"Among the ruins on the edge of this ancient oasis city are deep trenches littered with bones. That, local people say, is all that remains of one of the great atrocities of antiquity, when thousands of Christians were herded into pits here and burned to death by a Jewish tyrant after they refused to renounce their faith.
Residents of Najran say that the ruins on the edge of their city include deep trenches littered with the bones of thousands of Christians who were burned to death by a Jewish tyrant after they refused to renounce their faith. It is impossible to know whether the periphery bone fragments are related to the massacre or not.
The massacre, which took place in about A.D. 523, is partly shadowed by myth and largely unknown to the outside world. But it has become central to the identity of the people now living here, who mostly belong to the minority Ismaili sect of Islam."
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/middleeast/21saudi.html?_r=2
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