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 ha
ve 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.
Curer: "Djinn, will you remove the evil from the eye?"
Djinn: "Yes."
Curer: "Djinn, swear that you will remove it."
Djinn (its hold lost, its voice choking): "Eh, eh."
Curer: "Be gone!"
Djinn: no answer.
With a sweep of his dirty, blood-stained robe, the curer turned to the assembled and proclaimed, "It has fled. The djinn has fled." The afflicted pulled off his blindfold and began to wobble away, only to be followed, tapped 011 the shoulder, and reminded, "Gold binds fast the djinn."
Riding on a few paces and dismounting, Khuljan entered Ubar's temple compound. It was as much a house of commerce as a house of the gods. Storerooms and corridors were stacked with sacks of frankincense. Where safer to store it? The temple's garrulous kahin pointed out to the king the measures that belonged to various merchants and those belonging to the temple. Khuljan had the previous year upped the temple's share of the trade from a tenth to a quarter of a caravan's load. The merchants had grumbled and whined, but, as they themselves often said, "The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on."
We may never know exactly what went on in any temple of ancient Arabia, let alone that of the Ubarites. The identity, nature, and ranking of gods is conflicting and uncertain. It's a mystery which were male and which were female. Temples may have been staffed by regimented orders of priests and priestesses, or they may have been the haunt of soothsayers, even witches.
In Ubar's temple, Khuljan proceeded to a large plastered basin filled with water fresh from the Shisur spring.5 With a ritual ablution, he purified himself, then mounted the stair to the airless dark sanctuary, the holy of holies, where the gods of his people dwelt in squat stone blocks. These may have been roughly squared off and given suggestions of eyes and mouths, or they may have been uncut. The names of the principal deities of the 'Ad have been mythically reported to be the trio of Sada, Hird, and Haba or the quartet of Sada, Salimah, Raziqah, and Hafizun. Whatever their names, Khuljan would have circled them, chanting an invocation, obsequiously addressing them as masters of Ubar, masters of lands remote and near.
Khuljan was wary of his gods. They, like djinns, could inflict mischief and misery if they were angry, so they had to be kept happy. Sometimes public ceremonies were called for, accompanied by the blood sacrifice of goats and sheep. Today it was sufficient to anoint the stones with oil and offer a burner of frankincense.
As gods brought grief, they also brought benefits. Along with their proper names, they were known as "the rain bringer," "the food-giver," "the savioress," and "the healer." Properly flattered, they would grant benefits in exchange for ritual attention. This year they were in Khuljan's debt, for had he not renovated and enlarged their temple?
This day Khuljan needed a single answer, from the savioress. What should he do about the tribute demanded by the Persians? Was it worth it? Could the 'Ad stand up for themselves? He called for the arrows. The kahin came running with a goatskin bag containing three arrows, each of which had a name: "the enjoiner," "the forbidder," and "the vigilant." The arrows had no heads or feathers, but on one was written "My Lord has commanded me." Another was inscribed "My Lord has forbidden me." The third said nothing. At the king's order the kahin shuffled the arrows and mumbled, averting his eyes from Khuljan, "May you be happy with prosperity and esteem and blessings and—"6
Khuljan cut him off as he reached into the bag and withdrew a single arrow. He turned the shaft in his fingers. It was blank. He dropped it back into the bag. The kahin again shuffled the arrows. Khuljan drew again. It was the same arrow, blank. The king's jaw tightened; his eyes narrowed.
The kahin trembled as he shuffled the arrows a third time. He well remembered the time that Khuljan had asked the gods whether to avenge a cousin killed in a dispute over a camel. The king had drawn "the forbidder." Flying into a rage, he had flung the arrow at a sacred stone block and shouted, "You would avenge your cousin! Bite your cousin's zibb!" Later, though, Khuljan came to his senses, begged forgiveness, and took the unusual step of sacrificing a prize camel in honor of the god that dwelt in the offended rock.
The king withdrew the arrow on which was written "My Lord has commanded me." The soothsayer let out a sigh of relief and said, "The gods know best." Khuljan said nothing and left the temple. He chose to walk rather than ride to the knoll
beyond the fortress, where his royal tent was pitched.
Once, centuries before, the religion of the 'Ad may have been more meaningful: it may have had an aura of wandering shepherds reaching for the stars. Once, a temple and its rites may have symbolized the world and its destiny, offering a glimpse of eternity. But no longer.7 Khuljan and his people were haunted by djinns and consumed by superstition. The gods in their dark chamber were irrational, crass, greedy. Truth be told, Khuljan cared more for his horse.
As it does in the desert, darkness came quickly to Ubar. One by one, oil lamps flickered to life in the king's tent, lit by his fool. The envoy recently returned from Persia awaited Khuljan, nodding gravely as the king announced that the requested tribute would be sent. The gods had ordained it. The envoy thought this prudent and wise, even if the Persian demand was usurious. He had seen for himself the might of Artaxerxes and the splendor of his new palace being built at Susa. It had an oven that could bake an entire ox or camel, so it could be served up whole at dinner. The envoy spoke of what it took and meant to be a Persian king: "an excess of greed, corrupt force, bold daring, momentary success."
Khuljan and his envoy went on to discuss the increasingly complex alliances and enmities of the People of 'Ad. This was not the first mission for the envoy. With his camel stick, he drew a map in the sand and pointed out the territories of rival and friendly kingdoms (see the map on [>]).
In the half of Arabia beholden to the Persians, the envoy noted that the Gerrhans were pirates by sea and brigands by land. Yet the 'Ad were on good terms with them; they were active trading partners. The Rhambanians were a no-account tribe with a puffed-up king. And the people of the Persian Gulf Island of the Two Springs were too distant to matter.
The Road to Ubar Page 21