The Nameless City is a ruined city created by H. P. Lovecraft for his short story of the same name.
Description[]
Located somewhere in the Arabian desert, possibly modern-day Yemen, the Nameless City was built in prehistory by a species of quadrupedal reptilian creatures, and thus one of its most distinctive aspects is the proliferation of low ceilings. (HPL: "The Nameless City")
When built, the city had been located deep beneath the ocean, as its saurian inhabitants felt perfectly at home underwater, but the same cataclysm which sank Atlantis and Mu caused it to rise above the surface. This spelt its doom, as the inhabitants were ill-suited to survival beneath the burning desert sun, and the few survivors fled to the deepest subterranean sections of what remained. Currently, the Nameless City is described by Laban Shrewsbury as a "domain of Hastur", and serves as a safe harbor for the Byakhee and their allies. (AWD: "The Keeper of the Key")
Behind the Mythos[]
It has been suggested that the real-world abandoned city of Irem was the inspiration for the Nameless City; in his Commonplace Book, Lovecraft had copied out its Encyclopaedia Britannica entry. As a result of the Orientalist fad of the time, Iram was much better known as a folk tale during Lovecraft's career than it is in the twenty-first century, and it can be seen that "The Nameless City" is not the only tale in the Mythos that has taken inspiration from it.
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.