Oman (10): To the Edge of the Empty Quarter

A 'Lost' City in a Vast Expanse of Nothingness, Frankincense and the Salalah Museum

Khareef and the Mystery of the Empty Hotel

Oman

For the first time in our stay, a buffet was set out for breakfast. Ful, chilli, eggs and cheese went down well, but we still ate alone. We had learned yesterday that the hotel had seven guests occupying five rooms. Were they busier today or was this for show?

We met up with R and drove north across the arid land of the coastal strip towards the even more arid land of the higher ground behind.

North from Salalah

We asked him about the empty hotel. ‘It’s out of season,’ he said. Salalah’s temperature varies little throughout the year, the average daily high being 27º in the coolest months (January, February and August) and 32º in the warmest (May). We wondered when high season might be. ‘Khareef,’ R replied, literally ‘autumn’, ‘all hotels are full then’. The coastal fringe around Salalah is far enough south to just catch the edge of the south-west monsoon so July and August, among the hottest months elsewhere in Oman, are slightly cooler days of mist and drizzle locally called ‘autumn’.  I see enough drizzle in my life and cannot imagine travelling to see more, particularly not hot, sweaty drizzle, but in khareef, visitors come from all over Oman, Saudi Arabia and the gulf to experience rain and enjoy the brief, but dramatic, transformation of the landscape. Proof, if it was needed, that holidays are about different experiences; if sand and sun (and possibly even sea) are your everyday habitat, what is attractive about a beach holiday?

The road north from Salalah during Khareef
Photo by Samadash65, borrowed from Wikipedia

Salalah to Thumrait

Salalah to Thumrait is an 80km drive on a good, if uncrowded road.

The Empty Qarter is a huge dune desert covering the southern third of Saudi Arabia, parts of the UAE, Oman and Yemen.
Its southern edge is some 150km north of Salalah

Camels present a problem but in daylight at least the warning signs are smaller, less obvious and far less frequent than the camels themselves.

Beware of camels on the road to Thumrait

Thumrait is a hot, dusty little town largely inhabited by the nomads who once wandered the desert but now find life easier in settlements around its fringe. The Royal Air Force of Oman has a base nearby but Thumrait mainly makes its living as a truck-stop, a staging point on the route from Yemen to Salalah, though trade with Oman’s war-torn neighbour is not what it was.

Thumrait, basically a truck-stop

Thumrait to Shisr (or Ubar)

A little north of Thumrait we turned onto Route 43 a smaller, relatively recently tarmacked road running 90km north-west to a village called Shisr, though Google maps marks it as Ubar.

The journey started through an expanse of nothing…

An expanse of nothing north of Thumrait

…but further on we encountered some extensive irrigated areas.

Irrigated area on the road to Shisr, the small building to the left covers a well.

Small conical heaps of dark stones started to appear beside the road every few hundred metres. They mark tracks into the desert many of them only a few hundred metres long and all ending at a small cuboid shaped building, like the one in the photograph above. They have an electricity supply and I believe they are wells.

There are two of the 'small conical heaps of dark stones' one on each side of the road

As we neared Shisr there were huge circles of cultivated land. Metal gantries more than 100m long rotate around a vertical axle carrying sprinkler heads to irrigate the whole circle. We had seen identical devices in the deserts of western Washington in the 1980s; Oman, like the USA, can afford to make the desert bloom.

Reaching Shisr

Shisr or Ubar (or Iram of the Pillars)

Shisr is a lonely hamlet deep in the desert. Tamarisk trees grow here without irrigation, and it was once the site of an important well, the last one going north for a very long way. Modern Shisr is a prosperous little place where experimental farms pump water from deep underground. Aerial views show some of the circular irrigated areas are almost 600m in diameter.

Tamarisk trees, Shisr

Shisr also has a roundabout (though very little traffic) a camp site and an archaeological site, with the greeting ‘Welcome to Ubar, the lost city of Bedouin legend’.

There is not a great deal to see apart from some suspiciously newly rebuilt walls…

Recently rebuilt walls at Shisr (or Ubar)

…and a propped up, part-collapsed limestone shelf from which a fort long ago fell into the well below, either because of seismic activity or because the water table dropped. R retreated to the shade to play with his phone, so we read the information boards from which we learned little.

The well and the remains of the fort, Shisr (or Ubar)

The tourist authorities would like us to believe these are the remains of the lost city of Ubar or Iram of the Pillars whose destruction merits a fleeting appearance in the Qur’an. It might be - and they apparently have Google maps convinced - but probably isn’t. It is a long story so it appears as an appendix at the end of the post.

Into the Empty Quarter

Shisr was Wilfrid Thesiger’s last stop before his epic crossing of the Empty Quarter in 1946. It was also the gateway to the Empty Quarter for our less epic visit to the great arid wilderness. At Shisr the tarmac ended and we took to the sand. At first accompanied by a power line…

Leaving Shisr

….but before long there was nothing but sand, as far as the eye can see. We were not yet in the Empty Quarter, though it looked pretty empty to me - apart from the lines of car tracks, all running in the same direction...

And this is not the Empty Quarter yet!

Half an hour from Shisr we drove through the remains of a desert camp. It was intended as a tourist attraction, like the Thousand Nights Camp in the Wahiba Sands, but now lies abandoned.

Abanadoned camp near the Empty Quarter

A little further on a water tanker, old, rusty and huge, lumbered crossed our path. ‘The Bedu used to sling water skins on to their camels,’ R said (or words to that effect), ‘but that’s how they move water now.’

The Empty Quarter has no ‘official’ boundary, but it is reasonable to say it starts with the dunes, which came into view only ten minutes beyond the deserted camp.

The dunes of the Empty Qarter come into sight

We had entered an area of scrub, dotted with surprisingly large shrubs. These are Sodom Apple (Calotropis Procera), which produces a green fruit about the size of an apple. It is largely filled with air and when ripe bursts ejecting seeds and a small quantity of fine fibres which in days gone by were twisted into matches for guns. The fleshy lobes contain a highly poisonous, sticky, soap-resistant latex. A plant to avoid.

Lynne as close to a Sodom Apple as a sensible person would wish to be

The dunes were heavily marked with tyre tracks, but the only two vehicles on them left as we arrived. R drove round the base of the first set of dunes but was reluctant to venture onto them. Once you leave the flat land at the base….

On the firm ground at the base of a dune, the Empty Quarter

…the sand is soft and it is easy for spinning wheels to dig themselves in. We discovered just how soft it was when we set off on foot up the nearest dune.

One step up, three quarters of a step down, climbing a dune in the Empty Quarter

Our car was equipped with a winch – as should any vehicle that ventures out here - but in the absence of other vehicles there is nothing to attach the winch to. We had to respect R’s decision; this is no place to be stuck on your own.

Climbing up through the soft sand was difficult, every upward step included a downward slide so after four paces your lower foot had arrived where your upper foot had started at pace one, a little like running up a down escalator. In the Gobi we had worn thermal boots as protection from the heat of the sand but here climbing in bare feet was comfortable enough.

I don't care about the top, I'm willing to settle for this little plateau

Finally, reaching a plateau, it was time for a panoramic photo.

Apart from our car, the Empty Quarter looks pretty empty

The Empty Quarter really is empty, but once you have seen that, you must either cross it – a challenging journey even today – or turn round and go home.

Back to Salalah

Black Camels

Somewhere near Shisr, we found some black camels among a small group of ‘normal’ camels milling aimlessly around. There is nothing special about black camels; as with sheep a recessive gene sometimes manifests itself in producing a black coat, but we had never seen one before.

Black camel, near Shisr

Lunch in Thumrait

Back at Thumrait we stopped at the Thumrait Palace – an Indian restaurant, not an actual palace – for a belated lunch. A minibus-full of German tourists contented themselves with the buffet while we ordered chicken biryani, salad, vegetable curry and chapatis.

Indian 'guest workers' made up the majority of the customers. Throughout Oman, Omani citizens make up only 55% of the population. 45% are expatriates (62% in the Muscat Governorate) and we had encountered a substantial number of Filipinos and Indians, though many other nationalities are represented.

A Frankincense Orchard

Nearing Salalah we dropped into a frankincense orchard (or is it ‘grove’) though the trees are far more widely spaced than in any type of orchard in less arid countries.

Frankincense 'orchard' on the way back to Salalah

Despite their resistance to the climate they still need irrigation.

Lynne and a frankincense tree, with hoses for irrigation

Frankincense is harvested by slashing the bark, causing resin to bleed out and harden in the sunshine. Trees start producing at 8 to 10 years and are tapped two or three times a year, the final tap producing the most aromatic frankincense. The seeds of heavily tapped trees are reluctant to germinate and current over production is leading to a decline in the ‘wild’ population.

Salalah Museum

The Salalah museum our itinerary had down for our first day in the south had now reopened after the holiday - better late than never.

A frankincense tree dominates the main courtyard, and much of one room is devoted to the frankincense industry.

Salalah museum

Another room covered fishing and sea-faring generally, with models and full sized mock ups of local boats, while a third showed finds from archaeological excavations, including from Sumharam. The information was well-organised and well-presented and the museum gave a fine overview of southern Oman – which would have been even better if we had seen it at the start!

Finds from Sumharam, Salalah museum

Going Home

Then R took us to the airport. Our original plan had been to stay another night in Salalah, and take a morning flight to Muscat to connect with the Manchester flight. By the time we had sorted the details of this trip the only flight early enough for our connection was the only one fully booked.

We spent longer than we would have liked in Salalah airport, including time sitting on the plane while engineers fixed a problem – never a welcome experience. The flight, once it took off was uneventful, but the delay meant we reached our Muscat hotel too late for dinner - never mind, we had enjoyed a good lunch.

Next morning we went home.

And Finally (as promised)…

The Story of Shisr (or Ubar, or Iram of the Pillars or Omanum Eporium)

According to some Islamic beliefs, King Shaddad of  ‘Ad (or Ubar or Iram) defied the warnings of the prophet Hud, so Allah smote the city, driving it into the sands, never to be seen again. The ruins allegedly lie somewhere beneath the sands of The Empty Quarter. The story "The City of Many-Columned Iram and Abdullah Son of Abi Kilabah" in One Thousand and One Nights introduced Iram/Ubar to the west.

In 1930 the British explorer Bertram Thomas, the first European to cross the Empty Quarter, heard tales of a lost city and learned of the location of a track somewhere in the region of Shisr which led to the legendary city of Ubar. He contacted T. E. Lawrence, always an enthusiast of the lost city theory, who suggested exploration by airship. Thomas was never able to return to Arabia.

For a long time Shisr was known merely as a ‘difficult well’, a place where to it took all day to water a herd of camels. Wilfred Thesiger visited in 1946 at the start of his first crossing of the Empty Quarter.

“We watered at Shisur (sic), where the ruins of a crude stone fort…mark the position of the famous well, the only permanent water in the central steppes….At the bottom of the large cave…was a trickle of water in a deep fissure…When we arrived…the water was buried under drifted sand and had to be dug out.” Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands, Penguin

Thesiger made no suggestion as to the age of the fort. I have read that he found some early Islamic pot shards there, but I can find no mention of this in Arabian Sands.

In 1948 a geological party from Petroleum Development (Oman and Dhofar) Ltd carried out a survey of south western Oman. They were unimpressed by Shisr noting “there are no houses, tents or people here: only the tumble-down ruin of this pre-Islamic fort.”

The 1948 survey did not have the benefit of satellite pictures, but amateur archaeologist Nicholas Clapp did and they brought him to Shisr in 1992. His excavation concluded that he had indeed found Ubar/Iram of the Pillars. Sir Ranulph Fiennes was a member of the expedition and in his book Atlantis of the Sands claimed they had discovered the site of Omanum Emporium known only from Ptolemy's 2nd century map of Arabia.

I have no expert knowledge, but in support of Clapp’s or Fiennes’ theory there is definitely something there and the Empty Quarter has been a desert of arid dunes for 7,000 years so no city worthy of the name could have existed for several hundred miles to the north.

On the other hand, the mention in the Qur’an is fleeting. Surah 89, The Dawn deals with the ‘law of opposites, light and darkness, rise and fall, as in nature, so in the lives of men and nations,’ and does so in terms which are opaque, at least to this uninitiated reader. Verses 6 to 13 (of 30) read

Have you not seen what your Lord did to the ‘Ad
Of Iram with lofty pillars erected as signs in the desert,
The like of whom were never created in the realm;
And with Thamud who carved rocks in the valley; And the mighty Pharoah
Who terrorised the region,
And multiplied corruption.
So your Lord poured a scourge of punishment over them.

Juris Zarins of Missouri State University, who is a professional archaeologist said in a 1996 interview "There's a lot of confusion about that word [Ubar]. If you look at the classical texts and the Arab historical sources, Ubar refers to a region and a group of people, not to a specific town. …it was only the late medieval version of One Thousand and One Nights…that romanticised Ubar and turned it into a city, rather than a region or a people."

A fort, though, undoubtedly existed at Shisr. As Wilfred Thesiger tells, the tribes who lived around the fringes of the Empty Quarter were notorious for camel raiding and blood feuds. They largely met (and fought) at wells. Maybe at some time in the past an ambitious ruler built a fort to ensure peace at the waterhole.

When it comes to ‘lost cities’ my instinct is towards scepticism.

Oman, Kingdom in the Desert

Part 1: Muscat, an Unusual Capital
Part 2: Sur and Turtles
Part 3: Wadi Bani Khalid and the Wahiba Sands
Part 4: Ibra, Birkat al-Mawz and the Jebel Akhdar
Part 5: Nizwa
Part 6: Bahla, Jabreen, al Hamra and the Jebel Shams
Part 7: Misfat Al Abriyyin, Wadi Bani Awf and Nakhl
Part 8: Salalah and the South Coast
Part 9: Salalah, the City
Part 10: To the Edge of the Empty Quarter