Iram dhat al-'imad

Accounts differ about the site of Iram of the Pillars. According to al-Mas'udi, Jayrun ibn Sa'd ibn Ad built it in Damascus, and gathered marble and alabaster columns for it, and called it Iram of the Pillars. The Palace of Jayrun remained there with a great building and copper doors by the gate of the Umayyad Mosque until the year 332 AH. He reports that Ka'b al-Ahbar transmitted other accounts of it. ²

Ibn Khaldun reports that some commentators made Iram a city of pillars built by Shaddad ibn Ad in the deserts of Aden, and that al-Tabari, al-Tha'alibi and al-Zamakhshari mention it. He rejects this, and says that no news of it has been heard in any part of the earth, and that the deserts of Aden are populated in succession and their guides recount their routes. He mentions those who said it was Damascus, because the people of Ad ruled it, and describes other views as more like fables. ³

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), signed F. Buhl, treats 'Ad and Iram under the heading Dhat al-Imad, Lukman, Shaddad b. 'Ad. It says that what older traditions lie behind the Quranic story cannot be shown with certainty. The old poets knew 'Ad as an ancient nation that had perished, and the phrase "since the time of 'Ad" recurs in the Hamasa, while the Hudhalite diwan mentions their kings. Whether a people called 'Ad ever existed, and where, is still an open question. The Arab genealogies of the 'Adites are of no value, and their location in the sandy desert between Oman and Hadramawt is not credible. ⁴

The identification of Iram with Aram, which the Arabs and several modern scholars adopted, is not likely. Loth identified 'Ad with the tribe of Iyad, while Sprenger sought 'Ad among the Qadites of north-west Arabia, who according to Ptolemy lived there, and linked them with the well of Iram in the Hisma described by al-Hamdani. The excavation of a second-century Nabataean temple at Jabal Ramm, about twenty-five miles east of Aqaba, brought to light inscriptions naming the place, and Savignac plausibly connected this with Iram. Wellhausen pointed out that the phrase min al-'ad, "from ancient times," also occurs, so that 'Ad may originally have been a common noun meaning "the ancient time", and the mythical nation may have arisen from a misreading of it. ⁴