Iram of the Pillars

Iram of the Pillars (; an alternative translation is ''Iram of the tentpoles''), also called "Irum", "Irem", "Erum", or the "City of the pillars", is a lost city mentioned in the Quran.

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. 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. 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''.

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. His hypothesis is not generally accepted by scholars. The identification of Ubar as Shisr is also problematic, and even Clapp himself denied it later.

In fiction

Games

* '' Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception'' explores Iram of the Pillars in the city of Ubar.
* '' 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."

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). In "The Call of Cthulhu", Lovecraft uses the spelling "Irem". Lovecraft's mythos also includes "many-columned Y'ha-nthlei."
* Iram is the theme of Daniel Easterman's novel ''The Seventh Sanctuary'' (1987).
* Bayard Taylor's poem "The Garden of Irem".
* The SCP Foundation Wiki story "ROUNDERHOUSE's Gold Proposal" takes place in and revolves around a history of Iram.
* Sofia Samatar's short story
Meet Me in Iram
references the city

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

*
*

External links

Entry on Irem in Dan Clore's ''A Necronomicon Glossary''
*
*
*
*
*
*

{{Authority control

Arabian mythology
History of the Arabian Peninsula
Destroyed populated places
Former populated places in West Asia
One Thousand and One Nights
Lost ancient cities and towns
Quranic places
Mythological populated places