Iram of the Pillars
Iram of the Pillars (
Iram in the Quran
The Quran mentions Iram in connection with ʿimād (pillars): Surah al-Fajr (6-14)[2]
89:6 Did you not see how your Lord dealt with ʿĀd—
89:7 ˹the people˺ of Iram—with ˹their˺ great stature,
89:8 unmatched in any other land;
89:9 and Thamûd who carved ˹their homes into˺ the rocks in the ˹Stone˺ Valley;
89:10 and the Pharaoh of mighty structures?
89:11 They all transgressed throughout the land,
89:12 spreading much corruption there.
89:13 So your Lord unleashed on them a scourge of punishment.
89:14 ˹For˺ your Lord is truly vigilant.
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][4][5] Ubar, according to ancient and medieval authors, was a land instead of a city.[6]
As an area, it has been identified with the biblical region known as
It has also been identified as a tribe, possibly the tribe of
Iram in Western writings
Iram became widely known to Western literature with the translation of the story "The City of Many-Columned Iram and Abdullah Son of Abi Kilabah" in
In 1998, the amateur archaeologist Nicholas Clapp proposes that Iram is the same as another legendary place Ubar, and he identifies Ubar as the archaeological site of Shisr in Oman.[12] His hypothesis is not generally accepted by scholars.[6][8] The identification of Ubar as Shisr is also problematic, and even Clapp himself denies it later.[13]
In fiction
Games
- Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception explores Iram of the Pillars in the city of Ubar.[14]
- Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith features Iram as the playable nation Ubar, a precursor to Na'Ba, which represents the Nabataeans.
- port of call, the city having been transported underground to a subterranean ocean.
- In Civilization VI, when the player captures the last city belonging to an AI Suleiman I, Suleiman exclaims "Ruin! Ruin! Istanbul has become Iram of the Pillars, remembered only by the melancholy poets."[15]
Literature
- Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam mentions Iram: "Iram indeed is gone with all its Rose," begins stanza V.
- H. P. Lovecraft places it somewhere near "The Nameless City" in his stories (1921).[16] In "The Call of Cthulhu", Lovecraft uses the spelling Irem.[17]
- Iram is the theme of Daniel Easterman's novel The Seventh Sanctuary (1987).
- Bayard Taylor's poem The Garden of Irem.[18]
- In the SCP Foundation Wiki, SCP-001 (ROUNDERHOUSE's Gold Proposal) is about the lost Mekhanite city of Amoni-Ram based on Iram.[19]
See also
- Hadramaut
- Al-Hijr Archaeological Site
- Arabian Desert
- Al-Ukhdud ("The Ditch", or a place near Najran)
- Babil (Babylon)
- Madyan (Midian)
- Ma'rib, Saba' (Sheba)
- Qahtanite
- Sodom and Gomorrah
- The town in Surah Ya-Sin
- Wabar craters
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7591-0190-6.
- ^ a b Quran 89:6-14
- ISBN 978-0-8108-7603-3.
- ^ Al-Suyuti, Jalal al-Din. Al-Dur Al-Manthur (in Arabic) (2nd ed.). p. 347.
- ^ Ibn Asakir (1163). History of Damascus (Tarikh Dimashq) (in Arabic) (1st ed.). p. 218.
- ^ JSTOR 41223810.
- ISBN 978-0-7914-4355-2.
- ^ a b Webb, Peter (1 June 2019), "Iram", Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Brill, retrieved 20 January 2024
- ISBN 978-90-04-35761-7, retrieved 20 January 2024
- )
- ^ Burton, Richard Francis (1885). The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. p. – via Wikisource.
- ISBN 978-0-395-87596-4.
- ISBN 978-0-387-44455-0, retrieved 20 January 2024
- ^ "The Atlantis of the Sands: the real myth behind Uncharted 3". PlayStation Universe. 26 October 2011.
- ^ OTTOMAN - SULEIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT سليمان اول ALL VOICED QUOTES & DENOUNCE - CIV VI GS DLC, retrieved 27 July 2022
- ^ "The Nameless City". Mythos Tomes. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
- ISBN 9780008284954.
- ^ Taylor, Bayard. "The garden of Irem". Poetry nook.
- ^ "ROUNDERHOUSE's Gold Proposal". The SCP Foundation.
Further reading
- ISBN 0-679-40006-0.
- OCLC 41557131.
External links
- Entry on Irem in Dan Clore's A Necronomicon Glossary
- "Lost City of Arabia". PBS Nova documentary companion website. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
- "Space Radar Image of Ubar Optical/Radar". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 28 April 1998. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
- "Space Radar Image of the Lost City of Ubar". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 27 January 1999. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
- "The Search for Ubar: How Remote Sensing Helped Find a Lost City". NASA's Observatorium. Archived from the original on 27 February 2001. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
- Wilford, John Noble (21 April 1992). "The Frankincense Route Emerges From the Desert". New York Times. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
- Blom, Ronald G.; Crippen, Robert; doi:10.1109/AERO.1997.574258. Archived from the original(PDF) on 11 October 2006. Retrieved 22 November 2019.