Al-Abla Mining Site
Al-Abla Mining Site
A mining and settlement site on a pale mountain at the head of Wadi Ranyah, Bisha: a pre-Islamic market, gold and copper workings (some shafts to 75 m), and some 300 rectangular units. A research landscape, not an open trail.
Plan your visit
Practical information verified separately from the historical record.
Access: موقع ميداني غير مهيأ؛ لا يُقصد دون تصريح وتنسيق رسمي.
Why visit?
Adds extractive economy to the record, and keeps survey figures distinct from an open site visit.
Historic al-Abla sits on a pale mountain at the head of Wadi Ranyah, in Bisha governorate, Asir. Occupation is placed in the age of the early Arabian kingdoms: a pre-Islamic market and a centre that joined trade and herding to gold and copper working. The later decline of the market is not the same as a complete break in settlement.
The published survey records gold veins followed from 3 to 25 m, some to 75 m and about 150 m long; furnace remains; fluorspar at the copper mine, taken as evidence of smelting; and some 300 rectangular rooms of about 3 by 4 m. Those figures are cited from that survey, not re-measured here.
The pin is an area. The shafts are not an open visit. No freely licensed photograph that names al-Abla was added; images of neighbouring sites were not borrowed.