Iram of the Pillars

Iram of the Pillars (Arabic: إرَم ذَات ٱلْعِمَاد, romanized: 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][2]

Iram in the Quran

The Quran mentions Iram in connection with ʿimād (pillars):

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.

— Surah al-Fajr (6-14)^[2]

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 Aram.^[7] 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.^[8][9]

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.^[10] 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.^[1]

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.^[11]

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.^[12] His hypothesis is not generally accepted by scholars.^[6][8] The identification of Ubar as Shisr is also problematic, and even Clapp himself denied 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.
• 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."^[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]
• The SCP Foundation Wiki story "ROUNDERHOUSE's Gold Proposal" revolves around a city stated to be the Iram referenced in the Qur'an.^[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

Further reading

• Pellegrino, Charles R. (1994). Return to Sodom & Gomorrah: Bible Stories from Archaeologists. Random House. ISBN 0-679-40006-0.
• Clapp, Nicholas (1999). The road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-395-95786-8. 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; Elachi, Charles; Clapp, Nicholas; Hedges, George R.; Zarins, Juris (March 1997). Space Technology And The Discovery Of The Lost City Of Ubar (PDF). IEEE Aerospace Conference. Aspen, CO: IEEE. doi:10.1109/AERO.1997.574258. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 October 2006. Retrieved 22 November 2019.