Iram of the Pillars (Arabic: إرَم ذات العماد, Iram á¸Ät al-`imÄd), also called Aram, Iram, Irum, Irem, Erum, or the City of the tent poles is a reference to a lost city, a tribe or an area mentioned in the Quran.
Introduction
The Quran (1,400 years ago) mentions Iram in connection with pillars [Qur'an: The Dawn 89:7]:
There are several explanations for the reference to "Iram - who had lofty pillars". Some see this as a geographic location, either a city or an area, others as the name of a tribe. Those identifying it as a city have made various suggestions as to where or what city it was, ranging from Alexandria or Damascus to a city which actually moved or a city called Ubar. As an area it has been identified with the biblical Aram, son of Shem and the biblical region known as Aram. It has also been identified as a tribe, possibly the tribe of Ê¿Ä€d, with the pillars referring to tent pillars.
According to some 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.
Suggested identification with Ubar
In the early 1990s a team lead by amateur archaeologist and film maker Nicholas Clapp and adventurer Ranulph Fiennes, archaeologist Juris Zarins and lawyer George Hedges announced that they had found Ubar. Initially, NASA satellite photographs guided the team to a well known, and previously identified water hole at Shisr in Dhofar province. However, excavations of the site uncovered a large octagonal fort with 10 foot high walls and 8 tall towers on the corners. A large portion of the fortress was destroyed when it collapsed into a sinkhole.
In fiction
Literature
- In Weaveworld (1987), by Clive Barker, one of the antagonists visits the Empty Quarter and finds what is presumably the magically restored ruins of Iram.
- Iram is the theme of Daniel Easterman's novel The Seventh Sanctuary.
- Ubar is mentioned in Chapter 7 of Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001). It is mentioned by a cab-driver/ifrit as the perished ancient city and by Selim, a recent arrival to the US from Oman, as the Lost City of Towers that was allegedly found in a recent archaeological excavation.
- Iram is used in quatrain 5 of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to describe the brevity of human endeavors.
- H. P. Lovecraft places it somewhere near The Nameless City in his stories. In "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) it is the supposed base of the Cthulhu Cult.
- Sean McMullen's story "The Measure of Eternity" (published in Interzone 205) is set in Ubar, describing it as the wealthiest city on earth.
- In Tim Powers' supernatural novel Declare (2001), Wabar was a city inhabited by djinni and their half-human progeny, and was destroyed by a meteor strike.
- James Rollins' novel Sandstorm (2004) depicts Ubar as an underground city in a glass bubble with a lake of antimatter at the middle. The city, which was created as the result of a meteorite impact 20,000 years ago, is destroyed and becomes a massive lake known as Lake Eden.
- "Iram" is the lost city where the Muslim hero Thalaba was kept safe in Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801)
- "Wabar" appears in Josephine Tey's mystery novel The Singing Sands (1952), in which detective Alan Grant seeks to unravel the meaning of a strange poem found on the body of a young man. Wabar is one possible subject of the poem.
Video games
- In the video game Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, it is postulated that Sir Francis Drake made a detour here during his circumnavigation of the world and covered up all evidence of his voyage and the accursed lost city of Ubar, until hero Nathan Drake and an evil, shadowy secret society rediscover the city 500 years later.
- In the video game Sunless Sea, a creation of Failbetter Games, Iram (here spelled "Irem") was somehow brought into the vast cavern beneath the earth where the game is set, and can be visited and explored by the protagonist. It's characteristic pillars are present in great quantity, and it maintains the warmth of its original environment even far from the sun.
Tabletop role-playing games
- In the New World of Darkness limited game line, Mummy: the Curse, published by White Wolf Game Studios-Onyx Path, Irem is the Stone Age city where the game's protagonists, the Arisen, were created.
Music
- The middle eastern-themed folk metal band Aeternam features a track called Iram of the Pillars in their album Moongod.
See also
- Qahtanite
- Wabar craters
References
Further reading
- Nicholas Clapp, The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands, Houghton Mifflin (1999) ISBN 0-395-95786-9.
- Ranulph Fiennes, Atlantis of the Sands: The Search for the Lost City of Ubar, Bloomsbury (1992), ISBN 0-7475-1327-9.
- Charles R. Pellegrino, Return to Sodom & Gomorrah: Bible Stories from Archaeologists, Random House (1994), ISBN 0-679-40006-0.
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