tribal confederation · Arabia and the Gulf

Thamud

715 BCE – 450 CE (approx.)

An ancient Arab people of the Hejaz, known from Assyrian annals to the Quran, whose name lives on in thousands of rock inscriptions.

Origins

The Thamud are first named among Arab groups defeated by Sargon II of the Assyrian Empire in 715 BCE. They lived in north-western Arabia, between the Hejaz and the Nafud, and later Greek and Roman writers such as Diodorus, Pliny and Ptolemy also place them there.

Rule and society

They seem to have been a confederation of herding and oasis tribes rather than a centralised kingdom. Their name was given by modern scholars to a large body of Ancient North Arabian graffiti, though not all were written by Thamud. At Ruwafa, Thamudic tribesmen built a temple in the 160s CE honouring the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

Decline and legacy

Around 400 CE Roman lists record a cavalry unit of Thamudeni in Egypt and Palestine, after which they disappear. The Quran tells of the Thamud as a people destroyed for rejecting the prophet Salih, and links them to the rock tombs of Hegra, which were in fact Nabataean.

Few sources survive for this state; details are uncertain.

Connections (2)

More states of Arabia and the Gulf →

Cite this page
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Thamud. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/thamud
MLA
“Thamud.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/thamud. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Thamud.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/thamud.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Thamud’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/thamud (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻