History

Ubar’s existence as a real city was debated by Western scholars for most of the twentieth century. The city appeared in Arabian oral tradition, in the Quran (Surah 89:6 to 8, which describes “Iram of the Pillars” as a city of great columns and architectural magnificence whose proud rulers were destroyed by God), in early Islamic geographical texts, and in the imagination of European travellers including T. E. Lawrence — but no physical trace had been found. The key breakthrough came in 1984 to 1992 when filmmaker and amateur archaeologist Nicholas Clapp, working with JPL scientist Ronald Blom, analysed Shuttle Imaging Radar data from NASA Space Shuttle missions. The radar, which can penetrate metres of dry desert sand, revealed beneath the Dhofar surface a network of ancient caravan tracks converging on a single point at Shisr — a known oasis where a small, undated fort had been noted by earlier travellers.

Excavations conducted by Juris Zarins in 1992 to 1995 revealed at Shisr the remains of an octagonal fortress city approximately 0.6 hectares in extent, with at least eight polygonal defensive towers, built over and around a natural limestone cave system. The city had been a major commercial hub on the ancient frankincense trade route: the Boswellia trees of the Dhofar interior produced the frankincense that supplied the Roman, Nabataean, and Egyptian luxury markets, and Ubar was the collection and redistribution point where desert caravans assembled before the long northward journey. The city’s destruction was catastrophic and sudden: the limestone ceiling of the cave system below the fortress subsided, collapsing the city into a massive sinkhole and burying it under the desert sand. If the Quranic narrative preserves any historical memory, the disaster was remembered in Arabian oral tradition for more than a millennium before the text was codified in the 7th century AD.