Iram at the Intersection of Onethousandandonenights

chapter 26 A Paradise in the Desert: Iram at the Intersection of One Thousand and One Nights, Quranic Exegesis, and Arabian History Orhan Elmaz The tales from One Thousand and One Nights consolidated some long-standing ideas and preconceptions of the Muslim world to the European reader and introduced some other, novel ones. This paper, however, will look into the creation of one of the tales by analysing references to the Arabian tribes of ʿĀd and Thamūd and the riches of the legendardy king Shaddād b. ʿĀd and his proverbial and paradisiacal city called Iram. Since Iram is mentioned in the Quran, setting off from Quranic exegesis and early Arabic poetry, this paper will also discuss how Iram developed into a motif in Islamicate literatures, and address the question of how the embellished tale of The City of Many-columned Iram made its way into the Nights. Although the goal of this paper is not to identify the geographical location of Iram or—as Lawrence of Arabia called it—‘Atlantis of the Sands’. There have been enough suggestions to do so, and while some locate it in Damascus in Syria and others in Alexandria in Egypt or Ubar or Wabar in the Sultanate of Oman (see Fiennes 1992, and Clapp 1999), Harold Glidden suggested identify- ing Iram with Jabal Ramm in Jordan already in 1939. It is worth mentioning that there is epigraphic corroboration from a Hismaic text found by Zayadine and Farès-Drappeau in 1997 that suggests to locate Iram and the ʿĀd around Wādī Ramm in northern Arabia (see Healey 2001:56ff.) notwithstanding some uncer- tainty (Macdonald 2000:73n141, 76n171). As of 2011, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (icomos) considered this evidence as arguable the- ory rather than scientific proof, asking for more substantiation for this identi- fication (icomos 2011:45), but the area is protected and listed as the unesco World Heritage Site “Wadi Rum” since. Wādī Ramm also regained some of its fame since 2014 through the British-Jordanian film Theeb, Jordan’s first Oscar nomination, and the centennial anniversary of the Great Arab Revolt of 1916, during which the film takes place. The ʿĀd are mentioned in the Quran which refers to them 24 times, mostly listing their name along that of other annihilated people’s, while longer pas- sages dealing with the ʿĀd and their postdiluvian prophet Hūd are to be found © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004357617_027 a paradise in the desert 523 in q 11:50–60, and q 26:123–140. The point of departure for this paper is the passage q 89:6–8 in which Iram occurs. It seems that a whole embellished narrative has evolved or reemerged around this enigmatic name (see Elmaz 2011:23) and that this narrative yet again was reduced into a recurring reference (talmīḥ) with different connotations in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu poetry. The verse group q 89:6–8 reads: ʾa-lam tara kayfa faʿala rabbuka bi-ʿĀdin (6) ʾIramadhātil-ʿimādi (7) allatīlamyukhlaqmithluhāfīl-bilādi (8). Abdel Haleem translates “Have you considered how your Lord dealt with [the people of] ʿAd, of Iram, [the city] of lofty pillars, whose like has never been made in any land” (q 89:6–8). In doing so, he turns Iram into a unique place to which the ʿĀd relate or which they inhabit, and this is to be found in numerous other translations (see The Parallel Quran) with the exception of al-Hilālī & Khan (1998), who understand the ʿĀd to be of unique build and translate: not how your Lord dealt with ( للاىلص ّٰ ملسوهيلعه Saw you (O Muhammad ʿÂd (people) Of Iram (who were very tall) like (lofty) pillars, The like of which were not created in the land? This variation in meaning strongly suggests turning to Quranic exegesis in order to try and understand the connotations of these verses. It is worth noting that a native of Mosul, Abū Bakr al-Naqqāsh (d. 962), dedicated a whole exegetical work of unknown length entitled Iram dhāt al-ʿimād in which he dealt with Iram and past nations (ʿUthmān 2009:184, Bakıxanov’s (d. 1847) history of Azerbaijan bears a similar name). Neuenkirchen recently undertook the task of reading this passage as a Biblical echo by proposing the correspondence of Iram to a Biblical Ḫīrām,1 the self-deifying king of Tyre in the Midrash. He considers the passage in the Quran to be an appropriation of the story of Ḫīrām into Arabian culture, and the parallels might be notable. However, aside from the very problematic sound change (Neuenkirchen 2013:690f.), this hypothesis is refutable based on the verse’s syntax: Iram is not separated from ʿĀd by the conjunction wāw (like the subsequent Thamūd and Firʿawn) in any of the documented readings (see Corpus Coranicum), and dhāt is of feminine gender which does not befit a male individual (Neuenkirchen 2013:692–694). 1 A legend about Ḫīrām who built Solomon’s Temple is also relevant to the genesis of free masonry since he was killed for not divulging the Master Masons’ secret passwords, see Frank 1987: 240f..

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