| “ | Very gorgeous are the descriptions given of Irem, the City of Pillars (as the Koran styles it) supposed to have been erected by Shedad, the latest despot of Ad, in the regions of Hadramaut, and which yet, after the annihilation of its tenants, remains entire, so Arabs say, invisible to ordinary eyes, but occasionally and at rare intervals, revealed to some heaven-favoured traveller. | „ | |
| ~ Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., "Arabia" , HPL: Commonplace Book |
Irem, or Irim, is the City of Pillars visited by the Mad Arab in the desert.
Behind the Mythos[]
Irem is inspired by and based on the real life legend of Iram, "the Atlantis of the Sands". The islamic holy book the Koran mentions Iram by name, a city of towers or "lofty buildings". Its inhabitants were a people known as the Ad, and they were given over to evil, having turned away from holy teachings. A prophet named Hud was sent to try and turn the people back to goodness but he was ignored. As a result, Iram was drowned in a sandstorm that raged for seven nights and eight days. Iram vanished beneath the sands as though it had never existed.
As a result of the Orientalist fad, Iram was much better known as a folk tale at the time of Lovecraft's career than it is in the twenty-first century, and it can be seen that Irem is not the only tale in the Mythos that has taken inspiration from it.
One possible real life location for Iram / Irem is Shisr in Oman, at a site that both amateur archaeologists and satellite imaging have discovered a lost city.