Shem is a southern land of the Hyborian Age, a wealthy and ancient civilization whose trade routes, exotic goods, and cosmopolitan cities—especially the capital Shadizar of Zamora—serve as the primary setting for Conan's early adventures. It is a land of contrasts: opulent bazaars and squalid back alleys, legitimate commerce and decadent vice, and a pervasive serpent-worship cult that threatens to corrupt its youth and undermine its kings.

Geography and Trade

Shem lies to the south of the borderlands where Conan and Subotai first enter the region, as Subotai explains while gesturing broadly at the landscape. The land to the west is Brythunia, while following the river eastward a few leagues leads into the territory of Turan. In Zamora, the heart of Shemitish civilization, cross all the caravans of the world, laden with the riches of distant kingdoms: superb carpets from Iranistan, spiced fruits from Turan, the famed pearls of Khosala, gems from the iron hills of Vendhya, and the heady wines of Shem itself. This trade network makes the region a crossroads of the known world, a place where goods and peoples from every direction mingle in bustling markets.

The frontier town of Yazdir serves as the travellers' first point of entry, a place where Conan and Subotai begin their tireless pace through the region, walking, jog-trotting for an hour, and walking again. From Yazdir they proceed to the inner cities of Zamora, eventually reaching the capital, Shadizar, the city of thieves, the abode of rogues. Here dwelt, in comparative safety, all the outlaws of the western world, even escaped slaves, exiles, and men with a price on their heads; for here they could safely hide, if they had the price should they be caught, and knew their ways around. The city's broad boulevards, pillared temples, domed palaces and mansions, and lush, walled gardens amaze the Cimmerian, who marvels that so many could dwell crowded together thus, without turning on one another to rend and slay, like savage beasts.

The City of Contrasts

Shadizar presents a bewildering array of folk to the young barbarian. He rubs shoulders with merchants in rich robes; artisans hawking trays of brass ornaments, gems, and weapons; bearded farmers in rough homespun, guiding to market wains laden with sacks of wheat and barley, sides of beef, and trussed, grunting pigs; stiff-backed soldiers, mobile-hipped whores, beggars, urchins, and priests. He sees squat Shemites with curly beards, lean Zuagirs in head cloths, kilted Brythunians, booted Corinthians, and turbaned Turanians. The city far surpasses Yazdir in size and variety, and it seems to Conan that here is gathered a sampling of all the divers peoples of the earth.

Yet not all sections of the city are so beautiful as the estates of the great lords and princes, with their marble columns and glimpses of parks and gardens. In the back streets, Conan discovers crooked alleys swarming with hags and pimps, with painted children for sale to degenerates, with the poor and the ill. Here flesh is for sale, or at least for rent, and every pleasure, however decadent, could be had for money. In these back streets lurks violence and sudden death, as when a woman screams and a man writhes at Conan's feet, clutching a wound in his belly from which a steady stream of blood trickles through his fingers. The Maul, the lurking place of rapists, murderers, and perverts, is where thieves congregate and sell their stolen goods to merchants who are less squeamish than their fellows.

The Serpent Cult and Its Influence

The region is also the domain of the Cult of Set, whose influence pervades the land. A procession Conan witnesses is led by girls and young women, some scarcely more than children, who dance and chant to the rhythm of myriads of tambourines, all draped in soiled white garments with garlands of wilted flowers crowning heads of unbound hair. Behind them march ranks of youths beating time on deep-voiced drums, or making discordant music with cymbals, lyres, and plaintive flutes. The eyes of all are glazed, unaware of the scene about them, like dreamers walking in their sleep, while robed men with shaven pates bear brazen pots in which incense smoulders. The procession wends its way toward a slender dark tower piercing the tenuous fabric of the sky, and as it prepares to enter, a chant arises: "Doom... Doom... Doom..." The young men who follow lash their naked flesh with whips made of the hides of serpents and barbed with snakes' fangs, so that with each stroke their flesh is beaded with blood.

The cult's reach extends to the highest levels of society. King Osric laments that Thulsa Doom, this demigod in his poor kingdom, has filled his capital with snakes and black towers with black-hearted priests. "They steal away our children and turn them into monsters—into reptiles like the snakes they worship," he cries, trembling. The king's own daughter, Yasimina, has fallen under the spell of Thulsa Doom, and his brother was ensorcelled into murdering their father with a serpent's fang. Osric hurls the serpentine dagger to the marble floor, a thing of evil exposed for all to see, and declares that each generation is weaker than the one before, that today's young wallow in this snake cult, yearning to be slaves and beggars, drugged dreamers, while in his youth boys strove to be heroes.

The cult's rituals are equally sinister. In the temple, the Faithful of Set gather to hear the exhortation of their master, hundreds of candles throwing a dim radiance over the chamber. Thulsa Doom, resplendent in his reptilian armour, mounts the dais and intones that the day of doom is here, that all who stand against them in high places—parents, teachers, judges—shall depart in a night of blood and fire. His catechism demands absolute loyalty: "Who amongst you fears the warm embrace of death? When I, your father, ask it, will you take life for me? Will you strike true to the infidel heart, whether it be the heart of friend, or lover, or loved one in your former life?" The followers moan "Doom! Doom!" in ecstasy, swaying in rhythm to his utterances.

Commerce and Corruption

Even the legitimate commerce of Shem is touched by the cult's shadow. When Conan seeks to sell the jewel-set sigil he wears, he finds a merchant of gems in an ill-kept stall, an elderly Shemite judging by his turban and grey, curling beard. The sharp-eyed fellow appraises the seller far more closely than the object to be sold, and mutters that the pendant is old, very old, from some exotic land eastward a thousand leagues or more, showing the wear of centuries. The merchant's trade in precious stones reflects the cult's own obsession: the Set worshippers prize polished precious stones, deep and unwinking like the eyes of the serpents they adore, and the tribute of the believers from every Set cult in the kingdom comes in gold, drugs, jewels, wine, and women.

Conan's own introduction to Shemitish commerce is marked by his ignorance of the local language. Sometimes the merchant addressed has no knowledge of the Hyrkanian tongue, and the Cimmerian has not yet learned the language of Zamora. Sometimes the reply is obsequious, offering goblets of true Shemitish glass made from the pure sands of the river Sulk, or whatever other commodity the merchant has for sale. The land's wealth is thus both a lure and a trap, drawing the barbarian into a world where everything—including flesh and faith—can be bought and sold.

Significance

Shem, and particularly Zamora with its capital Shadizar, functions as the crucible in which Conan's character is tested and forged. It is here that he first encounters the full scope of civilization's splendour and squalor, its commerce and its corruption. The land's wealth and decadence stand in stark contrast to the harsh simplicity of his native Cimmeria, and its serpent cult provides the central antagonist of his early adventures. The region's trade routes bring together the peoples of the Hyborian world, making it a microcosm of the age itself—a place where the old gods are challenged by new, where kings are weakened by charismatic demagogues, and where a barbarian must learn to navigate the treacherous currents of civilized life.