My driver, Ahmad, was beaming as, together we stood atop Qalaat Ibn Maani (Ibn Maani's castle), on a hill top overlooking the remains of Palmyra - known to the Arabs as Tadmur - in Syria.

"See these ruins? They say Solomon sent his Jinn (mythical Arab spirits) to build this city in one night."

For me it was déjà vu. A few months earlier I had been at the Mayan city of Uxmal in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula and the guide had told a story of how a magician built its pyramid in one night.

The two cities were thousands of kilometers apart, separated by great oceans, yet both had eerily similar tales about the supernatural nature of their construction.

I gazed in wonder at the majestic ruins of Palmyra which were originally made famous by Zenobia – the legendary 'Empress of the East'. The pillars and tumbled stones seemed to convey a message from long ago, a message from Zenobia’s time. They told of magic riches, romance and the courage of a brilliant Arab civilization which flowered for a short period before being snuffed out by the legions of Rome.

The remnants were once thriving desert metropolis, 220 km (134 mi) northeast of Damascus, in Syria, and for centuries inspired romantic recollections by wayfarers and literary men. Looking over them today, it is no wonder they believed only a supernatural being could have conjured such a magnificent metropolis in the middle of a desert.

"Rise up and go into the world to release it from error and send word to the Jinn and I will give them leave to build Tadmur with hewn stones and columns." God said to Solomon according to the pre-Islamic Arab poet Nabigha al Dhubyain
Like Dhubyain, Arab storytellers through the ages ascribed the building of the city to the Jinn commandeered by Solomon. "The work of Jinns", asserted Said ibn Taimur, Sultan of Oman, when he visited the ruins in the 1950s. Guides love to tell tourists, as they walk them above the hot-steaming-sulphuric waters of Afqa Spring, now a part of the luxury Cham Palace Hotel complex, that Solomon left a Jinn in the spring to keep the water boiling

The sheer size of today's ruins surrounded by endless desert makes Ahmad's words plausible. It appears as if someone has magically planted a colossal wreck in the barren heart of Syria. The extraordinary Arab civilization which reached its peak some four centuries before the dawn of Islam flourished in the city, its economic and commercial influence becoming well-known throughout the ancient world. The epitome of the the city’s splendour came under the rule of Queen Zenobia, one of the most fascinating conquerors to stride across the deserts of the Middle East.

Resenting Roman encroachment on her territory and taking advantage of Rome's troubles with the Germanic tribes, she declared herself 'Queen and Empress of the East' and laid claim to the eastern half of the Roman Empire. In 269 A. D., she defeated the army of the Roman general Heraclianus and took control of Syria and most of Mesopotamia and Arabia. The following year her armies occupied Egypt, then challenged Rome in Asia Minor, advancing as far as Ankara in present day Turkey.

Zenobia's military conquests were the most spectacular the Middle East had seen since the days of Alexander the Great. In a few short years, she became Rome's most serious threat since Hannibal. Rome bided its time and built up its army in the east. In 272 A. D., the Roman Emperor Aurelian defeated Zenobia and brought her back to Rome parading her in gold chains through the city streets.

After Zenobia's demise, Palmyra's star waned. The city reverted back to its ancient Semitic name of Tadmur and faded into oblivion until rediscovered, in the 18th century, by the Europeans.

Today, visitors walking between the stones feel they have stepped back into the history of a superb civilization. The ancient walls, arches, bas-¬reliefs, columns, statues, temples and tombs speak in engraved stone, telling the never-ending visitors - about 70,000 a year - the story of Zenobia's Palmyra and its once renowned glory.

The dominating 17th century Qalaat Ibn Maani , built in the 17th century by the rebellious Ottoman governor, Emir Fakhir el-Din al-Maani, and forming a splendid backdrop to the ruins, appears as a guardian watching over Zenobia's city - majestic and haughty in its eternal isolation. As I watched the sun setting, throwing the castle's shadows toward the ruins, I experienced a haunting dream of how Palmyra must have appeared at the time, when as the legends say it was built overnight by Solomon's Jinn.

It was fitting that Palmyra would come to mind when I journeyed to Mexico's Uxmal for the second time soon after my trip to Syria.

A little way past the entrance is the oval-shaped La Pirámide Adivino (The Magician's Pyramid), the only one of its kind in the Mayan world. The oldest structure in Uxmal, the pyramid gets its name the legend of how it was built in only one night by a dwarf-magician with supernatural power. The story tells how that the dwarf was hatched from a witch's egg and grew to maturity in one year. His birth struck terror into the heart of the ruler of Uxmal since it was foretold that he would be replaced by a man 'not born of a woman'.

Looking for ways to outwit, the dwarf, the ruler challenged the dwarf to a contest of building skills. The dwarf's pyramid, built overnight, easily outclassed the ruler's pyramid. Angered, the ruler proposed that he and the dwarf compete to see who could break a cocoyol (a hard-shelled fruit) on his head. As a result, the dwarf-magician, in whose skull a turtle shell had been placed, easily broke the cocoyol, while the ruler crushed his skull.

Another legend relates how a witch and a dwarf were told by the king of Uxmal to build a great palace in a single night. With the help of the witch, the dwarf completed the project on time. Today, besides the Pyramid of the Magician, the Casa de la Vieja (the house of the old woman) in the ruins is said to be the home of this witch who became the adoptive mother of the dwarf.

Thereafter, the dwarf's handiwork became the crowning jewel of what is considered to be one of the most splendid archaeological site in the Pre-Hispanic era on the American continent. Uxmal is considered one of the great showplaces of Mayan architecture and refinement and is famous for the purity and delicacy of its architecture and decorative art.

According to archaeological experts, Uxmal was one of the largest cities in the Mayan world and its economic and political power, between 250 and 900 A.D., dominated a large area of the Yucatán. During this long era, important intellectual and construction advances were made.

As I survey the Pyramid of the Magician, I’m transfixed by the mystery of its magician builder. The pyramid is a testament to the ingenuity of its Mayan builder, whoever it was. Some 40 m (131 ft) high, this colossal structure is the tallest building on the site. .

I struggle to the top of the pyramid. All around one can see the deep-green countryside hugging the pyramid and its sister ruins. Resting awhile atop the pyramid, my mind wanders back to Syria’s Palmyra - could there be a connection? Was Palmyra's story related to that of the Magician's Pyramid? Why is the dwarf's structure the only oval-shaped pyramid in the lands of the Maya?

In Mayan mythology, there are stories that their chief god, Quetzalcoatl, had come from the East. One day he left, promising to return. For the Maya, therefore, the East was sacred and they believed that from the East their bearded god would return. This proved their undoing. When the Conquistador, Cortez, came from the East, the Maya did not resist. They believed their god had come home.

The tale had some base of truth. There are interesting parallels between the Mayan civilization and the civilizations of ancient Syria, Egypt and the other lands in the Middle East. In both ancient Egypt and the Maya world, society emphasized the place of the semi-divine ruler within the cosmos and focused upon public monuments. Even more interestingly, both the Maya and Mesopotamian societies were politically fragmented, but united by an overreaching civilization - a tradition of shared elite culture.

Like the records of ancient Egypt, Sumer and the other early states in the Middle East, Maya texts deal with histories of specifics centres, the reigns and political fortunes of their rulers, and with their alliances, conflicts, genealogy and marriages. In daily life, their narratives and in their architecture there are numerous indications of connections between the Mayans and the ancient Middle Eastern world.

To the Mayans, the most highly prized dye was a deep purple obtained from a type of a large sea snail - very similar to the mollusk which gave the Phoenicians the renowned `royal purple'. On the wall of the Ball Court in Chichén Itzá, is a replica of a ship that is similar to one carved on a stone in the Palmyra Museum. While exploring the ruins of the second millennium city of Ugarit in Syria, I noticed that the arch of the main gateway is exactly the same as arches found throughout the Mayan world.

With these similarities and others like the pyramids, it is no wonder that the stories of the supernatural builders of Palmyra and Uxmal have a strong resonance. There is little doubt that the people of the Middle East and the Mayan world had some connection.

The story of Solomon and his Jinn and that of the magician in Uxmal could be the same tale.