Things to see and do Shisr

Unlike the remains of the ancient port cities of Al Balid (5 kilometers from downtown Salalah) and Sumhuran (about 30 kilometers away), both of which are quickly accessible by car, the site of Shisr, found about 180 kilometers north in the sands of the Rub al-Khali, is a semi-expedition in its own right that requires a 4x4, a good GPS.. and, if possible, a certain amount of imagination, or a sufficiently developed fantasy to virtually recompose, from a handful of remains, what the city could have been.

In the heart of the great emptiness, along the roads and tracks, the access road is, in itself, a powerful experience. We know that there is nothing visible or almost on the ground, but we know that there is something underneath: more than 2 000 years of history, discovered almost by chance at the beginning of the Nineties while the British explorer Ranulph Fiennes excavates the ruins of a fortification of the XVIth century. Photos taken in 1983 by the Columbia spacecraft clearly showed several traces of destroyed cities all along the incense route. Researchers then used data from satellites equipped with ground-penetrating radar and NASA's Landsat, as well as the Spot satellite, to identify the ancient camel routes and their points of convergence. Approaching the goal without convincing everyone, documentary filmmaker Nicholas Clapp made the front page of the Times and published The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands. It is this same Nicholas Clapp who, during the excavations, put forward the idea that the destruction and thus the end of the city would have been caused by the repeated work of the underground water table which would have ended up generating the collapse of the limestone cavities on which the fortress had been built.

The archaeological remains are in fact located near a large dome of collapsed limestone, sheltering a cave where a perpetual spring flows. According to the Omani Antiquities Department, the site covers a total area of 0.36 hectares. A wall 90 cm thick, in the shape of an irregular pentagon, encircles a central complex on a rocky outcrop. It is reinforced at regular intervals by short buttresses of similar dimensions. The remains of two towers at the northeast and southwest corners, which are part of the original construction, can also be seen, as well as two horseshoe-shaped towers that were incorporated later. The wall has partly disappeared due to the collapse of the underlying limestone. Wall stumps indicate that the enclosure was divided into two parts, the smaller of which was located in the northwest corner. It was dominated by a large building, oriented towards the points of the compass, according to what may be a tradition in southern Arabia. This building underwent several alterations and modifications in the Middle Ages, which would suggest that the site was occupied until the 14th century. The larger enclosure has not been archaeologically studied, but traces of several structures are discernible.

Archaeologists associate these remains with the ancient city of Ubar, which refers to the city mentioned in the Qur'an as Iram, although its exact identity is unknown. It is also mentioned in two stories from the Arabian Nights which describe it as a place of great splendor, adorned with precious materials and surrounded by lush gardens... According to the legend, God decided to punish the inhabitants of Ubar, whose wealth had become such that it encouraged them to a depraved lifestyle, and made the city disappear under the sand. At the time of its splendor, in the heart of the incense trade, all the caravan routes converged there. Unearthed from the sand, the fortress reveals little by little its mysteries. It seems to have been built around 150 BC. Numerous objects were found near the site: tools, pottery, ceramics, an incense burner, some jewels, a thousand-year-old soapstone chess set, etc. So many secrets still... The diversity of their origins attests to the commercial vocation of the region and its relations with outside peoples: Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. The study of these vestiges seems to show however that the site was known well before the construction of the city and probably occupied more than 5000 BC. This theory deserves respect when we know that the inhabitants of Dhofar started to exploit incense more than 8,000 years ago. The trade of this precious gum, transported from Oman to Sumer, Bahrain and Iraq by boat, played a very important role in the relations between the regions of the Arab world and the civilizations of Asia and Africa.

Since 1995, the site of Ubar is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The entrance is free and the visit can be completed by the visit of the museum, where the objects discovered near the fortress are exposed. For more information and excitement, read Fiennes' gripping account, Atlantis of the Sands: The Search for the Lost City of Ubar.

The question of whether the site is worth the trip from Salalah does not arise, as this place is the product of its own legend, a concentrate of dreams of lost cities and the object of desire of every explorer.