Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [94]
A few times a year, lookouts would spot envoys, who had been dispatched to distant nations, now returning. Khuljan received few if any foreign visitors out here; the location of the oasis was best known only to the People of 'Ad. The king preferred to be buffered by middlemen like the Gerrhans to the north, who might take an outrageous cut of the incense trade but would stand in the way of invading armies. Over the years Tiglath-pileser, Alexander the Great, and the Emperor Augustus would have designs on Arabia; for all their might, none would penetrate the incense lands.
This month an envoy might well have returned from Persia, then under the rule of Artaxerxes III. A tribute, this year, had been demanded: a thousand talents' worth of frankincense. Should Khuljan pay it? Dare he defy the Persians?
The influences of Greece and Persia were subtly dividing Arabia, west versus east. Ubar was perilously close to the dividing line. Khuljan and his descendants could well have sided with the Greeks (and later the Romans). Instead, they cast their lot with the Persians, then with their successors, the Parthians. There is a pre-Islamic poem that reflects Ubar's alignment with the east. It describes a journey an envoy would have made, a journey home...
To thee from Babylon we made our way
Through the desert wilds o'er the beaten track;
Oft have our camels from fatigue collapsed
And almost failed the distant goal to reach;
But again they would start with heavy pace
To tread the barren route to journey's end...
For Iram of the towers [Ubar] we regard
Our sole aim and final destination.4
That afternoon, riding about Ubar on his fine horse, Khuljan would have splashed across irrigation ditches and passed through fields of sorghum, millet, wheat, barley, and even indigo and cotton. He would have been pleased by the number of caravans camped in the sprawling oasis. To meet increased demand, there were now two frankincense harvests a year. In the fall and winter months, small, unprotected caravans continuously shuttled the frankincense from the mountains out to Ubar, where it was transferred to larger, armed caravans that departed every few weeks. Two different houses of camels were required for this: animals with smoothly polished, small hoofs bore the incense across the flinty plain leading to Ubar, then animals with large, floppy, soft-soled feet took it across the sands of the Rub' al-Khali. Quite naturally, Ubar's corrals were the logical place to breed and sell dune-adapted camels.
Returning to the fortress, Khuljan would have made his way through the market that every day sprang to life as the sun fell toward the west. Outside the gate, livestock were offered for sale. Camels, the major commodity, were bid for by the casting of stones. Their owners feigned insult at the paltriness of the bids and rhythmically shouted, "The door for more is open! The door for more is open!" Close by, a procession of a dozen goats circled a solitary palm, to be poked and squeezed by potential buyers. A slow-witted man joined the circling goats. At the cost of a dozen stings, he had snatched a honeycomb from a hive in the oasis and was offering it for sale. One by one, each goat buyer broke off a sizable sample, popped it into his mouth, licked his lips, then scowled and shook his head. Not good enough. Before he knew it, the slow-witted man had only his sticky fingers to remind him of his honeycomb.
As Khuljan approached Ubar's gate, the soldiers on duty pushed a playing board out of sight. As he ducked to ride through, Khuljan smiled as the round stones with which the game was played rolled beneath the hoofs of his horse. The fortress's interior courtyard was ringed with stalls. There were merchants of cloth and pottery, merchants hawking olive oil, dried fish, palm