Describing the fate of 'Ad, Surat al-Fajr speaks of "Iram, possessor of lofty pillars (dhat al-'imad), the like of which had never been created in the lands" (89:6–8). What Iram was has been debated since classical times: some commentators took it as the name of an ancestor of 'Ad or of the tribe itself, others as the name of a city.
Commentators such as Ibn Kathir reported, and criticised, accounts identifying Iram with Damascus or Alexandria. In the early 1990s, excavations at Shisr in the Dhofar region of Oman attracted wide attention with the claim that the site was the legendary "Ubar", and thus Iram; many scholars, however, do not accept this identification.
The main marker (Shisr) therefore shows only one of the proposed locations.