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 ...
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 t ...