The case for Shisr being Omanum Emporium has been questioned by recent research. Nigel Groom commented in an article Oman and the Emirates in Ptolemy's Map published in 2007, that Ptolemy's map of Arabia contained many wild distortions. The word Emporium in the original Greek meant a place for wholesale trade of commodities carried by sea, and was sometimes an inland city where taxes were collected and trade conducted. Thus the term could be applied to a town that was some distance from the coast. This, Groom suggests, may have been the case with Ptolemy's 'Omanum Emporium'. He suggested that the Hormanus River, the source of which is marked on Ptolemy's map as being north-east of Omanus Emporium, was in fact the Wadi Halfrain which rises some 20 kilometres north east of Izki in modern-day central Oman. Thus, Groom concludes, Omanum Emprorium was likely to have been located at Izki, possibly Nizwa, or in their vicinity.