Iram of the Pillars explained

Iram of the Pillars (Arabic: إرَم ذَات ٱلْعِمَاد|Iram dhāt al-ʿimād; an alternative translation is Iram of the tentpoles), also called "Irum", "Irem", "Erum", or the "City of the pillars", is considered a lost city, region or tribe mentioned in the Quran.^[1]

Iram in the Quran

The Quran mentions Iram in connection with (pillars):

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.^{[2] [3] [4]} Ubar, according to ancient and medieval authors, was a land instead of a city.

As an area, it has been identified with the biblical region known as Aram. A more plausible candidate for Iram is Wadi Ramm in Jordan, as the Temple of al-Lat at the foot of Jabal Ramm has some ancient inscriptions mentioning Iram and possibly the tribe of ʿĀd.

It has also been identified as a tribe, possibly the tribe of ʿĀd, with the pillars referring to tent pillars. The mystic ad-Dabbagh has suggested that these verses refer to ʿĀd's tents with pillars, both of which are gold-plated. He claims that coins made of this gold remain buried and that Iram is the name of a tribe of ʿĀd and not a location.^[5] The Nabataeans were one of the many nomadic Bedouin tribes who roamed the Arabian Desert and took their herds to where they could find grassland and water. They became familiar with their area as the seasons passed, and they struggled to survive during bad years when seasonal rainfall decreased. Although the Nabataeans were initially embedded in the Aramean culture, theories that they have Aramean roots are rejected by modern scholars. Instead, archaeological, religious and linguistic evidence confirms that they are a North Arabian tribe.

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 The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.^[6]

In 1998, the amateur archaeologist Nicholas Clapp proposed that Iram is the same as another legendary place Ubar, and he identifies Ubar as the archaeological site of Shisr in Oman.^[7] His hypothesis is not generally accepted by scholars.^[8] The identification of Ubar as Shisr is also problematic, and even Clapp himself denied it later.

In fiction

Games

• explores Iram of the Pillars in the city of Ubar.^[9]
• features Iram as the playable nation Ubar, a precursor to Na'Ba, which represents the Nabataeans.
• Sunless Sea has Irem as a port of call, the city having been transported underground to a subterranean ocean. Fallen London, which exists in the same setting, likewise includes Irem as a location the player can visit late in the game.
• In Civilization VI, when the player captures the last city belonging to an AI-controlled Suleiman I, Suleiman exclaims "Ruin! Ruin! Istanbul has become Iram of the Pillars, remembered only by the melancholy poets."

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).^[10] In "The Call of Cthulhu", Lovecraft uses the spelling "Irem".^[11]
• Iram is the theme of Daniel Easterman's novel The Seventh Sanctuary (1987).
• Bayard Taylor's poem "The Garden of Irem".^[12]
• The SCP Foundation Wiki story "ROUNDERHOUSE's Gold Proposal" takes place in and revolves around a history of Iram.^[13]

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

Further reading

• Book: Pellegrino , Charles R. . Charles R. Pellegrino . 1994 . Return to Sodom & Gomorrah: Bible Stories from Archaeologists . . 0-679-40006-0.
• Book: Clapp , Nicholas . Nicholas Clapp . 1999 . The road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands . Boston . . 978-0-395-95786-8 . 41557131.

External links

• Entry on Irem in Dan Clore's A Necronomicon Glossary
• Web site: Lost City of Arabia . PBS Nova documentary companion website . 17 November 2019.
• Web site: Space Radar Image of Ubar Optical/Radar . 28 April 1998 . Jet Propulsion Laboratory . 17 November 2019.
• Web site: Space Radar Image of the Lost City of Ubar . 27 January 1999 . Jet Propulsion Laboratory . 17 November 2019.
• Web site: The Search for Ubar: How Remote Sensing Helped Find a Lost City . NASA's Observatorium . 17 November 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20010227203017/http://observe.arc.nasa.gov/nasa/exhibits/ubar/ubar_0.html . 27 February 2001 . dead .
• News: Wilford. John Noble . The Frankincense Route Emerges From the Desert. 21 April 1992. New York Times. 17 November 2019.
• Space Technology And The Discovery Of The Lost City Of Ubar . https://web.archive.org/web/20061011155216/http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/27582/1/96-1629.pdf . 11 October 2006 . Blom . Ronald G. . Crippen . Robert . Elachi . Charles . Charles Elachi . Clapp . Nicholas . Nicholas Clapp . Hedges . George R. . George Hedges . Zarins . Juris . Juris Zarins . March 1997 . Aspen, CO . IEEE Aerospace Conference . . 10.1109/AERO.1997.574258 . dead . 22 November 2019.

Notes and References

1. Book: Cyril . Glassé . Huston . Smith . The New Encyclopedia of Islam . ʿĀd . https://books.google.com/books?id=focLrox-frUC&pg=PA26 . 2003 . . 978-0-7591-0190-6 . 26 . The New Encyclopedia of Islam .
2. Book: Noegel . Scott B. . Brannon M. . Wheeler . Iram . The A to Z of Prophets in Islam and Judaism . 2010 . . 978-0-8108-7603-3 . 151 . https://books.google.com/books?id=lNAWAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA151.
3. Book: Al-Suyuti, Jalal al-Din . Al-Dur Al-Manthur . 2nd . 347 . ar.
4. Book: Ibn Asakir . History of Damascus (Tarikh Dimashq) . 1163 . 1st . 218 . ar.
5. Book: Sijilmāsī, Aḥmad ibn al-Mubārak . Pure gold from the words of Sayyidī ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz al-Dabbāgh = al-Dhabab al-Ibrīz min kalām Sayyidī ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz al-Dabbāgh . 2007 . John O'Kane, Bernd Radtke . 978-90-474-3248-7 . Leiden, the Netherlands . 310402464.
6. Richard Francis. Burton. 1885. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 4.djvu/135. 135.
7. Book: Clapp, Nicholas . The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands . Houghton Mifflin . 1998 . 978-0-395-87596-4 . Boston . 278–279.
8. Edgell . H. Stewart . 2004 . The myth of the "lost city of the Arabian Sands" . Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies . 34 . 105–120 . 41223810 . 0308-8421.
9. Web site: 26 October 2011 . The Atlantis of the Sands: the real myth behind Uncharted 3 . PlayStation Universe.
10. Web site: The Nameless City . Mythos Tomes . 16 August 2013 .
11. Book: Lovecraft . H.P. . H.P. Lovecraft Selected Stories . 2018 . William Collins . London . 9780008284954 . 117.
12. Web site: Taylor . Bayard . Bayard Taylor . The garden of Irem . Poetry nook .
13. Web site: ROUNDERHOUSE's Gold Proposal . The SCP Foundation .