The Road to Ubar (36 page)

Line 6: "three idols, Sada, Hird, and Haba..."

Here we have a glimpse of the pagan Arabia that Hud decried, with its religion centered on a celestial trinity of moon, sun, and morning star.

Lines 11–18: "I saw coming out of my loins a white chain..."

Aside from this passage's rambunctiously sexual imagery, a chain in early Islam bespoke power and control. It was often associated with the execution of divine will, whether beneficent (as here, heralding Hud's conception) or vengeful (in hell sinners are not only wrapped in chains but skewered on them, to be "roasted on fire as 'kabob' is grilled on skillets"). Ibn Kathir quoted in Khawaja Muhammad Islam,
The Spectacle of Death
(Des Plaines, 111.: Kazi Publications, 1987), p. 301.

Line 25: "he was born on Friday."

Propitiously, Hud is born on the day of the week holy to Islam. The stage is set for a contest between adherents of many gods and a believer in one God.

Lines 33–44: "'My child,' she said, 'worship your god, for on the day I conceived you I saw many strange things.'"

Hud's mother recalls six wondrous signs, which offer a sampling of the folklore of ancient Arabia. The black rock miraculously turned white is an inversion of the tradition that the black rock set in the corner of Mecca's holy shrine (the Ka'aba) was once dazzlingly white, darkening only in the shadow of the sins of man. Symbolically, Hud can reverse this and lead his people out of darkness into the light.

There are other images of light and white. The people of the heavens have white faces; rays of light bless the infant Hud. Then, as a final and inspired touch, a pearl, which is normally white, appears as a sign on Hud's arm. But here this talisman is green, the color of Islam.

The giant man who lifts Hud's mother into the sky harks back to the tradition that the People of 'Ad were a race of giants. Here is an excellent example of the creative role of exaggeration in Arabian folklore. Where we might employ relatively unimaginative words such as "impressive" or "beyond belief," Arab storytellers would describe a city as encrusted with rubies and pearls, or add a few zeroes to a tribe's population. An idea that was beyond man's comprehension would be symbolized by a being that was beyond comprehension; in this case a vision of heaven is delivered by "a man whose head was in the sky and whose feet were in the vast expanses of the earth." And this giant is a little guy compared to Arabian visions of angels: Gabriel (who appears later in the tale) is traditionally described as having a thousand eyes, wings that cover the earth, and a face that radiates the light of a thousand suns. The point is that the beings who flank God in his heaven—to say nothing of God himself—are beyond measurement in human terms (and infinitely more imposing than squat stone idols).

***

Lines 26–27: "his mother saw him and asked, 'My son, whom are you worshipping?'..."

Lines 44–77: "When Hud was four years old God spoke to him..."

The prophet Hud's relationship with his God—and his people—is at first low-key. As a small child, he mildly rebukes idolatry by pointing out to his mother, "These idols bring neither harm nor profit ... Neither do they see or hear." They are useless blocks of rock. But then the situation escalates. Fired by a message from God, Hud challenges his people—and his king—to worship but a single God. He wins a few converts but otherwise is rebuked and cursed. He counters with a seventy-year series of warnings and threats. To no avail. Even when the wrath of God comes down upon the People of 'Ad, they turn a deaf ear to Hud, his chosen prophet.

Regrettably, this arc of character and story development probably has little to do with actual events at Ubar. Rather, it is about a different man in a different age. It is an extraordinary replication—rich in emotion and detail—of the early career of the prophet Muhammad. Confronting the malaise and materialism of the people of Mecca, Muhammad became increasingly frustrated and angry at their disbelief, only to have his own tribe, the Quraish, proclaim his Koran a forgery and reject him as an impostor. As he walked the streets of Mecca, he was showered with insults.

It was then that, like Hud, Muhammad took it upon himself to become a "warner." His sermons, in fact, repeatedly brought up the story of Iram/Ubar as a prime example of the fate God had in store for the Meccans. It was only when he was in Mecca that Muhammad delivered verses of the Koran dealing with the People of 'Ad. Agitated, intense, inspired, they have been called the "Terrific Suras."

It is a little confusing, but the dynamic here is three-tiered: our tale's Hud (described in the 1100s) is modeled on the prophet Muhammad (600s), who in turn equated himself with a historic Hud (150–500)!

During his years in Mecca, Muhammad would have had no problem likening himself to a Jewish prototype. It was only after he left Mecca and migrated to Medina that he had a serious falling-out with the Jews. Even then, he honored them as "the People of the Book," that is, the Old Testament.

Lines 98–133: "it was the custom, when a people was afflicted from heaven or from an enemy, to take an offering to the Sanctuary of the Ka'aba..."

In the Koran, there is no mention of a delegation from Ubar/Iram making a pilgrimage to Mecca. This has apparently been added to "bring home" the story by having the 'Ad, who gave the prophet Hud grief, travel to the city that gave the prophet Muhammad grief.

Here also is a glimpse of a pre-Islamic Meccan pilgrimage. The seventy chosen men enter the Sanctuary on jeweled she-camels, and there is a rite involving the draping of robes.

Line 104: "and their names were Qayl, Luqman..."

The inclusion of the name Luqman connects the Iram/Ubar story to a vast web of interrelated Arabian legends. Luqman, it is written elsewhere, was granted the lifespan of seven generations of captive vultures; he wanders the Middle East for 650 to 3,500 years (depending on what source you read and what the author considered a vulture's lifespan).

Our rawi's tale signals Luqman's very first, understated appearance. Unlike his fellow delegates to Mecca, he has nothing to say or do. In years and legends to come, he makes up for it. He appears in Arabian and African tales as a vagabond, a shepherd, a deformed slave, a tailor, a carpenter. He composes proverbs and fables. He has the intellect of a hundred men and is the tallest of all. He becomes vizier to King David, who considers himself fortunate and proclaims: "Hail to thee, thine is the wisdom, ours the pain!" He becomes a king himself, king of'Ad the Second, a realm equated with the city-state of Sheba. There he builds the Great Dam of Marib, which makes it onto several lists of "Wonders of the Ancient World." (Its monumental, ruined masonry is still to be seen.)

When the last of the vultures reared by Luqman finally falls off the perch, Luqman stirs him to fly again, but in vain. The bird dies, and Luqman with him. The name of this last vulture is Lubad—"Endurance."

What a life, what a sustained flight of fancy! Like a genie, a good character let loose is hard to put back in the bottle, and there is no telling what he'll become. This is not to say that a Luqman never existed, only that his early incarnations—as a desert vagabond or shepherd—may have been closer to the truth. (By the same token, Luqman's first Arabian haunt—Ubar—could have been a relatively modest settlement.)

Lines 121–129: "he sent them two slave-girls, called the Two Locusts, who were singers in his service..."

Pairs of singing girls were a staple of pre-Islamic entertainment. What's interesting here is that the Locusts are decidedly free-spirited (a contrast to the reclusive stereotype of women in Arabia today). With little inhibition, they mock their audience of out-of-towners.

***

Lines 149–173: "God's angel Gabriel said, 'O cloud of the Barren Wind, be a torment to the people of'Ad and a mercy to others!"'

With these words, a torrent of imagery is let loose. And here we can imagine a blind medieval rawi, on the steps of a Cairo mosque, building to his tale's apocalyptic climax. It is late in the evening. Merchants have shuttered their stalls, yet people are abroad, seeking the breeze that comes on the wings of night. They're drawn to the rawi, who melodramatically lowers his voice as he relates: "
On the first day, the wind came so cold and gray that it left nothing on the face of the earth unshattered.
" The eyes of little boys at his feet widen. The better to hear, the crowd presses in. "
On the second day there was a yellow wind that touched nothing it did not tear up and throw in the air.
" The rawi melodramatically pauses and gropes to light an oil lamp; its flicker eerily brings life to his lifeless eyes. "
On the third day a red wind left nothing undestroyed.
" He talks faster now, mimicking the cry of the defiant 'Adites: "
We are mightier than you, Lord of Hud!
" The rawi now shouts, louder than anyone could imagine, stunning his audience: "
The wind ripped them apart and went into their clothing, raised them into the air and cast them down on their heads, dead.
" The rawi's imagery is increasingly fervid, gruesome—and powerfully poetic. With grim finality the rawi seals his story: "
Sons and thrones are destroyed!
"

Looking on, shaking his head, the rawi's mukawwiz mutters "Iram, khalas"...Iram, finished. The crowd sighs in relief and appreciation. The blind rawi faintly smiles as the mukawwiz's cup rings with dinars.

This climactic passage is packed with derivations, allusions, and lore. For example, our writer-rawi was no doubt familiar with the prophet Muhammad's antipathy to arrows, which in pagan Arabia were instruments of both gambling and divination. So when the 'Adites defy God's wind by shooting arrows at it, "the wind snatched their arrows and drove them into their throats." And the bizarre-seeming notion that the wind entered Khuljan's "mouth and came out his posterior" reflects an Arabian belief—still heard today—that the body is hollow. The concept of dying from a face-ful of wind goes back to the
Enuma elish,
the Babylonian creation myth in which a wind is driven into the goddess Tiamat's mouth; it gruesomely distends and destroys her.

Considered as a whole rather than as the sum of its parts, this passage is the payoff of a powerful myth. In the vision of mythologist Joseph Campbell, the essential function of myth is to pull individuals into accord with the universe. In warning the 'Adites, that is exactly what the prophet Hud tries to do. They could not care less; they revel in materialism, ignoring God. If anything, they consider themselves
above
any cosmic order. With the end clearly in sight, the 'Adites still scream, "We are mightier than you, Lord of Hud!"

The response, of course, is: God is mightier than you. And He proves it, wiping the 'Adites from the face of the earth.

But not all of them. The tale takes pains to add that Hud and a number of his followers survive, so that (as Joseph Campbell would have it) they may pursue, unhindered and anew, an accord with the universe.

In the world of early and medieval Islam, the story arc of
sin, then warning, then more sin, then punishment
was by no means unique to "The Prophet Hud." When it came to moral weapons, Muhammad enthusiastically chose the fear of God. In the Koran, time and time again, he tells of prophets spurned and cities and civilizations consequently destroyed by an angry God. The pattern goes back to Adam, who in Islam is not only a progenitor but a prophet. Speaking from his own recent and humbling experience, Islam's Adam instructs mankind in the correct way to live. But mankind never quite gets the message—despite the bad end that comes to Sodom and Gomorrah, despite the onset of catastrophes foretold by Noah, Joseph, Hud, Saleh, even Jesus (Isa in Islam).

Lines 178–198: "Kaab al Ahbar said: One day I was in the Prophet's Mosque..."

Though the curtain has inexorably rung down on Ubar/lram, there is more to the story. Adhering to good dramatic form, the climax of "The Prophet Hud" is followed by an anticlimax, an epilogue that eases the reader (or listener) back to the present. Moreover, the reader is assured that indeed there was such a place as Ubar, such a prophet as Hud. The evidence offered is Hud's tomb in Yemen's valley of the Hadramaut.

To this day, Hud's tomb is the most popular pilgrimage site in southern Arabia. Throngs of pilgrims offer incense at "the opening through which a thin man may pass." And they know well the story of the wicked city that denied the message of God's apostle Hud. Ubar may have been wiped from the face of the earth, but it was not—and is not—forgotten.

Prologue

1. "When I had finished reading the book...," Rev. Mr. J. Cooper, trans.,
The Oriental Moralist or the Beauties of the Arabian Nights Entertainments
(Dover, N.H.: Printed by Samuel Bragg, Jr. for Wm T. Clap, Boston, 1797), p. i.

2. "That God holds you over the pit of hell...," Clarence H. Faust and Thomas H. Johnson, eds.,
Jonathan Edwards
(New York: American Book Co., 1935), p. 164.

3. "We set sail with a fair wind ...," "Exploring the town's fantastical palace ...," "It was about three years ago...," and "Since that time I have whipped them...," Cooper, "The Petrified City,"
Oriental Moralist,
pp. 163–74.

4. "The Arabs were an ignorant, savage and barbarous people...," J. Olney, A
Practical System of Modern Geography
(New York: Robertson, Pratt, 1835), p. 201.

1. Unicorns

1. "one horn in the middle of his forehead...," T. H. White,
The Book of Beasts: Being a translation from the Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1954), pp. 20–21.

2. The Sands of Their Desire

1. "right foul folk and cruel...," John Mandeville,
Mandeville's Travels,
vol. 1 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1953), p. 47; "The people generally are addicted...," William Lithgow,
The Totall discourse of the Rare Adventures and Painefull Peregrenations of a Long Nineteene Years Traveyles from Scotland to the Most Famous Kingdoms in Europe, Asia and Africa
(1612; reprint, Glasgow: J. MacLenose, 1906), p. 262.