Mahd adh Dhahab

The Mahd adh-Dhahab (Arabic: مَـهـد الـذّهـب‎‎, "Cradle of (the) Gold"), is the leading gold mining area in the Arabian Peninsula. It is located in the Province of Al-Madinah, in the Hejazi region of Saudi Arabia.

Gold was first mined in Arabia c. 3,000 BC. A second period of activity was during the Islamic Abbasid period between 750 and 1258 AD. The latest activities by Saudi Arabian Mining Syndicate began in 1936 using both open-pit and underground mines at Mahd adh-Dhahab. The Saudi Arabian Directorate General of Mineral Resources carried out further gold exploration in the 1970s, following the 1971 suspension of the US$-gold exchange rate and the consequent rise in value of the metal. Gold mining is done today by the Saudi Arabian Mining Company.

There is a possibility that the Cradle of Gold is mentioned in the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden in The Book of Genesis. - "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone." Research by archaeologists Juris Zarins of Missouri State University and Farouk El-Baz of Boston University indicates that the Pishon River may be the now dried up river bed that once flowed 600 miles north east from the Mahd adh-Dhahab area of the Hejaz c. 3000 BC.

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