Abstract The Neoproterozoic Najd Fault System extends for 2000km across the East African Orogen, yet its history of motion and tectonic significance are widely debated. The Halaban–Zarghat Fault is the northeastern-most of the major NW-striking Najd faults in the Arabian Shield. Several sedimentary basins of the Neoproterozoic Jibalah Group are bounded by strands of the Halaban-Zarghat Fault and other Najd faults, particularly along right steps in the fault trace. Among the largest of the basins is the Jifn. The geometry of the Jifn Basin and the sedimentary facies of Jibalah Group indicate that it is a dextral pull-apart basin between strands of the Halaban–Zarghat Fault. A zone of high-grade mylonitic gneiss is located along a left step in the fault zone and may be a deeply eroded pop-up structure related to dextral transpression. Analysis of structural data from around and within the Jifn Basin, the position of other pull-apart basins and high-grade mylonite zones along the Halaban–Zarghat Fault are all consistent with early dextral movement along the Halaban–Zarghat Fault. Offsets of distinctive older rock units and transection of the Jifn Basin by sinistral faults, however, show that the latest and most significant sense of offset on the Halaban–Zarghat Fault and other Najd faults was sinistral. A U–Pb zircon date of 624.9 ± 4.2 Ma from rhyolitic basement of the Jifn Basin gives a lower limit for the formation of the basin and initiation of dextral movement along the Halaban–Zarghat Fault. This age is interpreted as the earliest age for the collision of East and West Gondwana. A 621 ± 7 Ma pluton is offset 10 km dextrally along the Halaban–Zarghat Fault, showing that dextral motions continued for some time past 621 Ma, before switching to sinistral motions, and accreted terranes caught between the two continents were forced toward an oceanic-free face to the north. A 576.6 ± 5.3 Ma U-Pb zircon date from an undeformed felsite dyke that intrudes the Jibalah Group gives an upper time limit for movement along the Halaban–Zarghat Fault. This may mark the time that collision and escape tectonics ended, or it may reflect the time that displacements were transferred to other Najd faults in more interior parts of the East African Orogen.

Abstract Orogenic gold ores of the Arabian–Nubian Shield are structurally controlled by the Najd Fault System. The Najd Fault System controlled the exhumation of the metamorphic complexes and, as such, there is a genetic relationship between the metamorphism and the formation of the orogenic gold ores. In order to constrain this genetic relationship, field observations, petrography, geochemistry and fluid inclusions of four mines from the Egyptian side of the shield are presented. The studied gold-bearing dykes and veins are structurally controlled where the gold-bearing fluid precipitated in pre-existing second-order and third-order extensional faults of the major NW–SE Najd Fault System. Fluid inclusions indicate that the gold was precipitated at shallow- to medium-crustal levels, equivalent to a temperature range of 250–350°C, and from low salinity metamorphic fluids, possibly mixed with magmatic/meteoric water. Thermodynamic modelling suggests that gold-bearing fluids were generated due to metamorphic devolatilization processes across the greenschist–amphibolite-facies transition of ophiolitic and metasedimentary source rocks. The Najd Fault System enables the vertical transport of gold-bearing fluids from the source region to the depositional sites. Decreasing the temperature of the fluid is required to precipitate the gold. However, the gold precipitation process needs to be buffered by Fe-bearing wall rocks.