Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [37]
If we ever did find Iram/Ubar, it certainly would be interesting to investigate how (or even if) the settlement was destroyed.
LOCATION The casual mention of the "Wadi al-Mughith" (line 147) was to provide a valuable clue to Ubar's location. At first the name didn't make any sense; it's not to be found on any map, old or new. But then, by chance, I found it cited in an account by the 800s A.D. geographer Ibn Sa'd, except that he expands the name to the "Wadi al-Mughith in Sihr." This rang a bell from my earlier Ubar research. The word "Sihr" appears on something called "The Gardens of Humanity and the Amusement of the Soul," a map compiled by Muhammad al-Idrisi, an Arab cartographer living in Sicily in the 1100s A.D. Though fanciful in title, the map is an outstanding example of the Arab scholarship that through the Dark Ages kept a flickering flame of learning alive. Based on earlier records and the accounts of mariners and merchants, it depicts Arabia in detail. The Ubar region bears the legend "the region of 'Ad and the place of Sihr."
Here, then, was an intriguing two-step connection: our rawi's tale placed Ubar near the Wadi al-Mughith, which another writer called the Wadi al-Mughith in Sihr. His addition of the word "Sihr" leads us to a locale on a respected early map of Arabia, a detail of which is shown here. The shaded box approximates what we had tentatively settled on as our Ubar search area. We were, it appeared, in the right neighborhood!
Detail of al-Idrisi's map of Arabia
Several worthies of storyteller al-Kisai's time locate Iram/Ubar and the People of 'Ad in the same patch of Arabia. The historian Nashwan ibn Sa'id al-Himyari (died 1117) sums up: "Ubar is ... the name of the land which belonged to 'Ad in the eastern part of Yemen; today it is an untrodden desert owing to the drying up of its water. There are to be found in it great buildings which the wind has smothered in sand." (At the time, eastern Yemen included part of what today is Oman.)4
This Nashwan al-Himyari was also a poet, who dwelt on the theme of vainglory come to grief. His verses are an epitaph for Iram/Ubar and the People of'Ad:
They turned to dust and are trampled under foot,
as they once did with others ...
They rest in the earth now,
when once they dwelt in palaces
and enjoyed food, drink, and beautiful women.
Time mingles good with bad fortune,
Time's children are made to taste grief amidst joy.5
8. Should You Eat Something That Talks to You?
THE APPROACH I HAD TAKEN with al-Kisai's tale "The Prophet Hud" was to look closely at the story, identify the elements added on over the years, and throw them out, hoping that maybe—always maybe—something would be left of a real time and place. This approach also worked well with the story of the geographer Yaqut ibn 'Abdallah (died 1229). "Yaqut" was a slave's name meaning "Ruby." In the medieval Arab world, it was common to give slaves names of gems and flowers and virtues, allowing their master to say, "Bring me dates, Pleasure. Tell me a story, Ruby."
As a trusted slave, Yaqut traveled the Persian Gulf on behalf of his master, a Baghdad merchant. He increased his master's prosperity, traveled farther, and eventually was given leave to compile his Mu- jam al-Buldam, or "Dictionary of Lands." It includes a substantial section on the "City of Wabar," or Ubar. Featuring lore Yaqut gathered while trading in Oman, most of his description is fanciful. Yaqut was particularly taken by the notion of nisnases. He wrote, "The Lord destroyed everything there [in Ubar] and converted the human beings to nisnas—a monkey-like creature with a human-being look. The men and women appeared ridiculous, each had half a head and half a face with only one eye and one arm and one leg ... They used to jump high and rapidly on that one leg. God made them chew up the grass like cows and buffalos." 1
Yaqut gives us anecdotal