Atlantis of the Sands refers to a legendary lost city in the southern deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, thought to have been destroyed by a natural disaster or as a punishment by God. The search for it was popularised by the 1992 book Atlantis of the Sands – The Search for the Lost City of Ubar by Ranulph Fiennes. Apart from the English name, coined by T. E. Lawrence, the city is commonly also called Ubar, Wabar or Iram.
Introduction
In modern times, the mystery of the lost city of Atlantis has generated several books, films, articles, and web pages. (See Atlantis in popular culture) On a smaller scale, Arabia has its own legend of a lost city, the so-called "Atlantis of the Sands", which has been the source of debate among historians, archaeologists and explorers, and a degree of controversy that continues to this day.
In February 1992, The New York Times announced a major archaeological discovery in the following terms: "Guided by ancient maps and sharp-eyed surveys from space, archaeologists and explorers have discovered a lost city deep in the sands of Arabia, and they are virtually sure it is Ubar, the fabled entrepôt of the rich frankincense trade thousands of years ago." When news of this discovery spread quickly around the newspapers of the world, there seemed few people willing or able to challenge the dramatic findings, apart from the Saudi Arabian press. The discovery was the result of the work of a team of archaeologists led by Nicholas Clapp, which had visited and excavated the site of a Bedouin well at Shisr (18° 15' 47 N" 53° 39' 28" E) in Dhofar province, Oman. The conclusion they reached, based on site excavations and an inspection of satellite photographs, was that this was the site of Ubar, or Iram of the Pillars, a name found in the Quran which may be a lost city, a tribe or an area. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, another member of the expedition, declared that this was the Omanum Emporium of Ptolemy's famous map of Arabia Felix.
A contemporary notice at the entrance to an archaeological site at Shisr in the province of Dhofar, Oman, proclaims: "Welcome to Ubar, the Lost City of Bedouin Legend". However, scholars are divided over whether this really is the site of a legendary lost city of the sands.
Early explorers in Dhofar
In 1930, the explorer Bertram Thomas had been approaching the southern edge of the Rub' al Khali ("The Empty Quarter"). It was Thomas' ambition to be the first European to cross the great sands but, as he began his camel journey, he was told by his Bedouin escorts of a lost city whose wicked people had attracted the wrath of God and had been destroyed. He found no trace of a lost city in the sands, but Thomas later related the story to T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), who regarded Ubar as the "Atlantis of the Sands". Thomas marked on a map the location of a track that was said to lead to the legendary lost city of Ubar and, although he intended to return to follow it, he was never able to.
The story of a lost city in the sands became an explorer's fascination; a few wrote accounts of their travels that perpetuated the tale. T. E. Lawrence planned to search for the location of a lost city somewhere in the sands, telling a fellow traveller that he was convinced that the remains of an Arab civilization were to be found in the desert. He had been told that the Bedu had seen the ruins of the castles of King Ad in the region of Wabar. In his view, the best way to explore the sands was by airship, but his plans never came to fruition.
The English explorer Wilfred Thesiger visited the well at Shisr in the spring of 1946, "where the ruins of a crude stone fort on a rocky eminence marks the position of this famous well." He noted that some shards found there were possibly early Islamic. The well was the only permanent watering place in those parts and, being a necessary watering place for Bedouin raiders had been the scene of many fierce encounters in the past,
In March 1948, a geological party from Petroleum Development (Oman and Dhofar) Ltd, an associate company of the Iraq Petroleum Company, carried out a camel-borne survey of Dhofar province. Like Thesiger, the party approached Shisr from the south, along the Wadi Ghudun. Their first sight of Ash Shisur was a white cliff in the distance. As they drew closer, they could see that the cliff was in fact the wall of a ruined fort built above a large quarry-like cave, the entrance of which was obscured by a sand dune.