Iram of the Pillars

Iram of the Pillars (Arabic: إرَم ذات العماد, Iram ḏāt al-`imād), also called Aram, Iram, Irum, Irem, Erum, Wabar, Ubar, or the City of a Thousand Pillars^{[citation needed]}, is a lost city (or region surrounding the lost city) on the Arabian Peninsula.

Introduction

Ubar, a name of a region or a name of a people, was mentioned in ancient records, and was spoken of in folk tales as a trading center of the Rub' al Khali desert in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula. It is estimated that it lasted from about 3000 BC to the 1st century AD. According to legends, it became fabulously wealthy from trade between the coastal regions and the population centers of the Arabian peninsula and Europe. The region became lost to modern history, and was thought to be only a figment of mythical tales. Some confusion exists about the word "Ubar". In classical texts and Arabic historical sources, Ubar refers to a region and a group of people, not to a specific town. Ptolemy's 2nd century map of the area shows "Iobaritae". It was only the late Medieval version of The One Thousand and One Nights, in the fourteenth or 15th century, that romanticized Ubar and turned it into a city, rather than a region or a people.

The Qur'an (1,400 years ago) mentions a certain city by the name of Iram (a city of pillars) [Qur'an: The Dawn 89:7], which was apparently not known in ancient history and non-existent as far as historians were concerned. But the December 1978 edition of the National Geographic Magazine records that in 1973, the city of Ebla was excavated in Syria. The city was discovered to be 4,300 years old. Researchers found in the library of Ebla a record of all of the cities with which Ebla had done business. On the list was the specific name of the city of "Iram" (and not the name of the general region of Ubar). The people of Ebla had apparently done business with the people of "Iram".^[1]

The Qur'an mentions Iram alongside 'Ad and Thamud:^[2]

The Quran, chapter 89 (Al-Fajr), verse 6 to 13:

“

6: Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with 'Aad - 7: [With] Iram - who had lofty pillars, 8: The likes of whom had never been created in the land? 9: And [with] Thamud, who carved out the rocks in the valley? 10: And [with] Pharaoh, owner of the stakes? - 11: [All of] whom oppressed within the lands 12: And increased therein the corruption. 13: So your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment.— translated by Unknown

”

According to Islamic beliefs, King Shaddad defied the warnings of the prophet Hud and God smote the city, driving it into the sands, never to be seen again. The ruins of the city lie buried somewhere in the sands of the Rub' al-Khali. Iram became known to Western literature with the translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.

Arabic tradition holds that the tribe of 'Ad were the great-grandchildren of Nuh or Noah. The Qur'an talks about 'Ad as “successors” after Noah's people (The Qur'an, chapter 7 (Al-A'raf), verse 69).

In the 2nd century AD Ptolemy made a map that labeled the region with the name "Iobaritae", meaning that it belonged to the Ubarites. Later legends referred to the fabulous wealth of the lost city and used the region name "Ubar" to designate it. T. E. Lawrence showed some interest in Iram, and named it "The Atlantis of the Sands".

Evidence for Iram

The ruins of the Ubarite oasis and its collapsed well-spring

Recent discoveries have brought Iram out of the realm of fable and into history. In the early 1980s a group of researchers interested in the history of Iram used NASA remote sensing satellites, ground penetrating radar, Landsat program data and images taken from the Space Shuttle Challenger as well as SPOT data to identify old camel train routes and points where they converged. These roads were used as frankincense trade routes around 2800 BC to 100 BC.

One area in the Dhofar province of Oman was identified as a possible location for an outpost of the lost civilization. A team including adventurer Ranulph Fiennes, archaeologist Juris Zarins, filmmaker Nicholas Clapp, and lawyer George Hedges, scouted the area on several trips, and stopped at a water well called Ash Shisar.^[3] Near this oasis was located a site previously identified as the 16th century Shis'r fort. Excavations uncovered an older settlement, and artifacts traded from far and wide were found. This older fort was found to have been built on top of a large limestone cavern which would have served as the water source for the fort, making it an important oasis on the trade route to Iram. As the residents of the fort consumed the water from underground, the water table fell, leaving the limestone roof and walls of the cavern dry. Without the support of the water, the cavern would have been in danger of collapse, and it seems to have done so some time between 300-500 AD, destroying the oasis and covering over the water source.

Four subsequent excavations were conducted by Dr. Juris Zarins, tracing the historical presence by the people of 'Ad, the assumed ancestral builders of Iram.

In fiction

• "Iram" is the lost city where the Muslim hero Thalaba was kept safe in Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801)

• Iram, City of Lofty Pillars is a play by Khalil Gibran.

• The great city is alluded to in the tales of H. P. Lovecraft as being somewhere near The Nameless City.^[4] Indeed, in Donald Tyson's adaptation of the Necronmicon, he described Irem as being built above this nameless city. He also alludes to it in The Call of Cthulhu where the supposed base of the Cthulhu Cult is held.

• In the Neil Gaiman novel American Gods a djinn working as a cab driver in New York City claims that he is originally from the city of Ubar.

• James Rollins's 2004 novel Sandstorm centers on Ubar and its mysteries. In that novel, Ubar is discovered to be an underground city in a glass bubble with a lake of antimatter at the middle, which was created as the result of a meteorite impact 20,000 years ago. In the story, Ubar is destroyed and becomes a massive lake known as Lake Eden.

• Sean McMullen's story "The Measure of Eternity" (published in Interzone 205) is set in Ubar, describing it as the wealthiest city on earth.

• "Wabar" is a major part of the plot in Josephine Tey's 1952 mystery novel The Singing Sands. An explorer kills a young man who discovered Ubar while flying over the Rub' al Khali, scooping a discoverry the explorer intended to make.

• In "The Legend of the Arab Astrologer", part of Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, Iram is mentioned as a marvellous magical urban Eden that appears to sleepers but disappears as soon as you exit the gates.

• In Weaveworld, by Clive Barker, one of the antagonists visits the Empty Quarter and finds what is presumably the magically reanimated ruins of Iram.

• "Irem" is the name of a song by the Italian band Green Man, from their album From Irem to Summerisle.

• The Australian progressive metal band Alchemist recorded the song "Road To Ubar" on their 1997 album Spiritech.

• In Tim Powers' novel Declare, Wabar was a city inhabited by djinni and their half-human progeny and was destroyed by a meteor strike.

• The plot of the Playstation 3 video game Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is centered around the search for Iram by the game's protagonist, Nathan Drake.^[5]

See also

• Atlantis of the Sands
• Thamud
• Sodom
• Wabar craters

References

1. ^ "Ebla: Splendor Or An Unknown Empire" by Howard La Fay (pp. 730-759), National Geographic, December 1978
2. ^ http://searchquran.net/quran.php?q=89:6-13&lang={$lang}
3. ^ "The Frankincense Route Emerges From the Desert". New York Times. 1992-04-21. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7D81E3FF932A15757C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2007-12-06. 
4. ^ Mythos Tomes - The Nameless City
5. ^ "'Uncharted' exclusive: Your first look at 2011's must-play videogame 'Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception'". EW.com. 2010-12-09. http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/12/09/uncharted-3-first-look/. Retrieved 2010-12-09. 

Further reading

• Nicholas Clapp, The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands, Houghton Mifflin (1999) ISBN 0395957869.

• Ranulph Fiennes, Atlantis of the Sands: The Search for the Lost City of Ubar, Bloomsbury (1992), ISBN 0747513279.

• Charles R. Pellegrino, Return to Sodom & Gomorrah: Bible Stories from Archaeologists, Random House (1994), ISBN 0679400060.

External links

• Lost City of Arabia, Nova On-line on the discovery of Ubar
• The Search for Ubar: How Remote Sensing Helped Find a Lost City, from a NASA Website
• The Frankincense Route Emerges From the Desert, New York Times, April 21, 1992
• Entry on Irem in Dan Clore's A Necronomicon Glossary
• Space Technology And The Discovery Of The Lost City Of Ubar