Iram of the Pillars
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Iram of the Pillars (Arabic: إرَم ذات العماد, Iram dhāt al-`imād), also called Ubar or Wabar or the City of a Thousand Pillars, is a lost city apparently on the Arabian Peninsula.
Ubar 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 B.C to the first century A.D. It became, according to legends, fabulously wealthy from trade of the coastal regions to the population centers of the middle-east and even into Europe. The city became lost to modern history, and was thought to be only a figment of mythical tales.
The Qur'an (e.g., Sura 89) says that Iram was a city built by the tribe of Ad, the great-grandchildren of Noah. It was a rich and decadent city, filled with wicked people who dabbled in the occult. Its king Shaddad defied the warnings of the prophet Hud, and God smote the city, driving it into the sands, never to be seen again, thus becoming a veritable Atlantis of the deserts. The ruins of the city lie buried somewhere in the sands of the Rub' al Khali. Iram (otherwise spelled Irem) became known to Western literature with the translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
Re-Discovery of Ubar/Iram
Recent discoveries have brought Iram out of the realm of myth into history.The first came when tablets found in the archives of Ebla were found to mention Iram by name.
A more recent discovery occurred when archaeologists examined photographs taken of the Persian Gulf Coast from the space shuttle Challenger in 1984. These photos revealed some buried cities along the ancient frankincense trade route dating from 2800 BC and 100 BC. One, on the eastern edge of Oman in the Dhofar province, proved to be a city known as Ubar, which is usually identified with Iram.
In the early 1980s a group of researchers became interested in the history of Ubar. They used remote sensing satellite ground penetrating radar and Landsat program data from NASA as well as SPOT (satellites) data to identify old camel train routes and the point where they converged. Excavations uncovered a fortress which protected the caravan routes and the all-important water source, which was a large limestone cavern underneath the fortress. Evidence of wide-spread trade was also found. As the Ubarites consumed the water from underground, the water table would fall, leaving the limestone roof and walls of the cavern dry. Without the bouyant support of the water, the cavern would have been in danger of collapse. It seems to have done so some time between 300-500 AD, destroying the city and covering over the water source. After this collapse, the city perished.
In 1992, the city was believed to have been rediscovered by Nicholas Clapp, an amateur archaeologist, by using the NASA data. Founded in 900 B.C. and located at one of the few watering holes, the ancient city had been an important trading post on the Incense Road, thus linking the frankincense groves of the coastal Omani Mountains to the markets of the rich cities of the north. Over the centuries the city, now called Ubar, had prospered and grown larger, until one day half of the city collapsed into a giant sinkhole and was abandoned to the sands by its citizens.
Ubar was not discovered through the use of NASA data although this did help identify possible sites. The camel trails were already known about, having been discovered by a previous expedition in 1953. The discovery of the ruins of Ubar was made almost by chance when the team (lead by Ranulph Fiennes) decided to investigate ruins at the site of Shis'r fort which had been previously identified as dating from the 16th century. These remains turned out to be what was left of the 'Atlantis of the Sands' (a name given to it by T.E. Lawrence), Ubar (or Irem/Iram).
In reality, Ubar was not the name of the city, but the name of the region. In the 2nd century A.D. Ptolemy made a map which called the area "Iobaritae", i.e. the Ubarites. The Qur'an called them "the people of 'Ad". Later legends referred to the fabulous wealth of the city and used the region name Ubar to designate it.
In Fiction
In the realm of contemporary fiction, the city is alluded to in the tales of H. P. Lovecraft as being somewhere near The Nameless City. The legend may also have inspired the story of the 'accursed seitch' of Jacurutu in Frank Herbert's novel Children of Dune. James Rollins's recent novel Sandstorm centres around Ubar and its mysteries.
See also
- In 1992 Clapp and Sir Ranulph Fiennes led an expedition that discovered the lost city of Ubar in Oman.
- ''Atlantis of the Sands: The Search for the Lost City of Ubar (1992) ISBN 0451175778
External links
- [Entry on Irem in Dan Clore's A Necronomicon Glossary]
- [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
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