Iram indeed is gone with all its rose, And Jamsheed’s seven-ringed cup where no one knows; But still the vine her ancient ruby yields, And still a garden by the water blows. (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. E. Fitzgerald)
The Key to Many-Columed Iram
Long ago in medieval Yemen, northeast of the ruins of fallen Shabwa, that entrepôt which the Graeco-Roman chroniclers called Sabota, a village by the name of Bayt Qahtan stood atop a low mountain that fronted the arid wastes of South Arabia. The mountain fell in terraces that were buttressed and fortified by walls of buff-colored stone.
Frankincense, myrrh, dates, pomegranates, and exotic herbs and spices (many of which have since become extinct), were cultivated on the mountain’s fertile slopes. When those fierce storms native to the region washed away the paths that linked the gardens and orchards to the village, the inhabitants of Bayt Qahtan laughed and shrugged, and set about repairing the damage.
In the village lived a beautiful woman named Bilqis, who belonged to the tribe of the Ahbash, those Abyssinians who traced their lineage to the generals and governors of the Axumite kings, who, in the years before the advent of Islam, had waged incessant war against the Persian Empire for control of the riches of the Hadramawt.
Bilqis was blessed with a doting husband who served as the village imam. Together they had raised five children whom they taught to harvest the yield and ready the bales for the seasonal caravans that took the mountain’s produce to faraway lands in the west, north, and east.
One morning, while walking down to the lower terraces, Bilqis saw heaped on the path before her the papery exuviae of hundreds of desert snakes. This had not been there the previous day. As she puzzled over this phenomenon, a sudden breeze blew the skins away and made a sound like the hissing of adders.
She turned to flee, but it was too late. Black-veiled men sprang from behind the rocks and seized her, carrying her off to the bottom of the mountain, where twenty Arabian steeds were tethered.
The women of Bayt Qahtan ululated from the white parapets, as the village gates were shut. Some had witnessed the abduction of Bilqis; and now they watched in dread as the storehouses on the lower slopes were ransacked. Since none knew whether the attackers were an isolated band or a vanguard of a larger force, the notables and sheikhs directed all accesses to the village sealed until the next day.
Falling to their knees, Bilqis’s children wept. But her husband did not grieve, since he knew that his wife was resourceful, and that Allah was swift to punish the unrighteous.
The thieves rode northwest, stopping at a well, which had (in former times) been a source of fresh water, until an evil hag had cast a handful of enchanted peppercorns into it. These sank to the well’s bottom and cracked open its base, opening a portal to the netherworld, from which the voices of shayatin (devils) could be heard chittering and cachinnating when the moon was full.
In bygone days, a sandstone cave in a hill close by had served as a halting place for weary travelers sojourning at the well. The cave’s walls and ceiling were still black from the soot of ancient Bedouin fires.
Bilqis refused to look or speak to her captors, who had bound her wrists and feet, but had neither gagged her mouth nor covered her eyes.
The thieves’ leader looked anxiously to the north, where a dark churning sandstorm was advancing in their direction. He commanded his men to tie the prisoner to a splintered crossbeam that had been used for lowering leather buckets into the well.
“We shall sacrifice this woman to the Ifrit who holds the reins of that monstrous zawba’ah (whirlwind), which even now approaches. Once you have secured her, bring the horses into the cave.”
“Great is Allah,” Bilqis said, “and greatly to be praised.” She laid herself on the ground at the foot of the well and waited to die.
But the next morning, she awoke and saw that the storm had passed; and that the leather thongs which had bound her feet and wrists had been gnawed away by the winds. She arose and went to the cave.
The thieves and their horses were dead. The sandstorm had abraded the flesh from their bones. White skeletons were all that remained. She could find neither water nor food in the cave, so she stepped outside and looked around. To the north, where the sandstorm had been, a thick roiling cloud the color of an overripe citron obscured hundreds of lofty towers and cupolas, which loomed over the shifting sands.
She walked a thousand paces from the well to the double door, which served as the city’s entrance. Each fold of the door was as wide as the village of Bayt Qahtan. Bilqis extended her hand to touch it; and when she did this, the folds swung inward in silence; and a fragrant exudation poured out of the city’s rosy interior.
She crossed the threshold into a vestibule, where the air was cool and where the burbling of water could be heard from the marble fountains all around. She slaked her thirst from a scalloped basin, and contemplated the lambent mists, which wreathed the slender columns that seemed to extend forever in front of her and rise into the very heavens above.
Everything inside the city seemed much larger than it had appeared from the outside.
She saw an archway, the edges of which were carved with arabesques, and passed through it. Looking down, she gasped in amazement. It was as though she trod on the surface of the sea. Beneath her, vast canyons plunged to unfathomable depths. The walls of this submarine world were ribbed with flaming coral. Rubies glittered and flashed from the many veins and crevices that cut through the gorgeous steeps. The sea lacked only waving fauna and fishes to give it life.
It was only then that Bilqis realized that she was not standing on water but on a floor made of translucent diamond; and that what she had thought had been a seascape was actually a work of art that served no apparent purpose other than to enchant the eye.
For hours she wandered through the city’s courts and corridors, which were suffused by chromatic mists that thinned to disclose one marvel after another. She came to a ceremonial chamber, richly appointed and hung with fluttering crimson curtains. Intricate punched lanterns depended from slender chains of brass.
Suddenly, the robes that lay puddled on the carpet before her floated up and filled with smokeless fire and transformed into an assembly of jinn servitors, all of whom bowed low to Bilqis.
Their leader spoke: “Know, O Queen, that you are in the fabled city of many-columned Iram. Around your neck is a chain that holds a key, which will unlock any door in the city except the one through which you entered.”
“I do not belong here,” Bilqis said. “I want to see my family.”
“You will see them.”
“When?”
“When the iron wall erected by Dhu-l-Qarnayn (He of Two-Horns) is breached, and the armies of Gog and Magog overrun the plains.”
“That will not be until the Last Days!”
“And until the Last Days, you shall abide with us.”
“I want to go home.”
“This is your home, O Queen.”
Bilqis abandoned the chamber and fled from the palace, crossing many bridges and passing through scores of marbled lanes, until a sumptuous mosque rose before her. She entered it and prayed to Allah to show her a way back to the ones she loved. Though she heard no response, her heart was refreshed; and she left the mosque determined to find her way home.
Over the ensuing days she evolved a plan. She used the key to open every door she could find. When a staircase was disclosed that led downward, she followed it. It was her belief that a subterranean passage would eventually empty her out onto the desert floor. Even if I am ejected into the Empty Quarter and exposed to the ravages of the blazing sun, I shall at least die in the world where I was born, and where (by the will of Allah) I shall die.
A month later, at the bottom of a flight of alabaster steps, she looked up and saw that the ceiling had become the transparent diamond floor beneath which she had thought (on her first day here) that she had stood on the surface of the sea. Slyly, she crept along the coral-encrusted ledges. One of these brought her to a ruby cave dripping with stalactites.
Sunlight filtered into the cave from a hazy remoteness. She approached it and rounded a corner, finding herself inside a perfumed room with a bed covered in silks and bolsters. A jinniyah (a girl jinn) was preparing an array of sherbets for Bilqis to enjoy after her day of subterranean exploration.
The jinniyah smiled and left.
The light that Bilqis had seen had come from a window on the far side of the room. She went to it and wept, because the path she had followed had led her from the depths of this labyrinthine city to the top of one of its loftiest towers.
In despair, she ran to the bed and collapsed on its plush bolsters. She removed the chain with the key and cast it aside as if it were a worthless thing. “I do not belong among the jinn,” she lamented.
But, as she stared at the petals falling around the base of an urn close by, out of which a mass of climbing roses grew, an idea blossomed in her mind; and her eyes brightened.
The next day, when the jinniyah came to clean the room, she found Bilqis on the floor, grumbling irritably and wiping the marble tiles beneath the urn with a silk sheet that she had stripped off the bed. Disconcerted, the jinniyah left and returned with the leader, who cleared his throat before speaking.
“Oh Queen, you are not obliged to exert yourself in the city of Iram. We are here to tend to your every need. Truly, this is an extraordinary spectacle!”
Bilqis stood up and put both hands on her hips. “Extraordinary, you say. Well, I say that what the jinn of Iram have failed to do is even more extraordinary. Deplorable, actually. There was a ring of dirt around the base of that urn.”
The mousy jinniyah, whose task it was to ensure each room the queen entered was immaculate, covered her face for shame and fled the tower, sobbing.
“I had no idea the jinn were so filthy,” Bilqis sighed. “But then perfection is given to Allah alone.”
“We admit the truth of this, O Queen. But you have everything that you could ever want in Iram.”
“I want to see my family. I want to return to the world of men.”
“The world of men is a flawed and ugly place, full of pain and suffering.”
“Its flaws and ugliness, its pain and suffering, are the things that give it meaning and make it complete.”
The leader of the jinn was not permitted to dispute the queen; and so he bowed low and exited the room facing her.
Later that day, Bilqis left the tower in bitterness, and found herself back in the city’s vestibule. The jinn attendants stood arrayed before her. Their leader spoke.
“O Queen, since the marvels of Iram are imperfect in your eyes, we have gathered here to offer you a gift. You will be permitted to step outside of the city and look upon the world of men one last time before you must return.”
He extended his gloved hand to her, and Bilqis laid the key to Iram in his palm.
The double door opened as quietly as it had on the day of her arrival. Bilqis stepped over the threshold, and again breathed the hot, dry air. She removed her sandals so that she could feel the warmth of the sands on the pads of her feet.
Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind her, a lock clicked, and Iram was nowhere to be seen. Bilqis smiled to herself and walked a thousand paces south, swinging her sandals by their straps.
In the cave, she found that the thieves were still dead, but the horses were alive and obedient to her every command. The saddlebags were filled with ample food; and flasks of water lay among the remains of the wicked dead. Although she had been in Iram for many days, she had miraculously returned to the morning after the sandstorm.
She mounted the meekest of the steeds and rode it southeast back to the Hadramawt. The other horses followed. They reached the base of the mountain. When the citizens of Bayt Qahtan spotted the horses, they again fled to the village gates. The previous day’s raid was still fresh in their minds.
But when Bilqis’s children saw their mother’s horse climbing a rocky trail between the groves, they urged the gates thrown open. Everyone ran out and, rejoicing, gathered around the horse that had brought their dear sister home.
The twenty horses were sold; and Bilqis and her husband became the wealthiest family in Bayt Qahtan. Their sons married chaste and goodhearted wives; and their daughters were betrothed to mighty princes and became exemplars of piety and matronhood. When Bilqis’s husband died many years later, she buried him in a humble grave on a middle slope of the mountain.
When she herself was old and gray, she awoke one morning and found around her neck the key to Iram. She feared that this was the jinn’s way of warning her that, since she was about to die, she was expected to return to that wretched city. Bilqis frowned at the golden key, fearing that if it were discovered after her death, it might sow greed and dissension among her loved ones or be the cause of a tribal war.
In an effort to prevent this, Bilqis despatched palm-fiber scrolls to her sons and daughters, saying that she wished to see them one last time before she was to die. From every quarter, her children and grandchildren came; and together the family traveled northwest into the desert to that halting place where Bilqis had first gazed upon the magic city. Pavilions were erected; and for days the family celebrated the life of their beloved matriarch.
In the afternoon of the third day, Bilqis snuck outside the camp to the cursed well by the cave. There, she prayed to Allah and thanked Him for the full life that He had granted her, which was far richer than anything she could ever have hoped to experience in that imperfect city of the jinn.
“We belong to Allah,” she said, “and unto Him we return.”
Then she cast the key into the well, and heard it splash into the water. For she had not only lifted the curse that the hag had placed on the well, but she had lifted the curse that the jinn of Iram had placed on her; and now she was free.
Bilqis laid herself down on the desert floor and died peacefully, as the well’s shadow lengthened to the east. One of her granddaughters found her and ran back to the camp to report what had happened.
Her last wish had been to be buried in an unmarked grave a thousand paces north of the well. After the sunset funeral ended, her family returned to their tents. The winds swept over the dunes; and the sands closed over the slab beneath which Bilqis al-Ahbash had been interred.
Over the years, strange stories would circulate of travelers lost in the deserts of South Arabia, who claimed an Abyssinian woman had guided them to safety; but when they turned to thank her, was nowhere to be found. But as to whether there is any truth to such tales, it is given to Allah alone to know.
This story was inspired by the story “The City of Many-Columned Iram and Abdullah Son of Abi Kilabah” from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
Thank you for the restack, @Winston Malone!