Iram of the Pillars

Iram of the Pillars (Arabic: إرَم ذات العماد‎‎, Iram dhāt al-ʿimād), also called "Aram", "Irum", "Irem", "Erum", or the "City of the tent poles," is a reference to a lost city, country or area mentioned in the Qur’an.^[1][2]

Introduction

The Qur’an, written in the 7th century CE, mentions Iram in connection with ‘imad (Arabic: عـمـاد‎‎, pillars) [Qur'an: The Dawn 89:7]:^[2]

The Quran, chapter 89 (Al-Fajr), verse 6 to 14:

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 lands 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.

14: Indeed, your Lord is in observation.

— translated by

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.^[3] As an area it has been identified with the biblical Aram, son of Shem and the biblical region known as Aram.^[4] It has also been identified as a tribe, possibly the tribe of ʿĀd, with the pillars referring to tent pillars.^[1]

"The identification of Wadi Rum with Iram and the tribe of ‘Ad, mentioned in the Qur’an, has been proposed by scholars who have translated Thamudic and Nabataean inscriptions referring to both the place Iram and the tribes of ‘Ad and Thamud by name."^[5]

According to some Islamic beliefs,^[2] 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 al-Rub' al-Khali (Arabic: الـربـع الـخـالي‎‎, the Empty Quarter). Iram became known to Western literature with the translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.

In fiction

Literature

• Iram is used in quatrain 5 of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to describe the brevity of human endeavors.
• "Iram" is the lost city where the Muslim hero Thalaba was kept safe in Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801)
• H. P. Lovecraft places it somewhere near The Nameless City in his stories.^[6] In "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) it is the supposed base of the Cthulhu Cult.
• "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.
• 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 (1987).
• Ubar is mentioned in Chapter 7 of Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001). It is mentioned by a cab-driving ifrit as the perished ancient city and by Selim, a recent arrival to the U.S. from Oman, as the Lost City of Towers that was allegedly found in a recent archaeological excavation.
• 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.
• Sean McMullen's story "The Measure of Eternity" (published in Interzone Vol. 205) is set in Ubar, describing it as the wealthiest city on earth.
• The Lost City of Iram (2012), by Eric Stone III, a professional land surveyor living and working in the Kingdom, is an historical fiction novel that features three story lines all converging at different time periods at the City of Iram, in al-Rub‘al-Khali.

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. Its characteristic pillars are present in great quantity, and it maintains the warmth of its original environment even far from the sun.
• In the video game Fallout 4, Ubar is mentioned in the journal of Lorenzo Cabot. He describes his journey to what he believes to be Ubar.
• In the video game 80 Days, the player playing as Phileas Fogg could potentially encounter a Bedouin Expedition in the Rub' Al Khali desert, looking for the fabled lost city of Iram.

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.
• In the Classic World of Darkness game line, specifically Vampire: The Masquerade, Ubar is believed by some to be the First City, Enoch, where the first vampire, Caine, became king over the mortals residing in the city. It is also here where he made his first progeny, the Second Generation, and where they created their progeny, the Antediluvians.

See also

• Al-Hijr Archaeological Site
• Al-Ukhdud (Arabic: الأخـدود‎‎, "The Ditch", or a place near Najran)
• Babil (Arabic: بـابـل‎‎, Babylon)
• Madyan (Midian)
• Ma'rib, Saba’ (Sheba)
• Qahtanite
• Sodom and Gomorrah
• The town in Surah Ya-Sin
• Wabar craters

References

1. Glassé, Cyril; Huston Smith (2003). The New Encyclopedia of Islam (Revised ed.). AltaMira Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-7591-0190-6.
2. "Surat Al-Fajr [89:6–14] - The Noble Qur'an - القرآن الكريم". Quran.com. Retrieved 2013-08-16.
3. Noegel, Scott B (2010). The A to Z of Prophets in Islam and Judaism. Scarecrow Press. p. 151. ISBN 978-0-8108-7603-3.
4. Al-Tabari (1999). Charles Edmund Bosworth, ed. The History of Al-Tabari: The Sassanids, the Lakhmids, and Yemen. State University of New York Press. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-7914-4356-9.
5. "Wadi Rum (Jordan)." International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Evaluation Report. May 2011. 11. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/advisory_body_evaluation/1377.pdf
6. "The Nameless City". Mythos Tomes. Retrieved 2013-08-16.

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