of gravel and sand linking the Nafud with the Rub al Khali. Together, the two deserts and the Dahna created a chain of routes rather than a single barrier.

The dunes also contain a deep record of human presence. A fossil human finger found in the Nafud was dated to about 85,000 years ago, and camel engravings indicate later seasonal journeys through northern Arabia. These traces belong to periods of changing rainfall and movement, when what is dry in the present age was crossed by people following water and game. The inner Nafud thus preserves both an imposing landscape and a long history of adaptation. The dunes preserve that record beneath shifting crests and gravel margins.