This location is recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site.
Ubar's rulers became wealthy and powerful and its residents -- according to Islamic legend -- so wicked and debauched that eventually God destroyed the city, allowing it to be swallowed up by the restless desert. T. E. Lawrence called it "the Atlantis of the sands," and like the undersea Atlantis, many scholars doubted that Ubar even existed.
A few villas have been built since the discovery of this site in 1992. There couldn’t have been more than 10 villas there in total as well as a small mosque and a tiny convenience store.
It is estimated that it lasted from about 3000 BC to the 1st century AD. According to legends, it became fabulously wealthy from trade between the coastal regions and the population centers of the Arabic peninsula and Europe. The region became lost to modern history, and was thought to be only a figment of mythical tales. Some confusion exists about the word "Ubar". In classical texts and Arabic historical sources, Ubar refers to a region and a group of people, not to a specific town. Ptolemy's 2nd century map of the area shows "Iobaritae". It was only the late Medieval version of The One Thousand and One Nights, in the fourteenth or 15th century, that romanticized Ubar and turned it into a city, rather than a region or a people.
Ubar's rulers became wealthy and powerful and its residents -- according to Islamic legend -- so wicked and debauched that eventually God destroyed the city, allowing it to be swallowed up by the restless desert. T. E. Lawrence called it "the Atlantis of the sands," and like the undersea Atlantis, many scholars doubted that Ubar even existed.
A few villas have been built since the discovery of this site in 1992. There couldn’t have been more than 10 villas there in total as well as a small mosque and a tiny convenience store.
It is estimated that it lasted from about 3000 BC to the 1st century AD. According to legends, it became fabulously wealthy from trade between the coastal regions and the population centers of the Arabic peninsula and Europe. The region became lost to modern history, and was thought to be only a figment of mythical tales. Some confusion exists about the word "Ubar". In classical texts and Arabic historical sources, Ubar refers to a region and a group of people, not to a specific town. Ptolemy's 2nd century map of the area shows "Iobaritae". It was only the late Medieval version of The One Thousand and One Nights, in the fourteenth or 15th century, that romanticized Ubar and turned it into a city, rather than a region or a people.
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