Qualla: Al-Okhdood https://qualla.com/al-okhdood en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/p/7/al-okhdood-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Al-Okhdood https://qualla.com/al-okhdood Al-Okhdood: Introduction https://qualla.com/al-okhdood/ Photo credit TacoJeddah, CC BY-SA 3.0. The word itself is a wound. Al-Okhdood means the trench, the ditch, the pit - and the Quran, in its 85th chapter, curses the people who dug one. Somewhere beneath the sand and mud-brick walls 1,300 kilometers south of Riyadh, archaeologists believe they have found what the verse remembered: the place where, in the 520s, the last Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas ordered the Christians of Najran thrown alive into fire. The town is in ruins now. It has been in ruins since the 7th century. But its silence is not empty - it is full of the names of people who died refusing to recant their faith, and whose deaths entered scripture.

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/p/7/al-okhdood-wp/sgp7-al-okhdood-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Al-Okhdood: A Town 2,500 Years Old https://qualla.com/al-okhdood/ Photo credit Mohammad Umair Yaqub, CC BY-SA 4.0. Long before the massacre, Al-Okhdood was a prosperous South Arabian trading town. The earliest structures date to at least 500 BCE. The largest visible building - a fort of stone-and-mud bricks - rose in the 1st century BCE, its walls thick enough to defend caravans moving betwee...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/p/7/al-okhdood-wp/sgp7-al-okhdood-a-town-2-500-years-old.mp3 0:06 2 full Al-Okhdood: Azqir of the Chapel https://qualla.com/al-okhdood/ Photo credit Mohammad Umair Yaqub, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first victim recorded by name was a priest called Azqir. In the 470s, he built a chapel - the text is uncertain whether small or church-sized - inside the ancient town. The Himyarite king Sharhabil Yakkuf ordered his execution and sent two governors, Dhu Tha'laban and Dhu Qai...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/p/7/al-okhdood-wp/sgp7-al-okhdood-azqir-of-the-chapel.mp3 0:06 3 full Al-Okhdood: The Fires of Dhu Nuwas https://qualla.com/al-okhdood/ Photo credit Mohammad Umair Yaqub, CC BY-SA 4.0. A generation later, the situation grew much worse. Dhu Nuwas, the final Himyarite king, had converted to Judaism and viewed Christianity with open hatred - or, in another reading of the sources preserved by Al-Tabari, simply saw Najran's Christians as allies of his Byzantine enem...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/p/7/al-okhdood-wp/sgp7-al-okhdood-the-fires-of-dhu-nuwas.mp3 0:06 4 full Al-Okhdood: What Remains https://qualla.com/al-okhdood/ Photo credit Mohammad Umair Yaqub, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the 620s, the surviving population of Najran migrated a short distance away and established the city that now bears the name. The old town was left to the wind. During the early Islamic period, a mosque was built there - the oldest in all of Najran Province. Over the centuries...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/p/7/al-okhdood-wp/sgp7-al-okhdood-what-remains.mp3 0:06 5 full Al-Okhdood: The Weight of a Verse https://qualla.com/al-okhdood/ Photo credit Mohammad Umair Yaqub, CC BY-SA 4.0. Archaeology cannot verify every detail the sacred texts and later chronicles preserve. But the Quran's mention, the Martyrdom of Azqir's specificity, and the Ethiopian Aksumite inscriptions recording Dhu Nuwas's defeat converge on the basic fact: in this place, in this century, p...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/g/p/7/al-okhdood-wp/sgp7-al-okhdood-the-weight-of-a-verse.mp3 0:06 6 full