Ubar (Shisr)
An oasis fort in Oman's desert hailed in the 1990s as Ubar, the 'Atlantis of the Sands', a claim most scholars now doubt.
- Location
- Dhofar, southern Oman, at the edge of the Rub' al-Khali
- Modern country
- Oman
- Type
- Caravan oasis and fortified well on the frankincense routes
- Identified as Ubar by
- Nicholas Clapp, Juris Zarins and team, using satellite imagery, early 1990s
- Status
- Part of UNESCO 'Land of Frankincense' (2000)
- Linked legend
- Iram of the Pillars ('Ad)
What is Ubar known for?
Shisr is an archaeological site in Dhofar, southern Oman, on the edge of the Empty Quarter. It was a fortified well and caravan stop on the frankincense trade routes. Together with Khor Rori, Al-Baleed and Wadi Dawkah, it forms the UNESCO World Heritage Site 'Land of Frankincense'.
In the early 1990s filmmaker Nicholas Clapp, archaeologist Juris Zarins and a team including the explorer Ranulph Fiennes used satellite images showing old caravan tracks to locate the site. They announced it as Ubar, a lost trading city of Arabian legend, and Clapp linked it to Iram of the Pillars, the city of the people of 'Ad in the Qur'an. Part of the fort had collapsed into a sinkhole, which seemed to fit stories of a city swallowed by the sands.
Later work suggested the fort was smaller and later than first proposed, and many scholars doubt that Ubar was ever a single city rather than a region or tribe. Clapp himself later hedged the identification.
Clapp's team identified Shisr as Ubar and linked it to Iram of the Pillars.
Mentioned on these pages
- Rabbit hole'Ad and Iram of the Pillars
- PersonJuris Zarins
- PersonNicholas Clapp
- PlaceWadi Rum
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 'Land of Frankincense'Reference
- Wikipedia, 'Archaeological site of Shisr'Reference
- Wikipedia, 'Atlantis of the Sands'Reference
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