Written by: Abdo Ali Al-Fahd

It is rumored that there is a treasure inside this energy located across the edge of the quarry fortress.

Greetings to the administration and visitors of the site. May God bless you with health, happiness, and prosperity. Allow me to share a story I've heard. Al-Mahjar Fortress is located at the peak of a high, circular mountain surrounded by cliffs from all directions. It has a single entrance gate built of rock. It is about three kilometers away from the nearest villages, making it a semi-abandoned place, occasionally visited by shepherds and rarely by locals for picnics. The mountainside is a circular area estimated to be about one hundred square meters, with ruins and collapsed walls of the fortress. There is an existing cistern carved into the black rock, designed to collect rainwater. It is constructed in an engineering style similar to the ancient mosque cisterns, made with a mixture of lime and gravel to retain water. The cistern is about four meters deep, six meters long, and three meters wide, with stairs for ascending and descending, and channels to direct rainwater into it. A small cavity in its wall hosts a tree that extends into the cistern, where it is said a black snake resides.

In the eastern side of the hillside, there is a small cave sealed with a cement-like material similar to that used for the cistern. Some people attempted to reach it using ropes from the top downwards, but they couldn't. Every time they got close, strong winds blew, shaking the ropes and almost causing them to fall to their death. At one time, some people fired at it with RPG bazookas, but they couldn't break through it despite the powerful shells. It is rumored that there is a treasure inside this small cave located on the hillside of Al-Mahjar Fortress. The witness here is that approximately eighty years ago, a shepherd from one of the nearby villages went to graze his sheep at the fortress. The villagers were surprised to see him return at noon, screaming and naked, without a shred of clothing on him, running barefoot until he reached the village. When they asked him what had happened and who had done this to him, he could only utter two words repeatedly and continuously, saying nothing else. In the local dialect, it meant "they did the vile deed to me," referring to the jinn. They gave him clothes, and the villagers thought he had lost his mind and gone mad. He was in his thirties and developed a stutter. Two days later, he told the villagers what had happened to him, but no one believed him, calling him crazy, and they continued to see him as such until he died. He told them that when he climbed the fortress, he found many gold coins shining in the sun near the cistern. He quickly returned to his home in the village to get a sack to collect the gold. When he returned to the fortress, he found no gold but only black coal instead. When he sat down and touched the black coal with his hands, a violent whirlwind rose, stripping him of all his clothes and throwing him into the bottom of the cistern. He lost consciousness and was in a state neither awake nor asleep. Two black men appeared to him and grabbed him. When he woke up, he found himself naked, and after searching for his clothes and the sack, he found nothing and ran back to the village. The villagers did not believe him, and some of them went to the fortress but found nothing – no gold, no coal, and no clothes. The questions raised are: Was the shepherd really seeing a treasure? Does the black snake, rumored to be in the cistern, have anything to do with the treasure and what happened to the shepherd? Do the jinn bring out hidden treasures to bask in the sun? Do the jinn guard the treasures? Does the treasure guard turn the treasure into black coal when humans find it? Was the shepherd right in saying the jinn did the vile deed to him, or was it his expression of disappointment in not finding the gold, meaning that the jinn played a trick on him and turned the gold into ashes? Where did the shepherd’s clothes and the sack go? I visited the fortress twice and saw what was mentioned there as it was said. I believe the fortress was a military castle from the Himyarite state. What is strange is, who brought the building materials and carried them up there? There is no way for even donkeys to reach it. The second belief is that the fortress survived Noah's flood as it is on a high ground, and Allah knows best. Greetings to everyone who reads, comments, and analyzes. May Allah keep you healthy, prosperous, and content