Among the ruins on the edge of my city – Najran – this ancient oasis city are deep trenches littered with bones. That is all that remains of one of the great atrocities of antiquity, when thousands of Najrani Christians were herded into pits here and burned to death by a Jewish tyrant after they refused to renounce their faith.
The massacre, which took place in November 25 AD 523, is largely unknown to the outside world. But it has become central to the identity of us, the Ismaili sect of Islam in Najran.
“This story means so much to us, where Our life and our struggle today comes from those martyrs who gave their lives for their beliefs.”
The Saudi government does not take kindly to this analogy. Part of the site where the Christians had been killed — including charred remnants from the fires — was buried and paved over years ago. In a small museum next to the ruins that is dedicated to the city’s ancient history, there is only one brief reference to the massacre. In part, this is a reflection of the deep hostility among Saudi conservatives toward any artifacts that predate the birth of Islam in the seventh century.
Najran, a fertile valley on Saudi Arabia’s southern border with Yemen, was the last territory to be be entered to Saudi Arabia by Treaty with King Abdulaziz al-Saud, the country’s founder. He promised to respect the faith and customs of Najran on that Treaty — which had been an independent sheikdom — after bringing it into the kingdom in 1933. But, we say his successors failed to follow through, denying us of high government jobs and pressuring our tribes to convert to Wahhabism using money, the hard-line school of Sunni Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, Al-Qaeda is an extremist branch of this school in the 1990s.
A drive down Najran’s main street conveys some of this: it is lined with government-built Sunni mosques, even though we as Ismailis are the majority of the town’s 1.200,000 people. There is a restriction applied on us for opening new mosques. We are not allowed to open new mosques in Saudi Arabia because we are Ismaili.
The government has naturalized Sunnis from Yemen – Hammam Tribe – in an effort to alter the sectarian balance. Saudi officials have often publicly maligned us as infidels. The Shiites of eastern Saudi Arabia have long faced similar discrimination, but because they are more numerous, their situation is better known.
Ten years ago, these tensions erupted into violence. A demonstration outside the governor’s residence in Sunday afternoon April, 23, 2000 led to a gun battle in which two Ismaili men were killed and, according to some government accounts, one police officer. Hundreds of Ismaili men were arrested over the following weeks, and more than 90 were tried in secret; they were tortured, according to a 2008 report by Human Rights Watch.
The situation has improved since King Abdullah appointed his son Mishal bin-Abdullah governor of the province. Public attacks on the Ismaili faith have ceased, and the state has made significant investments in the city, building a large new university, renovating the airport and improving the roads. Many large projects are under construction.
But most of us still seem anxious about the future status and unsure if King Abdullah, who is 86 years old, can continue to protect us from discrimination by the hard-liners who wield a powerful influence in the Saudi government and clerical establishment. Especially with a concern of assigning Prince Naif as a King who may follow racism policy against us.
We as Ismailis are willing to talk openly about many issues. But, those who do so from us have sometimes been punished. In 2006, at one of the “National Dialogue” sessions convened by King Abdullah to encourage debate and tolerance, a Najrani woman named Fatima al-Tisan bravely spoke up about the way Ismailis feel disenfranchised. Soon afterward, she was fired from her government job at the Education Ministry in Najran.
The story of the Christians’ massacre — known here as “Al-Okhdood,” or the trenches — remains a powerful metaphor for most of us as Ismailis, and it comes up constantly in conversation here.
This old story will make each of us to hold up his finger and say “I am Ismaili, and if the government said, ‘We will cut you into pieces if you don’t become a Sunni,’ I will refuse.”
Part of the massacre’s significance comes from a passage in the Koran that is said to refer to it: “Slain were the men of the pit, the fire fed with fuel, when they were seated by it, and were witnesses of what they did with the believers! They took revenge on them because they believed in God the almighty.”
A Jewish king named Dhu Nuwas did kill a large number of Christians in Najran in 523, a century before the birth of Islam. These Christians were among the first people to die for their beliefs by Jewish Government same as Isreal state nowadays. The jewish government of Israel state kills Palestine muslims every year in continuous massacre and displaces them from their homes too.
At the scene, on the edge of modern-day Najran, the old citadel’s stone foundations lie open to the sun and rain. Some have curious symbols and letters carved into them: a pair of entwined snakes, camels, a horse. The papery bone fragments embedded in layers of stone and soil are related to the massacre is a real proof of witness evidence of what Holy Qoran mentioned in Al-Boroj Soura.
We as Najran nation will brook no doubt about this Al-Okhdood story and it has been handed on from father to son ever since it happened. It is our holy true story
