The Road to Ubar (31 page)

How it must have galled the Greeks and Romans that distant foreigners—smug in their Arabia Felix—profited so from their profligate lifestyle. Though parts of the peninsula were tenuously within their sphere of influence, the Greeks and Romans knew little—heard rumors, at best—of the secret city that was a key source of their frankincense. It was an uncertain dot on Claudius Ptolemy's
Sexta Tabula Asiae,
hidden in the desert of the Iobaritae, the Ubarites.

It is now that the myth of Ubar comes into play and runs a course parallel to the site's archaeological record. Archaeology is history; myth is imaginative history. The two should probably not be mixed, but with Ubar, the temptation is hard to resist. Be patient then, with the next chapter, which speculates—very conjecturally—what might have happened at Ubar in a season of its glory. It is written with the caveat oft used by Arab historians and storytellers: "But God, however, knows best."

I
N THE LAND OF
'A
D,
in Arabia Felix, a moonlit late summer's night in 350
B.C.
¹

Roped four abreast, the column of camels shuffled across the desert plain. Their drivers intermittently dozed in the saddle, then jerked awake, often just in time to keep from pitching to the ground as a camel stumbled, which they occasionally did when moving by night. An old man, "as old as 'Ad," his companions joked, cleared his throat and chanted...

After the sun has set, in the watches of the night,
May the god of the moon whiten our faces...
²

The first caravan of the year, it was larger than usual, for its camels were laden not only with frankincense but with bags of rock salt. The salt was for a contingent of stonemasons and their apprentices, who were following on foot. The time had come to enlarge Ubar's temple and enclose and fortify its spring. Six days had passed since the caravan left the Dhofar Mountains. The little water left in the goatskins was fetid, barely drinkable.

Off to the east, the sky lightened. When the sun rose this day they didn't stop to rest but kept on. In protest, the camels pitifully gurgled, then brayed and balked. Their drivers were tempted to strike them but didn't, for it would damage their qualities. Instead they shouted, "Evil pestilence upon you!" and "Come to you death!" In their hearts they meant nothing of the kind, for their camels were their life.

It was a sharp-eyed boy who first spotted a tiny smudge of green on the horizon, appearing, then vanishing in a mirage.

"Hai! Our deliverance. Ubar," breathed the old man, as he had for most of his forty years.

Drawing closer and wending up the low hill surmounted by Ubar's old temple, the caravan was met by the small garrison—no more than a dozen men—that stood watch over the site during the hottest months. The camel drivers unloaded their cargo of salt and frankincense. After resting for a few days, they would return to the mountains for another load. The stonemasons unpacked their sledges and chisels and examined the site. They hammered at the limestone rising from the sand to the west of the temple. It was of adequate quality, and quarrying it would create a dry moat, a bonus to the fortification of Ubar. The stonemasons splashed in the water of the settlement's clear, cool spring, had their fill of fresh dates, then slept through the afternoon and night.

Up well before dawn the next day, the masons saw to the digging of shallow trenches to the south of the temple. They lined the trenches with goat droppings, then packed in a layer of rock salt. By midafternoon they were able to step back and view the footings of an inner and outer gate. As protection against djinns, they drove spikes into the ground at the gate's four corners.

From the shadows of the nearby temple a
kahin,
a soothsayer-priest, came forth. He rapped a hide drum with his knuckles, slowly at first. Two girls stepped forth from the temple, dancing. The older led and the younger followed, imitating, as best she could, her partner's spontaneous movements. They danced upon the salt. The kahin beat his drum faster, as fast as he could. The dancers' stampings and gyrations were frenzied now. Camel drivers drifted over from their camp and joined the masons in clapping to the rhythm of the dance, accented now by the bleating of a tethered goat.

With a cry of "For the face of the lord of the moon!" the kahin unsheathed a dagger and slashed the goat's throat. He lifted the animal and carried it about so that its blood would fall on the gate's four corners. The girl dancers pressed their hands in the blood, and raised them high to the accompaniment of wild ululations. For good measure, the kahin carried the dying, bleeding goat down the hillside, where more trenches would be dug and walls and towers would rise. That evening, the meat of the goat was divided, one measure to the kahin and four to the masons, builders of a new Ubar.

In the heat and dust of the next few weeks, the gate was fitted with heavy wooden doors and completed. At the same time, the masons and their apprentices were at work on Ubar's walls. They laid three to five courses of cut blocks, filling gaps by wedging in small stones selected from the many scattered around the spring (many of these were Neolithic tools, which would now be preserved in Ubar's walls). Every few paces along the walls, they fashioned angled arrow slits. The masons kept the width of the walls to a double elbow-to-fingertip span (92 centimeters). Unlike other sites in the Middle East, where imposing mud-brick walls would be built on this stonework, at Ubar the foundations were surmounted by a
duwwar,
a fence woven of gnarled branches and brush.
³

At the corners of Ubar's rising fortress, the masons erected sturdy towers. Additional towers guarded vulnerable points in the wall.

To complete their work, the masons may have returned the next season and even the one after that. The fortress they built served the essential needs of an early city: exchange and defense. With its welcoming gate and large interior court and spring, Ubar could accommodate the ebb and flow of desert trade. In the event of an attack, that same gate could swing shut and secure the Ubarites, their animals, and their frankincense.

At some point in the course of the construction, a lookout on duty in one of the towers would have caught sight of a column of dust rapidly approaching: the king of the People of'Ad and his retinue. To lend him a name, call him, as in myth, King Khuljan ibn al-Dahn ibn 'Ad.

Khuljan would have cut quite a figure. Riding a sleek stallion, he wore a scarlet robe fastened over his left shoulder. In preparation for his arrival at Ubar, the royal barber had woven the king's long hair in plaits and dyed it blue with the juice of the
nil
plant and had blued his face as well.

Khuljan wore no crown but rather a five-thonged leather headband wrapped with bands of gold and silver. On arriving at Ubar's new gate, he would have been honored with clouds of incense, and commoners falling to their knees to kiss his knees. Those of higher station who knew him well kissed his wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Little boys, if they dared, jumped to clap their hands beneath the king's nostrils, so they might acquire the virtue of his breath. The kahin who looked after the temple offered Khuljan hen's eggs, which the king dashed on the outer and inner thresholds of the gate, dedicating it to the glory of the gods and to the prosperity of his tribe. After inspecting Ubar's fortifications and enlarged temple, the king retired to his tent. It had, as always, been a long journey.

In the manner of Arabian kings, Khuljan would have held morning court (or majlis, as it later came to be called) in the shade of the gate. At times it was a court of judgment, with the king acting as "master of ordeals." As an accused man was brought forth, Khuljan drew his finely wrought bronze dagger and laid it on the coals of the fire kept by the soldiers on duty at the gate. He chatted with them as they watched it brighten and redden; it would swiftly determine whether the accused was "of gold or of iron," an innocent or a scoundrel. Turning to him, Khuljan ordered that he open his mouth and show his tongue. The king then took the tip of the man's tongue between finger and thumb with one hand, and with the other raised his dagger to his own lips and, almost kissing it, whispered, "O fire, O fire, be cold and at peace."

Swiftly and without hesitation, Khuljan pressed the flat of the dagger upon the man's outstretched tongue, turned it over, and pressed again. If the accused was at once able to spit, it boded well for him. The true test came later in the day, when his tongue was carefully examined. If there was swelling or undue burning or swollen glands in the neck, he was declared guilty and paid as his accusers saw fit, often with his life. If he was free of these signs, he was slapped on the back by the soldiers and smiled upon by his king.

At Ubar's gate the king resolved major and minor disputes, gave his blessing to caravans coming and going, and sometimes just passed the time of day. His barber was also his fool. He would dance madly and perform bodily contortions. Or, if the heat was great, he would quietly and slyly compose rhymed jokes at the expense of the Ubarites, the king's retinue, even Khuljan.

A few times a year, lookouts would spot envoys, who had been dispatched to distant nations, now returning. Khuljan received few if any foreign visitors out here; the location of the oasis was best known only to the People of 'Ad. The king preferred to be buffered by middlemen like the Gerrhans to the north, who might take an outrageous cut of the incense trade but would stand in the way of invading armies. Over the years Tiglath-pileser, Alexander the Great, and the Emperor Augustus would have designs on Arabia; for all their might, none would penetrate the incense lands.

This month an envoy might well have returned from Persia, then under the rule of Artaxerxes III. A tribute, this year, had been demanded: a thousand talents' worth of frankincense. Should Khuljan pay it? Dare he defy the Persians?

The influences of Greece and Persia were subtly dividing Arabia, west versus east. Ubar was perilously close to the dividing line. Khuljan and his descendants could well have sided with the Greeks (and later the Romans). Instead, they cast their lot with the Persians, then with their successors, the Parthians. There is a pre-Islamic poem that reflects Ubar's alignment with the east. It describes a journey an envoy would have made, a journey home...

To thee from Babylon we made our way
Through the desert wilds o'er the beaten track;
Oft have our camels from fatigue collapsed
And almost failed the distant goal to reach;
But again they would start with heavy pace
To tread the barren route to journey's end...
For Iram of the towers [Ubar] we regard
Our sole aim and final destination.
⁴

That afternoon, riding about Ubar on his fine horse, Khuljan would have splashed across irrigation ditches and passed through fields of sorghum, millet, wheat, barley, and even indigo and cotton. He would have been pleased by the number of caravans camped in the sprawling oasis. To meet increased demand, there were now two frankincense harvests a year. In the fall and winter months, small, unprotected caravans continuously shuttled the frankincense from the mountains out to Ubar, where it was transferred to larger, armed caravans that departed every few weeks. Two different houses of camels were required for this: animals with smoothly polished, small hoofs bore the incense across the flinty plain leading to Ubar, then animals with large, floppy, soft-soled feet took it across the sands of the Rub' al-Khali. Quite naturally, Ubar's corrals were the logical place to breed and sell dune-adapted camels.

Returning to the fortress, Khuljan would have made his way through the market that every day sprang to life as the sun fell toward the west. Outside the gate, livestock were offered for sale. Camels, the major commodity, were bid for by the casting of stones. Their owners feigned insult at the paltriness of the bids and rhythmically shouted, "The door for more is open! The door for more is open!" Close by, a procession of a dozen goats circled a solitary palm, to be poked and squeezed by potential buyers. A slow-witted man joined the circling goats. At the cost of a dozen stings, he had snatched a honeycomb from a hive in the oasis and was offering it for sale. One by one, each goat buyer broke off a sizable sample, popped it into his mouth, licked his lips, then scowled and shook his head. Not good enough. Before he knew it, the slow-witted man had only his sticky fingers to remind him of his honeycomb.

As Khuljan approached Ubar's gate, the soldiers on duty pushed a playing board out of sight. As he ducked to ride through, Khuljan smiled as the round stones with which the game was played rolled beneath the hoofs of his horse. The fortress's interior courtyard was ringed with stalls. There were merchants of cloth and pottery, merchants hawking olive oil, dried fish, palm beer, and date wine. Sunk to his waist in an earthen pit—for protection from the heat of his furnace—a blacksmith forged arrowheads of molten iron.

A youth screamed. By the northeast tower a curer was at work. Djinns, like men, were drawn to Ubar; the place was infested with them. They weakened the bones but could be driven away by branding. They soured the blood, requiring that it be drawn with heated cups fashioned from the tips of ibex horns. The king paused and watched as a blindfolded youth bobbed and weaved and pleaded for relief from the djinn tormenting him, stealing his vision.

The curer asked, "Are you djinn?"

The djinn—capable of speaking through the mouth of the possessed—didn't answer. Khuljan interjected, "What would you expect? Of course there's a djinn."

The curer said, "Yes, yes, O Lord," and addressed the youth, "You are surely powerful, djinn. What do you want? Tell us. Tell us. Is it gold you want?"

Speaking through the youth, the djinn answered, "A ring."

The curer turned to a knot of the possessed's companions. A ring was reluctantly offered. The curer dropped it into the coals of a frankincense burner, then snatched it up and slid it onto the youth's finger.