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of Baghdad, who wrote of an old, abandoned caravan road from Baghdad to southern Arabia. It was a direct route across the Rub' al-Khali, and it almost certainly would have passed through our search area. Was Ibn Mujawir describing our road to Ubar? If so, he advised against following it, for it was dangerous, abandoned for good reason. He wrote: "God is a witness that any bedouin who travels this road again has no one but himself to blame!" (Quoted in G. Rex Smith, "Ibn al-Mujawir on Dhofar and Socotra," in Proceedings of the Eighteenth Seminar for Arabian Studies [London: Seminar for Arabian Studies, 1985], pp. 84–85.)

4. "had been translated...," from "The Eldest Lady's Tale," in Burton, Thousand Nights, vol. 1, p. 165. Under the name "The Petrified City," this tale appears in Wil Clap's Oriental Moralist of 1797.

5. "When they reached the top..." This and the following quotes are from Burton, Thousand Nights, vol. 6, pp. 102, 114–15, 93, 119.

6. an ancient language... The language of the Dhofar Mountains is actually a cluster of four related tongues called the Hadara group. Shahri, believed to be the oldest, is described in Chapter 12.

10. The Singing Sands

1. "Wabar, it seemed..." This and the following quotes are from Josephine Tey, The Singing Sands (New York: Collier Books, 1988), pp. 140, 176, 205, 141.

11. Reconnaissance

1. "The plan is great," "the great scheme," "Asadum Tal'an...," "The one-eyed ...DETESTABLE!" Jacqueline Pirenne, "The Incense Port of Moscha (Khor Rori) in Dhofar," Journal of Oman Studies 1 (Ministry of Information and Culture, Sultanate of Oman, 1975), pp. 82, 86, 89, 90.

2. Andhur flint could have been traded ... With chemical fingerprinting, Juri explained, the extent of Andhur's flint trade could accurately be charted. Finding Andhur flint in sites to the north of the Rub' al-Khali would confirm the long-range reach—and trading importance—of our Ubar road.

12. The Edge of the Known World

1. "half a day's journey..." Ibn Battuta quoted in Philip Ward, Travels in Oman (New York: Oleander Press, 1978), p. 503.

2. the well of the Oracle of Ad. We were not the first to reconnoiter the well. The intrepid husband and wife team of Theodore and Mabel Bent had been here in 1895, Bertram Thomas in 1929, and Wendell Phillips in 1953. None had known quite what to make of it. See Bent and Bent, Southern Arabia (London: Smith, Elder, 1900); Thomas, Arabia Felix; and Frank P. Albright, The American Archaeological Expedition in Dhofar, Oman (Washington: American Foundation for the Study of Man, 1982).

3. "guarded by flying serpents," Selincourt, Herodotus: The Histories, p. 249; "in the most fragrant forests...," C. H. Oldfather, trans., Diodorus of Sicily (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 229; "sprang as high as the thigh...," Howard L. Jones, trans., Strabo: Geography, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 347.

4. "the language of birds." This remarkable language was reported by Theodore and Mabel Bent (Southern Arabia) in 1900. As early as five thousand years ago, the Sumerians called an aboriginal tribe near the Persian Gulf "Lulubulu," an onomatopoeic word mimicking the song of birds. It's quite possible they could have been describing the same language, as it was spoken by the ancestors of today's Shahra.

5. They were frankincense trees ... Frankincense trees— Boswellia sacra —are found elsewhere in Arabia and even in Africa. Though often impressive in size, none produce the pure, ethereally fragrant resin of the small, tortured trees of the Dhofar Mountains. Perhaps it is because the trees there grow in a unique microclimate: an elevation of 600–700 meters and seasons that alternate scorching sun with monsoon drizzle.

6. "No Latin writer...," "The district ... is rendered inaccessible...," and "It is the people who originated the trade...," John Bostock and H. T. Riley, trans., The Natural History of Pliny, vol. 3 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855), pp. 124, 125.

7. "Look at this your sacrifice ..." The Shahra's timeless chant of exorcism, first recorded by