Iram of the Pillars: Encyclopedia - Iram of the Pillars

Iram of the Pillars

Iram of the Pillars (إرَم ذات العماد, Iram dhāt al-`imād), also called Ubar or Wabar or the City of a Thousand Pillars, is a lost city 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.

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.

Iram of the Pillars - 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 data from NASA, and identified old caravan 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. An earthquake apparently broke open the water cavern and thus the water source was lost, after which the city fell into oblivion.

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 he 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.

In reality, Ubar was not the name of the city, but the name of the region. In the 2nd centiry AD 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.

See also

• Sodom

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Iram of the Pillars", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki