Iram: Die Verlorene Stadt der Riesen - Das Atlantis des Sandes

In the autumn of 1930, the legendary British explorer Bertram Thomas set out on his most historic journey. He tried to become the first European to cross the terrifying Rub Al Khali, this unspeakable Arab desert, which is also known as the Empty Quarter. With an area of about 680,000 square kilometers, stretching through Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen in the south of the Arab peninsula, the Empty Quarter is larger than the country of France. The largest sand desert in the world in terms of volume, with 244-meter-high dunes that block the way of visitors. But if a European succeeded in crossing it, it was probably Bertram Thomas. Thomas was born in Somerset, England in 1892 and was sent to Mesopotamia during the First World War, where he quickly fell in love with the area and its inhabitants, and they fell in love with him. He fought on the side of the local armed forces and even became a high-ranking political advisor to the Sultan of Oman. He knew the area and what was coming to him. He knew how to survive. So on October 6, 1930, he set off with 25 Bedouin leaders from Salaha on the coast of Oman to begin his historical attempt. As he later described, they flew north over the Karra Mountains, about 914 meters high, through Weyrauchheine and from there into the great unknown steppe. In the next 59 days, Thomas was neither seen nor heard. In fact, his own government did not know where he was and what he was doing, and would probably have strictly forbidden him from attempting to do so, if they had known about it and had left it to Thomas to carry out the mission in secret. If things turned out to be the worst, there would be no rescue team. Finally, on February 5, 1931, Thomas appeared in Doha, Qatar, healthy and unharmed, and with an incredible prey from the desert in the Sleptau. On his way there, he had collected more than 400 scientific specimens, including 21 species that were new to Western science. But Thomas had not only brought scientific specimens from the desert. No, on his journey he had experienced something even more incredible, a story that had been told to him by his Bedouin leaders and passed on over generations. The story of an old lost city in the desert, hidden under the sand. In the words of one of the Bedouin leaders, Our fathers told us that it was a great city that existed from old age. A city full of treasures, with date gardens and a red-silver fortress. It is now buried under the sand, a few days north. Thomas had tried to cross the desert while he was dying, not to lose time and was not able to explore the lost city. And although he intended to return to discover them, he was never able to do so. However, he recorded the story in such a way that it was presented to him in his groundbreaking book, Arabia Felix, which quickly attracted the European audience. A man who was particularly in love with the lost desert city was none other than T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. To his friends, Lawrence wrote, I am convinced that the remains of an old Arab civilization can be found in this desert. I was told by the Arabs that the destroyed castles of the great king Aad, son of Kin Aad, were seen by wandering tribes in the region. There is always some substance in these Arab stories. Lawrence even planned to go into the desert and look for the lost city, but he never got the chance after he tragically died in a motorcycle accident in 1935. Before he died, Lawrence gave the mysterious city a nickname that stuck. He called it Atlantis of the Sands. Could this lost city really exist? An Atlantis of the Sands, which is just waiting to be discovered? In the Quran, there are records about an old tribe that historians and scholars have long confused. Known as the Aad, the tribe of an area called Iram. It did not appear in the texts of Judaism or Christianity. Strangely, since all three of these Abrahamic religions build on the same history and therefore mention the same old tribes and events, think of King Solomon, Moses and the Egyptian pharaoh, Noah and the flood of sin and so on. They are all in the holy books of all three traditions, but not the Aad. It is best known that the tribe appears in the Quran when Muhammad warns the unbelievers. Have you not thought about how your Lord with Aad, the tribe of Iram, was killed, who had high pillars, whose like were not produced in the whole country? Many scholars have asked why the Aad of Iram would not have been mentioned elsewhere if they really constructed things whose like was not produced in the whole country. Was the Aad really there? And if so, what happened to them? The Quran gives an extraordinary answer to this second question. According to the Quran, the Aad of Iram was a tribe that existed after the flood of Noah on the Arabian Peninsula. There they built a mighty kingdom and used their enormous wealth and their expertise to build monuments on all heights and to build palaces as if they would live forever. They were not afraid to make their power known to their neighbors and to evilly conquer many on the peninsula, as the Quran says about the Aad, And when he conquers, he conquers like tyrants. But this enormous power led to arrogance. The people of Iram became idolaters and evil. That was the Aad. They denied the signs of their Lord, were disobedient to His messengers and followed the orders of every rebellious tyrant. For this reason, Allah sent the Prophet Hud to warn the people of Iram to swear their evil ways. But the people of Iram were unmoved. In an attempt to convince the Aad that Hud spoke the truth, Allah sent a terrible drought that searched for Iram's home. At its peak, Hud cursed the Aad, but they still did not want to hear. Finally, the Aad saw a cloud formation approaching Iram and believed that the rain had finally come, that they had been saved. How much they were confused. When they then saw the torment as a dense cloud approaching their valleys, they happily said, This is a cloud that brings us rain. But Hud replied, No, it is what you were looking for to speed up. A violent wind that bears a painful punishment. These clouds did not bring rain, but a sandstorm. And the result was catastrophic. As the Quran describes, And as far as the Aad is concerned, they were destroyed by a furious, bitter wind, which Allah let go of them for seven nights and eight days without interruption, so that they would see their people lying there dead, like trunks of rooted palms. Do you see how one of them survived? And so the story of the Aad of Iram ends. Their fate, their city, according to the Quran, extinguished by a sandstorm, buried under the desert sand, as if they never existed. The question that many scholars ask themselves is whether this story is only a rhetorical means, an allegory, which is intended as a not quite so disguised threat against the departure of God, or whether there really could be the remains of an old, once mighty kingdom, which could be buried under the Arabian sand. At least one thing is certain. While the Aad of Iram may not exist in the other Abrahamic traditions, the Quran is not the only place where their story is told. During the ninth century AD, the earliest copy of what was to become one of the most popular and long-lived books in the world was put together in Syria. It was supposed to bring together the earliest myths and folk tales of Persia in an extraordinary composition, which was supposed to be known as Alf-Layalah wa-Layalah, Thousand and One Nights. The basic premise of the book was simple. A Persian king discovered that his wife was unfaithful and had her executed. He then married a number of young women, but had them executed each morning after the wedding, before they had the opportunity to become unfaithful. Finally, the king married a woman named Scheherazade, who told him an incredible story during the night of their wedding, which she did not finish. The next morning, the king, who desperately wanted to hear the end of the story, did not let Scheherazade finish the story. That night, she finished the story and then started another one. This happened every night. Each of the stories she told represented an old Persian myth, until the king, after Thousand and One Nights, decided to spare her life and the two lived happily until the end of their days. After its original creation in the 9th century, the composition of the book grew and expanded over the years, based on the religious and political climate of the time. In the late 9th and 10th centuries, stories from Iraq were added. In the 13th century, stories from Egypt and Syria were added. While this was continued century after century, the book became a kind of living piece of history of the myths and stories of the Middle East. The book was finally published in Europe in 1704, first in French and then, after its popularity exploded, before the end of the 18th century, in English, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish and Russian. It is still printed all over the world today and contributes to our modern understanding of the history of the region. There is a story in Thousand and One Nights that deserves special attention. The story of a man named Abdallah bin Ali Kaliba. In the story, he goes out into the desert in search of his lost camel, whereupon he discovers an incredibly abandoned city. I got off and pulled my drum behind me and entered the city. When I got to the castle, I noticed that it had two huge gates. Nowhere in the world has this size been seen, which were decorated with all kinds of precious stones and hyacinths, white, red, yellow and green. When I saw this, I was stunned and thought it was a miracle. Then I entered the citadel in a fluttering fear and, taken by surprise and horror, I found it long and wide. And there were high palaces in pavilions, all built of gold and silver, with colorful jewels and hyacinths and chrysalises and pearls. And the door panels in the pavilions were as beautiful as those of a castle and their floorboards were covered with large pearls and balls, not smaller than hazelnuts made of moss, amber and saffron. When I came to the heart of the city and did not see any created beings of the sons of Adam, I was powerless and died of fear. I also looked down from the large roofs of the pavilion chambers and their balconies and saw rivers flowing beneath them, and in the main streets there were trees loaded with fruit and tall palms. And this way of building was a brick of gold and one of silver. So I said to myself, this is undoubtedly the promised paradise for the coming world. As he returned from the lost city, Abdullah immediately tried to inform the local government officials about his incredible discovery, by describing to them in detail the incredible things he had seen and even showed them some of the pearls and balls made of moss and amber and saffron. The officials, astonished by the story but skeptical, sent for another man, an expert in such things, and asked him if he had ever heard of such a great city. To which he immediately replied, Yes, O Commander of the Faithful. This is Iran, with adorned and illuminated pillars, as it was never done before in the countries, and the builder was Shaddad, son of Aad the Great. The man then talked to Abdullah and the officials about the story of the mighty king Shaddad in his city of Iran of the pillars. Shaddad ruled alone over the earth. Now he liked to read in ancient books, and when he accidentally came across the description of the future world and paradise with its pavilions and pillars and trees and fruits and so on, his soul moved him to build them in this world according to the same pattern. Now there were 100,000 kings under his control. Everyone ruled over 100,000 tribal leaders. Everyone commanded 100,000 warriors. So he called them all before him and said to them, I find in ancient books and inscriptions a description of paradise, as it should be in the next world, and I would like to build something like that in this world. For many years they worked to build this city of paradise for their almighty ruler, until they finally went to the king and told him that his city was ready. But before the mighty king could even reach the city, a catastrophe occurred. Shaddad set off with his host and was happy about the fulfillment of his wish until only one day's journey between him and Iran of the pillars remained. Then Allah sent on him and the stubborn unbelievers with him a mighty roar from the sky of his power, which destroyed them all with its vehement cry. And neither Shaddad nor anyone from his group saw the city. In addition, Allah extinguished the road that led to the city and it stands unchanged in its place. Before Shaddad could enjoy the prey of his paradise created on earth, he and his city were destroyed and lost forever in the Arabian sand. In more detail, it seems that the story of Abdullah bin Ali Kaliba, the story of the kind of Iran, is confirmed and expanded in the Qur'an. Could there really be not only a lost city buried under the sand of the Arabian desert, but also a lost city with unimaginable wealth, a lost paradise? For years, even centuries, many scholars claimed that the legendary lost city of Iran was not real, but merely a product of religious allegories and fantasy fictions. That is, until everything changed in the 1970s. In 1964, an archaeologist from the University of Rome named Paolo Mattie found a mission to a place in northern Syria, an area called Mardikh, about 56 kilometers southwest of Aleppo. In the first years, Mattie and his team found only a few scattered fragments in the city, which encouraged them to continue digging. In 1968, the long-awaited breakthrough finally came. This year, they discovered a statue dedicated to the goddess Eshtar, which bore an old inscription, which read, Ebit-Lim, King of Ebla. This was a breathtaking find. Ebla was the name of a city that was spoken of in the texts of the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians and Akkadians, but which has never been identified in modern times. Mattie and his team recognized the significance of the discovery and slowly continued the excavations in the city over a period of years and uncovered numerous temples, walls, gates and other impressive buildings from which the city of Ebla once consisted. What happened next, however, would put everything they had found before in the shadows. In 1974, Mattie and his team removed debris from an old palace when they discovered 42 clay tablets, which apparently were part of a kind of palace archive. As it turned out, this was just the beginning. There, underground, many thousand clay tablets were neatly stored in shelves, which had collapsed in a fire that seemed to have destroyed the palace. The fire, it seemed, was a stroke of luck for archaeologists and historians, as it had preserved the clay tablets as if they were in a stove. The tablets even contained catalogue labels made of clay for identification. In total, archaeologists discovered about 17,000 tablets and fragments that contained an inexhaustible treasure of information about the then city of Ebla and the surrounding region. The most incredible thing was that the tablets contained detailed information about the neighbors and business partners of Ebla, including Damascus, Gaza, Byblos, Lebanon and the Qananita, the historical information behind the scenes about these places at that time, about kingdoms and civilizations that existed, but never in this detail. In the opinion of many, it was one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. One of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. was the city of Iram. The tablets referred to it as the legendary Iram, the city of towers, which apparently confirmed that Iram, which had high pillars in the Koran and had a palace in 1001 nights, actually existed. The tablets describe Iram as a place of black magic and worship, and seem to confirm Iram's alleged evil ways in both books. After archaeologists had denied his existence for so long, they had found tangible evidence for Iram for the first time. The question is, if there is evidence that Iram existed, where is it now? What happened to it and could it really have been buried under sand? Ebla was once a lost city that has now been found. Could we do the same with Iram? In 1948, a geological group of Petroleum Development from Oman carried out a survey in the vast, desolate area of the empty district, in the province of Dhofar of the country, when they came across something extremely strange. As they approached the old oasis Shishir, they noticed something in the distance that they first thought was a large white cliff. When they came closer, they realized that it was not a cliff at all, but a wall of a destroyed fortress, which sat over a stone-like cave and led down into the darkness of the earth. The prayer for this fort was completely abandoned, which caused the geologists to ask whether and when the area had been a population center that a fort justified and what had happened with it. But because they did not have any modern archaeological equipment and they were more concerned with fetching water from Shishir's old well on their difficult journey through the desert, they did not go into further detail about this fort, but simply noted it down and moved on. Interestingly, Bertram Thomas, on his own journey through the empty district in the years 1930 to 1931, stopped at the Shishir Oasis himself and actually made a note of a red fort at the same place. However, his travel guides had told him that the fort had only been built by a local sheikh a few hundred years ago, and so Thomas, like the geologists of Petroleum Development Limited, simply made a note and moved on. So was this fortress really only a few hundred years old or much older? The question remained unanswered, the mystery unsolved, for more than 40 years. Nikolaus Klepp was a writer, filmmaker and amateur archaeologist who became known in the early 1990s as a self-proclaimed crazy idea that changed archaeology forever. As a young man, Klepp fell in love with the idea of ​​a lost city under the Arabian sand, after reading Bertram Thomas's Arabia Felix. When he reached adulthood, Klepp decided that where Thomas had not managed to return to the area to find the city, he would take up the horses and be successful. But first came the crazy idea. In the early 1980s, Klepp called NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, a place famous for its satellite radar images. Klepp asked the scientist on the phone a simple, if not unanswered question. If a city were buried in the desert, could you see it with the radar? Somehow, Klepp convinced NASA scientists not only that he was not crazy, but to take his idea seriously. In fact, they agreed to scan the empty district with a special radar system that could detect sand, lakes and geological features under the surface during its next shuttle radar flight in 1984. During the use of the images obtained during this flight, Klepp and Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists noticed something amazing. An extensive network of ancient trade routes stretched across the entire region and the empty district. Roads on which hundreds of thousands of traveling camels had pushed the earth's surface, which was now hidden under sand. Klepp was convinced that these ancient trade routes were the secret of a city lost in the sand. He suspected that where these trade routes ran together, there were old population centers. The trade centers along a trade route. And in fact, when he looked closer, he saw that a large number of these old roads ran together at the same place. The Shisir Oasis. Armed with this information, Klepp took the services of an American archaeologist named Jurius Zarens and a British researcher named Sir Ronald Fiennes into account and together they set out to the area to find out what was going on. When the team started digging, they knew almost immediately that they had come across something. At first they noticed that the locals, the Bertram Thomas, had said that Shisir's fortress was only a few hundred years old. The fortress was only a few centuries old. Except it was built on the ruins of something much, much older. When they started excavating, they discovered the remains of a large ancient settlement, which they remarkably dated to an age of almost 5,000 years. In the center of this old settlement was something really spectacular. There was a huge and imposing permanent fortress that was surrounded by eight walls, each of which was about 3 to 3.60 meters high and 18 meters long. At each corner of the fortress stood a massive tower with a diameter of about 3 meters and a height of 9 meters. Based on what they found in this fortress, they found a royal residence for the king, a processing and storage facility for the ancient city and a recording center for an ancient trading center. But there was more. As they continued their work, archaeologists discovered what had become of this once flourishing settlement. It seemed as if the city had been built on a limestone cave, before the weight of the city eventually caused it to fall into a huge earth hole, which destroyed the city and buried it forever under the sand. As much as it hurt, the archaeologists had to admit that the parts of the city that had disappeared in this earth hole had probably been lost forever, so that they could only ask and speculate which other secrets could be revealed if they were only able to retrieve the irreversible. But for Nicholas Klepp, no further discoveries were necessary. He believed that the riddle had been solved. Here was a mighty old economic center, marked by imposing towers. Far beyond what was technically possible at the time. Destroyed by a catastrophic event and buried under sand. For Klepp, this could only mean one thing. That the lost city of Iran had finally been found. Reynold Fiennes agreed and wrote a book in 1992, in which it was claimed that the long-standing riddle had been solved. The book was titled Atlantis of the Sands. Could this really have been the long-lost city of Iran? Was it found? And if so, which other untold treasures of the once mighty city could have been lost deep underground? And which other old secrets could have been solved or revealed? Could it have been gold or jewels of Iran's paradise on earth that is described in Thousand and One Nights? Or things that were not produced all over the country, as described in the Quran? Or could it even be something more? One day in 2004, a neurologist and amateur archaeologist named Abdallah al-Said with a hobby group led by him, was walking through the lava fields of Khaybar in Saudi Arabia. When he discovered an unusual stone wall about one meter high. Although perhaps strange, he did not think much about it at the time. Only in 2008 did new and emerging technologies completely change his view of the situation. With the help of Google Earth, which was only available in general at the time, al-Said was able to recognize the true extent of these strange structures in the area, which he called gates. There were not one, not two or three, not even dozens, but hundreds of them, which were spread over a huge area. As he described them, I was literally speechless and could not sleep that night. Like a bird, I flew over the whole Harad, from one enigmatic structure to the next. How is it that we passed these structures without appreciating their design? These structures would require a deeper investigation than he can afford. So al-Said sent the photos he had taken from Google Earth to David Kennedy, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia and a man who had documented 40 years of stone buildings and tombs on the Arabian Peninsula. Over the next decade, Kennedy searched and documented these stone gates and finally reported in 2017 that he and his team had discovered about 400 of the structures stretching over several hundred to several thousand meters in length, some up to nine meters thick. Despite his long-standing experience, Kennedy was speechless about the purpose of these huge structures. In his words, they do not look like buildings in which people lived, nor do they look like animals or to dispose of corpses. It is a mystery what their purpose could have been. Until 2021, the mystery had only deepened when researchers reported that on an area of almost 259,000 square kilometers they had discovered over 1,000 of the structures they now called Mustatil, the Arabic word for rectangle. It is even more astonishing that archaeologists dated the buildings to an age of over 7,000 years, which makes them older than Stonehenge. The more Mustatils were found, the more amazed the archaeologists became. Why were these buildings there, they asked. And why were some of them clearly visible, while others seemed almost hidden? In addition, how could people of the old age communicate how these imposing buildings were built over such great distances? And how did they manage to build some on the sides of mountains and volcanoes? It is certainly an archaeological mystery, but on the other hand, it is only one of a growing number of archaeological mysteries that have emerged in the region in recent years. For example, look at the huge stone circle that was found on the Golan Heights in 2015 and was found to be just as old as Stonehenge. There are actually five circles consisting of huge stones between about 2 and 2.5 meters in height. In Hebrew, it is known as the wheel of giants, and perhaps for good reason. With a diameter of over 150 meters, it is almost twice as large as Stonehenge. David Kennedy points out that similar large circles were found in the entire region, all with a similar appearance, too close to be a coincidence. Who could have built these massive stone circles, and why? Or look at the old grave roads found in 2022, which stretch for thousands of kilometers across the Arabian Peninsula. Old corridors that connect oases and meadows and are lined with thousands of grave monuments. What old civilization could have created these old superhighways that stretch for so many thousands of kilometers? According to an archaeologist who works in the region, the archaeological finds from these regions have the potential to fundamentally change our understanding of the early history of the Middle East. But how? Some have an answer. According to others, an explanation for these huge stone structures, buried cities and stretched roads, which were discovered on the Arabian Peninsula, can be found where the secret of the lost city of Iran began. On the pages of the Quran. There, the species of Iran is not only described as a powerful tribe with imposing pillars and economic power, but as a huge and powerful individual, big enough to root out trees with bare hands and throw houses into the mountains. Who is more powerful than we in strength? The species asks. Perhaps their gigantic stature allowed them not only to build the paradisiacal city of Iran, but also the huge stone structures and long distances, which can be found on the Arabian Peninsula through deserts, on hills and in lava fields. Although the species of Iran does not appear in the holy Jewish or Christian scriptures, they sound more interesting than those that occur there. The Nephilim. In the book of Genesis, the Nephilim are mysterious beings of enormous size and strength, who are described as descendants of the sons of God and the daughters of men. Giants who are so big that the people in their presence became like scarecrows in our eyes, and so we were in their eyes. Could the Nephilim have been the species of Iran? The connection continues and becomes more mysterious. Genesis describes the Nephilim as mighty men of old. In Islam there is a group of old deities called Jinn, who are also known as the old ones. Like the Nephilim, the Jinn are said to have planted themselves with the people, and according to some, it was these Jinn that built the city of Iran. Interestingly, the old Arabic word for pillar, like in Iran der Säulen, has a different meaning. Old. Was Iran der Säulen really the city of the old? And was the species of Iran really the Jinn? In addition, the huge stones in Mustatil, which can be found on the Arabian Peninsula, the local Bedouin tribes, are known as the works of the old men. Could these massive stone structures and perhaps the old superhighways that connect them really have been built by these old men? These old giants, which in the Abrahamic traditions are called the Jinn, the species of Iran, and the Nephilim? To answer these questions, you may have to look outside the official canon of the Abrahamic religions for another ancient holy book. One that tells such a dramatic story that it was banished from the Christian Bible. It is known as the book of Henoch. If you want to know what this book about ancient giants and the history not only of the Arabian Peninsula, but of humanity itself, you can watch our video about the book of Henoch. And if you want to learn more about giants, we have a whole documentary film that shows dozens of old newspaper articles that talk about the discovery of giants, together with many stories of historical personalities who meet giants in remote places. The link is in the pinned comment above and in the description. Thank you for watching. If you liked the video, please click on like. If you are new here, please subscribe to the channel and click on the bell to not miss anything in the future.