Myths and legends have long been composed about the sands of the Arabian desert, absorbing all the sands, including about the city, which does not even have an exact name. Somewhere it is called Ubar, somewhere Vabar or Iram, and it was allegedly brought in by hot sands 2 thousand years ago.
This mysterious city is mentioned in the Koran, as well as in the "Thousand and One Nights", and Bedouin nomads still tell tales about it.
The legendary city is said to be located somewhere in the Rub al Khali Desert, which occupies a third of the Arabian Peninsula. In 1992, researcher Ranulf Fiennes wrote a book about this city called Desert Atlantis: In Search of the Lost City of Ubar, after which the general public learned about this city.
It is curious that in the same 1992 it was announced that the “ancient Ubar” was located in an area called Shisr in Oman. However, it has not yet been officially confirmed that these are the ruins of Ubar.
According to legends, a people called Hell lived in the ancient city, led by King Shaddad (Shaddad ibn Ad). The city was allegedly built 3,000 years BC and was stunningly beautiful with its tall buildings, stately columns, towers and spiers.
It was a rich trading city, especially famous for its oils and spices. He was also drowned in greenery and everyone who visited him admired him in songs and poems.
And suddenly this city suddenly simply disappeared from history along with its people, high buildings and towers. It happened somewhere in 100-300 AD and according to legends, a divine curse fell on the city. As if the inhabitants of the city refused to follow the ways of God and rejected the advice of the prophet Hood. After that, a powerful sandstorm flew into the city from nowhere and swallowed it entirely.
Remains of Ubar. The artist's fantasy.
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Since then, many adventurers have tried to find the place where this mythical city of Ubar was, but no one succeeded, and the adventurers more often simply died, lost in the desert.
Of the foreigners, the most famous attempt to find Ubar is explorer Bertram Thomas. In 1930, he was practically the first European to cross the barren and hot sea of sand. During his travels, the Bedouins showed him a place among the dunes near the Ramlat Shuait area, where the city of Ubar was allegedly buried. Bertram checked everything there, but found no trace of the city.
Later, he told the archaeologist and traveler Lawrence of Arabia about this, and he was the first to give Ubar a beautiful name - Atlantis of the Sands. Lawrence even wanted to go in search of Ubar himself, but died before he was able to complete this venture.
Later, Bertram Thomas wrote a book about Ubar called "Arabia Felix", and then found traces of caravans that allegedly passed through the ruins of this city. But he too died before he had the opportunity to hit the road again.
In the 1940s, English explorer Winfried Tesiger was the first to find obscure ruins at a place called Shisr in Oman. In this place, a destroyed fortress of the pre-Islamic period was found, and in 1948 a long underground passage was allegedly found under its wall, leading to some unknown destination.
Fortress ruins.
Unfortunately, the researchers at that moment were more concerned with finding water for camels than with archaeological work, so they did not go down into the passage and no one else reported about it.
Subsequent expeditions into the desert led nowhere. The biggest problem was the vastness of the desert, which covers the territory of Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen, and nobody knows the exact location of Ubar.
From modern attempts to find Ubar, one can single out the expedition of Nicholas Clapp, who was inspired by the book of Bertram Thomas. Clapp examined old maps of the region, including an ancient AD 200 map by the Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy.
He discovered the ancient caravan trade routes to the same Shisr area and then began excavations there. Klapp immediately began to find traces that once upon a time people lived here: fire pits, fragments of pottery, animal bones, incense burners, coins, etc. It was about its opening that newspapers wrote in 1992.
The most grandiose excavated object in this place is of course a mysterious fortress with thick walls and four towers. The remains of a well that had collapsed in it said that some great cataclysm had happened here, but what exactly remained unclear. And whether it was the same Ubar, it was also not possible to find out.