Irem

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.
Category:Structures
Category:Locations Originating From Mythos-Adjacent Works