1
Achaemenid Imperial Architecture: Performative Porticoes of
Persepolis1
margaret c ool r oot

1.1 Map of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, with geographical coordinates of the DPh takht superimposed.

T

h e Apadana in Persepolis, with its elevated vista-valenced porticoes replete
with figural reliefs and its imposing hypostyle hall, has iconic status as an
architectural manifestation of the great empire of the Achaemenid Persians under
Darius I ‘the Great’ (r. 522–486 b c e ) (fig. 1.1, plate 1.2). Refined perspectives
based on new empirical research on many fronts, as well as fresh possibilities in
approaches to old problems, encourage me to explore the prospects of a richer
understanding of this particular monument and thus of Persepolis, of Achaemenid
kingship and of the empire – all of which it has so often seemed to stand for in a
generalized way. My discussion here will not be an effort in Achaemenid
architectural history sensu stricto;2 I will instead offer an interpretive analysis of the
setting, plan, orientation, foundational metaphors and superstructure of the
Apadana. My goal will be to propose ways in which the monument and its setting
(within both a built and a natural landscape) engaged the mindful gaze and
activated the physical experiential collaboration of participants in its presence so as
to mold, to reinforce and perpetually to negotiate meanings. I hope this foray will
be useful to those who contemplate the workings of imperial architecture broadly,
along with those concerned specifically with Iran across time.
David Morgan discusses ‘the cultural work that images do in constructing and
maintaining (as well as challenging, destroying, and replacing) a sense of order in a
particular place and time’.3 In a somewhat similar vein, I aim to suggest what the
‘cultural work’ of the Apadana was meant to be, and how many of its essential
features operated as an active tactic for carrying out that cultural mission.
Paradoxically perhaps, part of the cultural work it was meant to do (or was scripted
to do) was to express a carefully designed, highly charged ambiguity and to elicit a
push–pull of multivalent reaction. The Apadana, we find, was bound up in acts both
of place-/space-making and place-/space-experiencing as reciprocal social
performance. It was meant to engage multiple audiences and participants visually,
spatially, psychologically and spiritually in a dialogue about kingship, dynasty and
imperial family. This dialogue arced across its entire environmental landscape
temporally as well as experientially.
One meta-agenda here situates the Apadana within interdisciplinary discourse

on performativity, inviting the reader to consider its potential for adding to that
conversation. Performativity as a term and an idea occupies contested theoretical
terrain, with various competing applications. It is not widely drawn into studies of
ancient Near Eastern visual culture, although it has gained some traction in
Egyptology. Zainab Bahrani does, however, discuss one notion of it with reference
to the ancient Near East, framing her use of the term around Derrida’s rather
oblique definition as a ‘communication which does not essentially limit itself to
transporting an already constituted semantic content’.4 At the risk of seeming
banal, I might suggest that this could be translated for our purposes to imply a
communication for which meaning is fluid within certain parameters of cultural
understandings and is largely (but not exclusively) dependent upon charismatic
contingencies of presentation and reception, often in active social settings. The
crucial idea I want to develop here in abstract terms is this: that things,
representations and spaces can themselves be considered ‘communications’ and can
be dealt with as active agents. Active agents, in this context, are elements that give
out and also receive meanings. Such meanings are socially negotiated and are
dynamically unstable. This brand of performativity is related to social-performance
theory. Towards the end of this chapter we will reach back to such investments as
we populate the Persepolis landscape with human dimensions of ‘social life as
performance’ operating on various planes of spatial experience in this setting.5
A closely related meta-agenda places the Apadana in dialogue with recent
interpretive strategies in the study of Safavid Isfahan, which, through their implicit
deep engagement with notions of performativity as an abstraction within an
explicated discourse on imperial performance, have inspired me to think more and
somewhat differently about Achaemenid architecture.6

b ack dr op: p ar s a

as a

p lace

and as a

c u lt u r al n ot ion

The setting for our exploration is the place named Parsa by the ancient Persians.
This word is Old Persian both for the land of Persia and for the city itself. Thus the
name of city was conterminous with a larger concept of regional locus and cultural
identity around Persianness. In modern Persian the word becomes Fars, designating
to this day the region of south-western Iran that embraces ancient Parsa; the word

parsa lives on, coming to mean ‘pious’. It is, of course, the place Westerners call by
the Greek name Persepolis, meaning ‘city of the Persians’. Although I will
perpetuate the Western-centric nomenclature because it is so engrained in the
literature, I hope the reader will bear in mind the richer nuances carried by Parsa.
The ancient insistence on a triplicate invocation of Persianness (and what
various things this iterative invocation may have meant) is important to our
interpretation of Parsa/Persepolis as a whole and of its hallmark architectural
feature of elevated porticoes. Recent investigations into the nature of Persian
acculturation in south-western Iran in the early (pre-empire) centuries of the first
millennium b c e show the complexity of social experience in the region between the
relative-newcomer Persians and the indigenous Elamites (who were entrenched in
Fars as well as in Khuzestan to the west near the Persian Gulf).7 The quintessential
‘Persian’ founder of the empire, Cyrus II ‘the Great’ (r. c.559–529 b c e ) is now best
(if tentatively) characterized as a ‘Perso-Elamite’ from a line of acculturated elite
Persians who for at least two generations had already claimed their locus of power
in the old Elamite city of Anshan (Tepe Malyan) in Fars. Darius I emerged as the
new king in the vacuum following the short and ill-fated reign of Cambyses, a son
of Cyrus II.8 Darius’ rise to the throne can be seen now not only as the assertion of a
collateral branch of an extended family stemming from their eponymous ancestor
Achaemenes, but also as an assertion specifically of a branch that assiduously
identified itself as ‘Persian’ rather than as inheriting a venerable Elamite past.
These two points require emphasis: Darius did not reject or disdain Elamite
tradition; nor did Darius emphasize ‘Persianness’ as part of some vision of an
‘Aryan nation’ in the manner of Hitler’s Third Reich. Indeed, the ideology that
Darius created about Persianness was inclusive rather than exclusive in remarkable
ways, as will gradually unfold in the following pages.9
Darius created and rhetoricized Persepolis (and his entire ideological
programme) in new terms. These terms offered an implicit alternative to the
realities of the Perso-Elamite line of Cyrus, while managing to engage rather than
to reject Elamite cultural legacies as instruments of historical memory and
administrative know-how. They afforded a fairly subtle ‘talking point’ of legitimacy
for the shift in dynastic alignment to Darius’ bloodline and the different
construction of the cultural identity that he fashioned. They were, however,

deployed in calculated formulas that were meant to explain what benefits the new
vision of ultimate identity would hold for everyone who came on board with it. The
sitings and meanings of an invitational concept of Persianness within a vast
universal empire were the distilled essence of his vision. It pervades the
performativity of the porticoes of the Persepolis Apadana.
Persepolis was a new city foundation of Darius’, with construction beginning
very soon after he gained the throne. Egyptianizing evocations of the architecture
in Persepolis appear most obviously in the Egyptian cavetto moldings crowning
doorways of the ceremonial structures on the Takht. This element alone
resoundingly expresses the dynamic of Darius’ reconquest of Egypt in 518 b c e .
However, the project in Fars was clearly underway even before that triumph (at least
to the extent of construction of the monumental Takht). Work on wholly new palace
complexes over the site of the ancient Elamite city of Susa to the west in Khuzestan
began roughly simultaneously.10
Persepolis held the force of new capital cities generally throughout history in
creating an impressive statement on the landscape and among the people affected
by the inscription of efforts, resources and the focus of all sorts of activities onto
‘virgin’ terrain: a socio-economically as well as visually vivid marker of a new
order.11 Yet Persepolis, in anything but the narrowest sense of the palatial
installations on the Takht, was not really a sociopolitical and monumental tabula
rasa. It was established within immediate proximity to a nexus of very ancient and
ongoing indigenous Elamite culture. Pre-Achaemenid Elam held venerable seats of
power not only at Susa in Khuzestan, but also very near to Persepolis, at Anshan,
the titular seat of Cyrus’ immediate ancestors, at least in symbolic terms.12
The extraordinary resonance of the Elamite cultural presence in this area is
illustrated in particular by two of the numerous Elamite rock reliefs in Fars
depicting religious and royal themes. Each provided continually visible
connectivities with the past and with associations of a performative landscape of
participatory ritual in ways that will inform our reading of the panoptic porticoes of
Persepolis. The Kurangun rock relief overlooks the panorama of the Faliyan River
that winds through the Mamasani region in the valley passage that has linked Susa
with Anshan since time immemorial (and later also with Persepolis) (fig. 1.3a–1.3b,
plate 1.3c). A scene of a royal audience before a divinity of chthonic association

incorporates a depiction of a river teeming with fish, mirroring the natural
landscape below. Files of participants are portrayed streaming down steps cut in the
natural rock to enter the presence of this tableau. Some of these files were part of
the original representation, while others were added later as if to reinforce the
ongoing vitality of the sanctuary and its symbolic connotations for another era.13
The staircase façades of the Apadana porticoes will be a startling reminder (and
surely a conscious evocation) of this monument.

1.3a The Middle Elamite rock relief at Kurangun, with added Neo-Elamite figures.

1.3b The Middle Elamite rock relief at Kurangun, with added Neo-Elamite figures: panorama of Kurangun and the Faliyan River valley.

Remnants of what was surely a way station of the Achaemenid Royal Road at
Jinjun suggest a beautiful columned building suitable for rest stops of the court. It
was across the river from Kurangun and in plain sight of it. As the excavator Daniel
Potts remarks, the Elamite rock relief
must have resonated with the Achaemenids, no matter how one
characterizes their religion. It seems reasonable that, for reasons of
privacy and security, an Achaemenid royal stopping place would have been
sited in the lee of the mountain, across the river from the main line of
traffic, rather than out in the open alongside the road. Moreover, the
opulence of the column bases at Jinjun, which recall those of Persepolis
itself, is surely an indication that this was a palace built for royal visitors,
not for the common traveler or messenger.14
The other telling example is the rock relief turned historical palimpsest carved on
the cliff face at Naqsh-e Rostam (an ancient Elamite sanctuary to the north of

Persepolis proper). Flanking a cult scene of Middle Elamite times (second
millennium), a Neo-Elamite king and queen of the era just preceding the Persian
Empire had their images added, as if to reinforce the sanctity of the place and quite
literally to frame the past with their present/presence by participating in the ritual
performance of the central tableau.15 Then the Sasanian king Bahram II (r. 276–93
c e ) superimposed his own image flanked by courtiers, partly but not completely
overlaying the Old Elamite cult tableau and keeping the Neo-Elamite royal couple
intact as witnesses on either side (fig. 1.4a and plate 1.4b). Arrayed near this relief
on the same elevated level are the imposing rock-cut tombs of four Achaemenid
kings from Darius I onwards (fig. 1.5). This spot was evidently a locus of Old
Elamite ritual, in part because of the stream running through the rock here. This
natural feature (along with the desire to connect with a venerable past) also made it
ritually resonant for the Achaemenids. The cliff face as a whole looks back across
the plain southwards to Persepolis. Multiple Sasanian rulers in addition to Bahram
II carved reliefs below and adjacent to the Achaemenid tomb façades.16

1.4a The Middle Elamite cult scene at Naqsh-e Rostam with flanking royal couple added in the Neo-Elamite period and the figure of the
Sasanian king Bahram II superimposed (omitting the half-length figures of Bahram’s courtiers on either side of him).

1.5 Two Achaemenid royal tombs (the one at the right is the Tomb of Darius, under restoration) and adjacent Sasanian reliefs at Naqsh-e
Rostam.

Darius, with the entire cliff at his disposal, sited his tomb on a facet oriented
south-east towards the rising sun.17 This echoes the siting of his rock relief at
Bisotun, high above the Khorasan highway in north-west Iran. His tomb façade
begins about 15 metres off the ancient ground level; it culminates about 26 metres
from the crown of the rock. A tower-like Achaemenid ritual structure of elegantly
articulated stone masonry stands majestically opposite all this (some 14.12 metres
in height and 7.3 square metres in area). Its entrance faces northwards back to the
embellished cliff. This structure has been called the Kabah-e Zerdosht (literally,
‘cube of Zoroaster’) since sometime in the Islamic era. The post-Achaemenid
naming solidly affirms the lasting religious aura of the monument and its location –
an important thing worth stating explicitly. But while the name reflects an

appreciation of the codified religious affiliation with the Sasanian dynasty, it does
not reflect the precise nature of the religious practices of the Achaemenid court,
which reflected Mazdaistic traditions but cannot be described as Zoroastrian in an
exclusive and canonical way. We will return briefly to this issue.
The trilingual res gestae of the first Sasanian ruler, Shapur I (r. c.240–c.270
c e ), with additions by his high priest, Katir, are inscribed on the smooth lower
south, west, and east walls of the Kabah, echoing in many respects the rock-cut
trilingual Bisotun inscription of Darius I. The imposing Sasanian inscriptions on the
Kabah complete the historiated performativity of the Naqsh-e Rostam landscape in
its panoply of dynastic display arcing across three millennia.18 They also express (in
content, literary formulas and rhetorics of placement) the panoramic expanse of
empire spatially, culturally, spiritually, cosmically and temporally.19 They achieve
panoptic address of the four quarters, inviting the agency of the south (towards
Persepolis) and east–west to the rising and setting sun, combined with the direct
architectural address of the staircase-dominated north face that looks to the Naqshe Rostam cliff. In this panoptic, they again echo a concept that, with the
Achaemenids, we will find expressed in variant ways at Bisotun and then most
explicitly at Persepolis.

The Takht
A lofty terrace built up from a massive rocky outcrop dominates the landscape of
Persepolis. Atop this terrace is a vast multi-purpose compound of gateways,
courtyards, audience halls, smaller non-residential buildings with ceremonial and
ritual functions, garden areas, a treasury (also serving as an administrative unit and
an arsenal), administrative offices and archives in segments of a casemate
fortification, and a garrison (fig. 1.6). This terrace is called Takht-e Jamshid in
modern Persian, meaning ‘throne of Jamshid’ (the Iranian epic hero of later ages).20
It is easy to imagine how the ruins left in the wake of Alexander’s destruction in
331–330 b c e would have captivated the imaginations of subsequent generations to
make this association: heroic they seem, indeed – even in abstract terms – because
of their scale, grandeur and elevation. The removal particularly of architectural
sculpture from the post-destruction ruins occurred gradually but inexorably over

time, first at the hands of local agents and then aggressively at the hands of
European travellers and archaeologists.21 Some of the most striking door-jamb
reliefs left standing (and visible in perpetuity) amid the skeletal remains of the
ceremonial structures after the destruction depict, quite literally, a ‘royal hero’
keeping at bay various forms of powerful animals and hybrid creatures.22 The stone
members of the architecture, including columns, staircases and embellished doorjambs, often remain erect, but the brick walls connecting these elements are long
gone (plate 1.7). The multiple agencies of the heroic image in the Persian Empire
are becoming ever clearer through the study of Achaemenid glyptic. The motif in its
manifold meanings and resonances surely held a prime place as an insignium of
imperial glory, embedded in the cultural memory of later ages in ways that go far
beyond the majesty of these ruins.23

1.6 Plan of the Persepolis Takht and its immediate environs.

The word takht stems ultimately from the Old Persian gatu. This is the word
Darius himself uses when he refers explicitly to the platform in a text inscribed on
the south wall of the structure (DPf) on a surface adjacent to a formal entrance onto
the Takht that was eventually blocked off (see below). Here it carries a metaphorical
charge as a throne (or throne platform) in the sense of ‘seat of power’.24 The Old
Persian gatu has other valences as well, and we shall return to these multiple
meanings. The Takht backs up against a mountain peak at the east. Today this is
called Kuh-e Rahmat (‘Mountain of Mercy’) and in Old Persian it was called the
‘Mountain of Mithra’. Mithra was the Iranian solar deity associated with the horse,
who was also associated with the goddess of the waters, Anahita – venerated in

Achaemenid Persepolis along with other gods.25 Towered and crenellated defensive
casemate walls embraced the Takht on the north and extended up along the crest of
the mountain and down around the Takht again at the south-east. The jagged
mountain peak, now with its own added man-made stepped-pinnacle crenellations
reaching skywards, slopes away to the eastern horizon and the vast eastward extent
of an empire stretching to the Indus River and the towering mountains of modern
Kazakhstan: a diversified resource-rich arena. The crenellations, which ripple
across this place at every level, reinforce an iconography of cosmic collusion as well
as the wordplay on an architectural platform called a ‘throne’ upon which a king
with a crenellated crown will sit to survey his domain – and will be seen at its
pinnacled centre.26
To the west, the Takht opens out over a vast fertile plain of panoptic prospect
(plate 1.8). At this horizon a plethora of prestigious cultures to which the early
Achaemenids laid claim spreads out in the mind’s eye: Elam, Babylonia and Assyria;
Anatolia, including East Greek territories and the cities of Lydia; the Levant; Egypt
and north Africa. On the proximate north-north-western rim of this panorama, only
6 kilometres distant, the view from Persepolis includes the mountains signalling the
rock-cut tombs of Darius and three of his successors. The last kings of the dynasty
were buried in similar monuments carved into the Kuh-e Rahmat overlooking the
Takht and the surrounding plain.
The inscriptions on the south wall of the Takht are a suite of four texts in the
three official languages for imperial monuments: Old Persian (two), Elamite (one)
and Babylonian (one). They are carved in an array resembling square foundation
tablets on large blocks of the façade. As noted already, a formal entrance to the
south-west sector of the Takht once existed beside this imposing display of the
written word of the king. It cannot be ascertained with certainty at this point exactly
when in the history of the site this entrance was blocked off. The restoration team
investigating it proposed a date in late Achaemenid times.27 The textual contents
marking this entry, in collaboration with the language chosen for discrete specific
elements of the entire message, provide insight into the politics of Persepolis as a
‘new’ capital city and as a place standing for the empire as a whole. In the section of
text specifically in the Elamite language (DPf), Darius states that he made a palace
here, strong and beautiful just as he intended it to be, where formerly there had not

been one.28 This deliberately mutes the significance of the Elamite aura of this
region. Instead of using the Elamite text to invoke the power of this local (Elamite)
past, he uses it to proclaim the newness of what he, a Persian, has done to the
landscape.29 Likewise, Persepolis itself as a built entity makes a powerful statement
of a new order: a grand presentation of empire and kingship. The new vision forged
by Darius plays out in the geographical as well as ideological ‘neighbourhood’ of
Cyrus’ Pasargadae (which is only about 80 kilometres away via land passages plied
in antiquity), but it is a distinct departure from Pasargadae in many ways.30
The rhetoric of DPf situates Persepolis, Parsa and Persianness at the centre of a
vast realm – moving outwards from this Persianness to an increasingly distant
beyond. This emplacement does not, however, reify a static, dichotomous centreversus-periphery model of empire for the Achaemenid state. Recent work on the
Achaemenid Empire is re-envisioning its nature as a multicentric operation in
which a centre–periphery paradigm severely misrepresents realities of a complex
system of social structures and social ‘installations’ across the entire realm.31
Rather, it lays the groundwork for a scenario in which (a) the centre may be
wherever the king is – at any one of the many satrapal installations or travel
encampments occupied by the king; however, it is also a scenario in which (b) the
‘centre of all centres’ is this special place that houses the spiritual affect of the
dynastic enterprise at all times and literally sits at the geographical midpoint of the
realm.
Under Darius I, Persianness could be framed as a distinctive feature of identity,
but it could also be framed as a welcoming, all-embracing ethos. Persianness could
be about bloodlines, but it could also be about a ‘state of mind in empire’. For the
person who cooperated, the option of ‘becoming’ Persian was an inducement.32

t h e n at u r e

of

p e r s e polis

There is a persistent notion that Persepolis was remote, hidden away, off the beaten
track of royal road systems, not visited by anyone but Persians and not visited even
by the king except at certain times of year when the weather was most favourable or
some particular annual ceremonial (for example, New Year’s Day) demanded his
presence there. This notion of remote hiddenness is intertwined with the beguiling,

romantic idea that Persepolis was an exclusive and an exclusively ritual city.33 We
find this notion reiterated in some Iranian scholarship as well as in that produced
by Western imagination.34 It is thus an idea with more complicated roots than can
simply be ascribed to a Western-centric dismissiveness. For Iranian tradition, the
reification of Persepolis as a special and exclusive place for and of Persia may have
been important for positive symbolic reasons. In scholarship emanating from the
West, the idea of hiddenness emerges from a predicable Western-centric mapping
of the world that places Persepolis at the far-right (eastern) edge of the ‘ancient
Near East’ – if it is included at all. Furthermore, many maps representing the entire
Persian Empire in some current works of real substantive significance show only a
single stretch of the Royal Road – one that goes from Sardis in western Anatolia to
Susa and then stops dead in its tracks! No roads lead to Persepolis: a sad inversion
of the saying about ancient Rome.35 This vision of Persepolis as never visited is
completely untenable. In Western scholarship it is based not only on some
dismissive sense of the East as a distant place that becomes increasingly
unknowable as the distance from a (Greek) centre increases. It is also based on a
misunderstanding of classical and biblical sources. These sources refer frequently to
Susa, but do not mention the name Persepolis (until it does appear very late in
Greek texts of late Hellenistic and Roman times). In fact, ancient people beyond
Persia itself also habitually called the city by the same name as the land (Parsa), just
as the Achaemenid Persians themselves did. Understanding this enlarges the range
of Western literary allusions that can be attributed to Persepolis the city.36
All these correctives acknowledged, it is of course true that Susa was closer to
Western regions and was directly accessible from Egypt, via Darius’ Suez Canal, and
from the Arabian coast across the Persian Gulf, as well as being significantly closer
to many Western places via land routes. It probably was more frequented and more
commonly imagined in the West as a centre of imperial power–business than
Persepolis was because of this relative proximity. With due irony, then, we note that
it is from Persepolis that we have internal Achaemenid administrative records (as
opposed to Western literary texts) that prove the actual presence of the king and his
court doing imperial business in and from that city. This evidence is in the form of
an enormous archive of imperial food disbursement records called the Persepolis
Fortification tablets.37 Susa, by contrast, although mentioned explicitly in Western

literary sources as the go-to place of the empire, and despite excavations more or
less continuous since the late nineteenth century, has not yielded an actual working
archive (as opposed to isolated tablets) that can anchor this vision. This of course
does not mean that no Susa archives originally existed or that no business was
conducted in Susa. Indeed, the Persepolis Fortification texts frequently provide
referential evidence of the king’s presence in Susa rather than in Persepolis, where
he is sometimes cited as receiving missives passing westwards from Persepolis. The
current lack of a retrieved archive from Susa is merely cautionary. It highlights the
unevenness of primary evidence from Achaemenid sources on the one hand, and on
the other hand it reminds us that we must work seriously with the evidence we do
have from the Achaemenids themselves, rather than allowing our perspectives to be
engineered by interpretations of the classical testimonia – interpretations that
often remain skewed by historiographic burdens of orientalist colonialist
preconceptions.
In sum, Persepolis was a key place where the ruler went to perform as Great
King on matters of state and ceremony – to see and to be seen. He was present
there, moreover, on occasions well beyond any notion of a seasonal migration
pattern (as the old and now discredited idea would have it).38 This was indeed a
strategically valued and visited place – a seeing and a seen place – designed with
the reciprocities of ocular social dynamics in mind. Greater Persepolis (embracing
the royal necropolis of Naqsh-e Rostam) was the heartland ceremonial capital of the
empire – where kings were buried and, no doubt, also crowned and celebrated in
other ways. It was situated quite literally at the geographical (as well as the
spiritual) centre of an empire that stretched from the Indus to the Danube. It was
also the regional administrative hub of an expansive interlocked imperial system of
commodities, disbursements and associated record-keeping. Persepolis was also a
garrison headquarters and a storehouse for accumulated wealth and trophies of
prestige. It was a seat of action (whence sealed royal documents flew via fast
messenger). It was a locus of court society. Its environs hosted the workshops,
offices and residence of all kinds of people from a network of bureaucrats and
scribes to priests, farmers and craftsmen. It was a multicultural, polyglot arena. It
was a place where emissaries from around the empire and beyond came to attend
the king.

The nature of Persepolis as an urban entity in the customarily understood sense
is, however, problematic. The ceremonial and administrative installations on the
Takht coexisted with palatial compounds in the plain immediately below.39
Archaeological survey reinforces evidence from the Fortification tablet texts of
agricultural estates and settlements in the larger environs.40 Furthermore, the seals
applied to the Fortification tablets indicate that a local seal workshop existed here,
responsible for creating a distinctive local style (which Mark Garrison has identified
and called the Fortification Style) that accounts for about 50 per cent of the seals
used in this regional administrative system – including seals owned by people who
travelled back and forth via Persepolis on imperial business across the empire.41
Additionally, the archive reveals sealed transactions by living, real people present
together in the landscape on specific days for specific reasons. Their interactive
presence allows us to witness multicultural (as well as polyglot) social interactions
and hybridities in play experientially and in terms of the use of a plethora of images
and styles in glyptic preference.42 Nevertheless, we do not seem to have here a city
in the sense most people imagine – with archaeologically coherent vestiges of
dwellings and shops packed closely together, clustering below the citadel. It seems
clear that large portions of the common folk (excluding the garrisoned troops)
populating Greater Persepolis, working in it and for it, lived in a more diffuse mode
and further afield than the immediate environs of the Takht.43 Ancient Shiraz (the
Tirrazish of the Fortification texts) is but one example of such a venue that plausibly
hosted such enclaves – and one that will be familiar to readers of this volume in its
later manifestations.
All this means that Persepolis must be appreciated in positive terms as a certain
type of capital city, which we can view best through the lens of a larger literature on
variant manifestations of the concept in the modern era.44 Several ancient case
studies also provide useful comparative resources. Most apparent is the
compatibility of analyses of capitals that have a largely spiritual and symbolical
function.45 Yet we must remain wary of framing Persepolis within a rigid dichotomy
of spiritual centre versus living-and-working centre. The lack of conformity in
Persepolis to preconceived norms of urbanism does not mean that it was an
unpopulated place in terms of the cacophony of human interaction and expression
at all social levels; it simply means that the purpose the imperial emplacement

served in the environment was different from the standard model of citadel
towering immediately above densely populated neighbourhoods – as with the
relationship at Athens between Acropolis and Agora. Indeed, as I will expand upon
later, I now see the agrarian (rather than densely urban) nature of the Marv Dasht
as a key feature of the nature of Persepolis as the heartland capital city of the
empire.
Persepolis emerges as a complicated mix of a ceremonial-ritual centre with the
added gloss that it was simultaneously a garrisoned administrative centre, a major
treasury stronghold and a locus of engaged court activity, all set within a fruitful
agrarian plain. But the powerful agency of the place was as a symbolic centre in a
set of highly metaphorical senses. The centre of that centre was, I submit, the king
– both as an object of worshipful gaze and cultic praise, and as the embodiment of a
hegemonic gaze and a reciprocity of giving.

a ppr oach ing

the

a padana

and

i t s p or t icoe s

Others and I have thought and written a great deal about the Apadana of Persepolis.
The inspiration for some fresh perspectives in this essay derives in part from
contemplations through the lens of a digital humanities project I am engaged in on
the dynamics of social networking in Persepolis. The idea revolves around the
Persepolis Fortification archive. I hope it will help us imagine the commingling of
day-to-day ‘reality’ and spiritual centredness within a Persepolis that was teeming
with life even though it was not a normative city by most people’s standards.46
Another part of my inspiration comes from Sussan Babaie’s Isfahan and Its Palaces
(2008).

Through a Safavid Lens
Babaie offers nuanced close readings of the columned porch (the talar) of Safavid
palaces in their multiple engagements with the dynamics of rulership and spatial
choreography within a ritually and visually rich social environment. She treats two
intertwined features that concern me here the most: what I will call mirroring and
moving. The overarching thematic in which she places these features has to do with

notions and mechanics of feasting and gifting as royal performance within a
complicated social and religious environment.
As I distil her work for my own purposes, the imperial talar of seventeenthcentury Isfahan acts as both a dialogic space and as a stage that presents
negotiations between the palatial nexus and the social institutions critical to its
legitimization – from pools and gardens to maydans and mosques. It works as a
liminal zone between nature and culture, between places within and places without.
Speaking of the Ayenekhane Palace, Babaie notes that the literal mirrors applied in
sheets to the back wall of the talar or in facets to its columns ‘created a constant
dialogue of reflected and refracted light between the surface of the river [in the vista
below] and the talar [on high]’.47 This concept of mirroring also operated on another
level; it reinforced the visible presence of those participating within the space of the
talar – seeing themselves and those around them in passing fragments of
multiplicity.
Babaie also offers insightful articulations of spatial progressions both lateral
and vertical, particularly in relation to the Ali Qapu Palace once it was graced with
its talar. Staged movement and arrest, openness and constriction in two planes
operate in her account as powerfully affective psychosocial agents defining how and
when things are seen and not seen. The architecture choreographs who sees and
who does not see, what is seen and what is not seen. Laced through Babaie’s work is
the theme of reciprocities in gifting and feasting rituals as essential defining
performances of a new order concerned to establish a new paradigm of kingship and
the sacred. I will touch upon all these ideas as they apply to the experience of
Persepolis.
The Apadana defines, and was itself defined by, the particular cultural–
historical enterprise of the empire that it served. So, too, the world of Safavid
Isfahan was the manifestation and agent of a moment of special historical
particularism. Ideas that we can glean through comparisons of the two contexts are
intrinsically useful because they can stimulate new approaches. They do not need to
demonstrate historical causality in order to serve this goal. My aim in invoking
Babaie’s analysis is thus not to demonstrate that the Safavids were consciously (or
unconsciously) emulating Achaemenid precedents; such issues have been explored
before.48 There is more to be done in fathoming the ways, hows and whys of this,

but my project here is different. It makes use of Babaie’s insights gleaned in the
study of Safavid architecture as an analytical foil that may help us to treat
interpretations of architectural space, place and purpose in the Achaemenid palatial
complex in Persepolis on a more sophisticated level than has hitherto been
accomplished. We are now in a much better position to do this than we were just a
few decades ago. Perhaps these contemplations will aid future efforts that do revisit
issues of Safavid strategic invocation of the usable past of Persepolis.

Reviewing the Apadana on Its ‘Throne’ (Gatu)
The entire Takht ensemble is one palatial compound, as we have already noted (see
fig. 1.6). It was a working citadel and also a sumptuous site of performative kingship
in dialogue with the world of imperial aspiration and cosmic agency. I use the term
‘palatial’ in a broad sense of royal space, without meaning to suggest that any
building on the Takht was literally a royal residence in any modern sense of the
word ‘palace’. Sprawling structures in the plain, designed on the ancient
Mesopotamian model of royal residences, fulfilled at least part of this function.49
Elaborate tent installations for which we no longer have archaeological vestiges
may also have served.50
The masonry of the Takht upon which the Apadana sits (elevated on its own
distinct platform) is of a distinctive polygonal style composed of enormous blocks of
jigsaw-puzzle shapes joined perfectly without mortar, once held fast with hidden
iron clamps. It was a marvel of technical prowess and deployment of human
resources – far more demanding and costly in that way than the rationalized
modular ashlar style used for the platform at Cyrus’ Pasargadae. In that case there
was a message also – but it was a message about the triumphant commandeering of
Lydian expertise in the aftermath of Cyrus’ incorporation of Anatolia into the
empire.51 The originally intended surface of the Persepolis Takht was smooth,
polished and mirror-like. This masonry is an abstract visualization of a rhetorical
motif of Achaemenid kingship that describes an empire created by the god
Ahuramazda and composed of many peoples speaking many tongues, from plains to
mountains, from desert to sea – all joined harmoniously together (fig. 1.9).52 This
rhetorical motif in words is first documented in the Babylonian-language section of

the text of Darius (DPg) inscribed on the south wall.53 The smooth mirror-like aspect
of the original surface offers our first encounter with the concepts of mirroring,
multiplicity and moving that Babaie signals for Isfahan. Here, the symbolic aspect of
the jigsaw masonry couples with the subtle but speaking sheen of the polished
surface.

1.9 Engraving showing the Takht masonry below the Gate of All Lands rendered by Cornelius de Bruijn, Reizen over Moskovie, door Persia en
India (Amsterdam, 1711).

The western entrance to the Takht was begun by Darius but completed by his
son and heir, Xerxes. This is the grand ceremonial entrance to the elevated royal
compound. Often called in modern times simply the Xerxes Gate, Xerxes himself
dubbed it the Gate of All Lands in the trilingual text (XP) that adorns its interior.
This is an explicit acknowledgement of the symbolic association of the passage as a
liminal place inducting the cooperative into the space of hegemonic inclusion.54
The ascent here is by means of a double-reversed stairway that prompts a
deliberately restrained, stall-and-release progression upwards and inwards from
the open gathering areas in the plain below. In slow motion the visitor passed the
polished jigsaw masonry, which created the semblance of literal reflective surface as

well as a metaphorical one, as we have just noted. It captured the shadows of
processing personages, reflecting the glow and warmth of the sun in the day and
torches in twilight. It also captured the visitor’s sense of his own presence,
inscribed in a vague mirror reflection or a sharpening shadow on the wall of empire.
Here, we note a connection with Babaie’s exercise on Safavid palatial architecture in
its choreography of time as well as the motion of those moving within it.
It was through the Gate of All Lands that ambassadorial delegations with gifts
for (and pleadings to) the king passed en route to performances of empire. With its
interior benches, the Gate of All Lands was probably a site for certain waiting games
of power and persuasion. From there, the channelling of the chosen took place. One
might be directed towards the east sector of the terrace, where important structures
were nestled close to the rising mountain, including business offices, the garrison,
the enormous Hall of One Hundred Columns (Throne Hall) and the contiguous
Treasury. Alternatively, one might be directed towards the public ceremonial face of
kingship and imperial effort: the Apadana.55 With the Apadana, the spatial
experience explodes upwards as well as horizontally towards differentiated
possibilities of royal exposure and withdrawal and towards differentiated
possibilities of imagining the mirror effects of imperial incorporation. A tall, rather
rough-hewn and massive stone water basin stands just to the east of the south-east
corner of the gate within the courtyard, facing the north side of the Apadana. It
connects to a subterranean water system (see below) and was probably meant to
serve some ritual function related to waters, ablutions and ritualized hospitality.
The Apadana was the truly public ceremonial feature of the larger, integrated
palatial complex, capable of admitting large groups of people from all over the royal
domain. Indeed, the nature of the structure and its embellishment make it difficult
to imagine that it did not host such visitors in great numbers. By one reckoning, the
main hall could comfortably accommodate 10,000 people.
The term apadāna does not exist in the Persepolis record of building
inscriptions. The name has been applied to this structure by inference of its
occurrence in Susa and Ecbatana in short texts on column drums. It has thus often
been seen as a generic term connoting a hypostyle hall. From there, the application
to the Persepolis structure we call the Apadana was logical.56 The possible meaning
of the word is problematic and has given rise to some confusion in the literature. It

has sometimes been equated with Old Persian (OP) āyadana.57 This word is used in
the Bisotun inscription of Darius I in a sense variously rendered ‘temple’, ‘place of
worship’ or ‘sanctuary’. Schmitt renders DB1.14.163–4: ‘Just as [they were]
previously, so I made the places of worship [OP a-y-d-n-a], which Gaumata the
magus had destroyed.’ He notes that ‘it cannot be ascertained, what kind of
“temples” (if any) are meant and where these “places of worship” have to be sought;
cf. most recently J. Duschene-Guillemin, EIrIII 126b s.v. āyadana’.58
In its own right, āyadana causes dismay because, according to Herodotus
(1.131), temples (along with statues of divinities and altars) were not customary
among the Persians. Herodotus was addressing a Greek audience and was, in my
opinion, discussing the Persians against a Greek frame of reference for how
temples, cult statues and altars look and perform. Modern Western scholarship has,
however, reified Herodotus’ remark into an immutable fact upon which much
interpretation has been based and against which we must struggle to explain
architectural evidence that urges a different or more complex understanding.59
Unfortunately, this is not the end of the problem. Etymologically, OP āyadana is not
a variant of the OP word rendered in a graphically ambiguous mode as a-p-d-a-n in
the terse Achaemenid inscriptions. There is no firm consensus yet on what the
etymology of a-p-d-a-n is. If we read it as apadāna, then it is the ancestor of
Persian ābdān and has a meaning related to a reservoir of water. Lecoq suggests
that if we were to interpret this meaning in structural terms, it might signify the
place of a ‘plan d’eau’.60 In English this might best be rendered as a place of a
‘confluence of waters’.
How does the great subterranean water-channelling tunnel system running
under the Persepolis Takht relate to Lecoq’s hypothesis? This extraordinary feat of
royally commissioned engineering diverted the potentially destructive force of
torrential winter rains pouring down onto the Takht off the Kuh-e Rahmat. Instead
of flooding the Takht, the waters went to the surrounding plain. Two branches of
the underground system run parallel from east to west under the Apadana, with a
third extending under the main hall southwards and westwards to the western edge
of the Takht, just beyond the Palace of Darius.61 Is it possible that this extraordinary
system was associated in the Persian symbolical imagination with divine
connotations of natural watery confluences running under the built landscape of the

Apadana – and with notions of fertile and sacred nature tamed by the king himself
that come with it? The goddess Anahita, to whom the waters were sacred, already
figured in the pantheon to which observances were rendered in imperial Persepolis
– although she gained greater prominence in Sasanian times.62
In this vein, perhaps the relationship between the two etymologically distinct
(but aurally so similar) words āyadana and apadāna may have come together in the
Persian imagination as a clever, even profoundly connected, pairing. If the
Persepolis building that we call the Apadana on the basis of testimony from Susa
and Ecbatana was indeed thought of by the Persians themselves in connection with
OP apadāna, then the Persians might well have connected that building with
wordplay on the pairing of OP āyadana (‘temple’ or ritual space) and OP apadāna
(‘confluence of waters’ or the presence of Anahita). I am proposing in this
incremental stage that the ceremonial public audience halls (apadāna) – as we find
the form preserved in Persepolis and also in Susa – should be considered as a
certain type of place of worship. The possibility of symbolic wordplay associations
in this context is relevant and plausible.63
When Persepolis was sacked by Alexander, the Apadana and the Treasury were
apparently singled out for the most savage post-looting burning.64 This suggests the
symbolic power of the Apadana as well as the richness of its interior appointments.
It was planned and built in the reign of Darius (although work continued under
Xerxes). The foundations were metaphorically pegged down by numinously charged
deposits of gold and silver tablets, all inscribed trilingually with an identical text of
Darius (DPh). This text describes the extent of empire at the time in terms of
specified peoples from four points on the compass – held by and through the agency
of the king. This rhetorical orientation of the four corners corresponds to the
orientation of the four corners of the building itself, which are laid out as in an X
formation, north-east to south-west and south-east to north-west (fig. 1.10; see
also fig. 1.1).

1.10 Schematic expression of the DPh Apadana foundation text.

This is the kingdom which I hold, from the Scythians who are beyond
Sogdiana, thence unto Kush; from Sind thence unto Sardis.65
The muscular certainty of this foundation text is mirrored visually in the
metaphorical aspect of heroic encounter imagery portrayed on a royal name seal of
Darius known from its impressions on documents in the Persepolis Fortification
archive. The crowned hero controls two pacified beasts of cosmic implication
through a divinely invested force of will. Everything is in perfect kinetic balance
here, as the centred body of the hero keeps the world in order through his wellcalibrated and just might.66
Above ground the outward exertion of the DPh text, which anchors both the
empire and the building, resolves itself. Explicit visual presentations in the form of

sculptural imagery and activated social–spatial performance create a scenario of
funnelling in and climbing up of people and their offerings of social support and
gifts of praise. Relief sculpture and activated performance are complicit in a variety
of interesting ways. Not least of these is the device of figural representations
depicted moving along and then up the stairs on the inner faces of the portico
façades, literally climbing the same steps that the human participant steps on. In
this, we have another instance of mirroring and moving. Not unique to the
Apadana, this is a leitmotif of relief-embellished Achaemenid palatial architecture
at Persepolis and Susa (plates 1.11–1.12).
The Apadana is the loftiest structure on the Takht, sitting atop its own platform
measuring 2.6 metres tall, with a roof about 21 metres off the floor. It is also the
largest structure on the Takht, consisting of a 36-columned hall measuring 60.5
square metres, with a four-storey tower at each corner. It has three columned
porticoes of identical dimensions at north, east and west, each supported by two
rows of six columns. On the south side the portico is replaced by a different (but no
less significant) feature of imperial address.
Great double staircases lead up to the porticoes at north and east (figs.
1.13–1.14). These are decorated with the famous reliefs of gift-bearers, rendered in
mirror image on the two façades. Originally the king and crown prince were
depicted in audience at the centre. Behind them, on Wing A, Persian nobles in
alternating courtly and military garb await the start of a ceremony.67 On Wing B,
files of 23 gift-bearing delegations from the lands of the empire stand poised to
move forward with offerings to the Great King – each leading delegate taken by the
hand by a Persian usher wearing the court or military garb. The metaphorical
valences of these representations and their interior nuances convey elaborately
coded references to an imperial family on the brink of a marriage moment redolent
with cultic implication (figs. 1.15, 1.16, plate 1.17, fig. 1.18).68 These reliefs are the
metaphorical mirrors of some idealized notion of an actuality. The actuality no
doubt took place according to elaborate codes of protocol that were themselves
mirror-ricocheted back in some aspects on the reliefs. The whole package – in
representation and in actualized performance – will have been much more than a
presentation of what simply is. These representations are no mere illustration of an
actuality: they are visual hypertexts of ritualized court performances.69

1.13 Plan of the Apadana showing the programme of relief sculpture on the north and east façades.

1.14 Reconstruction of the double staircase leading to the north portico of the Apadana, showing the replacement panels at centre front.

1.15 Reconstruction of the staircase façade of the north portico of the Apadana, viewed straight on with the original central panel inserted.

1.16 Reconstruction of the original central panels of the Apadana.

1.18 Section of relief of 23 gift-bearing delegations on Wing B of the Apadana, shown coming towards the king and crown prince.

The north portico greets the visitor who arrives from the Gate of All Lands
significantly off-centre from the expanse of the façade (fig. 1.6). At this point
insider participants in court ceremonials may have been channelled to the east side
of the portico stair (where Persian nobility in courtly and military guises are
depicted in relief) and visitors from lands far and wide may have been channelled to
the west side of the same portico stair. Thus the guest from afar would find himself
moving along as if one of the gift-bearing supplicants depicted in relief in order to
reach the actual access point of the staircase itself. The fine stone double doorways
at the north mark this as the principal public entryway to the Apadana – the
entryway that served the largest and least winnowed group of participants.
The east portico mirrors the north programmatically, but it relates spatially to
the arm of the courtyard that offers access to one restricted zone of the Takht
through a triple-doored gate structure of intimately graceful stature. The stairway
reliefs on this so-called Central Building (aka Tripylon or Council Hall) portray files
of guards at attention and streams of convivial Persian courtiers in their two

identikits of status moving up and into the small central hall lined with benches (see
plate 1.12).70 From this intimate, transitional space of gatehouse and waiting-room
aura, the invited could proceed eastwards down a narrow staircase to a lower level
of the Takht, which gives insider access notably to the Treasury and the Hall of One
Hundred Columns.
The west portico gives out onto an extension of the Takht floor that was added
as an improvement after the initial profile for the Takht façade here had been
established less generously (fig. 1.19). At this point the Takht rises 14 metres above
the plain. Two small columned halls (called ‘pavilions’ in the literature) once
flanked the apron. Only the footings for their column bases remain. Four
substantial depressions near the edge of the extension, aligned with the door
between the west portico and the main hall, indicate the base for an installation.
Schmidt has postulated that a royal statue might once have been placed here.71 More
likely it was the footing for placement of a throne (or throne platform) upon which
the king himself would have sat or stood in resplendent actuality. Such a throne
could have been a permanent fixture of stonework, undoubtedly painted, gilt and
otherwise adorned with removable woven cushions. A permanent installation of
this sort would stand for the king even in his physical absence, just as a
representational statue of the ruler would.72 An Achaemenid precedent for such a
permanent throne emplacement in a palatial portico is documented at Cyrus’ Palace
P in Pasargadae.73 There, the siting afforded a vista out onto a contained formal
garden of a four-quarters plan, with its orchestrated metaphorical allusions to
cosmos and imperial domain.74 The view from the extended west portico of the
Persepolis Apadana has similar metaphorical resonances, but it plays out in a
different, more globalized way, and on an exponentially explosive scale. Krefter
imagined this scenario in his sketch of a reconstructed view looking through the
columns of the west portico towards the king enthroned on a massive platform at
the Takht apron (fig. 1.20).75

1.19 Plan of the Apadana indicating the apron extension of the west portico, with its central throne emplacement and columned pavilions.

1.20 Reconstruction of the Apadana looking west from the interior, through the west portico, to the king enthroned and surveying the
western plain from the Takht extension.

There was no fortification superstructure on the Persepolis Takht along this
western sector to mask the vista. Only a crenellated parapet once bounded the edge.
Given the height of the Takht here, the vista feels unbounded, except by the limits
of modern smog. There were circuit walls in at least two rings down below,76 but
these will not have masked the panorama; rather, they will have punctuated it in a
progression from inner circles out to the ‘great earth far and wide’ – a mantra of
Achaemenid royal inscriptions. Extensive areas below the western portico seem to
have remained open for planted parks, encampments and ceremonial gatherings
that were seen from the portico and whence people could witness the imperial glory
above.
Campaniform column bases carved as inverted lotuses support elaborate
Achaemenid complex columns with vertically disposed volute members and a downturned-petal element crowned with animal protomes on west, north and east. These
bespeak an imagery of floral abundance and pacified nature that unites the plain

and the paradise parks that surely existed there with the florally embellished built
environment of the Takht. At the east portico these column bases are uniquely
elaborate – perhaps intended to bring to the east (to the rising sun) a special
spiritual aura on a different level (plate 1.21).77 The porticoes of the Apadana depict
a lush symbolic landscape that addresses and bonds with the world beyond. The
vast interior of the Apadana, by contrast, is supported by starker columns with
double-plinth bases and animal protome capitals resting directly on the shafts.
Notably, the iterations of cypress trees and other flora on the Apadana façades
suggest a play with hierarchies of tamed and wild nature. Cultivated cypress trees
punctuate the human performers in their ordered ranks; stylized reeds crowned by
sunflowers punctuate the lion-and-bull symplegmata, with their allusiveness to a
realm of animal fecundity and cosmic vitality, and to the cycle of seasons.78
The west portico was an activated stage of viewing and being viewed between
king and peoples at a place where architecture mirrors but is also more than both
the nature and the culture of actuality.
We are reminded of the idea that the Apadana structure may have related in the
Persian imagination to wordplay invoking both OP āyadana (‘temple’) and OP
apadāna (‘confluence of waters’). The floral campaniform column bases of the
Apadana porticoes (and those that occur in select additional special spaces on the
Takht) are inverted. In their original state, the floor levels rose up around the
collars under these inverted floral tips. Thus, the vast porticoes of the Apadana
seemed to self-levitate on the tips of lotus petals. In effect, they floated on water.
There are cosmic elements in the symbolism of the inverted lotus – suggestive of
dimensions of spirituality here – that require their own dedicated analysis. Suffice it
to say that the inverted campaniform bases of the porticoes contribute to a
materialized sense of uplift in sacral space. This is a concept to which we will
return.
First, we move to the south side. In plan, the south wall of the main hall
mirrors the north wall with its double doorways. (The five windows indicated in
restorations of the superstructure here would have been recessed blind niches
rather than openings.) But the two doors on the south wall lead not to a fourth
portico in the sense we have been discussing at north, east and west: the south
portico of the Apadana is a very different kind of performative space. It emerges in a

most interesting light once subjected to a functional and spatial analysis (which has
hitherto been entirely lacking). This area is a commodious suite of chambers flanked
(as at north, east and west) by towers giving access to the roof. These chambers are
justifiably characterized as ‘storerooms’ in the excavation report – although the
banality of the term cannot adequately characterize their significance. Large
amounts of charcoal and ash as well as bronze and rosette-embossed gold
revetment fragments excavated here from the buried post-destruction debris imply
contents in the form of elaborate furnishings in highly flammable textiles and
lavishly adorned wood.79
As storerooms, these chambers served an active performative function: they
were the staging area for all rites occurring within the Apadana. Such rites surely
included the receiving and giving of gifts – performances that demanded secure
areas for storage and inventorying. Additionally, the royal entourage could enter
and leave the main hall in privacy only through this zone.
Beyond these ‘storerooms’ was a small porch featuring a brick bench. The roof
was once supported by a single row of delicately proportioned columns. This porch
was coated with a delicate mint-green plaster. The colouration linked this intimate
portico framing the ‘storerooms’ aesthetically and symbolically to the main hall and
the public porticoes of the Apadana, where traces of the same colour are
preserved.80 The term for the colour green or yellowish-green in the semantic field
of Iranian socio-linguistics links with Vedic soma and Avestan haoma.81 Thus the
significant use of this colour in the Apadana may relate back to the ritual
hallucinogenic substance (haoma) and rituals involved with it. Haoma was prepared
in Persepolis specifically using green-chert pestles and mortars, which have been
retrieved from the Treasury.82 A pestle and mortar are represented on a seal
depicting a ritual scene applied to tablets in a small group of administrative
disbursement records from Treasury accounts – the Persepolis Treasury archive.83
The traces of pale-green colour in the interior Apadana decor (including the
putatively ‘utilitarian’ southern area) may be a reference to a cult ritual performed
here involving the partaking of this substance. The colour binds the entire structure
together symbolically.84 Fallen remnants of glazed bricks document an exterior
treatment of the south towers with floral motifs (plate 1.22).85 This decoration
displays a palette that leans much towards pale green on the blue–green spectrum –

more than digital colour reproductions tend to convey. Thus we have another
connection.
The imagery of these exterior glazed-brick adornments echoes the reed-androsette portrayals on the sculptural façades of north and east, with their meaningladen punctuation by the lion-and-bull emblem. It also creates visual connections to
a private royal sphere in the plain. The residential palace directly below the Takht
incorporated colourful floral ornaments on roof and walls.86
The south portico of the Apadana ties it closely to the Palace of Darius, the
Central Building and the Palace of Xerxes, all in this south-western sector. During
the Darius–Xerxes phase of the lifespan of the Takht, an open area was framed by
this complex, which seems to have contained a garden installation. Gardens and the
notion of the ‘king as gardener’ had strong ritualistic significance in the arts of
kingship among the Achaemenids.87
The Central Building, as already suggested, was a prestigious inner gateway
leading from the courtyard in front of the east portico of the Apadana to the private
regions of the Takht. A select cadre could pass through its north entrance to a
waiting hall with benches. From there, access east and south was certainly limited.
To the east, a steep staircase led down to the level of the Takht where the Treasury
was situated. To the south, a staircase led to the open area we have just discussed,
with its access into the area whence one could walk around to the south – to the
entrance portico of the Palace of Darius (tačara). The Palace of Darius must have
been the site of some ritual activity involving investiture (and perhaps its cyclical
reaffirmation). Flanking and backing the main hall, a paired set of rooms suggests
the notion that two personages would perform parallel acts here. The reliefs in the
door-jambs of the two rooms at the back of the main hall are decorated with
identical images of a royal figure emerging into the hall, except that in one set of
doors the figure is labelled as the king and in the other set he is labelled as the
crown prince.88 This establishes the duality of the building in representational as
well as architectural terms. A unique version of the royal-hero imagery among the
many examples in monumental form in Persepolis occurs in the door-jambs of a
side passage within the rooms on both sides of the hall, leading from a very small
chamber outwards. It is very different from the standard images of the royal hero
stabbing a large rampant beast (see plate 1.7). Here, instead, the hero grasps a

small male lion cub to his chest while holding a dagger down at his side.89 This
imagery seems to be in dialogue with the gift of two male lion cubs of Elam depicted
on the Apadana reliefs as offerings to the enthroned king and his crown prince. The
representation on the Apadana is, I posit, a reference to dynastic succession and
connectivities with the ancient Elamite royal house.90 I further posit that this motif
of ‘hero holding cub’ in the Palace of Darius echoes the vision in the other doorjambs of the pairing of the royal figures as king on the one side and as crown prince
on the other. The unusual features of this duality suggest that the building had
some particular meanings and functions in which the transitive properties of
kingship and succession were paramount. These features put the secluded and
specialized Palace of Darius in dialogue with the Apadana on multiple levels of
spatial address and sequential narrative in a representational dynamic relating to
mythologies of dynastic identity and perpetuation.
Razmjou has presented new evidence of a small chamber attached to the northwest corner of the Palace of Darius. It features a draining installation to
accommodate the channelling of blood resulting from ritual animal slaughter. The
evidence is compelling to me on the basis of my own examination of this area in
May 2011 with his discussion in mind.91 The possibility of animal sacrifice occurring
here, in the context of a structure whose sculptural programme hints at rituals of
investiture, is intriguing. Razmjou extends his discussion to an argument that the
so-called ‘servant’ figures shown in relief climbing the façade of the south stairs
leading up to the building should be understood instead as priestly figures. They
carry supplies (including live baby animals) that have always suggested ideas of
preparation for a banquet. The possibility now that animals were
slaughtered/sacrificed within this precinct does not exclude the idea of a ‘banquet’
here. It does, however, urge us to consider any feasting that went on in this specific
and very restricted space to have been a ritual affair for which the generic term
‘banquet hall’ may be insufficiently evocative. Whatever took place here was
certainly not a ‘dining’ experience in a casual, banal sense. Feasting and conviviality
are part of ritual behaviour that can be made manifest on various registers of social
experience. Evidence from the Persepolis Fortification tablets now opens up whole
new areas for study in relation to animal sacrifice and courtly feasting.92
Allusions to rituals involving animals recur in the sculptural programme of the

Palace of Xerxes (hadiš), east of the Palace of Darius. Here, adult male ibexes are
depicted on window-jamb reliefs being led into the side chambers.93 The role of the
ibex in the symbolic world of the Achaemenids deserves more attention. It was
already an animal of extraordinary social–religious meanings in Iran well before the
arrival of the Persians, and during the Persian Empire new meanings seem to have
glossed the very ancient ones, as seals on the Fortification tablets make clear.94 In
particular, several seals draw the ibex into realms of ritual practice.95
All this reinforces the point that the southern side of the Apadana horizontally
channelled royal performance from the vastness of the public arena of the Takht
(exemplified by the Apadana itself) to increasingly smaller and/or less public spaces
that were dedicated to increasingly intimate and/or restricted rituals and other
activities. My thinking about this learns from Babaie’s analysis of transitioning
spatial sequences of scale, interiority and audience access in Safavid palace
architecture – and the dynamic role these sequences played in the performances of
kingship in that milieu.
The vista to which the south portico of the Apadana opened out was specialized
– just as the building itself was. The Takht in this area was free of embracing
fortifications. The south-western corner was ornamented not with the stone
crenellations deployed at the edge of the western extension of the Apadana, but
rather with a parapet of sculpted stone bull’s horns set atop rectilinear bases (fig.
1.23). These bases incorporate dentils and blind recess patterns that evoke ritual
structures in the circuit of Darius’ cultural experience. The Median-period fire
temple at Nush-e Jan not far from Bisotun displays lavish use of this imagery in
brick and must represent one building among a larger family of structures as yet
unretrieved. The Kabah-e Zerdosht in the royal necropolis at Naqsh-e Rostam (and
its twin predecessor at Pasargadae) displays such motifs in stonework.96 The horned
crowning molding over the door of the Kabah-e Zerdosht makes an additional
connection with the parapet here on the south-western edge of the Takht, although
the horns of the Takht parapet are more pronounced. Both are echoes of an age-old
symbolic notion in Mesopotamian and Elamite cult architecture.

1.23 South-west corner of the Takht, with the bull-horn parapet restored.

These horns crowned the Takht contiguous to the entrance originally built by
Darius adjacent to the inscriptions DPd–DPg, discussed earlier. A ceremonial horse
burial apparently of Achaemenid date lay under the grounds of the plain near this
south entrance, adding even more to a sense that this area of the plain and the
Takht immediately above were charged with religious auras.97 It also lends further
implication to the Achaemenid-period association in Old Persian of the Kuh-e
Rahmat with the solar god Mithra, who was closely associated with the horse in
mythology.
Religious life in Persepolis was a complicated thing, as the Persepolis
Fortification tablets and the seals ratifying them show us. In this complicated
imperial environment where many gods were worshipped, even though
Ahuramazda is supreme in the royal inscriptions, the Achaemenid king himself

performed ultimately as the focus of a cult of what I will call hegemonic divinity.
The king as a figure of hegemonic adoration coexisted with the other gods who were
venerated (and to whom sacrifices were made) by various parties in the
multicultural arena of Persepolis during the reign of Darius. Such a cult focus
certainly did not supersede or displace the worship of Ahuramazda as the supreme
patron god of the Achaemenid court itself any more than it superseded or displaced
the veneration of other gods favoured by particular social groups living and working
in Persepolis and further afield in the empire. It was, nonetheless, a powerful
mechanism for building ideological cohesion around Persian dynastic kingship
within a vast pluralistic domain.98 In this cult of hegemonic kingship the Apadana
played a key role.
The south portico of the Apadana was a liminal zone facilitating both lateral
and vertical movement between two worlds of actualized performance. It enabled
lateral movement from intimate religious activities in the south-western sector of
the Takht complex into the royal storerooms that gave life to the performances
visible inside the hall, in the representational panoptic panoramas on the north and
east portico façades and in the throne emplacement for the king’s presence on the
west portico apron. It also enabled vertical movement. I postulate that this vertical
dimension moved from the royal storage and staging facility to serve activities on
high, on the immense and robustly supported flat roof of the Apadana. The stairs of
the south towers, embedded in the privileged suite of backstage ‘storerooms’ and
exit–entrance performances for the king, led directly onto this roof. Ritual
performances atop the Apadana would have been enacted on a stage hovering 34
metres above the plain.
The tomb façades of Achaemenid kings from Darius onwards portrayed the
ruler worshipping before Ahuramazda (as the figure emergent from a winged
symbol) and a blazing fire altar in the open air atop a flat-roofed building (plate
1.24). An icon of the sun and moon (as solar disc with inscribed crescent moon)
occupies the field behind the altar. On the sidelines of this scene, facing the king,
figures in the court robe approach, each with a sleeve-covered hand raised up before
his mouth. On the sidelines behind the king, noble guards of the royal retinue stand
solemnly to attention. The central tableau is rendered as taking place on an
elaborate podium carved to show 30 personifications of the lands of the empire

raising the king in postures of interlocked cosmic support. The king is shown not
only lifted on high in a venerable posture of glorious cosmic elevation, but literally
on the move in joyful collaborative effort.99 The two personifications on the outside
of either leg of the podium depart from the symbolic posture of the other 28. These
two on the outside look like furniture-movers in real time. The figure on the left
side focuses straight ahead – in the direction in which the podium will apparently
travel. The figure on the far right, by contrast, must turn his head around to look in
this direction. He must do this in order to watch where he is going – just as any
good furniture-mover on a tricky job must do. This remarkable vignette of ‘reality’
creates a dynamic asymmetry in its interplay between notions of symbolic
representation and a more documentary visualization of the mundane human
condition in the performance of royal cult. Beyond that, the valences of this motif of
adoration through the uplifting and carrying forward of the king take us to a realm
where the spiritual and the political are intricately conjoined. In the inscription on
his tomb façade (DNa), Darius declares,
If now thou shalt think that ‘How many are the countries which King
Darius held?’ look at the sculptures (of those) who bear the throne [gatu],
then shalt thou know, then shall it become known to thee: a Persian man
has delivered battle far indeed from Persia.100
On one hand, this brings us back to the concept of the Persepolis Takht, called gatu
in Old Persian. The variant nuances of meaning of this OP term embrace not only
the concept of ‘throne’ but also a concept of ‘place’. Thus ‘throne’ offers a range of
ideas associated with a core element of kingship: the idea of the place where the
king is (physically or notionally) and his innate capacity to make and to mark a
place, and so too the centredness of where he is or is designed to be implicitly
present. On the other hand, the text allows for multiple meanings of the word Kent
translates as ‘bear’. The Elamite and Babylonian versions of the text use words with
clearly documented connotations of ‘carry’ and movement from place to place in
addition simply to ‘support’ or ‘bear’. Interestingly, the word used here in Old
Persian is also found in contexts that imply ‘to esteem’. The word ‘bear’ thus has
connotations of both support and movement in literal physical senses as well as in
senses taken to a spiritual plane. The same may be said of the imagery itself. This

makes it all the more intriguing in that whereas the text passage as a whole leans
heavily on the
iconography of
conjoining with
were in the air,

force of ‘bearing’ in relation to conquest on one level, the
the imagery and the ambiguities of word values articulate a
cosmic, ritual act. Such multiplicities and ambiguities of meaning
reverberating around the reception of representation and spatial,

experiential performance in Persepolis as well.
It is generally held that the rendering of a palatial façade on the tomb reliefs of
Darius and his successors used as its model the south façade of the Palace of Darius
in Persepolis. The number of columns is the same; so too is the simple type of
column the same. (As we have seen, the façades of the Apadana are emblazoned
with porticoes supported by columns with campaniform bases and complex floriated
upper elements under animal protome capitals.) The most important point here,
however, is that actual rituals staged on rooftops are totally plausible. The roofing
of the Persepolis and Susa palaces was flat.101 The question of an actual rite taking
place on a palace rooftop (whether on that of the Palace of Darius or some other
structure) is not typically dealt with in the literature.102 Rituals could in theory have
occurred on the flat roof of the Palace of Darius – especially when we consider that
it was also elevated on its own separate platform (much lower than that of the
Apadana). The idea is appealing since the building overlooked the religiously
imbued zone of the south-western Takht and plain below. It is the Apadana,
however, that offers the architectural venue in Persepolis most likely on structural
and other grounds to have served as a staging area for appearances meant to be
viewable from below. I am not suggesting a literal event that took place anywhere in
Persepolis precisely as the tomb façade depicts it. In particular I am not suggesting a
rite that would have literally involved 30 men in unison hoisting the king (already
standing on a huge podium) up the Apadana’s south-tower stairs and thence onto
the roof! Any such actualized performance up there would have been staged once
the podium (no doubt assembled from sections of wooden-cored, gold-overlaid
members) had been reassembled in place.103
The take-away points here are that the tomb façades depict some notion of a
palatial structure, on the flat roof of which the king is portrayed both held aloft
(with the feet of the podium furniture literally raised off the ground) and rotating or
in motion forward; also that they depict the king both in the act of worship and as

himself the subject of worshipful action and regard (through the figures on the
flanking sidelines as well as those lifting and moving him).
The ultimate expression of mirroring and moving in Achaemenid imperial
terms is this rendering of the king appearing on a palatial roof atop a great throne
platform, able to be turned from vista to vista – perhaps according to the time of day
– by the peoples of the empire united in cooperative, joyful enactment of a ritual of
royal cult. Anything performed on the roof of the Apadana would be visible across
the entire expanse of the imperial complex. Moving the king to greet the rising sun,
as it made its earliest appearance over the peak of the Kuh-e Rahmat, would be
possible from this vantage point as from no other. Moving the king at another
moment to acknowledge the western panorama with the setting sun and rising
moon would have its partnering symbolic association. The programme of animal
protome capitals on the Apadana porticoes reinforces this link with cosmically
articulated space. The animal protomes of the east portico of the Apadana are in the
form of lions (an animal that has been associated with solar energy since time
immemorial in the Near East); the protomes at the west present the bull (the paired
animal associated with the moon and lunar cycles). All this echoes the lion-and-bull
symplegma on the façades of ceremonial structures on the Takht and the solar disc–
lunar crescent symplegma on the tomb façades.104
The cosmic force field of site and movement would also echo the monument of
Darius at Bisotun (bagastana in Old Persian, meaning place of the god). There, the
great rock relief of the king in judgement over subdued rebels at the beginning of
his reign faces due east to the rising sun and recedes into shadow as each day wanes
and awaits a new dawn. It surveys a fertile plain and a vast highway of limitless
opportunity.105 It is the imagined movement of the sun in relation to the king that
operated the cosmic addresses of the king’s presence on high in this situation (plate
1.25).106 On the Apadana roof, the motion of humanly engaged ritual would, instead,
have moved the king in relation to the cosmic forces – just as this was depicted on
the tomb façades. In spatial–political terms this enactment could address from on
high the four reaches of achieved imperial power as expressed in the anchoring
rhetoric of the numinous foundation deposits (DPh) under corners of the building.
The symbolic control of, or collusion with, time – with the cycles of day and
night and those of the seasons (and hence the cosmic forces) – is a frequent trope of

empires in many cultures and historical situations. Jennifer Finn has discussed this
issue in relation to the Bisotun monument in interesting ways, drawing upon its
connection to tropes of empire established on the stele of Naram-Sin of Akkad
much earlier in the ancient Near East.107 Without even leaving antiquity, we note
two other famous imperial monuments – those of mainstream classical
civilizations: the Parthenon of Periclean Athens, its east pediment framing the birth
of Athena (a foundation mythological moment in the power narrative of the city
state) with the rising horses of the sun god, Helios, and the setting steed of the
moon goddess, Selene; and the statue of the Roman emperor Augustus from Prima
Porta, the cuirass fitting the ruler’s torso emblazoned with allegorical–mythological
characterizations of imperial power and ambition, crowned by an allegorical
enactment of the sun god, Sol, above the chariot of the moon goddess, Luna, with
Dawn sprinkling the dew of a new day.108
Human participants witnessing a performance of kingship atop the Apadana
would presumably be awestruck. These participants might be visitors gathered in
the plain below or military personnel posted on the fortifications crowning the Kuhe Rahmat, or even (in a spiritual sense) the kings of past, present or future,
depending upon the historical moment. As we know, some of them were destined to
be emblazoned on the cliff face of Naqsh-e Rostam in the distance: too far away
literally to see, but not too far away to feel as a proximate watchful presence. Others
were destined to be emblazoned on the Kuh-e Rahmat itself, looking directly down
upon the Takht and the plain beyond.
Performances involving the lifting and moving of the king (wearing flashing
gold regalia) find echo in later Sasanian tradition and in Roman imperial cult
traditions certainly inspired by legacies of cultural memory of the Achaemenid
past.109 Modern religious processions captured in an early- to mid-twentiethcentury photograph taken at Yazd allow us to imagine a portable cult structure of
huge proportions carried by multitudes (this time of the Zoroastrian faithful) (fig.
1.26). Here we see the 12-metre-high nakhl of Yazd – a wooden structure
symbolizing the ancient Cypress of Zoroaster – now turned since Safavid times to
the service of the solemn Shi‘i ritual of mourning for Imam Hossein during
Ashura.110 The feel of the tradition as captured in this photograph is more popularbased and is not choreographed in the way of a royal affair. Nonetheless, it is

evocative of a long legacy of cultic uplifting and movement of a sacred icon by a
human multitude – where the highly visible expression of collective belief is a
critical feature of the performance. Indeed, it portrays in its own way, in its own
time and in its own representational genre what I believe to have been an essence of
the message–intent of the Achaemenid tomb iconography and of the social
performance of it that I am positing for the Apadana. It conveys the power of
collective action in the service of a belief system – and the power of repeated
performances of that affective action.

1.26 A mid-twentieth-century photograph of the nakhl of Yazd during a communal procession, displayed in a vitrine in the ‘Alexander’s
Prison’ in Yazd, Iran, 2005.

The Takht itself, as we have seen, is a throne platform presented
metaphorically as a mirror-like jigsaw-puzzle metaphor of all lands of the empire.
The Apadana is a display arena for magisterial depictions of empire involving the
king in audience on the north and east stairway façades, wherein the king is the

representational fulcrum of a panoptic gaze across the peoples of the empire and
their special honorific gifts. It is the locus for the actualized performative
appearance of hegemonic Persian kingship in joyful, collaborative synchrony with
all the people of the imperial family forged into a kind of Persianness. Additionally,
it is the spatial conduit to the more secluded areas on the Takht where less public
rituals were enacted.
The Achaemenid ideology of harmonious hegemony was expressed in part
through the notion of the porticoes we have been discussing. As an ideological
construct, the play of architecture in its agencies of mirroring and moving was not,
in my view, meant to express a flat oppressive power of Foucaultian panoptic
scrutiny, where the ability to see in every direction is a one-way prerogative of a
strictly punitive power relationship.111 There was, rather, a reciprocity of vision and
experience embedded here in Achaemenid Persepolis. The king’s ability to see all
around was mirrored in various ways by the ability of the people of his court and of
his empire far and wide to see him as well. Both kinds of seeing were surely
performed in very scripted and stage-managed ways. But the formulas of place,
space and representation were based on an ideology of all-seeingness that
reinforced the positives of incorporation for those who agreed to the terms and
benefits of engagement.112 Hirsch has commented with great relevance on the
Avestan concept of Mithra, to whom Ahuramazda gave 1,000 senses and 10,000
eyes with which to see and judge the affairs of men.113 This Indo-Iranian solar deity
who is associated with the mountain rising above the Takht at the east served
mythologically as the paradigm of celestial surveillance of everything good and bad.
The Persian king was the earthly counterpart of this notion of justice.114
Only a small measure of the magnificence of meaning here was probably
appreciated by a Habsburg ruler who wished to build a new royal palace on a hill in
the same way as he had heard tell that the Achaemenid royal citadel of Persepolis
was sited. He yearned to be able to look out over his empire, to see as far as the
border of Hungary, just as the Persian king had overlooked his empire from
Persepolis. Yet the story is evocative of the ongoing romance of the Persepolis
porticoes in the imaginations of later rulers.115 That the evocative nature of this
setting was shared by other Western visitors to this place is lyrically demonstrated
by the words of Ernst Herzfeld. Herzfeld eventually went on to lead the initial

seasons of excavation at Persepolis for the University of Chicago in the 1930s. Long
before that, in a journal entry of 1905, when he first encountered Persepolis as a
young archaeologist, he rhapsodized in personal notes:
The situation of the city, or the palaces, is glorious. The wide, star-shaped
valley, completely flat, and framed by bizarre, ragged and high-piled
mountains. To the north and northwest long valleys, at the ends of which
appear the mountains of Khular and Ardekan. These high, blanketed with
snow. The terrace itself, despite so few remains there, is wonderfully
impressive. Almost more spectacular than some of the individual ruins at
Palmyra.116
Gifts pouring in towards the king as represented metaphorically on the north and
east portico façades of the Apadana would have been paraded in the plain below the
west portico before being carried in actuality up the grand double-reverse stairway
and into the Gate of All Lands. Many of the gifts (as depicted on the Apadana)
include vessels – though none explicitly depicts prepared foods inside them as far as
we can tell. Indeed, the layers of symbolism of the gifts suggest message agendas
here that go far beyond any simplistic notion of straightforward portrayal.117
Nevertheless, the symbolical underpinnings of the Apadana motif involve gifting to
the king. And it is fascinating to note that some favoured gifts offered particularly
by Iranian groups in the Apadana reliefs – garments and horses – emerge as
favoured gifts to the king in Safavid Isfahan. Underneath the gloss of reciprocity in
Persepolis, an implicit threat of punishment existed for those who defied the
system.118 Yet the contractual expectation of reciprocity implicit in the performative
porticoes is actually borne out by the Persepolis Fortification tablets.
The social arena that extended out below the Takht in all directions was one in
which the great agrarian estates of the crown in Fars dispensed food commodities to
those loyally in the service of the empire. People from all walks of life – from
labourers and camel-drivers to elite guides, ambassadors and members of the royal
family – drew upon these commodities. This system was a key element in the
structure of the exchange economy just as it was a key element in the social
economics of symbolic acts. It was all at the pleasure of the king in an ultimate
sense. So, too, the maintenance of irrigation systems that enabled food production

was ultimately at his command.
We do not observe this dynamic as a figurally represented phenomenon in the
architectural landscape of Persepolis. There are no preserved depictions in
monumental form of feasting, for instance. Significantly, however, that numerous
seals on the Fortification tablets – seals that were carried and used by persons who
populated this place in many different social capacities – depict banqueting and also
vessels for dining,119 and, as we have already noted, the tablet texts document the
importance of ritualized feasting at court.120 The social contracts of reciprocity
involved in all this, including their ritualized valences, played out across the entire
purview of the crown, region by region.121
Royally gifted objects of prestige included sumptuous gold and silver wine
dishes (Gk. phialai) inscribed trilingually with the king’s name and titulary. These
formed another part of the social economy, linking exchange value in practical and
symbolical terms with the notion of feasting, food and drink.122 A gift brought to the
king by several peoples of the empire on the Apadana stairway façades is a form of
this phiale type. This suggests the complexities of the Apadana metaphor and also
the complexities of reciprocal gifting at the Persian court and across the empire
widely.
There is a tradition in classical literary sources of the utter destruction of
Persepolis by Alexander in 331–330 b c e as an act of revenge for Xerxes’
destruction of the Athenian Acropolis in 480 b c e . From an archaeological
perspective, the site actually seems, however, to have been torched after the looting
only selectively by the Macedonian forces. Sancisi-Weerdenburg posits that the very
selective firing of the Takht structures reflected a specific strategy at the end of the
pillaging operations: to burn items of potential gifting value that had not already
been carried away as loot. The idea here suggests that Alexander understood well
the capacity of prestigious remnants of the Great King’s court paraphernalia to
become reactivated for the reciprocal exchanges of gifts (beyond food
disbursements carried out in the plain) that had traditionally sealed symbolic bonds
of loyalty between ruler and followers in the Persian system.123 It reaffirms the
agency of the Apadana as a monument decorated with elaborate metaphorical
representations of gift-giving to the king and, I would suggest, as a monument that
held well-understood power as a site of real-life performative connection in the

enactments of Persian kingship.124
The removal of the original central panels of the Apadana stair façades of the
north and east porticoes has puzzled many. They were placed in a columned
courtyard (Court 17 in the official excavation plans) of the Treasury – in the most
highly embellished court of this entire complex.125 Some commentators have
suggested that they were removed in ignominy; however, I agree with those who
see the transfer as an act of piety that took place at a time in the reign of Artaxerxes
III (r. 359–338 b c e ) when, for reasons we do not yet understand well, the nature of
the Takht had evolved.126 The new placement of the central panels puts them into a
strongly ritual but now interiorized portico setting. Time altered the functions of
the Apadana. Yet the significance of the close association between the Apadana and
the Treasury remained profound – profound enough that Alexander grasped it.
Furthermore, the cult of hegemonic divinity focused on the king remained
significant (and significantly associated with the site of Persepolis), even if it
evolved over the longue durée of the dynasty.
The charisma of the Apadana (gleaned through the importance of destroying it
by fire along with the Treasury) relates also to other agencies of the building. The
nature of great hypostyle halls with wide intercolumniations, commodious nonaxial organization and great sight-lines has been discussed fruitfully by Hilary
Gopnik. She considers the formal capacities and social valences of such structures to
serve as symbolic spaces of conclave, of group assembly – in immediately preAchaemenid Iran (at sites such as Nush-e Jan, Bab Jan, Godin and Hasanlu), in the
Persian Empire itself and among the great mosques of Islamic architecture.127
Important related observations have emerged in a rich analysis of social space and
place in Achaemenid Armenia by Lori Khatchadourian, particularly in relation to a
hypostyle hall with Achaemenid cult apparatus that she and her colleagues have
excavated at Tsaghkahovit.128 In other words, the very nature of vast hypostyle halls
can communicate an invitational grandeur and a signal of collective participation.
The jury is still out on whether or not the Odeion of Pericles in Athens was
meant to imitate in some sense the huge many-columned tent of Xerxes that was
reported to have been captured at the Battle of Plataea.129 However, the hypostyle
form in the Greek world was an unusual one in that context, and one that has –
perhaps paradoxically – been seen in classical scholarship as an expression of the

demands of a democratic system. The form was, simply put, the most effective way
to provide covered space for large numbers of people convening, we might add,
without an overwhelmingly hierarchical structure of movement.130
The resonance of the porticoes of the Apadana of Persepolis (and similar
porticoes at regional installations serving very similar functions in relation to local
performances of empire) is captured at the Greek sanctuary at Delphi. Karen
Laurence has explicated a bold and, I think, spot-on interpretation of the Stoa of the
Athenians at Delphi as an ‘emulation in empire’ of the panoptic agency in a ritual
setting of the western portico of the Persepolis Apadana. It is bound to be
controversial.131 Marksteiner has suggested that the towers framing the porticoes of
the Persepolis Apadana became an icon of hegemonic identity in far-flung regions
of the empire.132 There is much more we could cite in relation to these echo effects
of the Apadana that compel us to see it as a symbol of profound resonance from the
Indus to the Danube in the age of the Persian Empire (and later).
The perpetual visibility of majestic features in the Persepolis ‘landscape in
ruins’ after the (in)famous destruction by Alexander clearly inspired later Iranian
rulers and their court circles in various ways and with varying degrees of historical
acumen, sensitivity to a reverential past, or abject cynicism. We can track such
varied expressions of resistant pious resonance, nostalgic reinvention and/or
strategic exploitation from those of the localized Persian entities of Fars in the
immediate wake of Alexander to large-scale sociopolitical domains of presentation
stretching from the Sasanian to the Qajar and Pahlavi. The ruins of Persepolis were
a beacon also to early Western travellers, several of whom figured significantly as
visitors to the Safavid court in Isfahan. In this way, Persepolis became a site of
implicit and explicit discourse, binding outsider reactions to the place with insider
courtly contemplations of the affective potentials of the architecture.133
no tes
1 The original title of my paper, presented at the Los Angeles CAA in 2009, was ‘Palace, plain, domain: The
panoptic porticoes of Persepolis’. Although I have changed the title here, the theme expressed by the
original one remains key. I take this opportunity to thank Sussan Babaie and Talinn Grigor for including me in
the CAA panel and for continuing so energetically and with such deep intellectual sympathy on the vision for
this project. Thanks also go to Sally Bjork for her expert digital refurbishment of several slides shot in 1973

and to those whose photographs I have used here with their gracious permission. Production delays have
meant that some important recent publications cannot be added to the bibliography here, for which I
apologize.
2 For an excellent overview of archaeological work at the site to that date, see Ali Mousavi, ‘Persepolis in
retrospect: Histories of discovery and archaeological exploration at the ruins of ancient Parsa’, Ars Orientalis
xxxii (2002), pp. 209–51. Although it does not incorporate interpretive studies or archaeological surveys per
se, it does integrate the work of Iranian archaeologists whose publications are often sidelined in Western
scholarship. Discussions of survey work in Fars are reviewed in Rémy Boucharlat, ‘Iran’, in P. Briant and R.
Boucharlat (eds), L’archéologie de l’empire achéménide: Nouvelles recherches, Persika 6 (Paris, 2005), pp. 342–7.
An extensive literature exists on the iconography of architectural reliefs of Persepolis. Some of this
discussion places the iconography directly into a consideration of its relationship to the structures on which
the representations occur. Most comprehensively, and with a copious bibliography of work by others to that
date, see Margaret Cool Root, The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an
Iconography of Empire, Acta Iranica 19 (Leiden, 1979). Myriad articles by a host of learned scholars on issues
of sculptural iconography in Persepolis, which usually do not pertain to the siting of the representations,
include work of the late Peter Calmeyer across decades of Archäeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran, among
others. Specific essays dealing with particular issues that are pertinent to the situating of imagery within the
architectural dialectic will be cited in the course of my paper. Important technical studies relating to the
Persepolitan architecture have also been done on, for example, stone-working techniques there: a major
effort being Michael Roaf, ‘Sculptures and sculptors at Persepolis’, Iran xxi (1983), pp. 1–164. But
commentaries on the history and cultural implications of specific architectural forms in their own right are
for the most part embedded in the massive documentary publications of the Oriental Institute’s Persepolis
excavations, particularly in Erich F. Schmidt, Persepolis I: Structures – Reliefs – Inscriptions, Oriental Institute
Publications 68 (Chicago, 1953); Persepolis II: Contents of the Treasury and Other Discoveries, Oriental
Institute Publications 69 (Chicago, 1957); and Persepolis III: The Royal Tombs and Other Monuments, Oriental
Institute Publications 70 (Chicago, 1970). See also Friedrich Krefter, Persepolis Rekonstruktionen (Berlin,
1971). Similarly, such commentary is embedded in sections of the reports of the Italian restoration team,
particularly in Ann Britt Tilia, Studies and Restorations at Persepolis and Other Sites of Fārs, Istituto Italiano per
il Medeo ed Estremo Oriente Reports and Memoirs 16 (Rome, 1972); and in her subsequent Studies and
Restorations at Persepolis and Other Sites of Fārs II, Istituto Italiano per il Medeo ed Estremo Oriente Reports
and Memoirs 18 (Rome, 1978). One early foray into a dedicated Achaemenid architectural history is highly
idiosyncratic (as well as thought-provoking); although it is outdated in some respects relating to the
archaeological record, it remains important: Géza de Francovich, ‘Problems of Achaemenid architecture’, East
and West xvi (1966), pp. 201–60. Important ideas emerge on the architecture of Persepolis in studies focusing
on other sites. Pasargadae looms large here through Carl Nylander, Ionians in Pasargadae: Studies in Old
Persian Architecture (Uppsala, 1970) and David Stronach, Pasargadae: A report on the excavations conducted by
the British Institute of Persian Studies from 1961 to 1963, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1978), as well as subsequent
interpretive articles on the formal paradise garden set within the architectural layout there: see, for example,
David Stronach, ‘Parterres and watercourses at Pasargadae: Notes on the Achaemenid contribution to garden
design’, Journal of Garden History xiv (1994), pp. 3–12. The study of architectural layout in Achaemenid Susa
has also become a path into commentary on Persepolis: see, for example, Rémy Boucharlat, ‘The palace and
the royal Achaemenid city: Two case studies – Pasargadae and Susa’, in I. Nielsen (ed.), The Royal Palace
Institution in the First Millennium BC: Regional Development and Cultural Interchange between East and West
(Athens and Oxford, 2001), pp. 113–23, and Rémy Boucharlat, ‘Suse dans l’architecture iranienne et moyenorientale’, in Jean Perrot (ed.), Le Palais de Darius à Suse: Une résidence royale sur la route de Persépolis à

Babylone (Paris, 2010), pp. 420–43, with much bibliography. A study of the plan of the royal residential
structure in the plain of Persepolis against its Mesopotamian backdrop was an unusual foray in Persepolis
studies for its time, grappling with an architectural form in its particular historical relationships: see Michael
Roaf, ‘The diffusion of the “salles à quatresaillants”’, Iraq xxxv (1973), pp. 83–91. A recent analysis of the
forms and social/symbolical meanings of Achaemenid gates suggests the richness of possibilities of traditional
architectural history around this material: see Kim Christopher Codella, ‘Achaemenid monumental gateways
at Pasargadae, Susa, and Persepolis’, Ph.D. dissertation (Berkeley, 2007). Most relevant for us here, both in
topic and in approach to an Achaemenid architectural history is now Hilary Gopnik, ‘Why columned halls?’, in
John Curtis and St John Simpson (eds), The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and
the Ancient Near East (London, 2010), pp. 195–206. In this same volume several additional contributions
reflect what seems to be a reawakening of interest in the analytical study of Achaemenid architecture as
distinct from its archaeological recovery.
3 David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley and London, 2005), p.
29.
4 Cited at Zainab Bahrani, ‘Performativity and the image: Narrative, representation, and the Warka vase’, in
Erica Ehrenberg (ed.), Leaving No Stone Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of
Donald P. Hansen (Winona Lake, 2001), p. 20.
5 Some overviews that have helped me think about these issues include: Elin Diamond, ‘Introduction’, in Elin
Diamond (ed.), Performance and Cultural Politics (London and New York, 1996), pp. 1–12; Gary Palmer and
William R. Jankowiak, ‘Performance and imagination: Toward an anthropology of the spectacular and the
mundane’, Cultural Anthropology xi (1996), pp. 225–58; Takeshi Inomata and Lawrence S. Coben, ‘Overture:
An invitation to the archaeological theater’, in Takeshi Inomata and Lawrence S. Coben (eds), Archaeology of
Performance: Theaters of Power, Community, and Politics (Lanham and Oxford, 2006), pp. 11–44.
6 Sussan Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern
Iran (Edinburgh, 2008).
7 In 1979 I laid out a schematic scenario of elements we needed to keep in mind as we explored the nature of
(official) Achaemenid art against a complex backdrop of social experience in the run-up to empire. See Root,
King and Kingship, fig. 2 and pp. 28–42. The deep cross-disciplinary investigations occurring over the last
decade specifically on the Elamite connection have taken a giant step forward in articulating ways in which
such a schematic vision of complexity played out. Now Elam looms large and Media recedes. Projects range
from field archaeology to historical philology, to art history. Representative samplings from such perspectives
include: Daniel T. Potts, ‘Cyrus the Great and the kingdom of Anšan’, in V. Sarkhosh Curtis and S. Steward
(eds), Birth of the Persian Empire (London, 2005), pp. 7–28; the learned and richly annotated exploration in
Wouter F.M. Henkelman, The Other Gods Who Are: Studies in Elamite-Iranian Acculturation based on the
Persepolis Fortification Texts, Achaemenid History 14 (Leiden, 2008), esp. pp. 1–43 for an introductory review
of the historical issues and the literature; a short and useful summary of important points in Matt Waters,
‘Parsumaš, Anšan, and Cyrus’, in J. Álvarez-Mon and M.B. Garrison (eds), Elam and Persia (Winona Lake,
2011), pp. 285–96, as well as several other articles on historical matters in this volume. In particular, see
close analysis of stylistic issues in glyptic of direct relevance to these acculturation issues in Mark B.
Garrison, ‘The seal of “Kuraš the Anzanite, son of Šešpeš” (Teispes), PFS 93*: Susa – Anšan – Persepolis’, in
J. Álvarez-Mon and M.B. Garrison (eds), Elam and Persia (Winona Lake, 2011), pp. 375–405; and a
contemplation of Elamite–Iranian cultural connectivities as they play out on the Apadana reliefs in Margaret
Cool Root, ‘Elam in the imperial imagination: From Nineveh to Persepolis’, in J. Álvarez-Mon and M.B.
Garrison (eds), Elam and Persia (Winona Lake, 2011), pp. 419–74.

8 Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter T. Daniels (Winona Lake,
2002) is currently the standard survey of the history. Another excellent survey is Josef Wiesehöfer, Ancient
Persia, trans. A. Azodi (London and New York, 1996). This is particularly useful for its embrace of postAchaemenid antiquity in Iran, especially in Fars. Amélie Kuhrt’s recent compendium of text sources on the
Achaemenid Empire (with annotations on many cultural issues) is now a major resource; see The Persian
Empire: A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period (London, 2007). Scholarship on Achaemenid history
(not to mention archaeology) has blossomed to the extent that nuances on every point find explication now
in focused articles.
9 The term Aryan is an Old Persian word that means ‘Iranian’. It was used by Darius to denote multiple peoples
of his multi-ethnic empire who were part of a large sub-family of Indo-Iranian ancestry. Notions of this
Iranian-ness that play out in the representational programme of the Achaemenids are discussed in Margaret
Cool Root, ‘Medes in the imperial imagination’, in K. Abdi (ed.), Ō Šābuhr kē čihr az yazdān dāšt: Essays in
Memory of A. Shapur Shahbazi (Tehran and Persepolis, forthcoming). It is one of the great ironies of history
that this term was co-opted by Hitler for his xenophobic programme of ethnic cleansing that demanded the
expulsion and extinction of entire categories of the population as a means of forging hegemony. On related
issues, see Ali M. Ansari, ‘“Persia” in the Western imagination’, in V. Martin (ed.), Anglo-Iranian Relations
Since 1800 (London, 2005), pp. 8–20. The historiographic complexities of these issues for modernity are
discussed richly in Talinn Grigor, ‘Orient oder Rom? Qajar “Aryan” architecture and Strzygowski’s art history’,
The Art Bulletin lxxxix (2009), pp. 562–90.
10 The question of whether Darius began constructions at Susa slightly before, slightly after, or fully
simultaneous with the initiation of the project at Persepolis remains open. Note the comment in Boucharlat,
‘Suse dans l’architecture’, p. 435. Some brick relief fragments from Susa seem to constitute a Susa version of
the Bisotun monument. Presumably this would have been erected right on the heels of completion of the Ur
monument on the cliff of Bisotun (by around 520–519 b c e ); see Oscar White Muscarella, ‘Achaemenid art
and architecture at Susa’, in Prudence O. Harper, Joan Aruz and Françoise Tallon (eds), The Royal City of Susa:
Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre (New York, 1992), p. 218, note 2. Similarly, vestiges at Susa of a
glazed-brick relief-and-text segment including the name Otanes (one of Darius’ elite Persian allies in his bid
for the throne) might also suggest this. See Root, King and Kingship, p. 76, note 98. It seems clear, based on
royal inscriptions at both sites, that palatial planning and construction at Susa and Persepolis began very
early in Darius’ reign – while his father was still living. There is a remote possibility that some political
motivation beyond our understanding urged Darius to pretend in these official inscriptions that his father
was still living. On the Darius texts DSe and DPd–DPg, see Margaret Cool Root, ‘Temple to palace—king to
cosmos: Achaemenid foundation texts in Iran’, in M.J. Boda and J. Novotny (eds), From the Foundations to the
Crenellations: Essays on Temple Building in the Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible (Münster, 2010), pp. 186–
200. If construction at Susa began first, it was followed by construction of the Takht in Persepolis within a
year at most, according to what the available evidence allows.
11 The bibliography on new capital cities across time is vast. New capitals in antiquity include Akhetaten (Tell
el-Amarna) in New Kingdom Egypt, about which much has been written in relation to the establishment of a
new foundation with very specific and explicit theological–political objectives; see, for example: Ian Shaw,
‘Building the sacred capital: Akhenaten, El-Amarna and the “house of the king’s statue”’, in J.G. Westenholz
(ed.), Capital Cities: Urban Planning and Spiritual Dimensions (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 55–64; Fritz Volkmar,
‘Planning a capital: Akhetaten and Akhenaten’, in J.G. Westenholz (ed.), Capital Cities: Urban Planning and
Spiritual Dimensions (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 117–27. Other chapters in the same volume deal with relevant
settings in Greater Mesopotamia. A particularly interesting case for our purposes is Iron Age Jerusalem (in

the temporal and political orbit of the Persian experience in the Near East), for which J. Uziel and I. Shai
argue a calculated elision of temple–palace conceptualization in the expressive vision of this particular ‘new
city’. See their ‘Iron Age Jerusalem: Temple–palace, capital city’, Journal of the American Oriental Society
cxxvii (2007), pp. 161–70.
12 For survey overviews of Elam across time from various disciplinary perspectives, see: Prudence O. Harper,
Joan Aruz and Françoise Tallon (eds), The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre
(New York, 1992); Pierre Amiet, Élam (Auvers-sur-Oise, 1966); Daniel T. Potts, The Archaeology of Elam:
Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State (Cambridge, 1999). Anshan, attested in a rich array
of textual sources, is also well documented archaeologically for its early phases as a large-scale urban entity.
For the period immediately before the Persian Empire it is, however, not well defined archaeologically. It
probably suffered a serious decline as a result of the Elamite campaigns of the Assyrian king Aššurbanipal in
the seventh century c e . See, for example, Daniel T. Potts, ‘A note on the limits of Anšan’, in J. Álvarez-Mon
and M.B. Garrison (eds), Elam and Persia, (Winona Lake, 2011), pp. 35–43.
13 Basic consensus on the main tableau and segments of the participant files now yields a date in the mid
second millennium b c e , with added images of processing individuals applied as late as about 600 b c e . For
various issues of chronology, see, for example: Ursula Seidl, Die elamischen Felsreliefs von Kūrangūn und Naqše Rustam (Berlin, 1986); Louis Vanden Berghe, ‘Données nouvelles concernant le relief rupestre élamite de
Kūrangūn’, in L. de Meyer, H. Gasche and F. Vallat (eds), Fragmenta Historiae Elamicae (Paris, 1896), pp. 157–
67; Elizabeth Carter, Excavations at Anshan (Tal-e Malayan): The Middle Elamite Period (Philadelphia, 1996).
Nuances of the iconography and identity of the main divinity and subsidiary figures in the main tableau are
argued in, for example, Pierre Amiet, Glyptique susienne (Paris, 1972), p. 294; Pierre de Miroschedji, ‘Le Dieu
élamite au serpent et aux eaux jaillissantes’, Iranica Antiqua xvi (1981), pp. 1–25; Seidl, Die elamischen
Felsreliefs; Daniel T. Potts, ‘The numinous and the immanent: Some thoughts on Kūrangūn and the
Rudkhaneh-e Fahliyān’, in K. von Folsach, H. Thrane and I. Thuesen (eds), From Handaxe to Khan: Essays
presented to Peder Mortensen on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday (Aarhus, 2004), pp. 143–56.
14 Daniel T. Potts, ‘The Persepolis fortification texts and the Royal Road: Another look at the Faliyan area’, in
P. Briant, W. Henkelman and M. Stolper (eds), L’Archive des fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et
perspectives de recherches, Persika 12 (2008), pp. 278–80.
15 Schmidt, Persepolis III, p. 121. For a more detailed and updated study of the Elamite relief, see Seidl, Die
elamischen Felsreliefs.
16 Schmidt, Persepolis III, pp. 129–30, with basic documentation of all the Sasanian reliefs here.
17 Ibid., pp. 80–90.
18 For the still-valuable basic documentary publication on the Kabah, including a review to that date of major
discussions of its exact ritual function, see Schmidt, Persepolis III, pp. 34–49. Schmidt opts for a fire temple to
host a perpetually burning flame in the manner of later codified Zoroastrian practice. For the res gestae of
Šapur I (ŠKZ), see comments and selections in Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia, pp. 184–6; an easily accessible full
translation may be found in Richard N. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (Munich, 1984), pp. 371–3. For
perceptive commentary on the cultural valences of Achaemenid trilingual inscriptions and their postAchaemenid revival, see Jennifer L. Finn, ‘Gods, kings, men: Trilingual inscriptions and symbolic
visualizations in the Achaemenid Empire’, Ars Orientalis xli (2011), pp. 219–75. On the memory-scape
involved here, see a treatment that looks from the Sasanian perspective back to the Achaemenid: Matthew P.
Canepa, ‘Technologies of memory in early Sasanian Iran: Achaemenid sites and Sasanian identity’, American
Journal of Archaeology cxiv (2010), pp. 563–96.

19 For the Bisotun text, see Roland G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar – Texts – Lexicon (New Haven, 1953), pp.
116–35; Pierre Lecoq, Les Inscriptions de la Perse achéménide (Paris, 1997), pp. 83–96, 187–217; Rüdiger
Schmitt, The Bisitun Inscriptions of Darius the Great: Old Persian Text: Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum Part I,
vol. 1 (London, 1991). For the text in relation to the rock relief as well as for initial commentaries on the
dialogue with usable pasts in literary and sculptural rhetoric, see Root, King and Kingship, esp. pp. 182–226.
See now also Margaret Cool Root, ‘Imperial ideology in Achaemenid Persian art: Transforming the
Mesopotamian legacy’, Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies xxxv (2000), pp. 19–27; and
an important commentary in Marian H. Feldman, ‘Darius I and the heroes of Akkad: Affect and agency in the
Bisitun relief’, in J. Cheng and M.H. Feldman (eds), Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of
Irene J. Winter by Her Students (Leiden and Boston, 2007), pp. 265–93. For more recent iconographical
contemplations of Bisotun in relation to usable pasts and emphatic allusion to the cosmic, see Margaret Cool
Root, ‘Defining the divine in Achaemenid Persian kingship: The view from Bisitun’, in L. Mitchell and C.
Melville (eds), Every Inch a King: From Alexander to the King of Kings (Leiden and Boston, 2013), pp. 23–65.
20 A. Shapur Shahbazi, ‘From Parsa to Taxt-e Jamsid’, Archäeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran x (1977), pp. 197–
207.
21 For instance, note a discussion of the removal of some elements of the Palace of Darius by Abud al-Dawla
Buyid (r. 949–82) to his palace in Shiraz: A. Shapur Shahbazi, Illustrierte Beschreibung von Persepolis
(Persepolis, 1977), p. 50. Similarly, note commentary on the removal of Persepolis columns as spolia in
Isfahan: Eugenio Galdieri, Esfahan: Ali Qapu (Rome, 1979). Remarks on the post-Achaemenid ‘romance’ with
Takht-e Jamshid are offered in Mousavi, ‘Persepolis in retrospect’. This topic has been dealt with by various
scholars from other disciplinary perspectives: for example, Assadoullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, ‘Le
royaume de Salomon: Les inscriptions persanes de sites achéménides’, Le Monde iranien et l’Islam I (Geneva
and Paris, 1971), pp. 1–41, esp. pp. 20–41. For discussions of the spoliation of Persepolis by Europeans (with
bibliography), see Alexander Nagel, ‘Colors, gilding and painted motifs in Persepolis: Approaching the
polychromy of Achaemenid Persian architectural sculpture, c. 520–330 BCE’, Ph.D. dissertation (University of
Michigan, 2010).
22 On the meaning of the royal-hero motif within the architectural dynamics of Persepolis, see Root, King and
Kingship, esp. pp. 300–8. I have also written about valences of dynamic stasis and control implicit in the
imagery as it is displayed on many seals of heroic encounter produced in the empire; these are not
visualizations of raw aggression as much as they are icons of order, control and pacified/harmonized
dominion. In this, they dovetail with a contemporary Hebrew biblical tradition reflected in the story of Daniel
in the Lion’s Den. See Margaret Cool Root, ‘Persian art’, in D.N. Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary,
vol. 1 (New York, 1992), pp. 440–7.
23 The image of heroic encounter (in myriad permutations) enjoys an explosive renewal beginning in the reign
of Darius I. Approximately one-third of the seal images used on the Persepolis Fortification tablets in the
Garrison and Root research corpus of c.1,250 discrete seals deploy this motif in some form; see Mark B.
Garrison and Margaret Cool Root, Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, vol. 1: Images of Heroic
Encounter, Oriental Institute Publications 117 (Chicago, 2001). The reasons for this are, I think, complicated
and not subject to simplistic assumptions about the semiotics of power. The key point here is that there may
have been layered associations to the idea and ideals of heroic encounter so dynamically reinvented by the
Achaemenids in the monumental and portable media that remained vestigially in the consciousness of
Persian culture for centuries in relation to the Achaemenid past and to Persepolis specifically. The naming of
the Takht in later times, associating it with the quintessential hero, has often been seen as proof that after
Alexander there was a radical disconnect with what the Takht was as a historical Achaemenid entity. I

propose that we see this naming, rather, as a hyper-connect with what Achaemenid Persepolis was. For some
issues relating to ways in which seals in particular became conveyors of cultural memory, see Margaret Cool
Root, ‘Lifting the veil: Approaches to the study of artistic transmission beyond the boundaries of historical
periodisation’, in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, A. Kuhrt, and M.C. Root (eds), The Persian Empire: Continuity and
Change, Achaemenid History 8 (Leiden, 1994), pp. 9–37.
24 DPf (the Elamite text) uses the Old Persian gatu as a loan word in order to characterize the platform, as
discussed by Lecoq, Inscriptions, p. 329, note 1. The word also appears in Darius’ tomb façade inscription
(DNa.4). See Lecoq, Inscriptions, p. 220, where it explicitly refers to the representations of the peoples of the
empire who bear the throne (gatu), as in the element of furniture upon which Darius stands (see more on
this below). Root, ‘Temple to palace’, includes additional commentary. For a discussion of the relation of
these meanings to New Persian words, see François de Blois, ‘“Place” and “throne” in Persian’, Iran xxx
(1995), pp. 61–5.
25 On the name, see A. Shapur Shahbazi, ‘New aspects of Persepolitan studies’, Gymnasium lxxxv (1978), pp.
490–91. The issue of Mithra in Achaemenid Persepolis is mired in historiographical difficulty and compounded
by problems in interpreting the Elamite of the Fortification texts. Mithra along with Anahita were certainly
worshipped in Persepolis along with a multitude of other deities beyond Ahuramazda (who figures so
prominently in the monumental inscriptions). See, for example: Briant, History, pp. 251–4, 916; Pierre Briant,
e

e

‘L’élevage ovin dans l’empire achéménide, VI –IV siècles avant notre ère’, in P. Briant (ed.), Rois, tributs et
paysans: Études sur les formations tributaires du Moyen-Orient ancient (Paris, 1982), pp. 331–56. On difficulties
in the reading of the Elamite texts, see Henkelman, Other Gods, esp. p. 554, on Mišebaka.
26 On the symbolic force of crenellations in the Persepolis landscape, see the still-pertinent remarks in Arthur
Upham Pope, ‘Persepolis as a ritual city’, Archaeology x (1957), pp. 125–26 (despite some issues with his
overall thesis). On the symbolic resonance of the crenellated architectural landscape of Persepolis across
time and space in the cultural memory of the empire, see Björn Anderson, ‘Imperial legacies, local identities:
References to Achaemenid Persian iconography on crenellated Nabataean tombs’, Ars Orientalis xxxii (2002),
pp. 163–207. On crenellations and the cosmic associations of the Achaemenid royal crown and Persepolis, see
Root, ‘Defining the divine’.
27 Tilia, Studies and Restorations II, esp. pp. 11–18.
28 Schmidt, Persepolis I, pp. 62–3, provides Cameron’s translation of the Elamite. Cameron uses ‘fortress’ here.
Lecoq, Inscriptions, p. 229, uses ‘palais’.
29 Root, ‘Temple to palace’, pp. 165–210, esp. pp. 193–96, with full discussion and references.
30 The major studies remain Nylander, Ionians and Stronach, Pasargadae. See Margaret Cool Root, ‘Circles of
artistic programming: Strategies for studying creative process at Persepolis’, in A.C. Gunter (ed.),
Investigating Artistic Environments in the Ancient Near East (Washington, 1990), pp. 118–19, on the meaning of
the very different manifestations of the platform masonry at each site. Boucharlat, ‘Suse dans l’architecture
iranienne’ for a beautifully illustrated overview. Schmidt, Persepolis I, p. 20, on assessments of travel distance
between Persepolis and Pasargadae.
31 E.R.M. Dusinberrre, Empire, Authority, and Autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia (Cambridge, 2013). A
dissertation in progress is exploring Egypt in the Achaemenid Empire with a more nuanced paradigm of
operational power in mind as well; see Henry P. Colburn, ‘The archaeology of empire in Achaemenid Egypt’,
Ph.D. dissertation (University of Michigan, 2014). A new study of technologies of communication and
communication speed within the empire will encourage radical reassessment of tropes of unwieldy distance
as determinants of presumed imperial dysfunction. See Henry P. Colburn, ‘Connectivity and communication

in the Achaemenid Empire’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient lvi (2013), pp. 29–52.
32 Here I gratefully adapt the phrase ‘becoming Roman’ from Greg Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of
Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge, 1998). By adapting Woolf’s phrase I do not mean to suggest that
the ideology of the Achaemenid Empire imposed Persianness on subsumed cultures. There seem to be
distinct differences in ethos and behaviour between the Achaemenid and the Roman pursuit of hegemony;
however, the notion of a social process of becoming is very useful to consider for the Achaemenid
experience.
33 Pope, ‘Persepolis as a ritual city’ is the locus classicus for a concise and compelling statement of the
traditional view. It has much in it that is valid, but it must now be modulated by other considerations.
34 This notion runs through the scholarship even in much truly enlightened work, where hesitation remains
apparent on the possibility that Westerners ‘got as far’ as Persepolis in Achaemenid times, viz. remarks laced
through Margaret C. Miller’s outstanding and deservedly influential book, Athens and Persia in the Fifth
Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge, 1997). Among Iranian archaeologists, note Akbar
Tadjvidi, Dānestanihāy-e novin darbārey-e honar va bāstānshenāsiy-e asr-e hakhāmaneshi bar bonyād-e
kāvoshhāy-e panjsāley-e Takht-e Jamshid (Tehran, 1976), who strongly supported this view of a hidden
Persepolis in the interpretive introduction to this volume documenting Iranian excavations. By contrast,
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s 1971 birthday celebration of Iranian monarchy grasped with zeal an important
feature of ancient Persepolis as an internationally visited place. He hosted dignitaries from around the world
to participate in a lavish feast (catered by Maxim’s of Paris), which an ancient celebration surely would have
included as well. And in doing so, he was subverting the notion of a hidden-away Persepolis. Donald Wilber
(who maintained close ties to the Iranian regime in the run-up to 1971) had just recently published an
interpretation of the gift-bearing delegations of the Apadana: see Donald Wilber, The Archaeology of Parsa,
Seat of the Persian Kings (Princeton, 1969), p. 84. Precisely because he bought into the standard vision, he
could not imagine that in actuality ambassadorial gift-bearers would ever have visited Persepolis. Instead, he
hypothesized that the ancient performance echoed in stone on the Apadana was enacted by soldiers from all
over the empire who were garrisoned in Persepolis. They were made to impersonate regional ambassadorial
gift-bearers. See Talinn Grigor, ‘Preserving the antique modern: Persepolis ’71’, Future Anterior ii (2005), pp.
22–29, for historiographic reflections on the 1971 event dealing with other issues.
35 John Curtis and St John Simpson, ‘Editors’ introduction’, in John Curtis and St John Simpson (eds), The World
of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East (London, 2010), p. xiv: ‘Map of
the Achaemenid Empire’. Contrast the usefully articulated map in Lindsay Allen, The Persian Empire (Chicago,
2005), fig. 5.2, showing a schematic representation of land routes in the empire. Obviously it is not a
question of Curtis and Simpson being unaware of information on road systems; it is perhaps a situation best
described as revealing a lack of energetic attention to the importance of resisting the perpetuation of a trope
via the powerful medium of the misleading map in an otherwise terrific volume.
36 This is an interesting fact that has implications for how Persepolis has been approached. See Margaret Cool
Root, ‘The Persepolis perplex: Some prospects borne of retrospect’, in D. Schmandt-Besserat (ed.), Ancient
Persia: The Art of an Empire (Malibu, 1980), pp. 5–13, on the name issue. Some ways in which a visible
Persepolis may open up new approaches to the affective agency of the place in ancient times can be gleaned
from Margaret Cool Root, ‘The Parthenon frieze and the Apadana reliefs at Persepolis: Reassessing a
programmatic relationship’, American Journal of Archaeology lxxxix (1985), pp. 103–22; Margaret Cool Root,
‘Reading Persepolis in Greek: Gifts of the Yauna’, in C. Tuplin (ed.), Persian Responses: Political and Cultural
Interaction with(in) the Achaemenid Empire (Swansea, 2007), pp. 177–225; Margaret Cool Root, ‘Reading
Persepolis in Greek part two: Marriage metaphors and unmanly virtues’, in S.M.R. Darbandi and A. Zournatzi

(eds), Ancient Greece and Ancient Iran: Cross-Cultural Encounters (Athens, 2008), pp. 195–221. See also:
Anderson, ‘Imperial legacies’; Karen Laurence, ‘Reading Persepolis in Delphi’, in E.R.M. Dusinberre and M.B.
Garrison (eds), Festschrift in Honor of Margaret Cool Root (Leiden, forthcoming).
37 The archive of up to 30,000 complete and fragmentary records was revealed in the Persepolis Fortifications
in 1933–4. The bulk of the texts is written in Elamite cuneiform; smaller numbers were written in ink in
Aramaic; isolated exemplars in Old Persian, Babylonian, Phrygian and Greek have also been identified. Still
other tablet artefacts in this integrated system are uninscribed items bearing seal impressions. See: Richard
T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Oriental Institute Publications 92 (Chicago, 1969), for the largest
group of Elamite texts available in translation; Garrison and Root, Seals, vol. 1, Introduction (and much
bibliography to that date), for an overview including correctives to common misperceptions of its archaeology
and its relation to Persepolis as a place. See Briant, Henkelman and Stolper (eds), L’archive, for a recent
compilation of articles on the archive. For a sampling of exemplary texts (with commentaries) on topics
related to Persepolis as an active centre from the Fortification archive and from the much smaller Elamitelanguage administrative archive excavated in the Persepolis Treasury, see Kuhrt, Persian Empire, pp. 730–
814. See Wouter F.M. Henkelman, ‘“Consumed before the king”: The table of Darius, and that of Irdabama
and Irtaštuna, and that of his satrap, Karkiš’, in B. Jacobs and R. Rollinger (eds), Der Achämenidenhof – The
Achaemenid Court (Wiesbaden, 2010), pp. 667–72, for important contexts in which we can trace the king’s
presence in Persepolis through the tablets.
38 For discussions of this issue, see: Pierre Briant, ‘Le nomadisme du grand roi’, Iranica Antiqua xxiii (1988), pp.
253–73; Christopher Tuplin, ‘The seasonal migration of Achaemenid kings’, in M. Brosius and A. Kuhrt (eds),
Studies in Persian History: Essays in Memory of David M. Lewis, Achaemenid History 11 (Leiden, 1998), pp. 63–
114.
39 Schmidt, Persepolis I, must be expanded now with reference to later work (nicely summarized by Mousavi,
‘Persepolis in retrospect’).
40 Boucharlat, ‘Iran’, pp. 225–32.
41 A good example is PFS 49, a seal in the Fortification style owned by an elite guide named Ishbaramishtima,
who led distinguished personages between Susa and India via Persepolis. In one instance (PF 1316) the party
he leads (and receives rations for in Persepolis) is explicitly described as carrying a sealed document and
heading to see the king; see Garrison and Root, Seals, vol 1, pp. 95–6 (Cat. No. 23), used on PF tablets 1316–
18, for which, see also Hallock, Fortification Tablets, pp. 372–3. For a detailed and remarkable explication of
styles and workshops, see Mark B. Garrison, ‘Seal workshops and artists in Persepolis: A study of seal
impressions preserving the theme of heroic encounter on the Persepolis fortification and treasury tablets’,
Ph.D. dissertation (University of Michigan, 1988).
42 Margaret Cool Root, ‘Cultural pluralisms on the Persepolis fortification tablets’, in M.-F. Boussac (ed.),
Recherches récentes sur l’empire achéménide, Topoi supplément 1 (Lyons, 1997), pp. 229–52; Margaret Cool
Root, ‘The legible image: How did seals and sealing matter in Persepolis?’, in P. Briant, W. Henkelman, and M.
Stolper (eds), L’Archive des fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches, Persika
12 (Paris, 2008), pp. 85–150.
43 Boucharlat has explored this issue, moving from a consideration of Susa and Persepolis as intentional ‘citées
vides’ to a more modulated position. See, among his many articles on this subject: Rémy Boucharlat, ‘Suse et
la Susiane à l’époque achéménide: Données archéologiques’, Achaemenid History iv (1990), pp. 149–75, esp. p.
156; ‘Susa under Achaemenid rule’, in J. Curtis (ed.), Mesopotamia and Iran in the Persian Period: Conquest
and Imperialism 539–331 BC (London, 1997), pp. 54–67, esp. p. 66, on the ‘empty city’; ‘Camp royal et
résidences achéménides’, in M.-F. Boussac (ed.), Recherches récentes sur l’empire achéménide, Topoi

supplément 1 (Lyon, 1997), pp. 217–28; ‘The Persepolis area in the Achaemenid period: Some
reconsiderations’, in N.F. Miller and K. Abdi (eds), Yeki bud yeki nabud: Essays on the Archaeology of Iran in
Honor of William M. Sumner (Los Angeles, 2003), pp. 261–5, esp. p. 265; Boucharlat, ‘Iran’, p.278 (indicating
the need for further excavation and evidentiary analysis).
44 For example, discussions from a wide range of cultural contexts in John Taylor, Jean G. Lengellé and Caroline
Andrew (eds), Capital Cities/Les Capitales: Perspectives Internationales/International Perspectives (Ottawa,
1993). See Élisabeth Dorier-Apprill, Vocabulaire de la ville: Notions et references (Paris, 2001) for a relevant
analysis of terms and varying values of them in considering global approaches to what a contemporary city
may be. Useful for its conversation on these issues in relation to orientalist constructions of alien ancient
Eastern cities is Mario Liverani, ‘Ancient Near Eastern cities and modern ideologies’, in Die orientalische
Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch (Saarbrucker, 1997), pp. 85–107.
45 See, for example: Moshe Weinfeld, ‘Jerusalem—a political and spiritual capital’, in J.G. Westenholz (ed.),
Capital Cities: Urban Planning and Spiritual Dimensions (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 15–40; Joan Goodnick
Westenholz, ‘The theological foundation of the city, the capital city and Babylon’, in J.G. Westenholz (ed.),
Capital Cities: Urban Planning and Spiritual Dimensions (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 43–54.
46 ‘Ancient animations: Social networking in the Persian Empire’ was a project in interactive digital publishing
undertaken for the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan.
47 Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, pp. 168–9.
48 See, for example: Priscilla Soucek, ‘The influence of Persepolis on Islamic art’, in Études arabes et islamiques,
histoire et civilisation 4 (Paris, 1975), pp. 195–200; Ebba Koch, ‘The audience halls of Shah Jahan’, Muqarnas xi
(1994), pp. 143–65, esp. pp. 147–9.
49 For a critique of the use of the word ‘palace’ for buildings on the Takht, as he offers a reassessment of the
function particularly of the Palace of Darius, see Shahrokh Razmjou, ‘Persepolis: A reinterpretation of palaces
and their function’, in J. Curtis and St J. Simpson (eds), The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and
Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East (London, 2010), pp. 231–45.
50 In this sense, the tent-city extravaganza of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1971 may not have been far
short of the mark. Fig. 2 here shows (in the plain at left) the tent city still in perfect shape in 1973.
51 Nylander, Ionians in Pasargadae.
52 Root, ‘Circles of artistic programming’, pp. 118–21.
53 Lecoq, Les Inscriptions, pp. 229–30; Root, ‘Temple to palace’, esp. pp. 196–200.
54 Kent, Old Persian, pp. 112, 147–8; Lecoq, Les Inscriptions, pp. 103, 251–2; rhetorical interpretation: Root,
‘Temple to palace’, pp. 197–200.
55 A protrusion off the benches lining the interior of the gate directly opposite the south door leading to the
north façade of the Apadana must have been a special official seat. See Codella, ‘Achaemenid monumental
gateways’, p. 125.
56 Muscarella, ‘Achaemenid art and architecture’, p. 218, note 9, offers a useful overview of the naming issues.
57 For example, Wilber, The Archaeology of Parsa, p. 24.
58 Schmitt, The Bisitun Inscriptions, p. 53.
59 Root, ‘Temple to palace’, pp. 170–6, discussing notions of a ‘temple’ in Achaemenid Iran, especially with
reference to the fire temple at the Median site of Nush-e Jan. Mark Garrison is currently writing a book on
altars in Achaemenid art and in the archaeological record. This will encourage a reassessment of the
traditional approach to Herodotus’ comment.

60 Lecoq, Les Inscriptions, pp. 115–16.
61 For the recent work to chart and understand more fully this extensive system, see Mohammad Hassan
Talebian, ‘A review of research and restoration activities at Parsa-Pasargadae: Analysis, evaluation and future
perspectives’, in J. Curtis and St J. Simpson (eds), The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in
Iran and the Ancient Near East (London, 2010), pp. 299–307, esp. pp. 302–3 and fig. 26.3, which shows the
channels under the Apadana and elsewhere. For initial documentation of the subterranean system, the moat
and the cistern, based on the Chicago excavations, see Schmidt, Persepolis I, pp. 210–12.
62 Note Soudavar’s evocative commentary on Mithra/Anahita – Sun/Moon and Waters: Abolala Soudavar, The
Aura of Kings: Legitimacy and Divine Sanction in Iranian Kingship (Costa Mesa, 2003), esp. pp. 114–20.
63 There is a substantial literature on puns and wordplay in the Hebrew Bible and in Mesopotamian texts,
enough to make me confident that we need not cede such things in antiquity to the prerogative of Athenian
playwrights.
64 Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, ‘Alexander and Persepolis’, in J. Carlsen, B. Due, O.S. Due and B. Poulsen
(eds), Alexander the Great: Reality and Myth (Rome, 1993), pp. 177–88. Important nuances of these issues are
pursued in Jennifer L. Finn, ‘Alexander the Great: Forming identity in a multicultural empire’, Ph.D.
dissertation (University of Michigan, 2012).
65 Kent, Old Persian, p. 137. On the date of DPh, see Margaret Cool Root, ‘Evidence from Persepolis for the
dating of Persian and archaic Greek coinage’, Numismatic Chronicle cxlviii (1988), pp. 1–12. For an in-depth
rhetorical analysis and much bibliography, see Root, ‘Palace to temple’, pp. 200–8. See also: David Stronach,
‘The Apadana: A signature of the line of Darius I’, in J.-L. Huot, M. Yon and Y. Calvet (eds), De l’Indus aux
Balkans: Recueil à la mémoire de Jean Deshayes (Paris, 1985), pp. 433–45; Cindy L. Nimchuk, ‘Empire
encapsulated: The Persepolis Apadana foundation deposits’, in J. Curtis and St J. Simpson (eds), The World of
Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East (London, 2010), pp. 221–9.
66 I have broached the idea that the hero was charged with valences of universalized access to the glory of
kingship through association with the essence of being (or becoming) ‘a Persian man’, a concept reiterated in
several royal inscriptions. See Root, King and Kingship, pp. 307–8. More recently, see Garrison and Root,
Seals, vol. 1, pp. 53–60. The royal name seal of Darius with the image of heroic encounter (PFS 7*) is
catalogued in Garrison and Root, Seals, vol. 1, Cat. No. 4, pp. 68–70.
67 For an in-depth discussion of the alternating courtly and equestrian garments of the Persian nobles and the
importance of not understanding these figures as alternating Persians (court robe) and Medes (riding
garment), see Root, ‘Medes’.
68 Root, King and Kingship, pp. 227–84, esp. 267–72; ‘Reading Persepolis in Greek part two’. My presentations
on the force of the hand-holding motif in the context of the Apadana reliefs has been misunderstood
occasionally as expressing a naively uncomplicated vision of harmonious hegemony; for example, David
Stronach, ‘Icons of dominion: Review scenes at Til Barsip and Persepolis’, Iranica Antiqua xxxvii (2002), p.
388. My intention has always been to convey a sense of the powerful ambiguity of the representations, full of
tensional liminality and infused with an aura of religiosity, which is itself a tool of power as well as an
expression of authentic spiritual ambition.
69 A beguiling characterization of the Persepolis reliefs as illustrations of royal performances taking place quite
precisely when and how they are depicted on the architecture is too literalistic to be sustainable; cf. Roman
Ghirshman, ‘Notes iraniennes VII, à propos de Persépolis’, Artibus Asiae xx (1957), pp. 265–78.
70 Root, King and Kingship, fig. 12, for a plan showing placement of the entire programme of architectural
sculpture here.

71 Schmidt, Persepolis I, p. 81.
72 A good example of this is the throne permanently installed in the palace chapel of Charlemagne at Aachen
(792–805 c e ) to signify the presence of the ruler whether or not he was actually seated in it at any given
moment. Similarly, the colossal statue of the emperor Constantine in the Basilica Nova (aka Basilica of
Maxentius and Constantine) in Rome (c.315–30 c e ) was a surrogate for his presence, enabling him to preside
over all judicial functions there no matter where in the empire his physical body happened to be. These
famous examples populate all Western textbooks on the history of world art; see, for example, Marilyn
Stokstad, Art History, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2009), pp. 451–53 and 224–28, respectively.
73 For the architecture of Palace P, including documentation of the ‘throne portico’, see Stronach, Pasargadae,
pp. 78–94.
74 Stronach, ‘Parterres and watercourses’.
75 Krefter’s reconstruction at his fig. 28 is technically a pastiche vision, taking the elaborate campaniform
column bases and animal protomes in the form of lions from the east portico and applying them to the west
(see below). Farrokh Saidi treats some issues regarding the archaeological evidence of the emplacement for a
throne projecting out beyond the west portico with a different frame of reference and approach to the
material than mine here: ‘Two versions of the Achaemenid throne’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute xx (2006), pp.
77–86.
76 Diodorus Siculus (17.71.2–7), describing the sack of Alexander for an audience during the rise of the Roman
emperor Augustus, stipulates a three-walled place, one wall being the Takht fortification itself and the other
two being ring walls in the plain. Excavations have legitimized this feature of Diodorus’ sources. See fig. 6
above.
77 The forms, functions, symbolical associations and discourses of placement of column types in Persepolis cry
out for a dedicated analysis. It could reveal significant semiotics of space.
78 For commentaries on the lion-and-bull symplegma and the ubiquitous rosette, see Root, ‘Animals in the art
of ancient Iran’, in B.J. Collins (ed.), A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East (Leiden, 2002), pp.
201–3; ‘The lioness of Elam: Politics and dynastic fecundity at Persepolis’, in W. Henkelman and A. Kuhrt
(eds), A Persian Perspective: Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Achaemenid History 13 (Leiden,
2003), pp. 9–32. Important observations on the lion and the bull in Achaemenid iconography are found in
Parivash Jamzadeh, ‘The Achaemenid throne: Its significance and its legacy’, Ph.D. dissertation (University of
California, 1991); ‘The Achaemenid throne-leg design’, Iranica Antiqua xxxi (1996), pp. 101–46.
79 Sancisi-Weerdenburg, ‘Alexander and Persepolis’, draws attention to this. For small finds associated with
this area of the Apadana, see: Schmidt, Persepolis I, pp. 76–8; Ali Sami, Persepolis (Takht-i-Jamshid), trans.
R.N. Sharp (Shiraz, 1955), pp. 62–3.
80 Schmidt, Persepolis I, pp. 76–81. For a major study bringing together evidence of polychromy in Persepolis,
see now Nagel, ‘Colors, gilding and painted motifs’.
81 A. Rossi, ‘Colours and lexical taxonomies: Linguistic and cultural categories in Iranian’, in A. Panaino and A.
Piras (eds), Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea, Ravenna, 6–11 ottobre, vol. 1
(Milan, 2006), p. 462.
82 Schmidt, Persepolis II, pp. 53–6.
83 Ibid., p. 26 and pl. 7 (PTS 20).
84 The work of Alexander Nagel (in ‘Colors, gilding, and painted motifs’ and elsewhere) is now pointing the way
to new strategies for reading a semiotics of colour here.

85 Schmidt, Persepolis I, pp. 77–8 and fig. 35.
86 Sami, Persepolis, p. 59.
87 The precise archaeological articulation of the area is muddied by subsequent building and rebuilding in lateand post-Achaemenid times. For a sceptical overview of scholarship discussing the archaeological evidence
for gardens in this area of the Takht, see Christopher Tuplin, ‘The parks and gardens of the Achaemenid
Empire’, in C. Tuplin (ed.), Achaemenid Studies (Stuttgart, 1996), pp. 88–92, critiquing (among other
commentaries) the analysis by Francovich, ‘Problems’, p. 207. On testimonia for Mesopotamian and Persian
‘kings as gardeners’ (which is insistent in the ancient sources both classical and Near Eastern), see, for
example: Francovich, ‘Problems’, pp. 214–16; and (particularly for the Achaemenids, with the incorporation of
some glyptic evidence) Pierre Briant, ‘À propos du roi-jardinier: Remarques sur l’histoire d’un dossier
documentaire’, in W. Henkelman and A. Kuhrt (eds), A Persian Perspective: Essays in Memory of Heleen
Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Achaemenid History 13 (Leiden, 2003), pp. 33–49.
88 Root, King and Kingship, pp. 76–86 and fig. 7.
89 Ibid., p. 82, fig. 7 (Room 5) and pl. XVI, 16b.
90 Root, ‘The lioness of Elam’ and ‘Elam in the imperial imagination’.
91 Razmjou, ‘Persepolis’, and fig. 20.15. I am deeply indebted to my colleagues from the Parsa/Pasargadae
Research Foundation for allowing me to examine the Palace of Darius and surroundings in their company in
May 2011 despite the area’s closure to tourists because of ongoing scientific projects.
92 Henkelman, ‘Consumed before the king’. Scenes of sacrificial rites occur on many seals of the Fortification
archive: e.g., Mark B. Garrison, ‘The uninscribed tablets from the fortification archive: A preliminary analysis’,
in P. Briant, W. Henkelman, and M. Stolper (eds), L’Archive des fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et
perspectives de recherches, Persika 12 (Paris, 2008), pp. 149–238, especially figs 8 (PFS 75), 14 (PFUTS 3) and
48 (PFUTS 111).
93 Schmidt, Persepolis I, p. 243.
94 Root, ‘Animals’, esp. pp. 184–92.
95 See, for example, Garrison ‘The uninscribed tablets’, fig. 8 (PFS 75) and pp. 149–238 generally for many ritual
scenes including sacrifices.
96 David Stronach and Michael Roaf, Nush-i Jan I: The Major Buildings of the Median Settlement (London, Leuven,
Paris and Dudley, MA, 2007), pp. 67–92 and figs. 2.8, 2.11. Schmidt, Persepolis III, pp. 34–49 and fig. 7.
97 Tilia, Studies and Restorations, p. 247 and figs. 1, 26.
98 For a fuller discussion of some of these issues, with bibliography, see Root, ‘Defining the divine’. A
penetrating treatment of the historiographical and evidentiary problems that plague scholarship on
Achaemenid kingship and its divine status is offered in Mark B. Garrison, ‘By the favor of Ahuramazdā:
Kingship and the divine in the early Achaemenid period’, in P. Iossif, A.S. Chankowski and C.C. Lorber (eds),
More than Men, Less than Gods: Studies on Royal Cult and Imperial Worship (Louvain, Paris and Walpole, MA,
2011), pp. 5–78. Garrison develops a compelling and nuanced argument for a form of royal cult based in part
on new evidence from the Fortification archive. My notion of a ‘hegemonic kingship’ has not, however, been
articulated in quite these terms heretofore.
99 Discussed at length in Root, King and Kingship, pp. 131–61.
100 Kent, Old Persian, p. 138.
101 For a useful summary, see Miller, Athens and Persia, pp. 231, 237–8. No new work at either site has changed
this.

102 A notable exception is Pierre Amiet, ‘L’art achéménide’, in Hommage Universel I, Acta Iranica 1 (1974), p.
168, who early on suggested that a rite like this one may have taken place on an actual rooftop.
103 For a thought-provoking analysis of the material and visual record of Achaemenid thrones in conversation
with the prophetic literature of the Chronicles, see Helen Dixon, ‘Writing Persepolis in Judah: Achaemenid
kingship in the Chronicles’, in M. Nissinen and C.E. Carter (eds), Images and Prophecy in the Ancient Eastern
Mediterranean (Göttingen, 2009), pp. 163–94. Dixon reviews the evidence for transportable throne platforms,
superseding Root, King and Kingship on that topic.
104 Root, ‘Animals’, pp. 201–3, on the lion-and-bull emblem.
105 Root, ‘Defining the divine’.
106 Issues on the quality of perceiving the Bisotun monument from below (including the likelihood of goldencrustations and other metal additions that may have created a numinous visual display even from a great
distance) are discussed briefly in Root, ‘Defining the divine’. Related issues of reception and the optic aura of
the distant phenomenon are taken up in Benjamin B. Rubin, ‘(Re)presenting empire: The Roman imperial cult
in Asia Minor, 31 BC–AD 68’, Ph.D. dissertation (University of Michigan, 2008), pp. 80–91, 117–39. On
evidence for gold- and paint-encrusted cuneiform inscriptions in Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam, see Nagel,
‘Colors, gilding and painted motifs’.
107 Finn, ‘Gods, kings, men’, with reference to Irene J. Winter, ‘The conquest of space in time: Three suns on
the victory stele of Naram-Sin’, in J.G. Dercksen (ed.), Assyria and Beyond: Studies presented to Mogens Trolle
Larsen (Leiden, 2004), pp. 607–28.
108 Stokstad, Art History, pp. 137–41, 186–7 respectively. A review of the Parthenon evidence, with abundant
research apparatus is found in, for example, Jeffrey M. Hurwitt, The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology,
and Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 174–9. For the iconography of the
statue of Augustus and cosmic collusion, see Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans.
A. Shapiro (Ann Arbor, 1988), passim and esp. pp. 187–92.
109 L’Orange’s analysis of an iconography of cosmic kingship reaching back to the Achaemenid past and forward
into late antiquity continues to ring true; see H.P. L’Orange, Studies in the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in
the Ancient World (Oslo, 1953). On closely related matters of iconographical resonances across time, see
Rubin, ‘(Re)presenting empire’. Motifs of uplifting the ruler as a recurring theme in Achaemenid art and
performative practice played out in Roman iconography and ruler cult is broached in Margaret Cool Root, ‘The
Persian archer at Persepolis: Aspects of chronology, style, and symbolism revealed by the Fortification tablet
seal impressions’, Revue des Études Anciennes xci (1989), pp. 35–50. Iconographical evidence from Achaemenid
glyptic on the theme of upliftedness in the art of the Achaemenid Empire using additional material from the
Fortification tablets appears in Mark B. Garrison, ‘Visual representation of the divine and the numinous in
early Achaemenid Iran: Old problems, new directions’, in C. Uehlinger and F. Graf (eds), Iconography of
Ancient Near Eastern Religions I: Pre-Hellenistic Periods: Introductory Essays (Leiden, forthcoming).
110
Parviz
Tanavoli,
‘The
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previously
www.rozanehmagazine.com/allarticles/TanavoliCypress.htm (accessed 22 November 2013).

available

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111 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York, 1995 [1977]).
112 Michel Foucault, ‘The eye of power’, in C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings, 1972–1977 (New York, 1980), pp. 146–65. See also: John Rajchman, ‘Foucault’s art of seeing’,
October xiv (1988), pp. 89–119; Terrence W. Epperson, ‘Panoptic plantations: The garden sights of Thomas
Jefferson and George Mason’, in J.A. Delle, S.A. Mrozowski and R. Paynter (eds), Lines that Divide: Historical
Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender (Knoxville, 2000), pp. 58–75, esp. pp. 60–4. The importance of this

charismatic visibility is discussed in Root, ‘The Persian archer’.
113 Steven W. Hirsch, The Friendship of the Barbarians: Xenophon and the Persian Empire (Hanover, NH, and
London, 1985), pp. 120–5.
114 On the king as judge, see Root, ‘Defining the divine’.
115 Koch, ‘The audience halls’, note 44. Sadly, an influential commentary on Near Eastern palaces published in
1993 misses the mark (and a terrific opportunity) in its assessment of the ‘ancient Near Eastern’ backdrop to
Islamic experience by ignoring completely the significance of Achaemenid Persian material and letting
Assyria stand for the entire tradition of the pre-Islamic Near East; see Gülru Necipogˇlu, ‘Framing the gaze in
Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal palaces’, Ars Orientalis xxiii (1993), p. 306.
116 E.R.M. Dusinberre, ‘Herzfeld in Persepolis’, in A.C. Gunter and S.R. Hauser (eds), Ernst Herzfeld and the
Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950 (Leiden and Boston, 2005), p. 140 [her own translation of the
Herzfeld journal entry for 24 November 2005]; Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution,
notebook N-82.
117 See my ongoing cycle of in-depth treatments beginning with Root, ‘Gifts of the Yauna’, ‘Elam in the
imperial imagination’ and ‘Medes in the imperial imagination’.
118 This is explicitly stressed in the Bisotun inscription of Darius the Great (DBI.8.120–124): ‘The man who
was loyal, him I treated well, who was disloyal, him I punished severely’ (Schmitt, Bisitun Inscriptions, p. 50;
revised annotated edition of the Old Persian).
119 See those to be published in Garrison and Root, Seals, vol. 2. Of these, the especially impressive PFS 535*,
noted earlier, occurs also on Aramaic tablets (to be published by Dusinberre and Azzoni) and on the
uninscribed corpus (Garrison, ‘The uninscribed tablets’, figs. 2–3). Numerous additional seals known now
only from the uninscribed corpus also depict interesting ritual scenes involving vessels for eating and
drinking (see, for example, PFUTS 3, PFUTS 66 and PFUTS 91 in Garrison, ‘The uninscribed tablets’, figs. 14,
44, and 46). For a preliminary overview of the texts of the Aramaic Fortification tablets, see: Annalisa Azzoni,
‘The Bowman MS and the Aramaic tablets’, in P. Briant, W. Henkelman, and M. Stolper (eds), L’Archive des
fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches, Persika 12 (Paris, 2008), pp. 253–75;
E.R.M. Dusinberre, ‘Seal impressions on the Persepolis Fortification Aramaic tablets: Preliminary
observations’, in P. Briant, W. Henkelman and M. Stolper (eds), L’Archive des fortifications de Persépolis: État
des questions et perspectives de recherches, Persika 12 (Paris, 2008), pp. 239–52.
120 See: Wouter F.M. Henkelman, ‘Parnakka’s feast: šip in Pārsa and Elam’, in J. Álvarez-Mon and M.B. Garrison
(eds), Elam and Persia (Winona Lake, 2011), pp. 89–166; Henkelman, ‘“Consumed before the king”’.
121 E.R.M. Dusinberre, Empire, Authority, and Autonomy, makes a cogent case for elements of dining
behaviours as well as paraphernalia adopted in Sardis as features of emulation of courtly performance in the
Achaemenid heartland. In her new book, Dusinberre expands on issues of feasting and food in the service of
the Achaemenid Empire in exciting new ways.
122 Ann C. Gunter and Margaret Cool Root, ‘Replicating, inscribing, giving: Ernst Herzfeld and Artaxerxes’
silver phiale in the Freer Gallery of Art’, Ars Orientalis xxviii (1998), pp. 3–40.
123 Sancisi-Weerdenburg, ‘Alexander and Persepolis’. This article also presents an interesting critical
commentary on the classical narrative line of the destruction of Persepolis as an act of vengeance against
Xerxes. Finn, ‘Alexander the Great’, takes traditional interpretations of the meaning of the burning of
Persepolis in provocative fresh directions.
124 Nicholas Cahill, ‘The treasury at Persepolis: Gift-giving at the city of the Persians’, American Journal of
Archaeology lxxxix (1985), pp. 373–89, explores the relationship between gifts represented on the Apadana

façades and items stored in the Treasury, creating a dialogic relationship between these two imposing
structures.
125 For the excavation record, see Schmidt, Persepolis I, pp. 162–9.
126 Tilia, Studies and Restorations, esp. pp. 205–8.
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Waters, Matt, ‘Parsumaš, Anšan, and Cyrus’, in J. Álvarez-Mon and M.B. Garrison (eds), Elam and Persia
(Winona Lake, 2011), pp. 285–96.
Weinfeld, Moshe, ‘Jerusalem—a political and spiritual capital’, in J.G. Westenholz (ed.), Capital Cities: Urban
Planning and Spiritual Dimensions (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 15–40.
Westenholz, Joan Goodnick, ‘The theological foundation of the city, the capital city and Babylon’, in J.G.
Westenholz (ed.), Capital Cities: Urban Planning and Spiritual Dimensions (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 43–54.
Wiesehöfer, Josef, Ancient Persia, trans. A. Azodi (London and New York, 1996).
Wilber, Donald, The Archaeology of Parsa, Seat of the Persian King (Princeton, 1969).
Winter, Irene J., ‘The conquest of space in time: Three suns on the victory stele of Naram-Sin’, in J.G. Dercksen
(ed.), Assyria and Beyond: Studies presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen (Leiden, 2004), pp. 607–28.
Woolf, Greg, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge, 1998).
Zanker, Paul, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. A. Shapiro (Ann Arbor, 1988).

2
Dynastic Sanctuaries and the Transformation of Iranian
Kingship between Alexander and Islam1
matthew p . c anepa

2.1 Map of the ancient Iranian world between Alexander and Islam, with important sites.

T

h e invasion of Alexander and the subsequent fall of the Achaemenid dynasty
in 330 b c e wrought one of the deepest ruptures on Iranian culture, rivalled only by
the invasions of Islam in the seventh century c e . While these cataclysms effaced or
disrupted many traditions of Persian kingship, the intervening centuries witnessed
an incredibly creative period responsible for the growth of many new cultural forms.
During this ‘Middle Iranian’ period (c.330 b c e –c.642 c e ), several dynasties created
and contested a range of new Iranian royal identities, architecture and rituals,
ultimately forging a new pan-Iranian kingship in the process (fig. 2.1). This study
explores one of these new developments that emerged during this chaotic yet
creative period between Alexander and Islam. During this era, several Iranianspeaking or Iranian-influenced dynasties, from Anatolia to South Asia, established
sanctuaries that honoured the sovereign, his relatives and ancestors (both actual
and mythological) in conjunction with cult rendered to the gods and, in some cases,
funerary monuments. In the few instances where the Iranian names of the
sanctuaries are known, they show a marked uniformity, even if they come from the
opposite ends of the Iranian world.2 For example, the meaning of the Armenian
toponym ‘Bagawan’ (‘place of the gods’) corresponds quite closely to the Bactrian
word for the Kushan sanctuaries, bagolaggo, and all relate to Old Iranian
*baga.dānaka.3 Other names, such as the Sanskrit devakula in Kushan India, or the
Greek hierothēsion in Commagene, appear to translate the concept directly, or were
coined to encompass the sites’ unique function.
As new archaeological discoveries have added new perspective to previously
known sites, several scholars over the years, working on different dynasties and
time periods, have drawn attention to the common cultic, visual and architectural
features shared by many of these sites.4 Some interpreted these sites as expressions
of Zoroastrianism or a survival of an unknown Achaemenid or Zoroastrian
architectural tradition. Lack of evidence of official Achaemenid–Zoroastrian
architecture frustrated many of these approaches, as did the fact that few of the
patrons were adherents of orthodox Zoroastrianism, which was a late antique
phenomenon. Moreover, the fact that Zoroastrianism and other ancient Iranian
religions cultivated reverence for the souls of the departed did not explain the

development of the sites’ ritual, visual and architectural features.5 Rather than
arguing for any inherent ‘Iranian’, ‘Persian’ or, much less, ‘Mazdaean’ or
‘Zoroastrian’ quality to the architectural forms or rituals themselves, this study
focuses on the phenomenon as a contested and malleable collection of practices that
several different Iranian dynasties appropriated and manipulated to appeal to both
global and local audiences.6 While it is useful to describe the phenomenon’s basic
outlines, it is important methodologically to resist the temptation to posit and look
for a uniformly replicated ‘system’ informed by the best-documented sites. The goal
of this study, therefore, is comparative rather than reconstructive. Idiosyncratic
local concerns, artistic and architectural technique, as well as non-Iranian global
forces impacted the individual development of each sanctuary just as much as their
patrons’ engagement with the developing forms of Middle Iranian kingship.
Fundamentally, Iranian royal identity was something constantly enacted and
practised as well as modified, contested or erased.7

a c h ae me n id p e r s ia, a le x an d e r

and t h e

s e le u c id e mpir e

Middle Iranian dynastic sanctuaries did not grow in an uninterrupted and linear
fashion from Achaemenid royal practices. They did, however, incorporate several
older traditions with Persian roots into what was a new phenomenon. The most
important institution that the Achaemenid dynasty cultivated to architecturally and
ritually reinforce and bolster their rule was that of the palace.8 The Achaemenid
court built grand palaces incorporating a similar repertoire of architectural features
such as a colossal audience hall (apadāna) in their three main administrative cities,
Persepolis, Susa and, very likely, Ecbatana. The halls’ monumentality and rich,
detailed relief sculpture, which portrayed tribute-bearers coming from every
province of the empire, reinforced the Persian official view that their empire was a
divinely ordained creation meant to provide order and happiness to humanity. It is
likely that the palaces hosted equally grand ritual performances, which similarly
inculcated into visitors the power of the Persian king of kings and each province’s
expected place within the empire. While the Achaemenid palace was a powerful
institution, and its traditions indirectly inspired later generations of Persian rulers,
no palace hosted architectural or ritual features that anticipate the Middle Iranian

sanctuaries.9
Achaemenid funerary and sacred traditions present a more nuanced case.
Sacrifices to the gods were offered at each of the Achaemenid royal tomb
monuments for the soul of its occupant, but the dynasty did not create monumental
complexes honouring the living king along with the dynasty.10 It is important to
point out that these sacrifices were offered to the gods for the benefit of the soul of
the king, not to the king as a god.11 The search for such cultic and architectural
precursors of the Middle Iranian dynastic sanctuaries have led some to the
traditions of divine kingship in neighbouring cultures. The Achaemenids engaged
Egyptian and Babylonian traditions of divine rulership locally, and the king held an
extremely elevated status, but no Persian primary sources attest to an Achaemenid
‘ruler cult’ focused on the living king or his ancestors, empire-wide or in the
Persian homeland. The Achaemenids supported temples dedicated to non-Persian
gods outside of, and possibly within, the homeland, but we have scarce
archaeological evidence of a widespread Achaemenid tradition of temple
architecture, much less temples, sanctuaries or cult by which the king of kings was
worshipped.12
Alexander’s overthrow of the Achaemenid dynasty and the establishment of
Macedonian kingdoms on the lands of the Persian Empire was one of the greatest
ruptures in the history of Iranian culture. From the very start of his invasion,
Alexander was attuned to Achaemenid modes of governance and formulated his
own claims in reaction to them.13 Alexander sought, in his own way, to portray
himself as a legitimate successor to Darius III (r. 336–330 b c e ), and left in place
many Achaemenid political structures. Yet, while Alexander had basic knowledge of
Achaemenid royal ideology and practices, that knowledge was imperfect, shaped by
equally imperfect Greek impressions and stereotypes of the Persian kings and
Alexander’s ambitions to be something more than ‘just’ a Persian king of kings.14
Far from a king who sought to incorporate himself seamlessly into the Achaemenid
model, Alexander appropriated and manipulated those aspects of Persian royal
practice that suited him and invented or ignored the rest. Unlike Egypt and Babylon,
Alexander found no ready tradition of divine kingship that he could easily exploit,
and his attempts to use Persian royal traditions often appear to have backfired.15
After the fall of the Achaemenids, their ritual and architectural traditions of

kingship largely fell into obsolescence and what survived was not sustained with
any direct continuity. No king chose to represent himself in the official courtly style
of the Achaemenids. While Alexander, his Successors or the early Seleucids
periodically occupied a few of their palaces on a short-term basis, by the third
century b c e most had fallen permanently out of use and had begun to decay.16 The
Achaemenid tomb monuments and their protocols were eventually abandoned,
though we see echoes of the rituals in those Middle Iranian dynastic sanctuaries
that incorporate a funerary element.
The traditions of the Seleucid dynasty (312–64 b c e ) wrought much deeper
changes on the development of Middle Iranian kingship (fig. 2.2). In the aftermath
of Alexander’s death in Babylon in 323 b c e , the lands of the former Persian Empire
experienced decades of war as Alexander’s Macedonian generals fought over the
dead king’s conquests. These upheavals only ceased in 301 b c e when Seleukos I (r.
305–281 b c e ) had consolidated power over Syria, Mesopotamia, Iran and portions
of South Asia and established a Macedonian–Iranian dynasty from his union with
the Bactrian princess, Apama. The Seleucids were the leading power in Western
Asia until the Arsacid Empire detached the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia from
the Seleucid Empire in 141 b c e .

2.2 Coin of Seleukos I, founder of the dynasty.

The years between the death of Alexander (323 b c e ) and the death of his
general and ultimate successor in Iran, Seleukos I (281 b c e ), witnessed wide
experimentation in the traditions of kingship in the lands of the former Achaemenid
Empire. The Macedonian kings developed complex strategies of navigating between
several global and local idioms of power, ranging from the traditions of the Greek
city states, the ancient institutions of Egypt and Babylon, or South Asian traditions
of kingship in India.17 Although Alexander’s successors engaged many of the
ancient traditions of kingship in the cultures over which they ruled, they were
primarily concerned with portraying themselves as kings in a global sense – that is,
within the emerging phenomenon of Hellenistic kingship. Following on from
Alexander’s own experimentations, the ideas, images and rituals of Hellenistic
kingship emerged both from the needs of individual kings to legitimate their rule
and the environment of intense competition that arose between them.
The topic of Hellenistic kingship and specifically the Hellenistic ruler cults has

received a great deal of scholarly attention in the last one hundred years, often in
the context of much larger works on ancient religion or culture.18 These have been
subject to several valuable reappraisals in the last decade, which have refined our
understanding of the development of these institutions, the differences among
them, and our understanding of their impact on the post-Hellenistic world.19 An
outgrowth of the two dynasties’ competition for influence and prestige as much as
local needs, royal cults developed as a central monumental and ritual force in the
two most powerful Hellenistic kingdoms: Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Western
Asia.20
The Ptolemids were the first of Alexander’s successors to institute a cult of the
ruler and the royal dynasty. The Ptolemids cultivated the traditions of pre-conquest
Egypt, which functioned in parallel to their new dynastic cult. The cult was
controlled by the Egyptian priestly class and instituted at the major Egyptian
temples, serving for the native Egyptians a purpose similar to that of the ancient
pharaonic royal cult.21 Egypt, in fact, presents a rather exceptional case where native
priestly elites and Macedonian dynasts collaborated seamlessly to integrate the king
into a complex, pre-existing system of the pharaonic ruler cult.
The Seleucid dynastic cult developed much later and at a more irregular pace
than that of the Ptolemids. In contrast to their centralized, metropolitan-based,
bureaucratic structure, the Seleucid dynastic cult was organized according to
satrapy, with independent priestly hierarchies. Unlike Egypt, the Seleucids did not
have the luxury of a pre-existing tradition that they could immediately appropriate
to reach the majority of their subjects. The Seleucids supported the temples and
royal traditions of Babylon in a manner that paralleled Ptolemaic Egypt. Like those
of Egypt, the priestly elites of Babylon were willing to incorporate their Macedonian
overlords into their indigenous religious and political traditions in order to
maintain power.22 Although Babylon was an important satrapy, relative to the vast
expanse of the Upper Satrapies, which once extended from the Iranian plateau into
South Asia, Babylonian kingship was merely a local idiom without wide currency in
these lands inhabited by Iranian-speaking peoples.23 In addition, the priestly elite of
the Magi did not offer the Seleucids much opportunity to collaborate. In the eyes of
the Magi and the later Zoroastrian tradition that preserves their experience,
Alexander was a creature that the Evil Spirit had unleashed on the Earth to disrupt

the Good Religion. It was utterly impossible for a foreign, non-Aryan, nonMazdaean ruler to take the place of the rightful Iranian sovereign who ruled ‘by the
will of Ahuramazda’.24
Despite continued subdued hostility from the Magi, the Seleucids generally
enjoyed the support of the Iranian core of their empire. Any revolts the Seleucid
Upper Satrapies experienced were generally fomented by Seleucid satraps (both
Macedonian and Persian) rather than a rebellious Iranian populace. With Seleukos
I’s marriage to Apama and additional intermarriage with other Iranian dynasties,
the Seleucids were just as Iranian as they were Macedonian (though not necessarily
Persian). Although they stemmed initially from Macedonian practices, the Seleucid
ruler cult and associated traditions of honouring the king and his ancestors in
temples became the most prestigious expression of royal power across the Iranian
world. Within the conquered Western, Central and South Asian portions of their
empire, the Seleucid dynastic cult exercised a deep influence on the royal traditions
of rival and succeeding Iranian peoples. From the end of the fourth century to the
middle of the second century b c e , Seleucid kingship was Iranian kingship.
Antiochos III (r. 223–187 b c e ) was the founder of the official Seleucid dynastic
cult, which he introduced around 209 and was fully instituted in 204, after his
return from his eastern campaign.25 Although earlier scholarship often looked to
Seleukos I’s funerary mausoleum, or to various civic cults as the start of the Seleucid
cult, the dynastic cult of the Seleucids as a public institution is only fully attested
after Antiochos III.26 The Seleucid cult was an official, empire-wide institution that
honoured the king, his ancestors (Gk. progonoi) and, eventually, his queen in special
sanctuaries in each of their satrapies.27
While none of these sanctuaries survives fully intact, literary sources put in
dialogue with fragmentary archaeological and epigraphic evidence can provide an
outline.28 Eponymous priests and priestesses, whom the king himself appointed,
came from the upper echelons of society and, in the case of the priests, were
individuals who had completed honourable carriers of service to the king. The great
priests and priestesses did not oversee a college of subordinate priests in their
satrapies, but rather a group of temples. Just as they had bestowed divine honours
on the Antigonids and Ptolemids before Antiochos III, Greek cities in Iran and
elsewhere in the empire established cults for Seleucid sovereigns that were

instituted and structured solely by the polis. While these early civic cults arose
independently and on the initiative of cities, after Antiochos III the civic cults, both
old and new, began to mimic the form of the official cult, instituting the cult of the
queens and the progonoi, which were referred to with their official divine epithets.29
For this reason, after 209 it is not always easy to distinguish in epigraphic
documents among civic cults and the official dynastic cult, especially in Asia Minor,
where the kings and queens received many cultic honours.30
The most explicit description of the official Seleucid dynastic cult comes from
the edict (Gk. prostagma) of 193 b c e , by which Antiochos III introduced the official
cult of the queen Laodike alongside the cult of the progonoi and his own cult (fig.
2.3).31 Three copies of the edict, which were engraved on stelae and set up in
important public spaces, have been discovered in sites spread across the empire:
Eriza/Dodurga in ancient Phrygia (1884), Nehavand in Iran, ancient Laodikeia-inMedia (1947), and a fortress (Gk. phylakē) in the region of Kermanshah, Iran
(1967).32 The king ordered these edicts to be displayed in the ‘most illustrious of
sanctuaries’ or, in the case of the Kermanshah edict, the fortress, though the
sanctuaries themselves were apparently located in or near the cities.33

2.3 Antiochos III’s edict of 193 from Nehavand, Museum of Ancient Iran, Tehran.

Inscriptions and a limited amount of archaeological evidence provide enough
primary-source evidence to establish the basic outlines of the Seleucid dynastic cult.
The find site of the Laodikeia/Nehavand stele yielded numerous bronze statuettes
and a 1-metre-high altar, implying both cult offerings and sacrifices. Local
inhabitants reported that six columns stood at this site 50 years before the
excavation, which have been interpreted as the remains of a temple.34 Later survey
and excavation work at the site has produced a Seleucid Ionic column base and
capital of a type similar to Ionic capitals found at the Seleucid sanctuary at Ai

Khanum and Takht-e Sangin in Afghanistan. This indicates the sanctuaries
participated in the wider phenomenon of Seleucid official architecture and likely
shared features with other official structures from the Persian Gulf to Bactria.35 The
edict decrees that the priestess of Laodike should wear a crown of gold with the
image of the queen, which parallels that of the priest, which bore images of the
progonoi. Another edict from modern Balıkesir in Turkey generally refers to
‘sacrifices and other ceremonies’.
What form these sacrifices and ceremonies took can be elucidated with the
greater information available about the civic cults, which were administratively
independent, but not without strong influence, from the official cult.36 In the case of
the civic cults, cities bestowed upon the Seleucid kings and queens cultic honours
independent of the official cult. These included priesthoods, annual games, sacred
precincts or sanctuaries, altars and sacrifices, eponymous calendar months and
tribes, as well as, in other cases, the honour of including their cult statues in the
chambers of the temples of the gods (Gk. synnaoi theoi).37 Several of these cults
persisted for decades, even centuries, after the Seleucids had lost control of those
cities, attesting to their importance.38
In addition to the official cult, the Seleucids greatly enriched several
sanctuaries of their divine dynastic progenitor, Apollo (fig. 2.4). The most
important was the sanctuary of Daphne, located around 9 kilometres south of
Antioch in a mountainside area of exceptional natural beauty. Daphne was famous
for its abundant springs, tall cypresses, flowering trees and, symbolically, laurel
trees, the tree Apollo’s beloved Daphne turned into.39 Seleukos I founded this
sanctuary to his divine ancestor and popular devotion to it soon rivalled the ancient
sanctuaries of Apollo in the old Greek world. Claiming the significance of Delphi,
Seleukos I claimed that this was the site where Apollo’s beloved Daphne turned into
a laurel tree, and where on Earth the god chose to make his abode.40 There, Seleukos
I established the sanctuary (Gk. temenos), planted the cypress grove and founded the
temple.41 A nearby spring, called the Kastalia, inspired by and rivalling Delphi,
flowed on either side of the temple.42 The spring was the focus of the sanctuary’s
oracle, which became one of the most popular in the ancient world.43 The main
structure was a dipteral temple, whose porticos were lined with statues of Seleucid
kings.44 The available evidence, mainly textual, does not provide us with much

detail, but this proximity between a dynastic cult and statues of the living king and
his ancestors is significant for understanding similar features in the Middle Iranian
sanctuaries.

2.4 Coin of Antiochos I with Apollo on omphalos, minted Seleukeia-Tigris.

The official Seleucid dynastic cult and their reverence for their divine patron
projected the tangible presence of the king’s divinity throughout the empire.45
Engaging the visual and religious traditions of other divine and royal archers in
Western Asia, the image of Apollo became ubiquitous on Seleucid coinage.46 At the
same time the dynastic cult created a religious office that was socially pre-eminent
in prestige among other priesthoods in the satrapies, providing an arena for the
king to reward the elite of the empire and for them to display their loyalty and
favoured status. Some have suggested that the royal cult functioned primarily as a
focus for the Macedonian elite, bureaucrats and soldiers in Seleucid metropolises
like Antioch-on-the-Orontes, Seleukeia-on-the-Tigris, or in important regional
cities or garrisons like Laodikeia-in-Media, Ikaros or Antioch-Persis.47 The cult
certainly discharged this function, but considering the prevalence of the civic cults,
the dynastic cult insinuated itself into the ritual and urban life in such cities as
those of Asia Minor or Dura Europos. Even if one were not a member of the
Macedonian or civic elite, one could still participate peripherally in the festivals and
ceremonies sponsored by the cult, and the very presence of sanctuaries of the king

and his ancestors, attended to by the elite of the satrapy or polis, silently and
distantly attested to the power of the Seleucid king. The fact that local, civic cults
began to mimic the official dynastic cult is testament to the prestige it enjoyed.

a ne w i r a n i a n k i n g s h i p
As the Seleucid Empire began to crumble, new powers emerged in lands that had
been under its control. Some, like Diodotid and Euthydemid Bactria were Greek, but
increasingly regimes founded by Iranian-speaking nomads became dominant. The
Middle Iranian period presents evidence from across the lands of the Seleucid
Empire of Iranian dynasties, or dynasties heavily influenced by Iranian culture,
engaging with Macedonian practices and reinventing Iranian traditions. While the
patrons of the earliest sanctuaries shared the common influence of Hellenistic
culture and indigenous Iranian traditions, the responses to these ancient and
contemporary influences were not uniform. The political and cultural upheavals
following Alexander’s invasions ensured that Achaemenid religious practices were
imperfectly remembered, when they were at all, and not replicated in an unchanged
and uninterrupted manner. After Alexander no ruler with ambitions beyond his
province cared to represent himself using the artistic forms and conventions of the
Achaemenid court. Macedonian kingship had taken precedence and was the
departure point of Middle Iranian kingship.
Given the fragmentary and problematic nature of much of our evidence, it is
difficult to ascertain where in the Iranian world dynastic sanctuaries first became a
popular royal prerogative. For example, our earliest archaeological evidence comes
from Parthian Central Asia; however, late Armenian sources claim to preserve the
memory of sanctuaries honouring the gods alongside royal ancestors in Orontid
Armenia in the early second century b c e . Luckily, given the wide array of parallel
developments, it is not necessarily important or useful to attempt to inscribe a strict
linear developmental trajectory onto these phenomena.
The earliest archaeological evidence of elements relating to Iranian dynastic
sanctuaries comes from the Parthian site of Nisa (fig. 2.5).48 Founded as
Mithradatkert, it was the first imperial capital of the Arsacid dynasty of Iran (c.250
b c e –c.224 c e ).49 While the Romans encroached from the west, the Arsacids

conquered the majority of the eastern portion of the Seleucid Empire, becoming by
the middle of the first century c e the dominant power in Western Asia. The
Arsacids simultaneously engaged and competed with the traditions of Macedonian
kingship while creating a new Iranian royal idiom. Though proclaiming themselves
‘philhellenes’, on their coins, the Arsacids made a new Iranian kingship the
currency of power throughout the region, and numerous other dynasties modelled
their own activities on the Arsacid kingship practices.

2.5 Site plan of Old Nisa.

As the site’s excavator, Antonio Invernizzi, explained, Nisa represents a

‘decisive turn’ in Arsacid art.50 Its founder intended the complex and the associated
figural art to express a new imperial ideology of kingship, and the correspondences
with numismatic art, the only other extant evidence we have from this period,
suggests that it emerged from a unified imperial image.51 As far as the fragmentary
evidence will allow us to conclude, it appears that Seleucid visual and ritual
practices offered a challenging departure point and raw material.52 The Arsacids
adopted and manipulated many Seleucid practices, consumed Hellenistic art and
hired Greek artists and architects.
The city proper, referred to as ‘New Nisa’, grew into one of the most important
cities of the region. ‘Old Nisa’ refers to the fortified hilltop complex that hosted
several monumental structures with palatial and sacral functions. Built in several
different phases, Old Nisa likely began as a fortress and, after the establishment of
the Arsacid Empire, the Arsacid king of kings converted the site to a palatial
ceremonial centre.53 The Central Complex of Old Nisa presents several structures
significant for the study of the dynastic cult. Built in an earlier stage, the Red
Building, whose façade measures 41 metres wide, opens onto a large court, which,
in turn leads to a central room measuring 17.2 metres by 15.8 metres and reaching
through a four-columned portico. Reflecting the design of a grand reception hall, its
monumental design parallels immediately preceding and contemporary Seleucid and
Graeco-Bactrian architecture.54 To the south-east of the Red Building, a mud-brick
structure 17 metres in diameter, the Round Hall, belonged to a later phase and was
linked to the Red Building by corridors and three passages (fig. 2.6).55 A similar
porticoed entranceway opened to the east of the Red Building leading to the Tower
Building. The interior of the Tower Building contained a huge square foundation,
which supported a tower surrounded by an ambulatory. The Square Building, a
structure with a niched exterior and an interior dominated by four columns, formed
the eastern flank of an open square.

2.6 View of the Round Hall, Nisa.

The Round Hall was a grand, domed, mud-brick structure, which contained
over-life-sized figural sculptures in clay. Dating roughly to the first century b c e ,
the statues’ general figural treatment and iconography were Hellenistic, yet they
contained portraits of the Arsacid court.56 All told, the Round Hall’s rich decoration,
monumental size, unusual domed shape, limited access and relative lack of domestic
or military material strongly suggests that it was a prestigious and restricted space
dedicated for cult purposes. The mid-twentieth-century Soviet excavators
hypothesized that the structure involved ritual activity focused on the Arsacid
dynasty, which was reinforced with the discovery and identification of the
fragmentary portrait of Mithridates I by later Italian excavations.57 Alexander
Marushchenko and Gennady Koshelenko first hypothesized that the complex was a
mausoleum or a cult site dedicated to an important member of the Arsacid dynasty.58
According to Isidore of Charax, the tombs of the Arsacid kings were located at
Nisa.59 While textual sources indicate this was the likely site of the Arsacid funerary

monuments, no archaeological evidence of funerary materials, such as a
sarcophagus, were discovered to prove decisively that these structures were Arsacid
funerary monuments.60 Nevertheless, the portraits of Mithradates and other royal
figures suggest images of the Arsacid dynasty were the site’s dominant focus. To
answer the question of whether or not the structure contained divine images and
cult rendered to the gods, we have only indirect evidence.
The Square House, located to the north of the monumental complex enclosed a
large central courtyard, originally surrounded by a narrow wooden colonnade (fig.
2.7).61 A series of elongated rectangular rooms, each provisioned with a deep bench
along the walls and a roof supported by a central row of wooden columns, lined all
four sides. Along the walls, the excavators discovered fragments of painted clay
statues as well. While the Soviet excavators posited that the structure was designed
to serve as banqueting and assembly hall, possibly connected with the banquets
associated with the dynastic cult, its design relates to Persian and Graeco-Bactrian
treasuries.62 In a later phase it unquestionably functioned as a treasury and held
precious objects, coins, weapons, artwork and closed archives. While not discovered
in any original cultic context, excavations of the Square Hall yielded marble statues,
executed in contemporary Hellenistic style, of the Greek gods Aphrodite, Artemis
and Dionysos.63 The statues were kept in a room specially added at a later date, the
White Annex, indicating that they were too precious to discard, despite the fact that
they had suffered irreparable damage at a date subsequent to their initial
installation. At this point scholarship can only offer general hypotheses on the
original function and context of these statues within Old Nisa; however, it is clear
that the Arsacids not only appreciated Greek art, but deemed it worthy to serve as a
medium for representing gods that they venerated, be they Greek or Iranian.64

2.7 View of the Square House, Nisa.

While we must hesitate from directly connecting the Round Hall with such cult
activities, documents from the site indicate that a number of estates and vineyards
were named after living and deceased kings.65 Ostraka from Nisa document delivery
of goods from these estates and it has been argued that they supported some sort of
cult for the memory and the benefit of the king’s soul.66 Without any other
information, we can only speculate on the presence of cult activities in the various
structures of Old Nisa. As we will see the sanctuaries of Arsacid vassals and
successors included a sacred fire and royal images. In addition, the Arsacids adopted
the practice of lighting and maintaining a ‘regnal fire’ on the coronation of the king
of kings. Our only source on this phenomenon, Isidore of Charax, places a
perpetually burning fire at Asaak, commemorating the site where Arsakes was
proclaimed king.67 All in all, Nisa presents a collection of elements, a hilltop
sanctuary, statues of gods and kings, endowments for cult offered for king, and
perhaps a funerary connotation, that creatively adapted Seleucid traditions and, just

as importantly, integrated them with Iranian culture, influencing contemporary
royal practices of regimes to the east and west.
Once the Arsacids had taken Seleukeia-on-the-Tigris (141 b c e ) and
Mesopotamia, they held the majority of the Seleucid eastern empire and contested a
shifting array of borderlands with the Romans. Arsacid kingship began to exercise
great influence over the Arsacid dynasty’s vassals, including the kings of Elymais
and Armenia. The site of Shami, located in the mountainous region of ancient
Elymais in south-western Iran, yielded evidence of a sacred enclosure dating
generally to the Parthian era, which contained several statues and an altar.68 While
the site does not seem to have been an official emplacement of the Seleucid ruler
cult as an earlier scholar had speculated, the close connection between statues of
rulers, gods, cult paraphernalia and a necropolis parallel coeval Arsacid evidence
and strongly suggest that it was the site of a dynastic cult of a local ruler.69
The Shami sanctuary consisted of an enclosure wall measuring approximately
23 metres by 12 metres on a level terrace whose interior was originally paved (fig.
2.8).70 Shami yielded seven large bases that originally held statues or, in some cases,
statue groups.71 The site’s explorer discovered a large amount of ash within the
enclosure and observed that a wooden portico or roofed structure likely covered the
statues.72 The statues and their bases were disrupted from their original positions
sometime in the first or second century c e , when the site was destroyed.73 Although
in fragmentary form, some of Shami’s statues survive and provide enough evidence
to suggest that the sanctuary contained multiple over-life-sized bronze statues,
some of which drew from Parthian and others from Hellenistic stylistic and
iconographic features.74 The ‘Shami Bronze’, an over-life-sized statue measuring
1.9 metres, portrays a frontally posed male figure in Parthian dress (fig. 2.9). It is
the best preserved of this site’s sculptural remains and the finest bronze statue to
survive from the Parthian period and ancient Iran in general. Originally raising its
right hand (now missing) in a gesture of greeting or veneration common in Parthian
iconography, the figure represents a royal personage and wears a diadem and a
torque, two symbols of kingship common in Parthian numismatic portraits. Statues
of kings reflecting the conventions of Macedonian charismatic kingship appear to
have stood side by side with those in Parthian royal dress. Stein discovered a
fragmentary bronze male head rendered in a Hellenistic sculptural form and

wearing a diadem. A colossal hand holding a spear or sceptre, also modelled in
Hellenistic style, could have belonged to this statue. The site produced several
fragments of stone statues of lesser quality, including a nobleman in a tunic with
his right hand raised in a familiar gesture of worship and a female head in the Greek
style.75

2.8 Shami site plan.

2.9 The Shami Bronze, Museum of Ancient Iran, Tehran.

A necropolis composed of large dry-stone tombs lay 180 metres north of the
shrine, a fact that coheres nicely with the secondary – funerary – function of many
of the Middle Iranian sanctuaries.76 Unfortunately, the graves had been looted and
their contents remain unknown. Without inscriptions or archaeological context to

provide more information, it is equally possible the statues that appear to represent
Hellenistic kings were understood to represent the local dynasty’s distant Seleucid
‘ancestors’ (or allies) or, as occurred in the sanctuaries of several coeval dynasties,
the sanctuary’s gods. Apart from statues, Stein discovered other cultic
paraphernalia at the site, including a small stone altar, bronze incense-burners and
a lion-clawed leg of a table or throne, as well as bronze statuettes, which could have
served as offerings.77
Iranian culture deeply influenced Armenia, and Iranian dynasties ruled
Armenia during several important periods, including the Orontids (c. sixth
century–c. early second century b c e ) and Arsacids (54–428 c e ). While
corroborating archaeological evidence does not yet exist, textual evidence suggests
that the dynastic sanctuary entered Armenia by at least the end of the Arsacid era.
Our only evidence for the practice in Armenia comes from the History of the
Armenians of Movses Khorenats’i, whose text has been dated anywhere from the
fifth to the ninth century c e . Although his early chronology is hopelessly confused
and his early narrative is in places little more than a bricolage of reworked and
misplaced anecdotes from classical sources, Movses Khorenats’i incorporates
Armenian oral tradition in certain sections that preserve indigenous and
independent information.78 Of the eight passages where Movses mentions preChristian Armenian sanctuaries, five shed some light on the engagement of the
Iranian kings of Armenia with the traditions of the dynastic sanctuary.79 Movses
relates that a fictitious king named Vałaršak built a sanctuary in Armavir, which,
historically, was the first capital of the Orontid dynasty. Vałaršak, who, in Movses’
chronology would have reigned sometime around end of the third or the beginning
of the second century b c e , equipped the sanctuary with, ‘statues of the sun and
moon and his ancestors’.80 Movses later reports that later several gilt bronze statues
of Hellenistic workmanship were brought to Armavir as spoils of war. In addition,
the priestly family in charge of the sanctuary, who claimed descent from Vahagn–
Herakles, took a statue of Herakles and set it up in their ancestral home.81 In
Movses’ narrative, every time a king founded a new royal capital he transferred the
sanctuary and its statues. Eruand II, who possibly corresponds to the historical
Orontes IV (r. 212–200 b c e ) , founded a new fortified royal residence at
Eruandashat, located where the Akhurian and the Araxes meet.82 Instead of placing

the royal sanctuary within the walls, he founded a separate settlement nearby,
which he named Bagaran, where he set up ‘the complex of altars’ and statues that
had been at Armavir.83 The ancient site of Bagaran is located around 10 kilometres
to the north on the right bank of the Akhurian River. According to Movses, Artaxias
I (r. 188–161 b c e , possibly corresponding to the historical founder of the Artaxiad
dynasty) transferred the sanctuary again when he built the city of Artashat.84
Movses’ chronology and understanding of the pre-Christian Armenian
dynasties are so confused that it would not be prudent to base any specific claims on
his text. Nevertheless, he presents a recurrent pattern that likely reflects the
general outlines of the royal practices of the Arsacid and possibly the Artaxiad
kings.85 The basic elements of the dynastic sanctuary of the Armenian kings,
consisting of statues of the king, the king’s ancestors and the gods, and cultic
activity, corresponds to the evidence of the sanctuaries at Nisa and Shami. Only
under the Armenian Arsacids does the additional element of the ‘ever-burning fire’
appear.86 Reflecting archaeological evidence from other Arsacid-era sanctuaries,
Movses understands the statues were of ‘bronze’ and of Greek workmanship.87
The kingdom of Pontos had its roots in the Achaemenid satrapies of
Cappadocia and Phrygia and its dynasty claimed both Achaemenid and Seleucid
descent.88 Their kings were more Hellenized than the early Orontids and adopted
aspects of contemporary Macedonian kingship. The most important Pontic king,
Mithradates VI (r. 120–63 b c e ), experimented with the contemporary forms of
Iranian kingship at the same time as he emulated Alexander the Great. Reflecting
his interest in engaging Macedonian and Arsacid traditions, Mithradates VI built a
monument in 102–101 b c e in the temenos of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods of
Samothrace on Delos. The monument contains several unusual features that evoke a
dynastic sanctuary more than a standard Greek temple treasury or shrine.89 The
interior of this monument contained a frieze of shields featuring bust portraits of
the king’s officials, relatives and his Parthian allies, all identified by inscription. A
similar bust portrait of Mithradates VI occupied the pediment of the structure. Given
its fragmentary state and Mithradates VI’s own eclecticism, it should not be taken as
normative illustration of an Iranian dynastic sanctuary any more than it should be
taken as a normative monument to a Hellenistic ruler. Rather, this collection of
king, ancestors, courtiers and cult evoked contemporary Iranian practices to create a

unique monument for this unique ruler.
Like Armenia and Pontos, the kingdom of Commagene (162 b c e –17 c e ) stood
in a precarious place between the Roman and the Arsacid empires. It was one of the
last Persian–Macedonian courts of this region to survive the coming of the Romans
and, like Pontos, its ruling dynasty highlighted their Macedonian and Persian
ancestry. The royal dynasty of Commagene had its roots in the Persian Orontid
dynasty; however, as a Seleucid province, Commagene became heavily Hellenized.
Iranian cultural forms regained prominence in the first century b c e as part of a
deliberate policy of Antiochos I Theos (r. 69–36 b c e ). This king instituted a cultural
and artistic policy to accentuate the kingdom’s ancient roots that transcended
Seleucid, Arsacid or Roman claims in the region. Antiochos I was the kingdom’s
main innovator in cult and artistic activity and he carefully blended with the
traditions of the Iranian dynastic sanctuary with Graeco-Macedonian forms.
Referring to such sanctuaries in Greek as hierothēsia (sg. hierothēsion) in his
inscriptions, the king established dynastic sanctuaries at a number of important
sites within his kingdom, including the citadel of Arsameia-on-the-Euphrates
(Gerger, Adıyaman province, Turkey) and Arsameia-on-the-Nymphaios.90
These hierothēsia, which have long been approached as curiousities or even
monstrous examples of barbarization of Greek religion or Zoroastrianism, make
perfect sense within the context of the Iranian dynastic sanctuaries, which, of
course, had nothing to do with ‘orthodox’ Zoroastrianism (itself a late antique
Sasanian invention). Antiochos I established the supreme hierothēsion at presentday Nemrut Dağı, which was the most prominent mountain in the kingdom of
Commagene (plate 2.10).91 An artificial tumulus of crushed rocks crowned the
mountains and two terraces flanked the eastern and western side, providing two
focal points for cult activity (fig. 2.11). A row of 8-metre-high stone sculptures was
the dominant artistic and cultic feature on both terraces. The colossal statues
portrayed king Antiochos, the Tyche of Commagene and its chief gods enthroned
and wearing ‘Persian robes’, looking out over the lands of the kingdom below (plate
2.12). The backs of the colossal statues were inscribed with a copy of the king’s
foundation of the cult and protocol. A series of plinths arranged before the colossal
statues and surrounding the space before it carried relief slabs 2–4 metres in
height. The most prominent reliefs portrayed the king clasping hands with each of

the gods (plate 2.13). Figural representations of the king’s ancestors stretched back
to the Achaemenids on his father’s side and to Alexander on his mother’s, and
before each ancestor stele stood a small altar (fig. 2.14). The two terraces were not
identical: the west terrace contained an additional representation of the king’s
horoscope, while a single large altar stood directly across from the colossal
enthroned statues, presumably serving them all.

2.11 Plan of hierothēsion Antiochos I, Nemrut Dağı.

2.14 Paternal Persian ancestors of Antiochos I, west terrace, Nemrut Dağı.

The cult protocol (Gk. nomos) that Antiochos I instituted honoured primarily
the gods of Commagene and Antiochos himself, and secondarily his Persian and
Macedonian ancestors. It calls for the inhabitants of Commagene to make several
pilgrimages to the site for celebrations, including those on the anniversaries of the
king’s birthday and coronation.92 These anniversaries the priests would celebrate
monthly. While Antiochos I celebrated his Macedonian heritage and his philhellenic
credentials, he understood that he formed the core of the cultic institutions of
hierothēsion on Iranian models, integrating Macedonian elements secondarily.
Antiochos I explicitly states that, year in and year out, the priests must wear
‘Persian robes’, in order to enact the cult activities, which take place according to
similar ‘ancestral custom’.93 Although the male gods are referred to with Greek as
well as Iranian names (‘Zeus–Oromasdes’, ‘Apollo–Mithras–Helios–Hermes’ and
‘Artagnes–Heracles–Ares’), the pantheon they represent is Iranian. They are,
moreover, represented often according to what Antiochos considered to be the
‘Persian’ rather than ‘Greek’ lore handed down by his ancestors.94 In setting aside

an endowment for the site and calling for the chief priest to, ‘keep watch at this
memorial and devote himself to the care and the proper adornment of these sacred
images’, the nomos recalls the Achaemenid institution of tomb caretakers as
recorded in the Elamite tablets.95
The hierothēsion at Nemrut Dağı combines the dynastic cult with a funerary
temenos – something that Antiochos considered noteworthy to mention in his
inscription – and the hierothēsia of Arsameia-on-the-Nymphaios and Arsameia-onthe-Euphrates were also the burial sites of Antiochos I’s father and grandfather.96
However, not all royal tombs were designated as a hierothēsion and provisioned with
cult statues; similarly, not all cult sites dedicated to the king were hierothēsia. While
regional precedents may have impacted their formation or reception, at their core
the hierothēsia of Commagene self-consciously appropriated – and reshaped – this
Hellenistic Iranian phenomenon to reflect the particular political needs and selfconception of Antiochos I.97
Like the Arsacids, the Kushan dynasty (c. first century b c e –c. fourth century
c e ) stemmed from an Iranian-speaking nomadic people. Eventually coming under
the sway of the Kushan family, the nomadic people – the Yuezhi, whose name we
only know from Chinese sources – built an empire in Bactria, what is now southern
Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan. Bactria had an indigenous Iranian population
as well as strong Hellenistic cultural and political traditions from decades as a
Seleucid satrapy and, later, an independent Greek kingdom. Characteristic of the
cultural blending that occurred, the Kushans called the language they spoke
‘Iranian’ (or ‘airia’) but wrote it using a modified Greek alphabet. Their empire soon
expanded to encompass northern India and the Gangetic plane. In addition to
Iranian and Hellenistic traditions, Indian religious and artistic traditions became a
third cultural force. The original core of their empire centred in present-day
Afghanistan with Kapisa (present-day Bagram) as the royal residence. Their Indian
possessions centred on Mathura and eventually became the most important part of
their empire. There they engaged many South Asian religious traditions and
kingship practices. The Kushan dynasty facilitated interaction among Greek, Iranian
and Indian cultural traditions, and we have evidence that they patronized artists and
architects trained in Hellenistic traditions to build Buddhist reliquaries and stupas.
The religious and royal iconography of the Kushans similarly drew from the

Hellenistic, Iranian and Indian worlds, forging images that could speak across
cultures, both within their empire and in the wider world.
The Kushans built sanctuaries on the outskirts of their royal cities in Bactria
and India, including the sanctuaries of Surkh Kotal and Rabatak in present-day
Afghanistan,98 and Mat in the vicinity of present-day Mathura.99 Kanishka I (r.
c.127–50 c e ) founded Rabatak and Surkh Kotal (fig. 2.15). Mat was started by Vima
II Kadphises (r. c.100–27 c e ) and restored under Huvishka (r. c.154–87 c e ).
Supplementing the archaeological evidence from Surkh Kotal and Mat, the Bactrian
inscriptions of the Surkh Kotal and Rabatak and the Sanskrit inscriptions from Mat
provide a view of the Kushan pantheon worshipped at the sites and the members of
the Kushan dynasty honoured there. The Kushans referred to their dynastic
sanctuaries using the Bactrian term bagolaggo, which means ‘place’ or ‘sanctuary of
the gods’. Mat’s inscriptions translate bagolaggo into Sanskrit as devakula, which
has the same basic meaning.100 The Kushan sanctuaries in Bactria and India share a
remarkably uniform group of features: inscriptions, images of the living king, his
ancestors, gods and a central cult statue that received the main cultic focus.101

2.15 Coin of Kanishka I depicting Nana.

Superficially, the Bactrian and Indian sites drew from the artistic and cultural
traditions of the provinces in which they were built. Characteristic of Bactria, an
architect with a Greek name (Palamedes) built the central Surkh Kotal temple using
the architectural features and sculptural forms of the Hellenized Iranian world.102

Kanishka states that he composed his Rabatak edict in Greek before it was
translated into ‘Iranian’.103 In contrast, the Mat sanctuary employed contemporary
Hindu temple architecture and its sculptures were carved in the characteristic red
sandstone and style of Mathura. Despite these stylistic, material and formal
correspondences with the visual cultures of the regions in which they were created,
the basic elements and stated purpose of the Kushan foundations closely and
unmistakably respond to the features of Iranian dynastic sanctuaries, even when
they superficially appear to venerate non-Iranian gods. The sites’ inscriptions,
which detail their construction and restoration, prove that both the Bactrian and
Indian sanctuaries were based on a single Iranian institution, were conceived and
implemented through central courtly patronage and served the same function.104
Kanishka I built the sanctuary at Surkh Kotal in 128–32 c e , and called it:
Kaneško-oanindo-bagolaggo, ‘The Sanctuary of Victorious Kanishka’ (fig. 2.16).105
Surkh Kotal consisted of a mountaintop that had been modified by artificial
terracing on its eastern side and was surrounded by an irregularly shaped outer
fortification wall and rectangular inner enclosure wall, called by the excavator the
peribolos (fig. 2.17).106 Four flights of stairs led visitors up through a series of three
terraces to the summit, which hosted a porticoed courtyard of 75 metres by 70
metres, formed by the interior of the peribolos.107 The main temple (Temple A) was a
centralized, peripteral mud-brick and timber structure, which rose in the centre of
the courtyard on a brick podium measuring 47 metres by 40 metres.108 The
excavations found three damaged over-life-sized stone statues of Kushan kings (fig.
2.18). Evidence of their statue bases fixed into the stone pavement under the southeast entrance to the courtyard portico provided evidence of their original context.109
They were arranged diagonally so that they would meet the visitor’s gaze if they
looked left while facing the temple. A 2.22-metre-high stone stele occupied a
similar place under the north-east of the portico and counterbalanced the three
kings to the south-east.110 The stele, which is horribly defaced and weathered, bears
a relief of a king seated on a lion-footed throne, receiving an object from a figure (a
victory?) to his right. Fragments left in situ suggest that clay statues modelled in the
Gandharan style were located in the niches along the interior of the peribolos wall
around the temple.111 The architecture of the main temple relates to a tradition of
centralized temple architecture that first emerged in Seleucid Asia. This type of

temple appeared in Bactria at Ai Khanum and the sanctuary of Takht-e Sangin,
among other places, and continued in post-Seleucid Iran and Central Asia.112 The
temple at Surkh Kotal was a square peripteral temple with an ambulatory corridor
that surrounded the cella adorned with Corinthian pilasters. This central cult room
contained a 0.9-metre-high stone plinth whose area measured 4.25 metres by 4.25
metres and whose corners each carried large column bases.

2.16 Site plan of the Kaneško-oanindo-bagolaggo (‘The Sanctuary of Victorious Kanishka’), Surkh Kotal, Afghanistan.

2.17 Plan of the acropolis of the Kaneško-oanindo-bagolaggo (‘The Sanctuary of Victorious Kanishka’).

2.18 Fragmentary statue of Kushan king, Surkh Kotal. Once in the Kabul Museum; destroyed by the Taliban.

Monumental inscriptions adorned many features of the sanctuary at Surkh
Kotal and provide some idea of the nature of the cult. Of these, a monumental linear
inscription of the original patron, Kanishka, ran for 50 metres across a stone course
of the entrance to the peribolos, while an extensive inscription detailing gods,
dedicatees and patrons was found on a square stone monolith at the foot of the
façade of the lower terrace.113 Later inscriptions documented subsequent Kushan
restorations.114 Although the site’s excavator sought to find an example of a preSasanian fire temple in the main temple at Surkh Kotal, it revealed no evidence of a
fire cult. Instead the ground plan corresponds quite closely to previous Graeco-

Bactrian temples that housed cult statues, the likely purpose of the central plinth.115
Although only a few fragments of statue survived from the associated bagolaggo,
the discovery of an inscription from the site of Rabatak near Bagram attests the
importance of monumental inscriptions in the Kushan sanctuaries.116
The direct influence of the Kushan court is evident at the sanctuary of Mat,
which was located on the east bank of Yamuna River, about 14.5 kilometres north of
Mathura, the winter capital of the Kushan Empire and the heart of Kushan India.117
While the Bactrian sanctuaries directly engaged the contemporary architectural and
cultic traditions of the Iranian world, Mat revealed a sanctuary that adapted South
Asian architecture and religion to serve this Iranian royal institution. Like the Greek
architect who contributed to Surkh Kotal, local Indian sculptors and architects
worked on the Mat sanctuary. Like Surkh Kotal, however, a high-ranking general
with an Iranian name built Mat for the Kushan king. The overseer of the sanctuary
also bore an Iranian title, deliberately untranslated in the Sanskrit: bakanapati.118
Like Surkh Kotal and Rabatak, as well as Commagene, Shami and the Armenian
sanctuaries, Mat was located a comfortable distance from the metropolis, Mathura.
Situated on the opposite bank of the Yamuna it was also set apart from the majority
of Mathura’s cult sites, making it unlikely that the structure served an immediate
local function for the city.
Unfortunately, Mat was first explored by an amateur who cleared the site
wholescale while searching for statues without attention to the nuances of its
architecture, let alone stratigraphy and small finds.119 All of what we know about the
site comes from two short reports written by Marshall and Vogel after the fact.120
The main site at Mat, Tokri Tila, revealed a large plinth 30 metres long and 18
metres wide, paved with bricks and oriented south-east to north-west.121 The
sanctuary’s entrance was located to the south-west where a ramp leads to up to the
plinth. While the structures built on the plinth were too damaged to offer a detailed
reconstruction, at the north-west two concentric rounded walls with heavy
foundations supported what appears to have been the focal point of the shrine. We
can only speculate exactly what type of structure the plinth supported, though early
Indian temple architecture with its apsidal cult chamber (garbhagṛha) would fit
nicely with circular foundations located at the end of the plinth. Two temples
excavated at the nearby site of Sonkh indicate that these were the favoured type of

Hindu temple in the region built during the Kushan era.122 Over-life-sized statues of
Kushan kings were discovered in a fragmentary state (figs. 2.19–2.20). One statue
was found in the centre of what would have been the cult chamber and the
remainder were scattered to the south, both on and off of the plinth.123

2.19 Fragmentary statue of a standing Kushan king with inscription, Mat.

2.20 Fragmentary statue of an enthroned Kushan king, Mat.

The features of the site correspond to those of other sanctuaries in the region.
Several of the statues carried inscriptions that provide evidence of the original
components of the sanctuary. An inscription located between the feet of a colossal
seated royal statue describes the original features of the royal foundation: the
sanctuary itself (devakula), a garden (ārāma), a tank (puṣkariṇi), well (updapāna),
assembly hall (sabhā) and a gateway (dārakoṭaka).124 Another inscription, found on
a damaged statue pedestal, records later restorations and provisions for Brahmins

who, according to the inscription were, ‘regular guests’ at the devakula.125 A tank
was duly found about 180 metres west of the sanctuary, constructed of bricks with
the same dimensions as those used in the temple. A line of foundations flanked the
south of the main temple plinth, which could have served as lodging for the site’s
caretakers or been the remains of the assembly hall (sabhā) to accommodate the
Brahmins. While the Mat sanctuary’s architectural and perhaps even cultic features
paralleled Hindu temples in the region, the sanctuary’s ultimate function was quite
different.
The sanctuaries at Surkh Kotal, Rabatak, and Mat served a similar purpose: they
provided a venue where the Kushan kings and their ancestors were honoured in
conjunction with cult rendered to a god that was especially important to the
dynasty. In inscriptions at Surkh Kotal and Dasht-e Nawar, Kanishka bears the title
‘worthy of worship’.126 Both inscriptions and archaeological evidence suggest that
kings were not worshipped as the high gods, although such epithets and the
location of the royal statues within the sanctuaries indicate that they enjoyed an
elevated ritual status. The deities named in the inscriptions at the Bactrian
sanctuaries are mainly Iranian and belong to the Kushan pantheon known from
coins. The gods are not named at the Mat sanctuary, but evidence suggests that they
were Kushan gods cloaked as gods acceptable to the Brahmins. The goddess Nana
led the Kushan pantheon at the site and appears to have served as the divine
protectress of the dynasty, similar to the role that Anahita played for the Sasanian
dynasty. The Rabatak inscription, also found in Afghanistan’s Baghlan Province,
provides additional information on the Kushan dynastic sanctuaries in Bactria and
the gods worshipped at them.127
Then King Kanishka ordered Shafar the lord of the marches to make in this
place the temple which is called ‘Bage-ab,’ in the Kasig plains, for these
gods who have come hither into the presence of the glorious Umma, that
is, the above-mentioned Nana and the above-mentioned Umma, Aurmuzd,
Muzhduwan, Shroshard – who in Indian is called Mahāsena and is called
Viśākha – Narasa, and Mihir. And he gave orders to make images of the
same, namely of these gods who are inscribed hereupon, and he gave
orders to make images of these kings: King Kujula Kadphises his great

Grandfather and for King Vima Taktu his grandfather and for King Vima
Kadphises his father, and himself, King Kanishka. […] May these gods who
are inscribed here keep the king of kings, Kanishka the Kushan forever
healthy, fortunate, and victorious.128
The Kushan deities were subject to various forms of assimilation with Indian
deities. Nana gained the epithet Umma, allowing for a convenient assimilation with
Shiva’s consort, Uma.129 It appears this was part of a Kushan policy of assimilating
Nana and Uma linguistically and iconographically along with one of the most
important gods of the Bactrian and Indian pantheons: Oesho/Shiva. Nana/Umma
and Uma are both represented as consorts of this god, who himself regularly
appears with interchangeable Bactrian and Indian names and iconographies (fig.
2.21). The remains of the statuary at the site provides little additional evidence of
the deity worshipped there; however, some have interpreted a sculptural frieze
fragment from the main temple at Surkh Kotal as portraying a male figure standing
with a female figure behind a bull, one of the standard iconographies on Kushan
coins of the consort of Nana/Uma, Oesho/Shiva.130

2.21 Coin of Huvishka depicting Umma and Oesho.

While the preserved inscriptions from the Mat sanctuary do not name the main
deity worshipped, they do shed some indirect light. Line three of the restoration
inscription of Vima II Kadphises states that the king was one ‘on whom, on account

of his devotion, the kingdom was conferred by ‘Sarva and Ścaṃḍavira’: Shiva.131
Given that the inscription celebrates the presence of Brahmins at the site, it is quite
likely that the main deity was un-problematically assimilated with Brahmanical
gods.132 Like Surkh Kotal, Mat yielded peripheral sculpture fragments with vaguely
Shaivite symbolism.133 Thus, if Oesho/Shiva, whom Vima mentions as his divine
patron, is the same deity for whom Huvishka originally built the sanctuary, such an
appearance of Nana/Uma and Oesho/Shiva in Surkh Kotal, Rabatak and Mat would
cohere well with their popularity in coinage, presenting a compelling pattern.134

sas anian d is r u pt ion

and

r e inv e nt ion

The Sasanian Empire (224–642 c e ) marks an important rupture in the development
of the Iranian dynastic sanctuary. Almost immediately after he took power, the
founder of the empire, Ardashir I (r. 224–39/40 c e ), aggressively consolidated his
hold over all elements of symbolic power in Iranian kingship, restricting them to
the Sasanian king of kings. In addition, the Sasanians promoted their own version
of Zoroastrianism, which demanded that a sacred fire should be the object of
veneration, and this was accompanied by the destruction of cult statues across the
empire.135 By the end of the Arsacid Empire, Parthian vassals who maintained their
own dynastic sanctuary, such as the kings of Elymais and Armenia surveyed above,
fell to the Sasanians. The institution was considered to be such a natural royal
prerogative that outrage over the later Sasanian disruption of it appears across the
Iranian world. The oft-quoted apology in The Letter of Tansar reflects this, where a
priest answers a newly conquered vassal’s complaints regarding Ardashir I’s
policies:
Next for what you said, that the King of kings has taken away fires from
the fire-temples, extinguished them and blotted them out, and that no one
has ever before presumed so far against religion; know that the case is not
so grievous, but has been wrongly reported to you. The truth is that after
Darius each of the ‘kings of the peoples’ built his own fire-temple. This
was pure innovation, introduced by them without the authority of kings of
old. The King of kings has razed the temples, and confiscated the

endowments, and had the fires carried back to their places of origin.136
Similarly, in recounting Ardashir I’s reorganization of Armenia in the mid third
century c e Movses Khorenats’i reports:
[Ardashir I] increased the cults of the temples and ordered the fire of
[Ohrmazd], which was on the altar at [Bagawan] to be kept perpetually
burning. But the statues that [Vałaršak] had set up as the images of his
ancestors with those of the sun and the moon at Armavir, and which had
been transferred from Armavir to Bagaran and then brought to [Artashat],
these [Ardashir I] broke up.137
The Sasanians’ own engagement with dynastic cult practices diverges markedly
from the preceding artistic and architectural traditions of Middle Iranian dynastic
sanctuary. While the Sasanians continued many traditions of the dynastic
sanctuary, they did so with a few very important modifications related to wider
changes in religious practice. The iconoclastic Sasanians demanded the main focus
of cult be a sacred fire rather than a cult statue, though it appears that this was
already the case in some Arsacid sanctuaries. No archaeological evidence of a
monumental structure or open-air complex dedicated to dynastic cult has been
discovered on the scale of Nisa, the Kushan sanctuaries or Commagene. However,
archaeological evidence of smaller dynastic monuments and numismatic and
epigraphic evidence of sacred fires founded for the benefit of the soul of the king
and his ancestors provide an outline of the art and ritual celebration of the Sasanian
dynastic cult. The Sasanians continued the Arsacid practice of lighting and tending
regnal fires, which were represented on the reverse of Sasanian coins, often
labelled as such, from the beginning to the end of the dynasty. Drachms issued by
Ardashir I provide a simple representation of the regnal fire’s treatment.138 The
coins’ reverse depicts an altar enthroned on an Achaemenid-style throne. Under
Ardashir I’s son and successor, Shapur I (r. c.240–c.270 c e ), until the end of the
empire Sasanian coins regularly depicted two royal figures flanking a fire altar (fig.
2.22).139 While these reverses could possibly depict ritual activities performed
around the fire altar, given the nature of corroborating evidence it is just as likely
that they represent the actual sculptural environment around the fire, portraying

sculptures of the king and his ancestors surrounding the fire.

2.22 Sasanian coin of Shapur II depicting a fire altar and representations of royal figures honouring and protecting the fire.

Although it is probable that the court established one main dynastic fire, the
kings and their courtiers could found other fires at significant sites and cities
throughout their empire. These were founded ‘for the soul and memory’ (MP pad
amā ruwān ud pannām) of the royal family, sometimes with a funerary or memorial
context.140 This phrase and the offerings, sheep, bread and wine hearken to the
Achaemenid cult.141 Shapur I’s inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam (ŠKZ) provides an
epigraphic record of his foundation of fires and cult for himself, his family, his
ancestors and an impressive number of courtiers (plate 2.23, fig. 2.24).142 Carved
into, and likely celebrated in proximity to, the site’s Achaemenid tower, the Kabahe Zerdosht, these fires simultaneously celebrated the dynasty while appropriating
the site’s ancient Persian heritage and engaging with its funerary function. The
practice of endowing a sacred fire, albeit not a major fire, for the benefit of the royal
family, or simply of creating a monument with elements evoking the dynastic
sanctuary, was not limited to the king himself, but was one that provincial
aristocrats adopted to distinguish themselves within their communities. Like
microcosms of the dynastic fire sanctuaries, in these civic or domestic sanctuaries,
the royal personages inhabited the same cultic space as the sacred fire, and because
of this the rituals that honoured the fire in effect also honoured the king and his
family’s semi-divine status.

2.24 Site plan of Naqsh-e Rostam.

At Shapur I’s city of Bishapur in south-western Fars, the excavators discovered
a monument set up by a local grandee whose constituent elements closely match
those of a typical Middle Iranian dynastic fire, though its architectural shape. It
consisted of an inscription dedicating the monument to Shapur I, his father
Ardashir I and grandfather Papag, a statue of the king (and possibly one of another
figure too) and a fire altar.143 Paralleling this, a private fire altar found at Barm-e
Delak near Shiraz depicts, on two of its four sides Ardashir I and Shapur I, identified
by inscriptions, in poses similar to the ones on the reverses of Shapur I’s coins.144
This altar, in effect, presents a compact, self-contained version of the Iranian
dynastic sanctuary, with relief images of the sovereigns on the altar itself rather
than surrounding it. The so-called Sasanian ‘Manor House’ excavated at Hajjiabad
in the present-day province of Fars preserves an example of a possible rural
sanctuary.145 Room 114 of the country temple housed a shrine which included nearly
life-sized relief sculptures of the goddess Anahita with busts of royal personages
above, several identifiable as Shapur II and Bahram II Kushanshah, a KushanoSasanian governor. Considering the preponderance of female figures, it appears
that the cult in this room was intended to be centred on water, the element sacred
to the goddess Anahita, though – like Bishapur, another early Sasanian site with an
Anahita sanctuary – an adjacent room housed a fire sanctuary.
This survey of Middle Iranian royal architecture and cult practices underscores

the evidence of continuity and incredible innovation as well the impact of a wide
variety of non-Iranian traditions (fig. 2.25). On the one hand, the Middle Iranian
dynastic sanctuaries did not develop directly from Achaemenid or pre-Hellenistic
forms. We can point to no clear Achaemenid precedents attested in primary sources
where the king of kings and his ancestors were honoured in temples alongside ritual
activity directed towards a cult statue or sacred elements, such as fire or water. On
the other hand, evidence of sacrifices performed at the tombs of the Achaemenid
kings attests to an underlying Persian or Iranian funerary tradition that was coopted and integrated into new architectural and cultic traditions. While it would be
tempting to believe Movses Khorenats’i that the Orontid kings of Armenia
established their own dynastic sanctuaries, which would make them the first
known, no corroborating information exists to back up his otherwise troubled
chronology and confused understanding of the dynasty. If the Orontid kings
cultivated such sanctuaries, this would be a prime indicator that the institution of
the dynastic sanctuary somehow stemmed from Achaemenid practices, since the
Orontids had their roots in a line of hereditary satraps serving the Achaemenid
Empire and, generally speaking, archaeological evidence of the South Caucasus in
the Hellenistic age shows both a marked persistence of Achaemenid architectural
and urban forms and limited penetration of Hellenistic culture.146 Armavir, the first
capital of the Orontid dynasty shows no characteristic urban elements of a
Hellenistic city, though Greek does appear in a handful of inscriptions.147

2.25 Table of Middle Iranian dynastic sanctuaries.

In contrast, trustworthy evidence appears first in lands that had been part of
the eastern Seleucid Empire and becomes prevalent after the spread of empires
recently founded by Iranian-speaking nomads of the Eurasian steppes, the
Parthians–Arsacids and Yuezhi–Kushans, rather than the old Persian satrapal
families.148 Both were nomadic peoples who brought the traditions of Iranian steppe
nomads into contact with Macedonian culture. The fact that the Arsacid and Kushan
dynasties both cultivated these practices suggests that an Iranian steppe heritage
might have contributed a common influence. Some sort of Iranian ancestor cult or
veneration of a dynastic divine protector could indeed have prepared both of these
cultures to honour their rulers in such a way, though no evidence exists – either
textual or archaeological – that can securely attest to such prototypes. But while
some of these dynasties’ early cultural practices appear to stem from their steppe
origins, their eventual style of kingship grew more from the sedentary Hellenistic

and Persian traditions of the lands they conquered.149
The dynastic sanctuaries incorporated several elements drawn from Iranian
religious practices and sensibilities, such as a reverence for water and fire and an
understanding that mountaintops are sacred. Some of these correspond to wider
pre-Zoroastrian traditions shared by many Iranian peoples and are detectable in the
oldest textual evidence of Iranian religion, the Avesta. Others correspond more
specifically to Achaemenid Persian practices. The patrons founded the vast majority
of these sanctuaries on elevated sites, which were considered to be intrinsically holy
in Iranian culture. These included mountain hilltops in the case of Nisa, Shami,
Surkh Kotal, Rabatak and the hierothēsia of Commagene, or, in the case of Mat,
where no mountain or hill was available, an artificial platform. Similarly, the sacred
elements of fire and water figure strongly in the cult of most of these sanctuaries. In
the case of the Sasanians, a sacred fire was the exclusive cultic focus. Finally, some
of the dynastic sanctuaries incorporated a funerary function or symbolism that
correspond to Iranian cultural practice. The hierothēsia of Commagene again
provide the clearest and best-documented examples, though Nisa, Shami, Armenian
Bagawan, and Shapur I’s fires at Naqsh-e Rostam more clearly engage Iranian
religious traditions related to honouring the dead.
Many of the sanctuaries’ most characteristic common elements, such as
monumental statuary and architecture, did not originate from a nomadic heritage or
even Achaemenid Persia. These elements, which include monumental sculpture,
architecture and inscriptions, are surprisingly uniform, indicating that they
stemmed from a common outside influence: the Seleucid Empire. Both the Arsacids
and the Kushans ruled over lands that had been part of the Seleucid Empire or their
rebellious satraps and retained a deep tradition of Hellenism. More importantly,
Hellenistic kingship continued to be one of the currencies of power in the
Mediterranean and parts of India for several more centuries.150 The new Iranian
dynasties appropriated Hellenistic practices, but adjusted them for the religious
sensibilities and political needs of the new Iranian regimes. As the Hellenistic
kingdoms declined and Arsacid and Kushan kingship became the dominant idioms
of power in Western, Central and South Asia, they quickly took on a distinct and
self-consciously Iranian character.
The sites under consideration in this study encompassed a multitude of

activities and incorporated a number of subsidiary functions; however, what unites
them all was their role in honouring the king and his lineage. Fire and water were
important to many of the cults, but the main focus of the majority of sanctuaries
was a cult statue or statues. In the extreme case of Commagene, images of the king
were intermixed with those of the gods; however, the mere proximity of the cult and
royal images in the other sanctuaries established a clear, contiguous link between
the king and the gods, ritually implying the king’s divine or semi-divine nature
without overtly claiming it. The artistic forms of the cult and royal statues varied
not only according to the artistic modes of representation current in their kingdom
or empire, but, in the case of the iconoclastic Sasanians, according to the religious
strictures governing the religious use of images. The evidence from Parthia, Elymais
and Armenia suggests that the Arsacids and royal families influenced by the early
Arsacids favoured statues created with Hellenistic sculptural forms and
workmanship. Not only were the statues themselves expensive commodities, but
they also indicated that the patron appreciated and participated in the aristocratic
common culture of Hellenistic art, which extended beyond the Iranian world into
the Mediterranean. In the first century b c e , Antiochos I patronized what became a
unique and characteristic art and architectural phenomenon coming from
Commagene, which translated elements of Iranian culture into Hellenistic
sculptural forms. The Kushans patronized the artistic and architectural traditions of
the region in which a sanctuary was built. Even while the nature of the temple
architecture or divine iconography could change according to region, the
iconography, insignia and even poses of the representations of kings were the
same, no matter which sculptural school produced them.
While it is illuminating to note parallels among the sites, it is just as important
to concentrate on efforts of the patron to make the dynastic sanctuary culturally or
religiously relevant to their non-Iranian populations. In many of the sites it was
very important for the gods and kings to be correctly identified and portrayed in an
artistic style that would be powerful across cultures. In some cases this could take
place through a process of translating terms or iconographies of gods into a new
idiom, as the Kushans appear to have done in worshipping their tutelary goddess
Nana in the guise of Uma. In a different process, Antiochos I deliberately grafted
the names of Greek gods onto those of the Iranian gods and, in some secondary

representations of the gods, used their traditional Greek iconography instead of the
generic representation in ‘Persian robes’, which he had likely created because no
ready Iranian iconographic system existed by which to represent these gods. While
we do not have any direct evidence of a specific god or cult statue worshipped in
Nisa beyond the veneration of the fire, the pediment of the Red Building carried
metopes with the iconographic features of Herakles: club, bow and quiver, and lion.
Forged from many culturally diverse elements, dynastic sanctuaries became an
important and flexible expression of power within the Iranian world between
Alexander and Islam. The fact that this practice spread primarily among Iranian
royal families indicates that it became an institution that gained currency alongside
the rise of Iranian kingship as a global idiom of power. They not only communicated
a family’s royal claims and connections with patron deities, but also put their claims
into a ritual and visual idiom that had meaning beyond their kingdom or even
empire. Fundamentally the practices associated with these sanctuaries were openended, flexible strategies that any dynasty strong enough would choose to engage,
either to project power over conquered peoples or to contest and obliterate the
claims of the overthrown dynasties – strategies which were then bequeathed to the
world of Islam.
no tes
1 The author gratefully acknowledges the support of a Charles A. Ryskamp fellowship from the American
Council of Learned Societies and a visiting senior research fellowship from Merton College, Oxford.
2 As opposed to the more geographically restricted nation state or region, in ancient Iranian studies, ‘Iranian’
refers to several peoples who self-consciously considered themselves to be Iranian (Av. airiia-; MP ēr;
Bactrian airia) or spoke an Iranian language. These Iranian peoples further classified themselves according to
the region they inhabited (Persian) or their dynasty (Achaemenid, Arsacid, Kushan, Sasanian, etc.). In
addition, several regimes, such as Mithradatid Pontos or Orontid Commagene, adopted aspects of Iranian
culture and kingship and played up their distant Persian roots.
3 N. Sims-Williams and J. Cribb, ‘A new Bactrian inscription of Kanishka the Great’, Silk Road Art and
Archaeology iv (1995–6), p. 91; P. Huyse, ‘Überlegungen zum Βαγολαγγο des Kaniška I’, in C. Cereti et al.
(eds), Religious Themes and Texts of Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia: Studies in Honour of Professor Gerardo
Gnoli (Wiesbaden, 2003), p. 180, note 12; Frantz Grenet, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Bagina’ [online]; R.H.
Hewsen, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Bagaran’ and ‘Bagawan’ [online].
4 For an overview, see: Daniel Schlumberger et al., Surkh Kotal en Bactriane, 2 vols (Paris, 1983–90), pp. 139–52;
J.M. Rosenfield, The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 140–2; G.K. Sarkissian, ‘On the problem
of the cults of the Hellenistic world: The cult of the royal dynasty in ancient Armenia’, in J. Harmatta (ed.),

Studien zur Geschichte und Philosophie des Altertums (Budapest, 1968), pp. 283–92; Klaus Schippman, Die
iranischen Feuerheiligtümer (Berlin, 1971); Malcolm Colledge, Parthian Art (London, 1977), p. 47; Helmut
Waldmann, Der kommagenische Mazdaismus (Tübingen, 1991), pp. 149–56; Gérard Fussman, ‘The Māṭ
devakula: A new approach to its understanding’, in D.M. Srinivasan (ed.), Mathurā: The Cultural Heritage New
Delhi (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 193–9; Sims-Williams and Cribb, ‘A new Bactrian inscription’, pp. 75–142; Huyse,
‘Überlegungen zum Βαγολαγγο’, pp. 175–88.
5 M. Boyce, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Fravaši’ [online].
6 On the problem of cross-cultural interaction, see: Matthew Canepa, ‘Theorizing cross-cultural interaction
among ancient and early medieval visual cultures’, Ars Orientalis xxxviii (2010), pp. 7–29.
7 Building on several previous studies, I argue that, in terms of art-historical methodology, the architectural
and visual material of these sites should not be studied in isolation, but must be approached in the context
provided by the web of visual, spatial and ritual correspondences in which it participated. See Matthew
Canepa, The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran (Berkeley, 2009),
pp. 7–8; Matthew Canepa, ‘Distant displays of power: Understanding cross-cultural interaction among the
elites of Rome, Sasanian Iran, and Sui-Tang China’, Ars Orientalis xxxviii (2010), pp. 121–54.
8 See Chapter 1 in this volume.
9 See Chapter 1 in this volume.
10 Matthew Canepa, ‘Achaemenid and Seleucid royal funerary practices and Middle Iranian kingship’, in H. Börm
and J. Wiesehöfer (eds), Commutatio et Contentio: Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near
East (Düsseldorf, 2010), pp. 1–21.
11 Wouter Henkelman, ‘An Elamite memorial: The šumar of Cambyses and Hystaspes’, in W. Henkelman and A.
Kuhrt (eds), A Persian Perspective: Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg (Leiden, 2003), pp. 101–
72; Wouter Henkelman, The Other Gods Who Are: Studies in Elamite-Iranian Acculturation Based on the
Persepolis Fortification Texts (Leiden, 2008), pp. 287–91, 429–32 and 546. See also Robert Rollinger,
‘Herrscherkult und Königsvergöttlichung bei Teispiden und Achaimeniden: Realität oder Fiktion?’, in L.-M.
Günther and S. Plischke (eds), Studien zum vorhellenistischen und hellenistischen Herrscherkult (Berlin, 2011),
pp. 11–49.
12 Matthew Canepa, ‘The transformation of sacred space, topography and royal ritual in Persia and the ancient
Iranian world’, in D. Ragavan (ed.), Heaven on Earth: Temples, Ritual, and Cosmic Symbolism in the Ancient
World (Chicago, 2013), pp. 319–72.
13 Josef Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD, trans. A. Azodi (New York, 1996), p. 105.
14 Andrew Stewart, Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 171–81.
There is no evidence that Alexander was ‘consecrated’ as a Persian king of kings at Pasargadae or
‘ceremonially enthroned’ at Susa. See A.B. Bosworth, ‘Alexander and the Iranians’, Journal of Historical
Studies c (1980), pp. 1–21, esp. p. 5.
15 For example, his clumsy and portentious demand that all fires be extinguished after the death of
Hephaistion; see Diodorus 17.114.4–5.
e

16 Rémy Boucharlat, ‘Les destins des résidences et sites perses d’Iran dans la seconde moitie du IV siècle
avant J.-C.’, in P. Briant and F. Joannès (eds), La Transition entre l’empire achéménide et les royaumes
hellénistiques (Paris, 2006), pp. 443–70.
17 J. Ma, ‘Paradigms and paradoxes in the Hellenistic world’, in B. Virgilio (ed.), Studi Hellenistici XX (Pisa, 2008),
pp. 371–86. R. Strootman, Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires (Edinburgh, 2014), pp. 42–53 and 187–

263. On the creation of the Seleucid Empire, see P. Kosmin, The Land of the Elephant Kings (Cambridge, MA,
2014).
18 Among the most influential contributions are: M. Rostovtzeff, ‘ΠΡΟΓΟΝΟΙ’, JHS lv (1935), pp. 56–66; E.J.
Bickerman, Institutions des Séleucides (Paris, 1938), pp. 249–56; L. Cerfaux and J. Tondriau, Le Culte des
souverains dans la civilisation greco-romaine (Tournai, 1957); F. Taeger, Charisma: Studien zur Geschichte des
antiken Herrscherkultes (Stuttgart, 1957), pp. 171–440; M. Nilsson, Geschichte der greichischen Religion
(Munich, 1961), pp. 132–85; C. Habicht, Gottmenschentum und griechische Städte, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1970); F.W.
Walbank, ‘Monarchies and monarchic ideas’, in F.W. Walbank et al., Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, pt 1
(Cambridge, 1984), pp. 62–100.
19 B. Virgilio, Lancia, Diadema e Porpora: Il re e la regalità ellenistica, 2nd ed. (Pisa, 2003), pp. 87–130; P.
Debord, ‘Le culte royal chez les Séleucides’, L’Orient méditerranéen de la mort d’Alexandre aux campagnes de
Pompée, Pallas 62 (Toulouse, 2003), pp. 281–308; P. Van Nuffelen, ‘Le culte royale de l’empire des séleucides:
Une réinterprétation’, Historia liii/3 (2004), pp. 278–301; L. Capdetrey, Le Pouvoir séleucide: Territoire,
administration, finances d’un royaume hellénistique, 312–129 avant J.-C. (Rennes, 2007), pp. 25–38, 167–89.
20 Strabo 17.1; A. Erskine, ‘Life after death: Alexandria and the body of Alexander’, Greece and Rome xlix (2001),
pp. 163–79. Classical sources on the Sema are collected in: E.J. Chinnock, ‘The burial-place of Alexander the
Great’, The Classical Review vii/6 (1893), pp. 245–6; A. Collins, ‘The divinity of Alexander in Egypt: A
reassessment’, in P. Wheatley and R. Hannah (eds), Alexander and His Successors: Essays from the Antipodes
(Claremont, 2009), pp. 179–205.
21 Virgilio, Diadema, Lancia, Porpora, pp. 110–18.
22 A. Kuhrt, ‘Usurpation, conquest, and ceremonial: From Babylonia to Persia’, in D. Cannadine and S. Price
(eds), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 22–55, esp. pp.
48–52.
23 A. Kuhrt, ‘The Seleucid kings and Babylonia: Aspects of Hellenistic kingship’, in P. Bilde (ed.), Aspects of
Hellenistic Kingship (Aarhus, 1996), pp. 41–54.
24 ‘Vašnā Auramazdāha’. See: B. Lincoln, ‘Happiness for Mankind’: Achaemenian Religion and the Imperial Project
(Leuven, Paris and Walpole, 2012), pp. 357–74; M. Boyce and F. Grenet, History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 3
(Leiden, 1991), pp. 12–17.
25 Van Nuffelen, ‘Le culte royale de l’empire des séleucides’, p. 285.
26 The Nikatoreion of Seleukeia-Pieria – that is, the temenos in which Antiochos I buried Seleukos I – was a
mausoleum and was not the genesis or centre of an empire-wide cult like the Sema of Alexandria. Appian Syr.
63.
27 Virgilio, Diadema, Lancia, Porpora, pp. 118–27.
28 See the collections of documents in: ibid., pp. 206–310; J. Ma, Antiochos III and the Cities of Asia Minor
(Oxford, 1999), pp. 284–372.
29 Van Nuffelen, ‘Le culte royale de l’empire des séleucides’, pp. 298–300.
30 Virgilio, Diadema, Lancia, Porpora, pp. 94–6; Van Nuffelen, ‘Le culte royale de l’empire des séleucides’, p.
289.
31 Debord, ‘Le culte royal chez les Séleucides’, pp. 291–300; Virgilio, Diadema, Lancia, Porpora, p. 123; Van
Nuffelen, ‘Le culte royale de l’empire des séleucides’, pp. 278–85.
32 On Eriza/Dodurga, see: Maurice Holleaux, ‘Nouvelles remarques sur l’édit d’Ériza’, Bulletin de correspondance
hellénique (1930), pp. 245–62; Ma, Antiochos III, pp. 354–6. On Laodikeia/Nehavand, see: Louis Robert,

‘Inscriptions séleucides de Phrygie et d’Iran’, Hellenica vii (1949), pp. 6–29; Louis Robert, ‘Addenda au Tome
VII’, Hellenica viii (1950), pp. 73–5; Virgilio, Diadema, Lancia, Porpora, pp. 239–41. On Kermanshah, see: Louis
Robert, ‘Encore une inscription grecque de l’Iran’, CRAI (1967), pp. 281–96; Van Nuffelen, ‘Le culte royale de
l’empire des séleucides’, pp. 278–85.
33 It is difficult to ascertain the relationship of the sanctuaries to the cities since the cities themselves have
not been securely located. See Mehdi Rahbar and Sajjad Alibaigi, ‘The hunt for Laodicea: A Greek temple in
Nahavand, Iran’, Antiquity lxxxiii (2009), p. 322, available at http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/alibaigi322/
(accessed 22 November 2013).
34 Robert, ‘Inscriptions séleucides de Phrygie et d’Iran’, p. 21.
35 Unfortunately no ground plan has been discovered. See Rahbar and Alibaigi, ‘The hunt for Laodicea’.
36 Van Nuffelen, ‘Le culte royale de l’empire des séleucides’, p. 287.
37 Debord, ‘Le culte royal chez les Séleucides’, pp. 284–5.
38 Van Nuffelen, ‘Le culte royale de l’empire des séleucides’, pp. 292–3.
39 Strabo 16.2.6. Ancient literary sources are collected in: C.O. Müller, Antiquitates Antiochenae:
Commentationes duae (Göttingen, 1839), p. 46; G. Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria: From Seleucus to the
Arab Conquest (Princeton, 1961), pp. 82–6.
40 Seleukos I supposedly discovered a golden arrowhead shot by his divine ancestor, proving that this was the
site, Lib. Or. 11.94–99. The site had many relics of this story, including the very laurel tree into which
Daphne had metamorphized (Lib. Or. 11. 94; Philostratus, Life of Appollonius 1.16; Eusthathios, Commentary
on Dionysius Periegetes, pp. 916). As might be expected from a sanctuary of this popularity, Daphne began to
agglomerate many other traditions too; see Downey, A History of Antioch, p. 84.
41 See Downey, A History of Antioch, p. 83.
42 Lib. Or. 11.241.
43 Nonnos, Narr. Greg. 2.14.
44 Polybius, 30.25–6; Athenaeus, 5.22–4. See also: J.G. Bunge, ‘Die Feiern Antiochos’ IV. Epiphanes in Daphne
im Herbst 166 v. Chr.’, Chiron vi (1976), pp. 53–71; Walbank, ‘Two Hellenistic processions: A matter of selfdefinition’, Scripta Classica Israelica xv (1996), pp. 125–9; Virgilio, Diadema, Lancia, Porpora, p. 125; Malal.
307; Müller, Antiquiates Antiochenae, p. 46, note 4.
45 The image of Apollo sitting on omphalos became ubiquitous throughout the empire and was the most
popular Seleucid coin type; see A. Houghton and Catherine Lorber, Seleucid Coins: A Comprehensive
Catalogue, Part I: Seleucus through Antiochus III (New York and London, 2002), p. 360.
46 K. Erickson, ‘Apollo-Nabû: The Babylonian policy of Antiochus I’, in K. Erickson and G. Ramsey (eds), Seleucid
Dissolution: The Sinking of the Anchor (Wiesbaden, 2011), pp. 50–65; P.P. Iossif, ‘Apollo Toxotes and the
Seleukids’, in P. Iossif, A. Chankowski, and C. Lorber (eds), More than Men, Less than Gods: Studies on Royal
Cult and Imperial Worship (Leuven, Paris and Walpole, 2011), pp. 229–91.
47 Bickerman, Institutions, pp. 249–56; Walbank, ‘Monarchies and monarchic ideas’, pp. 96–7.
48 A. Invernizzi, Nisa Partica: Le sculture ellenistiche (Florence, 2009); A. Invernizzi and Carlo Lippolis, Nisa
Partica: Recerche nel complesso monumentale arsacide 1990–2006 (Florence, 2008).
49 Invernizzi, Nisa Partica: Ricerche, pp. 369–79, 474–5.
50 A. Invernizzi, ‘Arsacid dynastic art’, Parthica iii (2001), pp. 133–57.
51 Ibid. pp. 134–6.

52 A. Invernizzi, ‘Die hellenistischen Grundlagen der frühparthischen Kunst’, AMIran xxvii (1994 [1996]), pp.
191–203; Invernizzi, ‘Arsacid dynastic art’; A. Invernizzi, ‘Representations of gods in Parthian Nisa’, Parthica
vii (2005), pp. 71–9; Canepa, ‘Seleukid architecture’.
53 Invernizzi, Nisa Partica: Ricerche, p. 389.
54 Ibid., pp. 83–166, 265–82.
55 Ibid., pp. 7–81.
56 Invernizzi, ‘Arsacid dynastic art’, p. 145.
57 Ibid., pp. 145–7.
58 G. Koshelenko, Rodina Parfian (Moscow, 1977), pp. 57–64; G. Koshelenko et al., ‘Ricerche nel complesso del
Tempio Rotondo a Nisa Vecchia’, Parthica iv (2002), pp. 9–45; N. Krasheninnikova and G. Pugachenkova,
‘Kruglyi khram parfyanskoi Nisy’, Sovetskaya Arkheologiya iv (1964), pp. 119–35; Invernizzi, Nisa Partica:
Ricerche, p. 7 and p. 382.
59 Isidore of Charax, Parthian Stations 12.
60 According to Dio Cassius, in 216 c e Caracalla plundered the Arsacid royal tombs in Arbela and scattered the
bones; however, no Arsacid king is known to have built a city or fortress here. It is more likely that the
tombs at Arbela were, in fact, the tombs of the vassal dynasty of Adiabene, again reflecting the Arsacid
conventions; see: Dio Cassius 71.26, 74.1; J. Hansman, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Arbela’ [online].
61 A. Invernizzi, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Nisa: An Arsacid city and ceremonial center in Parthia’ [online].
62 E. Dąbrowa, ‘Mithradates I and the beginning of the ruler-cult in Parthia’, in E. Dąbrowa (ed.), Orbis
Parthicus: Studies in Memory of Professor Jósef Wolski (Kracow, 2009), pp. 41–51.
63 M.E. Masson and G. Pugachenkova, ‘Mramornye statui parfyanskogo vremeni iz Staroi Nisy’, Ezhegodnik
Instituta Istorii Iskusstv: Skul’ptura, zhivopis’, arkhitektura (1956 [1957]), pp. 460–89, Italian trans. in Invernizzi
(ed.), Nisa Partica: Le sculture ellenistiche, pp. 153–63; R. Heidenreich, ‘Griechisches aus Turkmenien’, AA
(1988), pp. 81–5; Invernizzi, ‘Arsacid dynastic art’, pp. 136–41.
64 Invernizzi, ‘Representations of Gods in Parthian Nisa’, pp. 71–9; Invernizzi, Nisa Partica: Le sculture
ellenistiche, pp. 129–51.
65 It should be noted that Boyce implies that the Nisa documents specifically refer to fires dedicated for the
soul of the king using the phrase in the Sasanian inscriptions, pad ruwān, but the ostraka contain no direct
mention of this phrase or such fires; see M. Boyce, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Arsacids iv. Arsacid Religion’
[online].
66 See: ibid.; V. Lukonin, ‘Administrative institutions’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3 no. 2 (Cambridge,
1983), p. 694. I.M. Diakonoff and V.A. Livshits, Parthian Economic Documents from Nisa Texts I, Corpus
Inscriptionum Iranicarum 2.2.1 (London, 1977–2001): Pryptykn, p. 200; mtrdtkn, p. 197; ’rtbnwkn, pp. 185–6;
gwtrzkn, p. 191; ‘temples’, or better ‘cult sites’ (‘yzny [āyazanī]) are mentioned, but appear to be submitting
rather than receiving taxes: p. 158, note 2301; pp. 164–5, note 2573.
67 Isidore of Charax, Parthian Stations 11.
68 M.A. Stein, ‘An archaeological journey into western Iran’, The Geographic Journal xcii/4 (1938), pp. 313–42,
esp. pp. 324–6; M.A. Stein, Old Routes of Western Īrān (London, 1940), pp. 130–4, 141–59; Schippmann, Die
iranischen Feuerheiligtümer, pp. 227–33.
69 M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, 2nd ed., 3 vols (Oxford, 1953), vol. 1, p.
437; vol. 3, p. 1428, note 237. See also S. Sherwin-White, ‘Shami, the Seleucids and dynastic cult: A note’,

Iran xxii (1984), pp. 160–1.
70 Stein, ‘Archaeological journey’, p. 325; Stein, Old Routes of Western Īrān, pp. 146–7.
71 Stein, ‘Archaeological journey’, p. 325; Stein, Old Routes of Western Īrān, pp. 147–8, 155.
72 Stein, Old Routes of Western Īrān, pp. 149–50.
73 Stein, ‘Archaeological journey’, p. 325; Stein, Old Routes of Western Īrān, pp. 149–50 and 154–5. For a review
of the dates put forward for the structure, see Sherwin-White, ‘Shami, the Seleucids and dynastic cult’, pp.
160–1.
74 Stein, Old Routes of Western Īrān, p. 155.
75 Ibid., pp. 130–4 and 154.
76 Ibid., p. 158.
77 Stein, ‘Archaeological journey’, pp. 325–6; Stein, Old Routes of Western Īrān, pp. 153–4.
78 P. Gignoux, ‘Quelle connaissance eut de l’Iran Movsès Xorenac’i?’, Studia Iranica xxviii/2 (1999), pp. 215–26;
R. Hewson, ‘The primary history of Armenia: An examination of the validity of an immemorially transmitted
historical tradition’, History in Africa ii (1975), pp. 91–100.
79 Carrière argued that Movses’ mentions of the sanctuaries depend entirely on Agat‘angełos, which is not
entirely the case, as Movses refers to these sanctuaries in new contexts with new, unrelated information.
See A. Carrière, Les Huit sanctuaires de l’Arménie payenne d’après Agathange et Moïse de Khoren: Étude critique
(Paris, 1899). On the identification of Greek and Armenian deities, see A. Petrosyan, ‘State pantheon of
Greater Armenia: Earliest sources’, Aramazd (2007), pp. 174–201.
80 Movses Khorenats’i, The History of the Armenians, trans. R.W. Thomson (Ann Arbor, 2006), p. 141, note 93.
See also Huyse, ‘Überlegungen zum Βαγολαγγο’, pp. 179–82.
81 Khorenats’i, History of the Armenians, p. 146.
82 The king transferred everything in the city except the sanctuary because he was concerned that the city
could not be securely guarded when throngs of worshippers came to sacrifice; see ibid., p. 179.
83 Ibid.; cf. Agathangelos, History of the Armenians, trans. R.W. Thomson (Albany, 1976), p. 491, note 1.
84 Khorenats’i, History of the Armenians, p. 187.
85 M. Facella, La Dinastia degli Orontidi nella Commagene ellenistico-romana (Pisa, 2006), p. 277; cf. Sarkissian,
‘On the problem of the cults’, p. 287.
86 Agathangełos 785.
87 While no statues were discovered at the sites mentioned by Movses, a gilt bronze head of Aphrodite of
Hellenistic workmanship was found in the vicinity of the Armenian city of Satala (now located at the British
Museum: GR 1873.8–20.1). This might reflect the Armenian princes’ taste for Hellenistic sculptures for their
cult statues, a taste that would have been encouraged once the city had been incorporated into the Roman
Empire under Trajan. Interestingly, the nineteenth-century excavator of the site found no trace of a
traditional Greek temple; see T. Mitford, ‘Biliotti’s excavations at Satala’, Anatolian Studies xiv (1974), pp.
221–44.
88 Mithradates VI boasted equally of his royal Persian and Macedonian descent, counting as ancestors Cyrus,
Darius, Alexander and Seleukos I; see Just. Epit. 38.7.1.
89 F. Chapouthier, Le Sanctuaire des dieux de Samothrace (Paris, 1935), pp. 13–42; D.B. Erciyas, Wealth,
Aristocracy and Royal Propaganda under the Hellenistic Kingdom of the Mithradatids, Colloquia Pontica 12th ed.
(Leiden, 2006), pp. 143–5.

90 For an overview of these sanctuaries, see: Facella, La dinastia degli Orontidi, pp. 250–97; M. Canepa, ‘Review
of La dinastia degli Orontidi nella Commagene ellenistico-romana, by Margherita Facella’, The Bryn Mawr
Classical Review (21 January 2007). See also: P. Mittag, ‘Zur Selbstilisierung Antiochos I. von Kommagene’,
Gephyra i (2004), pp. 1–26; J. Wagner, Gottkönige am Euphrat: Neue Ausgrabungen und Forschungen in
Kommagene, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt/Mainz, 2012).
91 See: D. Sanders, Nemrud Dağı: The hierothesion of Antiochus I of Commagene: Results of the American
excavations directed by Theresa B. Goell (Winona Lake, 1996); B. Jacobs, ‘Bergheiligtum und Heiliger Berg:
Überlegungen zur Wahl des Nemrud Dağı-Gipfels als Heiligtums- und Grabstätte’, in J. Hahn (ed.), Religiöse
Landschaften (Münster, 2002), pp. 31–47; P.F. Mittag, ‘Zur Entwicklung des “Herrscher-” und
“Dynastiekultes” in Kommagene’, in L.-M. Günther and S. Plischke (eds), Studien zum vorhellenistischen und
hellenistischen Herrscherkult (Berlin, 2011), pp. 141–60. For Commagene’s place within the wider context of
Roman client kings, see A. Kropp, Images and Monuments of Near Eastern Dynasts (Oxford, 2013), pp. 180–88
and 357–64.
92 Nomos 67.
93 Nomos 67, 132.
94 Nomos 24.
95 Nomos 124.
96 Nomos 36. While their dynastic sanctuaries were located elsewhere, an ‘altar of Ohrmazd’ was located at the
site of the tombs of Arsacid kings of Armenia at Ani (Agat‘angełos 785). According to Movses Khorenats’i, a
King Tigran built an altar over the tomb of his brother at Bagawan, the site of the ‘Fire of Ohrmazd’, where
the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia would celebrate New Year’s Day; see Khorenats’i, History of the Armenians, p.
195 and p. 209.
97 Canepa, ‘Review of La dinastia degli Orontidi’; Mittag, ‘Selbstilisierung’; W. Messerschmidt, ‘Grabstele eines
Herrschers von Kummuh: Zu den späthethitischen Wurzeln des kommagenischen Königs- und
Ahnenkultes’, in E. Winter (ed.), Von Kummuh nach Telouch: Archäologische und historische Untersuchungen in
Kommagene (Bonn, 2011), pp. 283–308.
98 Schlumberger, Surkh Kotal en Bactriane, vol. 1; H. Humbach, ‘The great Surk Kotal inscription’, in C. Cereti
et al. (eds), Religious Themes and Texts of Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia: Studies in Honour of Professor
Gerardo Gnoli (Weisbaden, 2003), pp. 157–6; Huyse, ‘Überlegungen zum Βαγολαγγο’, pp. 175–88. Related is
the extensive inscription found at Rabatak, near Bagram; see Sims-Williams and Cribb, ‘A new Bactrian
inscription’, pp. 75–142; N. Sims-Willians, ‘The Bactrian inscription of Rabatak: A new reading’, Bulletin of the
Asia Institute xviii (2004 [2008]), pp. 53–68.
99 Huyse, ‘Überlegungen zum Βαγολαγγο’, pp. 175–88; Rosenfield, Dynastic Arts, pp. 140–2.
100 Devakula can mean ‘temple’, but it appears in Sanskrit literature in a few instances specifically referring to
a sanctuary with statues of kings or to the dwelling of a dynastic deity that a future king must worship
before he can gain the throne. See: Bhāsa, Pratimānāṭaka, Act 3; Mahāvastu 1.223.4–10; Fussman, ‘The Māṭ
devakula’, p. 198; Lüders, Mathurā Inscriptions, p. 144.
101 In addition to structures that served a specifically cultic function, several palatial sites built either under
the Kushans or under Kushan influence integrate elements of the dynastic sanctuary. Palaces at Kalchayan
in southern Uzbekistan and Toprak Kale in Chorasmia present parallels with the Square House at Arsacid
Nisa. Although they have been interpreted as dynastic sanctuaries, it is important to mark the differences
between sites such as Mathura or Surkh Kotal, which primarily served a cultic function, and these palatial
sites. F. Grenet, ‘Palais ou palais-temple? Remarques sur la publication du monument de Toprak-kala’, Studia

Iranica xv (1986), pp. 123–35.
102 SK 2.
103 Rabatak 3.
104 Fussman, ‘The Māṭ devakula’, p. 195.
105 SK 4. Writing before the additional information from the Rabatak inscription was fully assimilated, Fussman
argued that the main deity of the sanctuary was the goddess of royal fortune: Śrī, whose name he argued was
translated into Bactrian as Oanindo, ‘Victory’. Thus he translated the name of the sanctuary as ‘Sanctuary of
the Victory of Kaniška’; see Fussman, ‘The Māṭ devakula’, p. 199. Humbach translates it as ‘Kaniška Nikator
Sanctuary’; see Humbach, ‘The Great Surk Kotal Inscription’, p. 157.
106 Schlumberger, Surkh Kotal en Bactriane, vol. 1, pp. 11–20 and 49–62.
107 Ibid., pp. 31–48.
108 Ibid., pp. 63–5 and 107–32.
109 Ibid., pp. 36–7 and 117–19.
110 Ibid., pp. 122–3. The inscription lists five kings, leaving perhaps one statue unaccounted for.
111 Ibid., pp. 37–8, 125–31.
112 P. Bernard, ‘Les traditions orientales dans l’architecture gréco-bactrienne’, Journal Asiatique cclxiv (1976),
pp. 245–75; C. Rapin, ‘Les sanctuaires de l’Asie Centrale à l’époque hellénistique: État de la question’, Études
de Lettres iv (1992), pp. 101–24; G. Lindström, ‘Heiligtümer und Kulte im hellenistischen Baktrien und
Babylonien – ein Vergleich’, in S. Hansen, A. Wieczorek and M. Tellenbach (ed.), Alexander der Grosse und die
Öffnung der Welt: Aisens Kulturen im Wandel (Mannheim, 2009), pp. 127–34.
113 SK 1 and SK 4M. Schlumberger, Surkh Kotal en Bactriane, vol. 1, pp. 134–7. Two more versions of SK 4 were
discovered reused in restorations of the irrigation canal.
114 Water was centrally important for the cult of Surkh Kotal; the restoration inscription states that the gods
were removed (or ‘departed’) from the site when its water dried up and that they returned once the
renovator built a well. SK 4. A stone irrigation canal ran about 10 metres from the first flight of stairs. A later
period of restoration in antiquity converted the lower flight of stairs into a terrace and sank a well on the
west bank of the canal.
115 Fussman, ‘The Māṭ devakula’, pp. 197–8. After the main temple had fallen out of use, two small fire temples
(Temples B and D) appeared on the sanctuary’s summit. The entire complex was destroyed in a massive fire
sometime between 250–300 c e ; see Schlumberger, Surkh Kotal en Bactriane, vol. 1, pp. 67–74. Dating later
than the main sanctuary, a platform was constructed about 2 kilometres from the site on the plain below, but
in direct alignment with the stairs of the main sanctuary; see Schlumberger, Surkh Kotal en Bactriane, vol. 1,
pp. 75–81. The later temples housed fire cults, but were built in the ruins of the sanctuary after its original
cult had ceased to function.
116 Sims-Williams, ‘The Bactrian inscription of Rabatak’, pp. 53–68.
117 For the excavation history of the region, see: G. Fussman, ‘Southern Bactria and northern India before
Islam: A review of archaeological reports’, Journal of the American Oriental Society cxvi/2 (1996), pp. 243–59;
U. Singh, ‘Cults and shrines in early historic Mathura’, World Archaeology xxxvi/3 (2004), pp. 378–98.
118 Fussman, ‘The Māṭ devakula’, p. 195; Grenet, ‘Bagina’.
119 Fussman, ‘The Māṭ devakula’, p. 193.
120 J. Marshall, Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report of the Director-General of Archaeology, Part I:

1911–12 (Calcutta, 1914), pp. 14–17; J.P. Vogel, ‘Excavation at Mathurā. Excavation at Māṭ’, in J. Marshall
(ed.), Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report 1911–12 (Calcutta, 1915), pp. 120–7.
121 Vogel, ‘Excavation at Mathurā’, p. 121.
122 See ibid. Apsidal temple No. 2 at Sonkh belonged to level 5, the Kushan level; see H. Härtel, Excavations at
Sonkh: 2500 Years of a Town in Mathura District (Berlin, 1993), pp. 413–17.
123 The activities of post-Kushan desecrators and later looters thoroughly destroyed and disrupted the
statues, and so it would not be prudent to try to make any specific claims about their original positions from
the later find sites. One of these was transferred centuries later to the nearby tank (mentioned in the
inscription) to serve as a cult statue of Varuna; see Vogel, ‘Excavation at Mathurā’, p. 122; plate LL for the
find sites. Cf. Singh, ‘Cults and Shrines’, who states they were all found ‘outside the shrine’ (p. 393).
124 Statue (Mathura Museum No. 215). See: Vogel, ‘Excavation at Mathurā’, p. 124; H. Lüders, Mathurā
Inscriptions: Unpublished Papers, ed. Klaus L. Janert (Göttingen, 1961), No. 80d, pp. 134–8. Kanishka built a
Naga shrine also in the vincity of Mathura, which was also provided with a garden (ārāma) and a tank
(puṣkariṇī); see Lüders, Mathurā Inscriptions, No. 21b, p. 148.
125 Lüders, Mathurā Inscriptions, No. 80c, pp. 138–45.
126 A. Panaino, ‘The Bactrian royal title βαγ[η]-ζνογο/βαγο-ιηζνογο and the Kušān dynastic cult’, in W.
Sundermann, A. Hintze and F. de Blois, Exegisti monumenta: Festschrift in Honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams
(Wiesbaden, 2009), pp. 331–46.
127 Sims-Williams and Cribb, ‘A new Bactrian inscription’, p. 75; G. Fussman‘L’inscription de Rabatak et l’origine
de l’Ère Śaka’, Journal Asiatique cclxxxvi/2 (1998), pp. 571–651; J. Cribb, ‘The Rabatak inscription and the date
of Kanishka’, in M. Alram and Deborah E. Klimburg-Salter (eds), Coins, Art and Chronology: Essays on PreIslamic History of the Indo-Iranian Borderlands (Vienna, 1999), pp. 177–206.
128 Rabatak 7–18, translation adapted from Sims-Williams, ‘The Bactrian inscription of Rabatak’, pp. 56–7.
129 A deity named Umma only appears in a single issue of Huvishka, where she was portrayed with basically the
same iconography as Nana, holding a lotus-tipped wand instead of a lion-clawed one, perhaps to indicate a
new aspect. Nicholas Sims-Williams has pointed out that the spelling of Umma (Οµµα) indicates that a labial
should have followed the initial vowel and suggests that the word could be an Iranian epithet of Nana ‘Her
Highness’ (<Av. upǝma-, ‘highest’). See: R. Göbl, System und Chronologie der Münzprägung der Kušānreiches
(Vienna, 1984), note 310; Sims-Williams and Cribb, ‘A new Bactrian inscription’, pp. 108–9; G. Gnoli, ‘Some
notes upon the religious significance of the Rabatak inscription’, in E.W. Sundermann, A. Hintze and F. de
Blois, Exegisti monumenta: Festschrift in Honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams (Wiesbaden, 2009), pp. 141–61.
130 Interestingly, after Surkh Kotal fell out of use, Shaivite tridents were carved into the steps, indicating that
the site became – or remained – holy to devotees of Shiva. Fussman hesitated to call Surkh Kotal an
Oesho/Shiva temple, though I believe that his – as well as Lüders’ – interpretation of the gods’ general role
at the temple coheres quite well with the evidence. See: Fussman, ‘The Māṭ devakula’, p. 197; Lüders,
Mathurā Inscriptions, p. 143.
131 Lüders, Mathurā Inscriptions, No. 80c, p. 143.
132 On Kushan patronage of the Brahmans, see Singh, ‘Cults and shrines’, pp. 394–5.
133 V.S. Agrawala, ‘A catalogue of the images of Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva in Mathura art’, Journal of the Uttar
Pradesh Historical Society xxii (1949), pp. 102–210; Singh, ‘Cults and shrines’, p. 393.
134 Ciro Lo Muzio, ‘OHÞO: A sovereign god’, Silk Road Art and Archaeology iv (1995–6), pp. 160–74; R. Mann,
‘Parthian and Hellenistic influences on the development of Skanda’s cult in north India: Evidence from

Kushana-era art and coins’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute xv (2005), pp. 111–28.
135 M. Boyce, ‘Iconoclasm among the Zoroastrians’, in J. Neusner (ed.), Christianity, Judaism and Other GrecoRoman Cults (Leiden, 1975), pp. 93–111.
136 M. Boyce (trans.), The Letter of Tansar (Rome, 1968), p. 47.
137 Khorenats’i, History of the Armenians, p. 221.
138 M. Alram and Rika Gyselen, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Paris–Berlin–Wien, vol. 1: Ardashir I. – Shapur
I. (Vienna, 2003), pp. 36–37; R. Göbl, Sasanian Numismatics, trans. P. Severan (Braunschweig, 1971), pp. 17–
18.
139 Alram and Gyselen, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum, pp. 36 and 191–2; Göbl, Sasanian Numismatics, p. 18.
140 ŠKZ 33.3. Philip Huyse, Die dreisprachige Inschrift Šabuhrs I. an der Kaba-i Zardust (ŠKZ), Corpus
Inscriptionum Iranicarum, Part III (London, 1999), pp. 105–6.
141 M. Canepa, ‘Technologies of memory in early Sasanian Iran: Achaemenid sites and Sasanian memory’, AJA
cxiv/4 (2010), pp. 563–96, esp. p. 582.
142 ŠKZ 33–50.
143 G. Salles, ‘Chapour: Rapport préliminaire de la première campagne de fouilles (Automne 1935–Printemps
er

1936)’, Revue des arts asiatiques x (1936), pp. 120–3; R. Ghirshman, ‘Inscription du monument de Châpour I à
Châpour’, Revue des arts asiatiques x (1936), pp. 123–9.
144 For bibliography concerning the inscription, see Alram and Gyselen, Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum, p. 32,
note 9.
145 The patron is unknown but the identity of the individuals in the bust portraits suggest that it was built in
the reign of Shapur II (r. 309–79 c e ). M. Azarnoush, The Sasanian Manor House at Hājīābād, Iran (Florence,
1994), pp. 80–8 and 102–65; for the identification of the royal figures, pp. 158–61; for the identification of
the stucco figures, pp. 162–3. The complex was never actually used.
146 Florian Knauss, ‘Ancient Persian and the Caucasus’, Iranica Antiqua xli (2006), pp. 79–118.
147 Mahé, Jean Pierre, ‘Le site arménien d’Armawir: De Ourartou à l’époque hellénistique’, CRAI cxl/4 (1996),
pp. 1279–314.
148 The Armenian historians even reference a common Central Asian origin for the Arsacids and the Kushans,
though they understand that the royal families were blood relations. See: Thomson, History of the Armenians,
p. 210, note 478; Huyse, ‘Überlegungen zum Βαγολαγγο des Kaniška I’, pp. 182–3.
149 Parthian: S. Hauser, ‘Die ewigen Nomaden? Bemerkungen zu Herkunft, Militär, Staatsaufbau und
nomadischen Traditionen der Arsakiden’, in B. Meissner, O. Schmitt and M. Summer (eds), Krieg – Gesellschaft
– Institutionen, Beiträge zu einer vergleichenden Kriegsgeschichte (Berlin, 2005), pp. 163–208; J. Sheldon, ‘The
ethnic and linguistic identity of the Parthians: A review of the evidence from Central Asia’, Asian Ethnicity
vii/1 (2006), pp. 5–17; A. Invernizzi, ‘La cultura di Nisa partica tra steppe e impero’, Quaderni dell’Accademia
delle Scienze di Torino xiii (2003), pp. 47–66; M.J. Olbrycht, ‘Parthia and nomads of Central Asia: Elements of
steppe origin in the social and military developments of Arsacid Iran’, in I. Schneider (ed.), Militär und
Staatlichkeit: Beiträge des Kolloquiums am 29. und 30.04.2002 (Halle, 2003), pp. 69–109. Kushan: C.G.
Benjamin, The Yuezhi: Origins, Migration and the Conquest of Northern Bactria (Louvain, 2006); X. Liu,
‘Migration and settlement of the Yuezhi-Kushan: Interaction and interdependence of nomadic and sedentary
societies’, Journal of World History xii/1 (2001), pp. 261–92.
150 In the case of Armenia, Hellenistic influence grew in Armenia under Artaxias, who served as a satrap under

the Seleucid kings, and Movses Khorenats’i’s information becomes more specific when he speaks about the
deeds of Artaxias. Other Hellenistic practices that he adapted, such as the introduction of the use of
boundary stones, have been borne out archaeologically. See James Russell, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v.
‘Artaxias I’ [online].

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3
The Sasanian Palaces and Their Influence in Early Islam
lionel d . b ier

3.1 Map of Iran under the Sasanian dynasty.

T

h e ruins of palatial buildings in Iran and Iraq have been linked with the
Sasanian dynasty since the nineteenth century, but the concept of a Sasanian palace
architecture goes back only six decades to Oscar Reuther’s study in A Survey of
Persian Art (fig. 3.1).1 Despite excavations and surveys undertaken since then,
Reuther’s work remains extraordinarily influential. Indeed, most of our impressions
about the ‘Sasanian palace’ still derive from this study and particularly from the
attractive drawings with which he illustrated it.
Reuther’s seminal work has many shortcomings, which were due for the most
part to the nature of the materials available to him. His first-hand experience of the
monuments he presented was limited to Ctesiphon, where he excavated in the late
1920s. For everything else he had to defer to the accounts of others – Flandin and
Coste, for example, and the Dieulafoys, de Morgan and Gertrude Bell. These, in
turn, had based their Sasanian attributions on traditions embodied in the works of
Arab and Persian authors writing centuries after the fall of the empire. Few
buildings at that time had been adequately recorded and even fewer excavated. Add
to this the fact that these monuments have yielded virtually no epigraphic material
and it is easy to understand the problems that Reuther faced in compiling his study.
It seems to me that now, some sixty years later, a realistic conception of
Sasanian palace architecture continues to elude us, and that this is due largely to an
oddly uncritical acceptance of the published drawings that are ultimately our most
important source of information. The older plans, for example, are so familiar
through frequent reproduction on an ever-smaller scale that they have become
almost iconic. They most often begin, as in the case of Damghan,2 as line drawings
that clearly indicate the limits of excavation and preservation, but in time they are
reduced to their essentials. In Pope’s A Survey of Persian Art the walls of the palace
are partially blackened for clarity.3 Further along in the recension the broken edges
become less distinct. F. Kimball’s reconstruction,4 which appears in the following
chapter, shows a clean edge at the left, adding to the impression that we have
before us a complete unit. The graphics have prepared the ground for statements
about the building’s symmetrical plan and theories about its function.
This transmogrification of an original survey is particularly striking at Kish,

where Watelin uncovered in a relatively small area what he described as eight
‘Sasanian palaces’.5 Palaces I and II are well known for their rich stucco decoration
and their elaborate ground plans, which suggest a ceremonial function. Even when
the plans are hatched rather than blackened, we have become accustomed to seeing
in each a more or less complete building. Moorey, who has recently made a fresh
study of the Kish excavations, suggested that Palaces I and II may actually have
been part of a single complex – if not a single building6 – and the published plans
are here arranged in a pastiche as if they were (fig. 3.2). A variance of some ten
degrees indicated by their north arrows does not pose a significant problem;7 plans
that show ancient buildings oriented dead north are always suspect, especially in
roughshod surveys, which this one seems to have been. The published site plan,
which is apparently definitive – although it has no scale – seems to indicate a
uniform orientation, but in a different direction. They fit well, in any case, in their
general scale and in the thickness of their outer walls, which varies from room to
room. What lay in between and to the north may have fallen victim to the plough, a
common fate for mud-brick buildings, but we are not given the topographic
information to judge.

3.2 Reuther’s plans of Palaces I and II at Kish, combined as a single building.

The case of Bishapur is especially interesting in this respect. The original
publication, which remains the basic work, contains a well-known plan (fig. 3.3)
showing the great cruciform hall flanked by a rectangular court in the south and a
group of three rooms in the north.8 The plan first appeared already blackened and,
like all drawings in this style, has tended to divert attention from archaeological
problems like the separation of building phases. There is no indication, first of all,
that the partly sunken structure, which was made of dressed stone blocks rather
than the usual mortared rubble, and which is actually oriented differently from the
rest of the building, almost certainly existed before the palace was built. Nor is
there any indication that the massive walls defining what Ghirshman called the
‘triple iwan’ were, as Keall recently pointed out,9 later additions, even though they
partially covered the famous floor mosaics.

3.3 Plan of the palace at Bishapur.

Ghirshman also published an aerial photograph of the city (fig. 3.4) showing its
grid plan, the river, and the citadel at the mouth of the gorge.10 One can see that the
entire north-east corner of the city was occupied by an enormous enclosure of some
27,000 square metres, whose southern limit and south-west corner are plainly
visible. To the east is a depression that represents a great rectangular court
measuring approximately 30 metres by 50 metres. In the centres of three sides are
the remains of structures that were probably ayvans (iwans). From the fourth side a
broad corridor (which has since been cleared by Ali Akbar Sarfaraz) led to the
excavated western portion of the palace which seems to have comprised less than 7
per cent of the whole.

3.5 Reconstruction of Imaret-e Khosrow, by Reuther.

3.4 Aerial photograph of Bishapur showing iwans or gateways and the Anahita temple.

Such scrutiny of a well-known photograph puts the palace of Shapur I into a
somewhat clearer perspective and has interesting implications for the thorny
problem of functional interpretation not only of Bishapur, but of the Sasanian
palaces in general.
This interpretation has tended to follow two often-interconnected lines. The
first has been to take the sum total of all the nefarious activities that would have
taken place in such palaces and make them fit the fragmentary remains. Here we are
like the three blind men who describe the elephant variously as a snake, a tree or a

whale, depending on which part of the beast we happen to touch. The second is to
see these buildings not as palaces at all, but as fire temples. Almost all of the
monuments now thought to have been Sasanian palaces have at one time or another
been seen as temples, and some still are.11
Once it is recognized that what we have come to think of as a more or less
complete building is but a small portion of another, some difficulties disappear. We
know from the Pahlavi inscription on the Kaba Zardasht at Naqsh-e Rostam, for
example, that both the king and queen, as well as members of the royal court, made
religious sacrifices on a daily basis, so we can assume that the palaces and perhaps
smaller princely residences like those uncovered at Ctesiphon contained chapels of
some sort. Most recently Azarnoush has argued that the palace of Shapur – by
which he means the parts exposed by Ghirshman – was not a palace at all, but a
temple for the worship of Anahita.12 My arguments with him stem from the
architectural analogies he made with his fragmentary building at Hajjiabad to the
south, which I do not find convincing. His conclusion, however, is entirely
reasonable, especially since the cruciform hall at Bishapur, with its associated
rooms and courts, lies immediately adjacent to the sunken building at the edge of
the great complex, which was, as Ali Akbar Sarfaraz proposed, most likely an
Anahita temple.13
Hubertus von Gall’s theory that the Bishapur mosaics, with their strong
Dionysiac flavour, alluded to the Bacchic pomp borrowed by Shapur from Western
rulers to celebrate his own military victories over the Romans14 would not contradict
a cultic interpretation because Sasanian state religion had from the very beginning a
strongly militaristic character. If the excavated portion of the building was indeed of
a sacred nature, the secular activities and specifically the audience could have been
located elsewhere in this vast complex, most likely in one of the ayvans that opened
onto the great court. In the same vein, it seems entirely possible that if Sasanian
Palaces I and II at Kish did originally belong to the same building, one locale could
have served as an audience hall, the other as a chapel.
Perhaps the best example of how architectural drawings can cloud rather than
clarify almost any issue is the so-called Imaret-e Khosrow, the palace of Khosrow II
(r. 590–628 c e ) at Qasr-e Shirin. That this building can have played such an
important role in the architectural history of the region is astonishing because

Reuther’s wonderful drawing (fig. 3.5)15 on which virtually all discussion has been
based is a total fabrication. The building, which rose from a great platform, was in a
ruined state long before de Morgan came through on his mission scientifique in the
1890s. But he managed to extract a plan that showed basically a series of bayts
around an open court, and an elaborate gate complex preceded by colonnades that
were doubled at the front.16 A few years later Gertrude Bell visited the site and
produced another plan which looked vaguely like that of her predecessors except
that, instead of rows of paired columns, she has a simple ayvan hall of narrow
proportions.17 Now Reuther, who gives no indication of having seen the place,
recognized the inconsistencies of the two surveys and tried his hand, explaining
that he had taken the liberty to make his own variation on a theme, based on the
columned buildings at Damghan and Kish that were just then coming to light, and
the palace acquired a dome.
There is no doubt that a very large building once stood on this platform, and it
may well have been the palace of Khosrow II mentioned by the medieval
geographers. But before using this drawing to discuss the nature of Sasanian gate
complexes, the typical Sasanian arrangement of domed hall fronted by an ayvan, or
the basilical hall in Sasanian architecture, we should dwell for a moment on its
pedigree. Bell informs us that in producing her survey she was sometimes obliged to
make analogies with the better-preserved palace at Ukhaidir in Iraq to fill in the
missing parts,18 of which there were many. I suspect this is why Khosrow’s building
has such a strong Abbasid flavour. Put less delicately, it seems to me a fine example
of how Sasanian architecture can be influenced by early Islam.

The assumption that architectural design in any period is somehow influenced by
that of the preceding one is not only reasonable but an underlying principle of
architectural history. Due largely to the dearth of reliable archaeological data at the
Sasanian end it has not been possible to define systematically the nature and extent
of this relationship between the palaces of the Khosrows and those of their Muslim
successors. Studies have tended to focus on isolated features such as the four-ayvan
plan and the familiar combination of ayvan and domed hall.

Two classes of evidence have fostered the widespread notion that there was a
continuity in palace design in a more comprehensive sense, but they are largely
circumstantial and of limited significance. The first is an extensive body of symbols
and imagery originally associated with Sasanian kingship, which survived in all
media into the Umayyad period and later. Grabar, in his doctoral thesis of 1955 and
in a number of later publications,19 has dealt in great detail with Umayyad
ceremonial, as it is described in the Arab sources, relating it to material remains as
they have become available. He has shown how the Umayyad rulers were able to
create for themselves an ambiance of princely splendour that was drawn in large
measure from the defunct Persian court. He did not, however, press the issue of
continuity of its architectural setting, noting that the desert castles of Syria, Jordan
and Palestine – virtually all that remains of Umayyad princely architecture – derived
from local Roman and Byzantine traditions.
Second, a considerable number of Pahlavi works describing Sasanian court
ceremonial survived into the later Middle Ages and were used by Muslim
chroniclers. The Kitab al-Taj of al-Jahiz (776–869 c e ), for example, seems to have
incorporated much material from the Gahnama, a notitia dignitatum of the
Sasanians which listed according to rank all the dignitaries of the Persian
monarchy.20 As vital as such sources are for an understanding of internal politics in
the royal court, they provide virtually no direct information about an architectural
background.
The archaeological evidence for continuity of form and function is no less
equivocal. The problem is best illustrated by considering briefly the setting for the
audience. Very few Umayyad palaces, first of all, preserve locales that can be
identified with reasonable certainty as throne rooms. Two of these are Mshatta and
Khirbat al-Mafjar. At Mshatta21 the throne complex lay at the back of the walled
enclosure directly opposite the entrance gate, and it consisted of a triconch
preceded by a long hall open at the front that was divided into a broad central nave
flanked by side aisles. At Khirbat al-Mafjar22 the audience most likely took place, as
Ettinghausen once demonstrated,23 in a complex that included a pillared hall with a
broad central aisle that led from a gate structure to an apsidal room at the back. The
ensemble was richly decorated with mosaic and stucco that incorporated an
elaborate programme of images taken from Sasanian royal sources. Most striking

are the stucco figure of a prince in Persian dress, added to the gatehouse façade at a
later time, and the stone chain and headdress that hung from the semidome,
presumably above the throne. Two points can be made here, the first being that
neither the triconch nor the pillared hall is known in Sasanian palace architecture
and indeed would seem to be quite uncharacteristic. The second is that while the
Umayyad audience could apparently take place in any number of architectural
settings, the Sasanian audience was connected primarily, if not exclusively, with the
ayvan hall – with or without a domed chamber. This is certainly the impression one
gets from the Muslim sources that deal specifically with the Taq-e Kasra. But the
Sasanian monuments themselves, in so far as we know them, give the same
impression.
The so-called Taq-e Girra, which probably dates to the Middle Sasanian period,
seems to reproduce the form of an ayvan hall, and cuttings in the floor and at the
back suggest that it held a statue, most likely a royal one.24 The rock-cut ayvans at
Taq-e Bustan, richly decorated in relief with royal imagery, may actually have been
provided with a throne.25 In Qala-e Dukhtar, the royal audience certainly took place
in the great ayvan hall at the centre of the building. Huff, noting the window
opening high at the back, and a fragmentary stone basin discovered in the middle
terrace, compared the arrangement with seventeenth-century pavilions in Isfahan
that accommodated the Safavid audience and had windows in the upper story from
which courtiers could view the official activity taking place below.26
In a detailed analysis of Mshatta, Hillenbrand plays down the importance of the
forms of the individual halls as indicators of Sasanian influence, stressing instead
their arrangement with an open court along a single axis: ‘Functionally, there is
very little to choose between the Partho-Sasanian formula of an ayvan preceding a
domed chamber and the classically inspired formula of a basilical hall preceding a
triconch audience chamber.’27 He continues his general argument for Sasanian
influence in late Umayyad palace architecture by pointing to the vaulting in this
official area at Mshatta, suggesting first that its pitched brick construction was
inspired by Sasanian architecture – most likely the palace at Ctesiphon, where the
brick rings also incline towards the rear wall – and second, that the very use of brick
vaulting in the audience complex of a stone building may have been intended as a
reference to the Taq-e Kasra, where brick was also used ‘for the area most closely

associated with the sovereign’.28 The fact remains, however, that while the great
vault of Ctesiphon is indeed built of brick, the rest of the building is too, and tunnel
vaults of pitched brick laid vertically or in inclined rings are common enough in
Byzantine architecture.29 Thus, while it is true that Mshatta has a strong Iranian
flavour, the nature and extent of Sasanian influence is difficult to define. It seems to
have consisted of little more than an axial disposition of the halls and court at the
official centre of the palace and the deployment of Sasanian royal symbols in the
carved ornament.
An intriguing example of Umayyad palace architecture of some relevance here
is the complex at the northern edge of the Amman citadel, which seems to have
been built and decorated in the Sasanian mode.30 Constructed in the local cut-stone
technique, its nucleus consisted of a domed chamber fronted by an ayvan hall that
opened onto an inner court. Its unmistakably Persian aspect derives from a
vocabulary of decorative motifs clearly originating in Sasanian stucco. The
articulation of the court wall of the qapr, a kind of entrance building, with tiers of
niches framing the ayvan arches, makes, on a miniature scale, an emphatic allusion
to the Taq-e Kasra at Ctesiphon, the great palace of the Sasanian kings.31
There have been attempts to establish a second type of Sasanian audience
complex based on what are in fact strong similarities between the building at
Damghan at the core of the Umayyad dar al-imara at Kufa.32 But the two major
buildings normally pressed into service to form a class – Sarvistan and Qasr-e
Shirin – are of dubious value. Since Sarvistan can no longer be attributed to the
Sasanians,33 and since the Imaret-e Khosrow is a fantasy based partly on Damghan
itself, the arrangement at Damghan must remain an anomaly, one whose precise
function is unclear.
There is ample evidence that the Abbasid caliphs followed the Umayyads in
incorporating Sasanian practices into their ceremonial,34 but their palaces, in so far
as we know them from Samarra and isolated monuments like Ukhaidir, had fewer
affinities with Sasanian architecture than might be expected. They are characterized
by their sprawling plans that contained a great number of units, and consisted most
typically of courts in series connected by gate structures around which were grouped
numerous bayts of fairly uniform format.35
The Abbasid gate complexes were architecturally significant and had

ceremonial importance.36 But whether these or the Umayyad palace gateways before
them owed anything to the Sasanians is a moot question, as little Sasanian gate
architecture survives. The unit is known only in the very early Qala-e Dukhtar,
where the layout and built-in features suggest a reception area rather than a place
of appearances.37
Sasanian influence becomes a real factor only with the cruciform grouping of
rooms which were clearly the focus of these complexes. There are two variants. The
first, found in all the major palaces of Samarra, consisted of four axial ayvans
fronting a domed room.38 In the second, represented at Samarra only by the
‘resthouse’ behind the mihrab of the Abu Dulaf Mosque, four ayvans open on a
central court.39 The first type is known also from the dar al-imara of Abu Muslim at
Merv and probably formed the nucleus of the great palace of al-Mansur at
Baghdad.40
To recreate the ceremonial of an earlier dynasty one needs a reason for doing
so and some genuine text to serve as a guide. Something of the physical ambiance
can be reproduced by copying a courtly style of stucco decoration or metalwork from
examples that in the early Islamic period must have survived in ample quantities.
Continuity in ceremonial practice also implies a parallel re-creation of architectural
features to provide a proper framework.
It is very likely that the audience ensembles of both Abbasid and late Umayyad
palaces derived from Sasanian models. Whatever symbolic value such
appropriations might have had for the early Muslims, these ensembles were
eminently suited to an audience ceremony that began with a revelation in which the
ruler was stationary.
It might be useful at this point to consider the question of what early Muslim
builders and their princely patrons could have known about the palace architecture
of the Sasanian kings. In Western tradition, concepts of architectural planning and
details of construction are often transmitted by a process involving the close
observation of existing monuments and their description in architectural treatises.
This process is exemplified by Vitruvius, the Roman architect of the first century
b c e who travelled about, examining earlier monuments of architecture in order to
establish principles for practising architects and builders of his own day.
This antiquarian, indeed forensic, approach to architecture is nowhere in

evidence in the early Islamic period. We do have references in geographical and
historical works to dozens of palaces, princely residences, hunting lodges and
garden pavilions. Their authors refer to wonders of construction and decoration
such as columns in the shape of women and blocks of stone so finely worked that
the joins were invisible. Their main purpose, aside from marking a conspicuous
feature of a locale, was to impress the reader with certain qualities of the original
occupant. But they contain no information that would enable a builder to
understand these remarkable monuments in architectural terms.
Even imagining a prince with archaeological inclinations, it is difficult to say,
given the paucity of available data about the post-Sasanian histories of the Sasanian
palaces, what information remained to be gathered. Some were already in ruins
when Yazdgerd III fled the capital for the Iranian plateau. Dastagird and Qasr-e
Shirin, for example, had been totally demolished by Heraclius in the sixth century
ce.
Excavations at Firuzabad and Bishapur have shown that the palaces there were
occupied into the early Islamic period, but we do not know how the buildings were
used or how far their physical integrity was appreciated and respected.41 At Takht-e
Sulayman we have in the Ilkhanid period a rare case of builders incorporating
Sasanian walls, which then determined the plan of the new palace.42
As a result of recent survey work at Samarra, the remains of a large Sasanian
palace have been identified immediately adjacent to the Qasr al-Jafari of alMutawakkil.43 The Sasanian building was renovated when the Abbasid palace was
constructed in 859–62 c e , at which time a substantial water tank with supply
channels and drains was built into it. Certain features – notably a series of
courtyards and public rooms – have been tentatively located in the unexcavated
debris, and there was apparently a hunting enclosure nearby, which was used into
the Abbasid period. Further work there may provide some insight into the caliph’s
attitude towards the buildings of a Sasanian predecessor.
The rulers of certain Iranian dynasties of the early Islamic period must have
had a special interest in Sasanian palace architecture. The Muslim Buyids, for
example, traced their lineage back to the Sasanian kings, and a few of them are
known to have displayed an active interest in the ancient monarchy.44 Adud alDawla, who rebuilt the Sasanian capital of Gur, renaming it Firuzabad, appears as a

Sasanian ruler on coins minted in Fars that bear the Persian title shahanshah. He
proudly recorded at Persepolis a visit he made to the site in the company of a mobad
from Kazerun who read to him an inscription in Pahlavi. The founder of the line
from which the Buyids emerged is said to have dreamt of conquering Iraq,
rebuilding the palace at Ctesiphon and reestablishing an Iranian state based on the
ancient Zoroastrian religion. Unfortunately we have little Buyid architecture of any
kind, and none of the palaces that were described by contemporary authors have
survived.45
Finally, I would like to return to the great palace in Ctesiphon, which was
probably erected by Khosrow II in the sixth century c e . When the Arab commander
entered the Sasanian capitol in 637 c e , he led the Friday prayers in the throne hall
and, from that moment, the building assumed great symbolic significance to the
Muslims. This is perhaps most dramatically expressed in the often-cited passage in
al-Khatib al-Baghdadi’s introduction to his history of Baghdad, which describes alMansur’s demolition of the Taq-e Kasra and the reuse of its bricks for his own
palace.46 He relates how al-Mansur proceeded despite a council of non-Arab
advisors who argued that the palace was a monument to the Arab victory over the
Persian kings, and how the caliph desisted only when the undertaking proved too
vast. Al-Tabari offers a variant in which an advisor now recommended pushing on
at all costs, lest the caliph’s inability to destroy the palace damage his prestige in
the eyes of his Persian subjects.47
Whether or not such anecdotes reflect historical reality, they are interesting
because they illustrate what seems to be the real significance the monuments of the
Persian kings had for their Muslim successors. When we consider these accounts
alongside the quasi-historical traditions and romances that later grew up around
this and other Sasanian monuments like Taq-e Bustan and Takht-e Sulayman in
Iran,48 it becomes clear that the influence of the Sasanian palaces on early Islam was
largely in the realm of poetry and metaphor.
There is no doubt that early Muslim rulers looked to their Sasanian
predecessors for the means by which to express a concept of kingship in
architectural as well as ceremonial terms. However, the resulting adaptations were
usually so subtle and complete that they defy attempts to isolate the various
components. There is no evidence that early Muslim princes sought to imitate the

Sasanian palace in a comprehensive sense, and it is doubtful that there was readily
available, sufficient archaeological information with which to do so. When Sasanian
influence is evident at all, it is invariably seen in the official portions, more
specifically in the throne-room ensemble, which must have embodied for writers
and builders alike the essence of Sasanian imperium.
no tes
1 In Arthur Upham Pope (ed.), A Survey of Persian Art, vol. 1 (London, 1938), pp. 493–578.
2 Erich Schmidt, Excavations at Tepe Hissar, Damghan (Philadelphia, 1937), pp. 327 ff. and fig. 170.
3 Pope, Survey, fig. 166 (drawn by Oscar Reuther).
4 Ibid., fig. 167.
5 Reproduced in P.R.S. Moorey, Kish Excavations 1922–33 (Oxford, 1978), fig. J.
6 Moorey, Kish Excavations, pp. 122 ff.
7 My own compass reading taken in 1976 showed a variance of about two degrees.
8 Georges Salles and Roman Ghirshman, Bichapour, vol. 2: Les Mosaïques sassanides (Paris, 1956), passim. See
plan II.
9 Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘BITsapdr’, 4:3, pp. 287–9.
10 Salles and Ghirshman, Bichapour, pl. I.
11 Klaus Schippmann, Die iranischen Feuerheiligtümer (Berlin, 1971), passim.
12 Massoud Azarnoush, ‘Fire temple and Anahita temple: A discussion of some Iranian places of worship’,
Mesopotamia xxii (1987), pp. 393 ff.
13 See Ali Akbar Sarfaraz, ‘Anahita, Ma abad-e Bozorg-e Bi’tapfr’, in Proceedings of the IIIrd Annual Symposium on
Archaeological Research in Iran (Tehran, 1975), p. 99.
14 Hubertus von Gall, ‘Die Mosaiken von Bishapur’, Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran, n.F. 4 (1971), pp. 221 f.
15 Pope, Survey, plan, fig. 153 with reconstruction, fig. 154.
16 J. de Morgan, Mission scientifique en Perse, vol. 4 (Paris, 1896), pls 40, 42 and 46.
17 Gertrude Bell, Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir (Oxford, 1914), pp. 44–51 and pll. 53–4.
18 Ibid., pp. 44–51.
19 Oleg Grabar, ‘Ceremonial and art at the Umayyad court’, Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton, 1955); Oleg Grabar,
‘Notes sur les ceremonies umayyades’, in Myriam Rosen-Ayalon (ed.), Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet
(Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 51 ff.
20 See Arthur Christensen, L’Iran sous les sassanides (Copenhagen, 1944), pp. 62 f.
21 See K.A.C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1932), pp. 578 ff. and plan.
22 R.W. Hamilton, Khirbat al-Mafjar: An Arabian Mansion in the Jordan Valley (Oxford, 1959).
23 Richard Ettinghausen, From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran and the Islamic World (Leiden, 1972), ch. 3. But see
R.W. Hamilton, ‘Khirbat al-Mafjar: The bath hall reconsidered’, Levant x (1978), pp. 126 ff., who sees this
complex as Walid’s majlis al-lahu and denies that ornament was consciously used to assert legitimacy. See

also R.W. Hamilton, Walid and His Friends (Oxford, 1988).
24 Hubertus von Gall, ‘Entwicklung und Gestalt des Thrones im vorislamischen Iran’, Archäologische
Mitteilungen aus Iran, n.F. 4 (1971), pp. 221 f.
25 Ibid., p. 221.
26 Dietrich Huff, ‘Qal’a-ye Dukhtar bei Firuzabad’, Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran, n.F. 4 (1971), pp. 164 ff.
27 Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Islamic art at the cross-roads: East versus West at Mshatta’, in Abbas Daneshvari (ed.),
Essays on Islamic Art and Architecture in Honor of Katharina Otto-Dorn (Malibu, 1981), pp. 63–86, esp. pp. 71
ff.
28 Ibid., p. 72.
29 For pitched brick construction with vertical and inclined rings, see John Ward-Perkins, ‘Notes on the
structure and building methods of early Byzantine architecture’, in David Talbot Rice (ed.), The Great Palace
of the Byzantine Emperors, second report (Edinburgh, 1958), p. 580 and passim.
30 See: Alastair Northedge, ‘Survey of the terrace area at Amman citadel’, Levant xii (1980), pp. 150 ff.; Alastair
Northedge, ‘The Qasr of Amman’, Art and Archaeology Research Papers xv (1979), pp. 26 f. See also the brief
discussion by J.W. Allan in Muqarnas viii (1991), pp. 13 f.
31 Northedge, ‘The Qasr of Amman’, p. 26.
32 See, for example, Oleg Grabar, ‘Al-Mushatta, Baghdad, and Wasit’, in J. Kritzeck and R. Bayly Winder (eds),
The World of Islam (London, 1959), p. 104.
33 For a date of construction in the ninth century c e , see Lionel Bier, Sarvistan: A Study in Early Iranian
Architecture (University Park, PA, 1986), passim.
34 Dominique Sourdel, ‘Questions de cérémonial abbaside’, Revue des Études Islamiques xxxviii (1960), pp. 121 ff.
35 Ernst Herzfeld, Geschichte der Stadt Samarra (Hamburg, 1948), passim.
36 See Grabar, Ceremonial and Art, pp. 125 ff.
37 Dietrich Huff, ‘Ausgrabungen auf Qal’a-ye Dukhtar bei Firuzabad 1976’, Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran,
n.F. 11 (1978), pp. 117 ff. and fig. 1.
38 For a discussion of the four-ayvan plan, see Yasser Tabbaa, ‘City of power: Palace, citadel, and city in Ayyubid
Aleppo’, Ars Orientalis xxiii (1993), pp. 181–99.
39 Alastair Northedge, [no title], Muqarnas viii (1991), p. 89 and fig. 10.
40 For a recent summary of attempts to reconstruct the plan of the palace at Baghdad, see J.W. Allan, ‘New
additions to the new edition’, Muqarnas viii (1991), pp. 17 ff.
41 For Qala-e Dukhtar, see Dietrich Huff, Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran, n.F. 9 (1976), p. 173; 11 (1978), p.
140. Occupation of the palace of Bishapur during the early Islamic period is attested mostly by decorative
stucco and coins. See Salles and Ghirshman, Bichapour, pp. 149–99.
42 Rudolph Naumann, Archäologische Aneiger (1965), pp. 697 ff.
43 Alastair Northedge et al., ‘Survey and excavation at Samarra, 1989’, Iraq lii (1990), pp. 132 ff.
44 For Buyid interest in the Sasanians, see: C.E. Bosworth, ‘The heritage of rulership in early Islamic Iran and
the search for dynastic connections with the past’, Iran xi (1973), p. 51 ff.; H. Busse, ‘Iran under the Buyids’,
in R.N. Frye (ed.), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1975), p. 273 ff. See also R.N. Frye, ‘The
new Persian renaissance in western Iran’, in Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honour of Hamilton A. R. Gibb
(Leiden, 1965).

45 Muqaddasi, for example, reported that Adud al-Dawla built a palace with 360 rooms, each decorated in a
different style, in the vicinity of Shiraz. See Donald Whitcomb, Before the Roses and Nightingales: Excavations
at Qasr-i abu Nasr, Old Shiraz (New York, 1985), pp. 140 ff., for the topographical problems.
46 Jacob Lassner, The Topography of Baghdad in the Early Middle Ages (Detroit, 1970), p. 128.
47 Ibid.
48 See, for example, Gerd Gropp, ‘Neupersische Überlieferungen vom Heiligtum auf dem Taxt-e Soleiman’,
Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran, n.F. 10 (1972), pp. 243 ff.; Priscilla Soucek, ‘Farhad and Taq-i Bustan: The
growth of a legend’, in Peter Chelkowski (ed.), Art and Literature of the Near East: In Honor of Richard
Ettinghausen (New York, 1974).

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Schmidt, Erich, Excavations at Tepe Hissar, Damghan (Philadelphia, 1937).
Soucek, Priscilla, ‘Farhad and Taq-i Bustan: The growth of a legend’, in Peter Chelkowski (ed.), Art and
Literature of the Near East: In Honor of Richard Ettinghausen (New York, 1974).
Sourdel, Dominique, ‘Questions de cérémonial abbaside’, Revue des Études Islamiques xxxviii (1960).
Tabbaa, Yasser, ‘City of power: Palace, citadel, and city in Ayyubid Aleppo’, Ars Orientalis xxiii (1993).
Ward-Perkins, John, ‘Notes on the structure and building methods of early Byzantine architecture’, in David
Talbot Rice (ed.), The Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors, second report (Edinburgh, 1958).
Whitcomb, Donald, Before the Roses and Nightingales: Excavations at Qasr-i abu Nasr, Old Shiraz (New York,
1985).

4
In the Footsteps of the Sasanians: Funerary Architecture and
Bavandid Legitimacy
melanie m ichailidis

4.1 Map of Iran.

W

i t h this chapter, we enter the Islamic period of the history of Iranian
kingship: the Sasanian dynasty, which had ruled Iran since 224 c e , fell to Arab
troops when the ruler Yazdgerd III (r. 632–51 c e ) was killed at Merv in 651. Yet the
Arabs failed to gain control of the interior of the Elborz Mountains south of the
Caspian Sea; this region – now part of the province of Mazandaran, but called
Tabaristan at that time – remained in the hands of a local dynasty known as the
Bavandids (665–1349 c e ). Although the Bavandids ruled for a longer period of time
than any other dynasty in the history of Iran, they are one of the least well known.
They came to power as Sasanian vassals during the twilight years of that dynasty in
the mid seventh century c e and ruled in their mountain strongholds in Tabaristan
throughout the mid fourteenth century, when the Ilkhanids (1256–1353 c e )
controlled Iran as a whole.1 Their remote location served to protect them from
invasion and ensured that a conservative Iranian culture flourished in their realm
throughout a period of immense change in the rest of the Iranian plateau. Religion

did not play a major role in the construction of Bavandid identity; although the
Bavandid rulers themselves converted to Islam in the mid ninth century, the
majority of their subjects remained Zoroastrian for several centuries thereafter, and
the regional chronicles do not give a single example of a Bavandid ruler
constructing a mosque, madrasa or khanqah (Sufi lodge). Instead, the extant corpus
of Bavandid buildings consists of three royal tomb towers from the eleventh and
early twelfth centuries, indicating that funerary architecture was the primary focus
of Bavandid architectural patronage. These structures have a number of features,
including a lack of actual burials, that are anomalous in the history of Islamic
funerary architecture and therefore appear strange at first glance. Yet it is these
very features that show how the rulers of this dynasty asserted their legitimacy by
placing themselves firmly in the line of past Iranian kings.
Due to the geographic and cultural isolation of the Bavandids, their monuments
have not entered the canon of Islamic architectural history. The area has been a
peripheral one by almost any definition, and yet these structures provide the key for
understanding the origins of the tomb-tower genre in Islamic architecture. The
earliest extant Islamic tomb tower, the Gonbad-e Qabus, is considered a
masterpiece and appears in virtually every survey of Persian and Islamic art and
architecture. Located at Gorgan, just to the east of the Elborz Mountains, it was
constructed by Qabus ibn Vushmgir (r. 977–81, 997–1012 c e ), a ruler of the Ziyarid
dynasty (927–c.1090 c e ) whose mother was a Bavandid princess. This well-known
structure can only be understood through referencing the Bavandid context. It is the
most prominent, though not the only, tomb tower inspired by Bavandid examples,
and these structures were followed in the succeeding centuries, under the Saljuqs,
Ilkhanids, and even later, by a multitude of tomb towers that spread from Anatolia
to Central Asia. Despite changes in form, function, building material and
decoration, in different geographical areas and over time, the tomb tower retained
an enduring popularity. Elucidating the historical and cultural context of the
Bavandid tomb towers therefore nuances the idea of centre and periphery, showing
how a form originating in an area considered as peripheral can radiate outwards and
enter the architectural language of areas deemed to be central. However, the
importance of the Bavandids should not be derived solely from the influence of their
buildings on acknowledged masterpieces of the centre; an examination of their

monuments shows not only a distinct local context, but also a participation in wider
discourses. This connection with the broader discourses emerging from this volume
brings into question the very idea of a periphery.

h is t or ical b ack gr ou nd
The area ruled by the Bavandids is certainly very isolated in the geographical sense:
their kingdom was located high in the Elborz Mountains, which curve around the
southern coast of the Caspian Sea (fig. 4.1). The climate is extremely humid,
producing dense vegetation which makes the region difficult to navigate,
particularly given the height of the mountains. Not only was this mountain range
highly resistant to military invasion throughout most of its history, but also it was
usually ruled by a plethora of small dynasties controlling relatively small swathes of
territory. The stronghold of the Bavandid dynasty was the area of Firuzkuh, in the
eastern part of the mountain range, in the region known as Tabaristan. It was this
geographical setting that enabled the dynasty to survive over the course of so many
centuries, but it also means that many of the details of their history are unknown.
Indeed, even the chronology of rulers and their relations with one another are in
many cases not firmly established.
The Bavandids traced their origin back to Kayus, son of the Sasanian king
Qobad I (r. 488–97, 499–531 c e ), and older brother of Khosrow I (r. 531–79 c e ).2
The most detailed historical source for the region is the Tarikh-e Tabarestan of Ibn
Isfandiyar, composed in the early thirteenth century, utilizing earlier sources such
as the now lost Bavandnameh.3 According to Ibn Isfandiyar, Bavandid rule began
during the reign of the Sasanian king Khosrow II (r. 590–628 c e ), when Bav ibn
Shapur ibn Kayus was appointed military governor of a large region including
Tabaristan as a reward for outstanding military service.4 After the fall of Yazdgerd
III, the last Sasanian ruler, Bav maintained his rule in Tabaristan due to popular
acclaim, but was later murdered by the mother of a rival. His son, Sohrab, was
eventually restored to the throne, beginning the long ascendancy of the Bavandid
dynasty. During the early Islamic period, the post-Sasanian successor states in
Tabaristan – the Dabuyids, the Masmughans, the Bavandids and the Qarinvands –
were able successfully to repulse Arab armies time and again and maintain their

small Zoroastrian kingdoms in the mountains. This began to break down, however,
once the Tahirids (821–873 c e ) came to power in the ninth century. This hereditary
dynasty of governors inaugurated a series of increasingly independent Muslim
Iranian dynasties controlling the Iranian plateau and Transoxiana, representing a
general return of Iranian rule several centuries after the Arab invasions. In
Tabaristan, where there had never been a hiatus in Iranian kingship, other powerful
governors of Khorasan prior to the Tahirids had been given caliphal investiture to
rule, but were consistently unable to enforce their authority and were only able to
control the coastal cities. But with the advent of de facto Persian rule in Khorasan,
the petty dynasts of Tabaristan became increasingly tempted to involve the larger
outside powers in their squabbles with one another.
It was during one such squabble that a Bavandid ruler first converted to Islam
in 841, when Qarin ibn Shahriyar accepted a robe of honour from the Abbasid
caliph al-Mu’tasim in return for caliphal support. Although it is not known whether
Qarin ibn Shahriyar adhered to Sunni or Shi‘i Islam, tenth-century coins show that,
by this time, the Bavandid rulers were Shi‘a.5 The Shi‘i profession ‘‘Ali wali Allah’,
meaning ‘Ali is the friend of God’, appears on the coins of Rostam ibn Sharvin, for
example, albeit in conjunction with recognition of the Abbasid caliph.6 This phrase
shows that the Bavandids probably favoured Imami Shi‘ism, the branch of Islam
that believes in a succession of 12 Imams descending from the Prophet Mohammad
and is now the state religion of modern Iran. During this period, the religious and
political landscape of Iran was rather complicated. The Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad
retained their religious authority, but political leadership was divided among a
plethora of dynasties, most of which espoused Persian identity as a basis for their
legitimacy to some degree, as manifested through literary and artistic patronage,
titulature and claims to Sasanian descent. This entailed using New Persian – the
language of the Iranian plateau, now written in Arabic script and incorporating
Arabic loan words as well as loan words from other Iranian languages such as
Sogdian – as a language of literature and government, alongside and in some cases
replacing Arabic, which had been the language of government, religion and
literature since the advent of Islam in Iran. The official use of the Persian language,
combined with references to a reinterpreted and mythologized Persian past,
asserted Iranians as different from yet equal to their Arab co-religionists for the

first time, ushering in the period known to literary historians as the Persian
Renaissance.7
The largest regional players during this period were the Samanids (874–1000
c e ) and the Buyids (932–1062 c e ). The Samanids controlled Transoxiana and
Khorasan: they were Sunni Muslims, ostensibly loyal to the Abbasid caliphs, who
were the first to use New Persian as an official language. They were succeeded by
the Ghaznavids in Khorasan (977–1186 c e ) and the Qarakhanids in Transoxiana
(992–1211 c e ), two Turkic dynasties originating in Central Asia who nevertheless
continued to use Persian as an official language (in fact, the earliest extant
architectural foundation inscription in New Persian survives on a royal Qarakhanid
mausoleum at Safid Boland, in the Fergana Valley in modern Kyrgyzstan). The
Buyids were military adventurers from Dailam, in the western part of the Elborz
Mountains, who ruled western Iran and Iraq, with capitals at Rayy, Isfahan and
Baghdad. They espoused Imami Shi‘ism, but as they were not descendants of the
Prophet they could not claim any overt religious authority themselves. The Buyids
were the first to use Sasanian titulature and, like the Samanids, they claimed
descent from the Sasanians. Unlike the Samanids, they did not promote New
Persian; Middle Persian, the language of the Sasanians, enjoyed a renaissance in
Fars province under their rule instead.8 Neither the Buyids nor the Samanids
controlled the entire Elborz mountain range, where smaller dynasties flourished,
including the Bavandids in the eastern Elborz. The Ziyarids, Sunni relatives of the
Bavandids, ruled the coastal plain of Tabaristan from their capital at Gorgan. In the
western Elborz Mountains, there was an overlapping succession of several Zaidi
Shi‘i regimes. Unlike the Imami Shi‘a, the Zaidis believed that any descendant of the
Prophet with sufficient learning and military strength was qualified to rule as an
Imam; hence it was this status that formed the cornerstone of their claims to
religious and political leadership.9
The Bavandids frequently fought against their Zaidi neighbours, but it was the
Buyids who constituted a much larger threat. In the mid tenth century, the Bavandid
ruler Shahriyar ibn Sharvin was forced to submit and pay tribute to the Buyids and
had to include their name on his coins along with that of the caliph. He was
overthrown at an unknown date by his brother, Rostam, who continued to
acknowledge the overlordship of the Buyids. According to the coinage, Rostam was

succeeded by his son, Marzuban, by 981 c e . However, it was Rostam’s daughter,
Shirin, known by the title Sayyida, who was to become the most famous Bavandid
and the only one to rule outside of Tabaristan.10 Shirin was married off to Fakhr alDaula, the Buyid ruler of Rayy, and after his early death she ruled as regent queen
until her young son, Majd al-Daula, came of age. Her brother, Marzuban, was briefly
overthrown in 998 by their nephew, Shahriyar ibn Dara ibn Rostam, with the help
of their Ziyarid cousin Qabus ibn Vushmgir, but Marzuban then allied with Qabus
and regained his throne. Shahriyar died in exile at Rayy. After that point, the
Bavandids disappear even from the histories of the region until 1016–17, when an
unnamed Bavandid ruler helped Shirin and Majd al-Daula defeat a rebellion.11
From the little that is known about them, Marzuban ibn Rostam appears to have
been the most culturally illustrious of the Bavandids. The famous polymath alBiruni visited his court, and he himself authored the Marzubannameh, a collection
of stories of pre-Islamic Persian kings in the local Tabari language. However, with
so little information available for the eleventh century in particular, the tomb
towers of the Bavandids become one of the main sources of information about this
dynasty. The foundation inscriptions on these buildings refer to their incumbents as
rulers, yet these individuals are otherwise unknown in either the chronicles or the
coinage. The inscriptions are therefore very useful for filling in some of the
genealogical sequence of the dynasty during this rather murky period of their
history. The buildings are so remote and inaccessible that they have largely escaped
scholarly attention, but the remoteness of their kingdom also protected the
Bavandids; the Saljuqs, like the Arabs before them, were unable to conquer the
mountainous interior of Tabaristan, and so the Bavandids were able to continue to
rule unmolested and without acknowledging Saljuq overlordship. With the Mongols,
however, not even so remote a region was safe, and the Bavandids duly became
Mongol vassals in 1238.

t h e t o mb t o w e r s
Despite ruling for over seven centuries, the only standing structures known to have
Bavandid patronage are the three tomb towers from the eleventh and early twelfth
centuries (fig. 4.2). Although accidents of survival are to account for this paltry

record, there is no indication in the textual sources that other types of buildings
were patronized by Bavandid rulers. Ibn Isfandiyar mentions mosques constructed
at Sari and Mamtir on the Caspian littoral by the mercurial ninth-century
adventurer Mazyar ibn Qarin.12 He also mentions that Mazyar allowed his
Zoroastrian subjects to destroy mosques.13 He refers to the construction of
mausoleum complexes, with madrasas and libraries, by the Zaidi rulers, as well as
their patronage of the major Shi‘i shrines of Ali at Najaf and Husayn at Karbala.14
Not a single mosque or madrasa is mentioned in conjunction with any of the
Bavandids. It must be remembered that the Friday mosque was usually the main
focus of dynastic patronage from the Umayyads (661–750 c e ) onwards, due to its
significance as a communal as well as a religious centre and its clear political
function denoted by the presence of a minbar (which was used for political
announcements as well as Friday sermons). Therefore, the Bavandid choice of the
mausoleum as the prominent focus of their dynastic patronage is especially
meaningful.

4.2 Map of Bavandid and Ziyarid tomb towers.

The earliest mausoleum in this series is the Mil-e Radkan, constructed in 1016–
21 c e as the tomb of Mohammad ibn Vandarin Bavand during his lifetime (plate
4.3). It is dramatically sited on a low hill in an isolated valley in the Elborz
Mountains. Constructed of baked brick laid in a single bond, it is 35 metres high and
is cylindrical with a conical double-domed roof. It has a terracotta plaque with a
now-fragmentary Arabic foundation inscription framed with a star border over the
doorway (plate 4.4). Just below the roof is a band of terracotta trefoils set into
arched niches, and underneath is an inscription band with another foundation text
repeated in both Arabic and Pahlavi, the official written language of the Sasanians
(plate 4.5). The single entrance, which is approximately 1.5 metres off the ground,
leads to the dark and undecorated interior chamber, which reaches all the way to
the inner dome.

4.8 Lajim tomb tower, view from south.

The second Bavandid tomb tower is at Lajim, a remote and isolated village in
the central Elborz Mountains (plate 4.6). Located on top of a hill surrounded by deep
ravines, it is a circular building composed of baked brick with an interior dome and
an exterior conical roof. Its decoration consists of a recessed doorway with a
tympanum filled with small blind arches (plate 4.7), a band of blind niches just
under the roof, and two inscription bands in Arabic and Pahlavi just below (fig. 4.8).
The inscription indicates that the tower was constructed in 1022–3 c e for
Shahriyar ibn Abbas ibn Shahriyar, who is termed a great prince but is unknown in
other historical sources. The patron was the prince’s mother, Chihrazad. The east-

facing single entrance to the dark interior chamber is approximately 1.8 metres off
the ground. In its current state the building does contain a cenotaph – that of an
eighteenth-century caretaker of the building. Restorations of the building in the
1950s and 1970s have shown, however, that there was no body buried inside.15
The third tomb tower is located approximately 500 metres away from that of
Lajim, on top of a steep hill from which the nearest village, Resget, is just visible in
the distance (fig. 4.9). The Arabic foundation inscription above the doorway, part of
which is repeated in Pahlavi, reveals this to be the tomb of Hormozdiyar and
Habusiyar, the sons of Masdara (plate 4.10). Although these individuals are not
known from any other sources, the area was still under the control of the Bavandids
until the early thirteenth century, hence they must have been members of the ruling
family, given the monumentality of the structure and its resemblance to the tower at
Lajim. Unlike the other two towers, however, the inscription is not preserved
enough to give a date of construction. Although the building is very similar in
appearance to the Lajim tower, it has considerably more elaborate decoration in the
bands just under the dome, which enables it to be dated roughly to the late eleventh
or early twelfth century (plate 4.11).16 The single entrance, which faces south-east,
is approximately 1.5 metres off the ground, without any steps. The interior chamber
is dark, windowless and undecorated, and does not contain a body buried
underneath (fig. 4.12).

4.9 Tomb tower near Resget, Iran.

4.12 Interior, Resget tomb tower.

The Bavandid towers spawned imitations outside the mountain fastness of their
realm, including the famous Gonbad-e Qabus, which also lacks an actual burial
(plate 4.13). While this magnificent structure, built in 1006–7 c e , predates the
earliest extant Bavandid tower, it is such a monumentally confident building that it
is highly unlikely to have been the first in the series and probably imitated Bavandid
tomb towers that are no longer extant.17 The other pre-Saljuq tomb towers were
either built in proximity to the Elborz Mountains, or by patrons with connections to
Tabaristan, or both. The Pir-e Alamdar is located in Damghan, to the south of the
Elborz Mountains, on the main east–west trade route (plate 4.14). It was
constructed in 1026–7 for Abu Jafar Mohammad ibn Ibrahim, the Ziyarid governor
of the region, after his death, by his son Bakhtiyar (who also constructed the

minarets of the Tarik Khaneh in Damghan and the Friday Mosque of Semnan). The
tower known as Chehel Dokhtaran is located a mere 700 metres away from the Pir-e
Alamdar, which was clearly the model (plate 4.15). It was constructed in 1054–5 for
Abu Shuja Asfar and his sons, during the lifetime of the former. Chahriyar Adle and
Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani have contended that this was a friend of the
Ziyarid ruler Manuchihr ibn Qabus, who ruled the Damghan region on behalf of the
Saljuqs.18 The Gonbad-e Ali, located near Abarquh, in the province of Fars, is the
only pre-Saljuq tomb tower to be built outside of the Caspian region (fig. 4.16). It
was constructed in 1056–7 for Amid al-Din Shams al-Daula Abu Ali Hazarasp and
his wife, Naz bint Kashmir,19 by their son, Firuzan, and its presence so far from
Tabaristan can be explained by the connections of these scions of the local
Firuzanid dynasty to the Buyids, Ziyarids and Bavandids of northern Iran. This
tower is exceptional in another way, being the only one constructed of stone rubble
rather than brick. In spite of this anomaly, however, it is clearly modelled upon the
northern Iranian tomb towers. Although the Buyid mausolea have not survived, the
tenth-century geographer al-Muqaddasi compared the Buyid tombs at Rayy to the
pyramids at Giza,20 indicating both height and conical roofs, so that in all likelihood
they were also tomb towers constructed on the Bavandid model.

4.16 Gonbad-e Ali, Abarquh, Iran.

h is t or iogr aph y

of the

t o mb t o w e r s

Scholarship on the Bavandid and other Iranian tomb towers has been rather scanty
on detailed information about each particular building and has mostly consisted of
sweeping statements on the tomb-tower genre as a whole. Scholarly opinions often

conflate the earliest structures with the later, much more accessible and well-known
Saljuq tomb towers that stretch across Central Asia, Iran and Anatolia. The Saljuq
tomb towers, of brick in Iran and Central Asia but translated into stone in Anatolia,
have quite different proportions, with a balance between their conical roofs, their
round or polyhedral bodies, and their crypts, which extend above ground and do
actually contain bodies. They also have much more lavish decoration and a much
wider base of patronage, including many women in Anatolia in particular. Much of
what has been said in the scholarly literature about the origins of the Iranian tomb
towers is not actually applicable to the Bavandid or Ziyarid buildings at all, and it is
usually apparent that it is these later Saljuq examples that the author had in mind
instead.
It was Ernst Diez who first tackled the origin of the tomb towers: in several
publications, including one in Pope’s A Survey of Persian Art, first published in
1938, he argued that this genre was inspired by nomadic tents.21 He used
descriptions of much later Mongol tents by the traveller William of Rubruck
(c.1220–c.1293 c e ) to support his thesis, with the clear implication that all Central
Asian nomads are timeless and unevolving, an approach that is unfortunately all too
common. Other scholars who have argued that the towers were derived from tents
include Katharina Otto-Dorn, who, like Diez, was a student of Josef Strzygowski’s,22
and Guitty Azarpay, who also maintained that Armenian influence accounted for the
conical roofs, although this is apparent only in the Saljuq towers.23 Emel Esin
repeated this argument from a highly nationalistic viewpoint: tents are Turkish in
her view and she set out to prove Turkish influence and Turkish continuity with
examples ranging over a millennium and all over Central Asia (including
illustrations from sedentary Iranian-speaking cities in eastern Central Asia).24 The
only book solely concerned with the early tomb towers is Medieval Tomb Towers of
Iran, published in 1986 by Abbas Daneshvari, who studied under Otto-Dorn. He
addressed their origin from another point of view, following the example of a group
of scholars seeking endogenous, intra-Islamic explanations and Sufi meanings for
all Islamic architecture – namely, Nader Ardalan, Titus Burckhardt and Keith
Critchlow. Daneshvari argued that Arabs as well as Turks had tent burials, and so
the tomb towers must have been derived from Arab tents (he does not explain how
Arab nomads are supposed to have moved into this region where Arab armies were

unable to penetrate).25
A few scholars have accurately noted that the earliest Iranian tomb towers were
not constructed by Saljuq Turks: Adle and Melikian-Chirvani, in their 1972 article
on the tomb towers of Damghan (Pir-e Alamdar, Chehel Dokhtaran and
Mihmandust), argued against the influence of tents, correctly contending that the
earliest towers predated the Saljuq invasion and that the Caspian area was noted for
its sedentary population that held conservatively to its Iranian traditions.26 In his
survey of Islamic architecture, Robert Hillenbrand has simultaneously argued for
the influence of Turkish tents while admitting that the early examples were built by
pre-Saljuq princes ‘of Iranian rather than Turkish stock’.27 In The Cambridge History
of Iran and in the survey of Islamic art that he wrote with Richard Ettinghausen,
Oleg Grabar has also argued for both Turkish and Zoroastrian influence, citing the
Gonbad-e Qabus and the Damghan towers.28
The Bavandid tomb towers are largely absent from the historiography,
primarily because of their geographical remoteness. The Mil-e Radkan was first
published by Diez in A Survey of Persian Art,29 while the towers at Lajim and Resget
were first published by André Godard.30 Ernst Herzfeld translated the Pahlavi
foundation inscriptions,31 while the most thorough analysis of the Arabic
inscriptions is by Sheila Blair.32 The towers have been described in catalogues of
early Islamic funerary architecture, but have received little attention beyond this.33
Yet they are extremely interesting not only for their formative role in the tombtower genre, but also for their use as political symbols in the construction of
Bavandid dynastic identity and for what this reveals about notions of Iranian
kingship. These buildings can only be understood in this particular milieu, which
has not been touched upon in the catalogues that describe the buildings or in
attempts to generalize about the tomb towers as a whole.

uniqu e f e at u r e s

of the

b av an d id t o mb t o w e r s

Some of the formal features that characterize the Bavandid tomb towers are shared
with the Ziyarid and Firuzanid tomb towers: all but one of the towers are composed
of baked brick (the Gonbad-e Ali is the exception, composed of the rubble and
mortar characteristic of Fars); they have all been constructed for secular rulers; they

are not part of religious complexes; and they all have single entrances and double
domes. Examples of each of these features can be found in some of the
contemporary domed square mausolea that were prevalent in the Persianate world
as well: the famous Samanid mausoleum at Bukhara (built c.914–43 c e ), for
instance, was magnificently constructed of baked brick and served as a dynastic
monument for secular rulers. However, the entire corpus of early funerary
architecture in Iran and Central Asia exhibits a great deal of diversity in material,
patronage, setting and plans.34 Taken as a unit, this set of characteristics begins to
establish the pre-Saljuq tomb towers of Iran as a coherent group apart from the
rest.
Another feature that distinguishes the tomb towers from the contemporary
domed square mausolea is of course their height. The Gonbad-e Qabus is by far the
highest at 51 metres; next is the Mil-e Radkan at 35 metres, while the rest all
measure between 14 and 16 metres high. The majority are therefore not actually
any higher than most of the domed square mausolea. Instead, it is the ratio of their
proportions that enables them to be categorized as towers. Hillenbrand has
calculated that their ratio of width to height ranges from 1:3.5 to 1:5.5, whereas
with the domed square mausolea it rarely exceeds 1:2.35 Combined with their
dramatic settings in the landscape, this gives the tomb towers an appearance of
exaggerated height, which the domed square mausolea lack.
Geography also delimits the pre-Saljuq tomb towers: it is significant that they
are all found in or very close to the Elborz Mountains in northern Iran, again with
the exception of the Gonbad-e Ali (see fig. 4.16). Apart from the Damghan
monuments, all the tomb towers are located away from any centre of habitation and
on inaccessible high ground. Although a modern town has sprung up around it, the
Gonbad-e Qabus was constructed several kilometres away from Gorgan, Qabus’
capital city; as the landscape was flat, an artificial mound 10 metres high was
constructed to give added height to the monument. Far from the nearest village
even today, the Mil-e Radkan was constructed atop a hill deep into the Elborz
Mountains (fig. 4.17). The Lajim tower was built on a hill that falls steeply away into
deep ravines on two sides. A village is near it today, but archaeological remains –
possibly of a castle – at the far end of the village show that earlier habitation was
approximately 1 kilometre from the mausoleum. The Resget tower is about 2

kilometres away from a modern village, and there are no signs of any earlier
remains anywhere closer to it. It is perched on a hillside that is exceedingly steep on
all sides (fig. 4.18). The Gonbad-e Ali, although more accessible than the Elborz
towers, is likewise perched on a steep and craggy hill outside the town of Abarquh.
The Damghan towers, although subsumed within the town today, were well outside
it on the road to Semnan when they were constructed (and even up until the early
twentieth century).36 The Bavandid towers, however, were considerably more
remote and inaccessible than the others. Al-Muqaddasi, who visited some areas in
the Elborz, describes the trade routes of his day as following much the same routes
as the roads of today, and hence nowhere near the Bavandid tomb towers.37 The
other four towers, however, are found on main roads: the Gonbad-e Qabus is on the
road from Gorgan to Khorasan; Damghan, where both the Pir-e Alamdar and
Chehel Dokhtaran are located, is on the main east–west road that formed part of the
Silk Route; and the Gonbad-e Ali is near the road from Shiraz to Yazd.

4.18 Tomb tower near Resget, Iran.

4.17 Mil-e Radkan, Radkan, Iran.

The isolated Bavandid mausolea form the core of the tomb-tower group, while
the other four buildings represent extensions of this genre constructed by patrons
with strong links to the Caspian region beyond the mountain fastness of the Elborz.
Several characteristics of the Bavandid buildings are completely anomalous in the
context of Islamic funerary architecture: inscriptions in Pahlavi, with the
concomitant use of the Sasanian solar calendar; single high entrances designed to
discourage entry; dark, windowless, undecorated chambers; and the lack of any
actual bodies buried inside the monuments. Some of these features can be found in
some of the Ziyarid and Firuzanid towers: the Gonbad-e Qabus, for example, does
not have a body buried inside and gives the date of construction in the Sasanian as

well as Arabic calendars. But only the Bavandid towers possess all of these
characteristics, and it is these features that set this group apart from the rest and
provide the key to understanding both their meaning and function.
In addition to their high location, the Bavandid tomb towers also have high
entrances approximately 1.5 metres off the ground, effectively prohibiting entry to
all but the most determined individuals.38 So after struggling to enter one of the
Bavandid mausolea, the visitor is confronted by a small, dark, undecorated round
chamber, devoid even of the symbolic sarcophagi that mark the location of the body
underneath in the domed square mausolea. It is an internal space that is
diametrically opposed to the Samanid mausoleum, which is open on all four sides,
flooded with light from the doors and the windows in the gallery above, richly
decorated on the interior with a wealth of brick patterns, and with plenty of space to
circumambulate the cenotaph (plate 4.19, fig. 4.20). Just as the Samanid mausoleum
was clearly designed to encourage visitation, or ziyarat, the Bavandid mausolea just
as clearly were never meant to function as sites of pilgrimage.39 Not only is entry
difficult and unrewarding, but external circumambulation is also impractical due to
the way the structures are sited in the landscape. They are, however, visible from a
considerable distance, and it is the exteriors of these buildings that carry the
messages their patrons wished to convey. Given that the buildings are located away
from the main roads, these messages would appear to be aimed at their constituents
rather than at passers-by. They are contained in the formal characteristics of the
buildings, their siting in the landscape, and their inscriptions.

4.20 Samanid mausoleum, interior gallery window.

b av andid i ns cr ipt ions
The Mil-e Radkan has a foundation inscription in Arabic over the doorway, which
reads:
In the name of God. This is the palace of the amir, the important lord, Abu
Jafar Mohammad ibn Vandarin Bavand, client of the Commander of the
Faithful. [It was ordered] in the month of Rabi II of the year 407 [7
September–5 October 1016].40
In the band under the dome there is another foundation inscription in Arabic, which
is repeated in Pahlavi:

In the name of God. The ispahbad Abu Jafar Mohammad ibn Vandarin
Bavand, client of the Commander of the Faithful, may God honour him
with forgiveness and satisfaction and paradise, ordered commencing the
construction of this mashhad during the days of [his] life in 407 [1016–17].
It was finished in the year 411 of the hegira [1020–1].41
The foundation inscription at Lajim is in two bands, one in Arabic and a translation
in Pahlavi:
In the name of God. This dome is the grave for the great prince Abu’l
Favaris Shahriyar ibn al-Abbas ibn Shahriyar, client of the Commander of
the Faithful, may God have mercy on him. The noble lady Chihrazad,
daughter of Sh-l-y Kh-v-r [?] ordered it built in 413. The work of al-Husayn
ibn Ali.42
At Resget, the inscription band under the dome is in Arabic only and quotes two
verses from the Qur’an:
In the name of God. Every soul shall taste of death, and We try you with
evil and good for a testing, then unto Us you shall be returned. In the name
of God. Say, He is God, One, God, the Everlasting Refuge, who has not
begotten and has not been begotten, and equal to Him is not anyone.43
The foundation inscription is on the terracotta plaque above the doorway, in Arabic
and Pahlavi:
There is no god but God, sincerely. Mohammad is God’s prophet, truly.
This is the tomb for Hormozdiyar, son of Masdara, and for Habusiyar, son
of Masdara […] 4 […].44
It is an interesting dichotomy that the Bavandid towers do not contain bodies, and
yet their inscriptions clearly indicate a funerary function. At the Mil-e Radkan, the
inscription on the terracotta plaque over the doorway not only refers to the building
as a qasr (palace) but also echoes the position of the same attribution on the
Gonbad-e Qabus; this inscription is in Arabic only. The inscription in the band

underneath the dome refers to the building as a mashhad in Arabic, but as a gonbad
in Pahlavi. Although gonbad would correspond with a qubba rather than a mashhad,
both of these terms are used to denote a funerary structure: gonbad by referring to
the most prominent architectural feature of a mausoleum, and mashhad by referring
to the common association of mausolea and martyrs. The inscription on the tower at
Lajim refers to the building as both a grave (qabr) and a dome (qubba), in
ungrammatical Arabic; the Pahlavi translation calls it a gonbad. The qubba–gonbad
combination clearly indicates a funerary monument, while the addition of qabr
unambiguously refers to burial. The Resget inscription is equally clear: the band
under the dome contains the Qur’anic verse 21:35 which refers to death and is
frequently attested on funerary monuments. The foundation inscription on the
stucco plaque above the door calls the building a qubba; the Pahlavi translation is
unfortunately too damaged to read. However, all three of the Bavandid towers
clearly state that they served a funerary function, with the use of qasr at Mil-e
Radkan mirroring the use of that term at the Gonbad-e Qabus. In all likelihood, qasr
was intended as a parallel to the Persian kakh, which was used in the Shahnameh to
refer to the mausoleum of Nushirvan; as will be discussed below, the description of
this edifice is remarkably similar to the tomb towers.

t h e b av andid r u le r s

in t he

i ns cr ipt ions

The inscriptions are also very interesting for the information they contain about
individual Bavandid rulers; given the paucity of sources for this dynasty, the tombtower inscriptions form one of the major documents for this period of Bavandid
rule. None of the rulers named in the inscriptions are known from other sources,
although it is possible that Mohammad ibn Vandarin Bavand, named in the
inscription at Mil-e Radkan, was the Bavandid prince who helped his female kin,
Shirin, quash a rebellion.45 Whether this is the case or not, it is not so surprising
that the three extant Bavandid monuments are for unknown individuals when one
considers that the Bavandids ruled without interruption in their mountain
stronghold for 700 years – a record nearly equal to that of the Ottomans. There
must have inevitably been a sizable number of Bavandid princelings, even if one
assumes relatively endogamous marriage and some attrition through the inevitable

internecine squabbling and resultant battles. Ibn Isfandiyar’s genealogy has a long
gap precisely during the years when the towers at Mil-e Radkan and Lajim were
constructed, and much of the available numismatic evidence does not correspond
with the tomb-tower inscriptions, with too many discrepancies to reconcile if one
tries to construct a straight line of dynastic descent.
The Bavandids can only be understood in light of a similar system of rule as
that of the Buyids, with multiple rulers in multiple capitals. We know of two
locations that served as strongholds of the Bavandid dynasty in Tabaristan:
Shahriyar-kuh (so called because of the propensity of this family to name their sons
‘Shahriyar’) and Firim. Ibn Isfandiyar makes a distinction in his descriptions of the
Bavandid rulers: he tells of Rostam ibn Sharvin Bavand, for example, and Marzuban
ibn Rostam ibn Sharvin Parim. At least two Bavandids must have ruled
simultaneously, one at Shahriyar-kuh (the one designated as ‘Bavand’) and another
at Firim (Ibn Isfandiyar’s ‘Parim’), with the ruler of Shahriyar-kuh usually being
regarded as the senior member of the family. This not only accords with the way the
Buyids organized their affairs, but also enables much better sense to be made of the
historical evidence.
Given the addition of ‘Bavand’ to his name, Mohammad ibn Vandarin Bavand
probably is one of the missing rulers of the main branch of the family. It is
interesting that he was named ‘Mohammad’, as prior to this only one Bavandid ruler
had an Arabic name: Jafar ibn Shahriyar, who was so named because of his status as
a hostage of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, even though his father was a
Zoroastrian.46 Since Vandarin is unknown in the sources, it is impossible to know
his motive for naming his son, but religious devotion is an obvious explanation for
choosing the name of the Prophet. After this, Arabic names became somewhat more
common in the family, although most of its members still had traditional Persian
names even throughout the Mongol era.
Like his Ziyarid relative Qabus ibn Vushmgir, Mohammad ibn Vandarin
constructed his own mausoleum during his own lifetime. Hence like the Gonbad-e
Qabus, the Mil-e Radkan gives some indication of the motivations and resources of
its patron. At 35 metres high, it is the tallest of the Bavandid towers, and it is
dramatically sited to emphasize its height and to be visible from afar. It is topped
with a conical dome like that of the Gonbad-e Qabus, and it is quite likely that either

Mohammad ibn Vandarin or his architect had seen the earlier building, particularly
since the inscription on the terracotta plaque over the doorway echoes both the
terminology of the Gonbad-e Qabus (referring to the building as a qasr) and the
location of the word qasr. The Mil-e Radkan differs from the Gonbad-e Qabus,
however, in its usage of stucco, its band of decoration under the dome and its
bilingual foundation inscription – features that it shares with the other Bavandid
towers.
Unlike Qabus, Mohammad ibn Vandarin designates himself as ‘client of the
Commander of the Faithful’, indicating that caliphal investiture was at least one
source of his legitimacy. During this era when the Buyids ruled Baghdad, such
investiture was given at their bidding. Some Bavandid coins also express allegiance
to the Buyids, indicating that the Buyids were at times active in settling Bavandid
internecine squabbles in return for acknowledgement. The known struggle between
Rostam ibn al-Marzuban and Shahriyar ibn Dara, supported by the Buyids and
Qabus respectively, is a case in point. Although the coinage of Mohammad ibn
Vandarin is not known, it is likely that he, too, would have acknowledged Buyid
overlordship.
Shahriyar ibn Abbas ibn Shahriyar, named in the inscription on the Lajim
tower, is likewise designated as ‘client of the Commander of the Faithful’, and
hence was probably also supported by the Buyids. He was most likely a ruler of a
subsidiary branch of the Bavandids, not the main branch. His mausoleum was built
in 1022–3 c e , just one year after the completion of the Mil-e Radkan, and so he
must have ruled contemporaneously with Mohammad ibn Vandarin. Since Shahriyar
was not the patron, the tower was in all likelihood constructed after his death. He
may have been a grandson of Shahriyar ibn Dara, Qabus’ cousin and ally, although
given the frequency of the name ‘Shahriyar’ in the Bavandid family, it is impossible
to be sure of this. Since his mother was the patron, he probably died relatively
young. Her name is given as Chihrazad bint S[h]-l-i…[kh]-v-r, an unknown name
which has been cobbled together by comparing the Pahlavi and the Arabic
inscriptions.47 Chihrazad, characterized in the inscription as a ‘noble lady’, clearly
ordered the building of the tower at Lajim; the name of her architect, al-Husayn ibn
Ali, is also given. She is the only known female patron of a pre-Saljuq mausoleum,
and this is the earliest extant mausoleum of this region to name its builder in the

inscription.
The Lajim tower is therefore an interesting indication of the status of the royal
Bavandid women. For a dynasty so concerned with lineage and Sasanian descent
claimed through Bav, the eponymous founder of the dynasty, the women were
important elements of the family genealogy and valuable tools in the forging of
alliances. After all, anyone marrying a Bavandid princess would procure Sasanian
descent for his offspring. Pride in such descent can be seen, for example, in the
prologue to the Qabusnameh, the Mirror for Princes composed in 1082 by a grandson
of Qabus ibn Vushmgir, where the author traces his lineage back to the Sasanians
through his Bavandid mother and great-grandmother.48 In another example, Ibn
Isfandiyar tells of a potential succession crisis in the early thirteenth century that
was averted when the childless ruler of the main branch married his sister off to
another ispahbad, probably one of the secondary rulers of the family, and their child
inherited the rule of the entire family and a place in its primary lineage.49 However,
the Lajim tower shows that the Bavandid women were more than just pawns in the
power games played by their male relatives; Chihrazad was clearly eager to see that
her son was properly commemorated, and she had the resources and the authority
to carry this out, just as Shirin was eager to promote her son, Majd al-Daula, and
ruled as a vigorous queen regent in order to ensure his place in the Buyid hierarchy.
The third extant Bavandid tomb tower, at Resget, does not so explicitly name its
patron, but by inference it may have been built by Masdara, the father of the named
incumbents. The stucco above the doorway, in Arabic and Pahlavi, states that the
tomb was constructed for Hormozdiyar ibn Masdara and Habusiyar ibn Masdara. No
titles remain legible for either the sons or the father. Masdara was presumably a
ruler of the secondary Firim branch of the Bavandids, since Ibn Isfandiyar gives the
ruler of the main branch in the early twelfth century as Shahriyar ibn Qarin ibn
Surkhab.50 One date is given in the foundation inscription, indicating that the two
brothers died simultaneously or that it was planned that the second brother should
join the first upon his demise. As mentioned above, not enough of this date has
survived to enable it to be deciphered, but the building has been dated stylistically
to the early twelfth century, and is therefore an excellent example of the
conservatism of this long-ruling dynasty.

t h e b av andids

and t h e

s as anian p as t

Another very interesting aspect of the foundation inscriptions is the titulature. The
inscriptions of both Mil-e Radkan and Lajim refer to their incumbents as ‘client of
the Commander of the Faithful’. This assertion of a link to the Abbasid caliphate
indicates that the Bavandids did receive caliphal investiture, perhaps due to their
close relations with the Buyids during this period (the Buyids of Rayy intermarried
with the Bavandids and often interfered in their internecine squabbles). At Mil-e
Radkan, Mohammad ibn Vandarin Bavand refers to himself as al-amir al-sayyid in
the inscription over the doorway, which is in Arabic only; this is a title also used by
the Samanids. However, in the bilingual band under the dome he is called ispahbad
in both languages. This is the official title of the Bavandids, as seen in the
numismatics, chronicles and inscriptions on textiles and metalwork. It is a military
title, used for high-ranking generals in the Sasanian period. Hence it dramatically
emphasized the longevity of Bavandid rule, their origins in the late Sasanian period
and, most importantly, their connections to the Sasanian royal family.
The Bavandids were not alone in presenting themselves as heirs to the
Sasanians: the Persianate dynasties that had proliferated throughout the eastern
Islamic world by the mid tenth century were distinguished by a simultaneous
adherence to Islam and the proud promotion of Persian culture, including the
Persian language and links to a reimagined Persian past. The largest regional
powers of this era – the Samanids and Buyids – justified their rule by manufacturing
direct lines of descent from the Sasanians as well as claiming Sasanian titulature.51
The Bavandids, however, had a unique status due to their dynasty’s beginnings as
actual military governors under the late Sasanians. Despite their rivals’ bold
arrogation of the Sasanian title Shahanshah, they never claimed more than the
military title of ispahbad bestowed upon them by the Sasanians. This was not from a
sense of false modesty, but from a desire to emphasize that historical connection;
the title ispahbad more than sufficed to illustrate their historical Sasanian
associations and hence the plausibility of their claim to Sasanian descent. Likewise,
the bilingual inscription on the Lajim tower terms Shahriyar ibn Abbas ibn
Shahriyar a ‘great prince’, or al-kiya al-jalil, using a Persian word for ‘prince’ even
in the Arabic inscription.

This emphasis on continuity from the Sasanian period is also reflected in the
Pahlavi inscriptions on the buildings – a unique instance in monumental Islamic
epigraphy. Arabic was the language of religion and of most monumental epigraphy
during this period, and was a language known and used well by the educated classes
in the eastern Islamic world. Qabus ibn Vushmgir, for example, engaged in an
extensive correspondence in Arabic with his Bavandid uncle. Knowledge of Arabic
was not uniformly excellent, however, as evidenced by a grammatical error in the
Arabic version of the inscription at Lajim.52 The local vernacular was Tabari, an
Indo-European language related to Persian. Persian was known but had not yet
displaced Tabari, and literature was produced in both languages.
Pahlavi was the version of Middle Persian that was used in an official and
religious capacity by the Sasanians. This was not a language spoken in Tabaristan in
the tenth century and the input of an educated Zoroastrian, such as a priest, would
have been required to execute the inscriptions on the tomb towers. Likewise, when
the Buyid ruler Adud al-Daula visited Persepolis in 955 and 956 c e , he needed the
help of a local Zoroastrian priest to read and translate the Pahlavi inscriptions at
that site. Regardless of the religions they practised, very few of the Bavandids’
subjects would have been able to read the Pahlavi inscriptions, and probably only a
minority would have been able to read the Arabic ones. Yet the presence of both
was important, and it is likely that most of the Bavandids’ subjects would have at
least recognized which language was which, even if they could not decipher the
actual words (just as Adud al-Daula, or someone in his retinue, knew that the
inscription in question required the linguistic expertise of a Zoroastrian priest). The
Arabic inscriptions would have functioned here much as they did elsewhere in the
Islamic world; it is the Pahlavi inscriptions that are unique.53 What mattered was
more the presence of Pahlavi rather than the content of the inscriptions per se; this
use of the Sasanian language and script was a conscious and dramatic effort to
render the Bavandid link with the Sasanians visible to all.
In their literary and artistic patronage, too, the Bavandids stressed continuity
from the past. Sasanian styles continued for centuries in textiles and metalwork –
the products for which Tabaristan enjoyed particular renown. The region was the
source of much ‘post-Sasanian’ silver, depicting hunting shahs and banqueting
scenes.54 The damp climate of the Elborz Mountains was well suited to the silk

worm; a tenth-century silk, with fragments in multiple collections, has an
inscription stating that it was made for an ispahbad.55 This highly sophisticated and
technically difficult piece shows that the region’s reputation for weaving was welldeserved, and its confronted animals and falconers bear comparison with Sasanian
silks. The literary work that most exemplifies a desired connection to the preIslamic past is the Shahnameh: because of its subject matter and its conscious
minimizing of Arabic loan words, the Shahnameh has often been called the last
literary work of pre-Islamic Iran. Ferdowsi dedicated his epic poem to a Bavandid
ispahbad, Shahriyar ibn Sharvin, after receiving a much warmer welcome at his
court than he had at the court of Mahmud of Ghazni. Another compilation of preIslamic legends mixed with history – the Marzubannameh – was composed in the
local language, Tabari, in the late tenth century by another Bavandid ruler,
Marzuban ibn Rostam ibn Sharvin.
Admiration of the past can also be seen in the work of the thirteenth-century
Bavandid chronicler Ibn Isfandiyar, part of which is based upon a much earlier text,
the now-lost Bavandnameh. The incorporation of earlier histories was a common
methodology in Islamic historiography, and these earlier sections of the Tarikh-e
Tabarestan clearly emphasize the continuity of the Bavandid lineage without any
sense of judgement upon the Zoroastrian past, despite the clear Shi‘i proclivities of
Ibn Isfandiyar himself. This is particularly striking when the text describes without
comment the slaughtering of Muslims by the ispahbad Sharvin ibn Surkhab (r. 772–
97 c e ) and the Qarinvand Vandad-Hormozd in conjunction with fighting against
the Abbasids and the refusal of those two rulers to allow Muslims to be buried in
their realms.56 The conversion to Islam of the ispahbad Qarin ibn Shahriyar in 841
c e is presented without comment, so that the continuity of Bavandid rule is
stressed over this momentous shift in religious belief.57 The text conveys a strong
impression of an unbroken thread reaching back to the Sasanians and beyond. The
early history of Tabaristan, prior to the advent of the Sasanians, overlaps strongly
with the legends of the Shahnameh, while the story of the beginning of the
Bavandid dynasty reveals one of the long-lasting tropes of Persian kingship,
whereby the rightful heir to the throne is endangered and raised by a lowly yet
honest person until his true identity is revealed and he takes his rightful place on
the throne. These elements are present in the foundation stories of the Sasanians

and even the Achaemenids (559–331 b c e ).58 In the Bavandid case, Sohrab ibn Bav
was an infant when his father was murdered, and so he was hidden with a gardener
and his family until he came of age and claimed his throne.59 With this type of tale
from the beginning of their dynasty, the Bavandids placed themselves in the
tradition of earlier Iranian kings.
In their secular dynastic ritual, just as in their chronicles, the Bavandids
emphasized their connections with the Sasanian past and beyond.60 As late as the
early thirteenth century, their coronation ceremonies were believed to date back to
the distant past, as described in detail by Ibn Isfandiyar:
The coronation festivities lasted seven days, according to the old Persian
fashion, and included the usual feastings, rejoicings, giving of presents,
while the notables and Ispahbads and Bavands assembled from all the
countryside. When these congratulations were finished, on the eighth day
the Ispahbad ascended the throne, girded on the royal girdle, and
confirmed the governors in their appointments, and caused the Ispahbads
and Amirs to cast aside their mourning, and clad them in robes of
honour.61
The girdle in particular bears comment here, since this is the kusti associated with
the Zoroastrian faith and donned by believers for their daily prayers. Ibn Isfandiyar
describes Qarin ibn Shahriyar as casting off his kusti and accepting a robe of honour
from the caliph when he converted to Islam, a clear indication of the symbolism of
this item of clothing. It is very interesting that it continued to be utilized in the
coronation ceremonies, which comprise such a fundamental assertion of dynastic
identity. The cultural associations of the kusti with the rulers of the past must have
outweighed its religious associations in order for it to continue to be used in this
way.
Indeed, it does appear that religious persuasion in this region was more a
matter of private belief, and that Caspian identity was founded upon a perceived
continuity with the past. Although a majority of the Bavandids’ subjects were still
Zoroastrian according to the reports of tenth-century geographers, we do not hear
of the type of intercommunal strife, which was prevalent in Fars at this time (in
which the Buyids emphasized their status as Persian rulers by taking the side of the

Zoroastrians).62 The Bavandids had no need to show favouritism to one religious
group over the other, as neither their Muslim faith nor their Persian credentials
were in any doubt. The earlier Bavandids did engage in and encourage attacks upon
Muslims, but following the conversion of Qarin ibn Shahriyar there are no reports
of attacks in either direction. Challenges to Bavandid rule came from other Caspian
rulers – namely, the Zaidis and Buyids – and not from their subjects. Moreover,
they do not seem to have been concerned about appeasing those subjects with
grants of land and so forth, as was common with the Samanids and Ziyarids. Ibn
Isfandiyar reports that taxes were low under the Bavandids, yet they were by all
accounts exceedingly wealthy due to the natural resources of their realm.63 Rather
than being separate from the societies they ruled – like the Buyids and the
Samanids, who both originated outside of the regions they appropriated – the
Bavandids had long been a part of Caspian society and hence enjoyed a type of
legitimacy quite different from that of their contemporaries. Their funerary
architecture and the practices associated with it reinforced that legitimacy.
Their claim to Sasanian descent was so important to the Bavandids because it
placed them in an unbroken line of Iranian kingship, rendering their rule both
inevitable and just. In every aspect of the construction of their dynastic identity, the
Bavandids stressed their Sasanian heritage: in their coronation ceremonies, their
titulature, their dynastic foundation myths, their literary and artistic patronage, and
the design of their funerary monuments. Their mausolea were the main focus of
their architectural patronage, and hence constituted a major element in the public
presentation of the dynasty. It is in this context that the unusual features of these
buildings can be understood: the Pahlavi inscriptions, the single high entrances
designed to discourage entry, the dark, windowless, undecorated chambers and the
lack of burials inside the monuments. These features can be explained through
Bavandid emulation of what they believed to be the funerary practices of their
Sasanian predecessors, an emulation that reified their claims to Sasanian descent as
the primary justification for their right to rule. It is therefore crucial to understand
how the tomb towers were used in order to comprehend both their architectural
features and how the monuments fit into the Bavandid conception of Iranian
kingship.

b av andid f u ne r ar y p r act ice s
There is literary evidence that, for the rulers of northern Iran in the eleventh
century, the tower form itself was concretely associated with the royal mausolea of
the Sasanian past. As mentioned earlier, al-Muqaddasi revealed that the Buyids of
Rayy, whose desire to emulate the Sasanians was well-known, also constructed
tomb towers, which have unfortunately not survived. In an anecdote in a text from
the Saljuq period, the Siyasatnama of Nizam al-Mulk (vizier from 1063 to 1092 c e ),
we see that such buildings were still associated with Zoroastrians during that era:
They say that in the city of Rayy in the time of Fakhr al-Daula […] there
was a fire-worshipper, a rich man, who was called Bozorgomid Dizu. He
had built an ostodan for himself on the hill of Tabarik, and it is still in
existence today; now it is called the Generals’ Lookout, and it is situated
above the dome of Fakhr al-Daula. Bozorgomid took great pains and spent
much money on completing this sepulchre with two domes on top of that
hill.
He then recounts how the mausoleum was desecrated, so that it was not used by
Bozorgomid, but was subsequently used by a group of unemployed scribes
pretending to play chess and backgammon while composing letters of application to
other courts. This activity aroused the curiosity of Fakhr al-Daula.
A party of courtiers went and climbed the hill; they shouted at the foot of
the tower because they could not get up. The men heard them and looked
down […] they let down ladders for the party to ascend.64
From this anecdote we learn not only that as late as the Saljuq era the tomb-tower
form was associated with prominent Zoroastrians, but also that its purpose was held
to be the containment of bones, rather than burial. The text also indicates that the
building should not have been reused in this way, at least not so soon after its
construction, if the bones of its patron had actually been placed inside. The main
features of the tomb tower of Bozorgomid correspond with those of the Bavandids:
location atop a hill, a double dome and a high and inaccessible entrance. The

Bavandids, however, had been Muslim since 841 c e . They would have no reason to
emulate a Zoroastrian form, but both they and a contemporary wealthy Zoroastrian
would have reason to emulate a Sasanian form.
There are sources that reveal not only what late-tenth- and early-eleventhcentury Iranian Muslims believed Sasanian mausolea to look like, but also how they
believed them to have been used. The foremost among these and the most detailed
is the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. Several anecdotes in the epic poem illustrate what
was understood in Ferdowsi’s time to be royal Sasanian funerary practice, but most
revealing is that of the death of Nushirvan (r. 531–78 c e ), who made the following
request on his deathbed:
When I have left this world, build me a tomb like a palace [kakh], in a place
where few men go, and so high that the vultures cannot fly over it. Its
entrance must be high in the vault, as high as ten lariats would reach, and
over it must be written that this is my court, together with an account of
my greatness, my wealth, and my armies. See that the chamber is spread
with carpets and cushions, preserve my body with camphor, and sprinkle
musk on my head for a crown. Bring five unused brocades of cloth of gold
from my treasury, and wrap me in them according to the custom of the
Kayanids and our ancestors. Construct an ivory couch [takht] and place it
there, and over it suspend my crown. Then to its right and left set out all
my gold dishes, goblets, and jewels: twenty goblets are to be filled with
rosewater, wine and saffron, and two hundred with musk, camphor and
ambergris. The blood must be drawn off from the trunk of my body, so that
it dries, and then it must be filled with camphor and musk. Then close the
door to the chamber, since no one must see the king. If the tomb is built in
this manner, no one will be able to find his way to me.65
The tomb described sounds very much like the Bavandid tomb towers: it is tall and
sited in a remote location, its entrance is high off the ground, and it has a
foundation inscription. The words attributed to Nushirvan also explain clearly how
such a structure was used, with the embalmed body of the king placed on a platform
and the door subsequently closed off. The inaccessibility of the structure served to
prevent entry and to protect the body, while its impressive exterior appearance and

foundation inscription extolled the glory of the royal incumbent. Following the
traditions of Persian kings from deepest antiquity was deemed to be important.
Although the description of Nushirvan’s tomb is the clearest, elements of both
the architecture of the tomb and the funerary practices that occurred within it are
echoed in Ferdowsi’s account of the deaths of several other Sasanian kings. The
embalming of the body of Yazdgerd I (r. 399–420 c e ) with musk and camphor is
described in detail, and the corpse was wrapped in brocade to keep it dry. It was
then placed in a golden coffin to be transported to Fars, where it was laid out inside
the tomb.66 Qobad I (r. 488–97 c e , 499–531) was also embalmed with musk and
camphor, wrapped in brocade and placed on a golden platform – or takht – inside
his tomb, which was then sealed.67 After the death of Khosrow II, his distraught
wife Shirin decided to commit suicide. She asked for his tomb to be opened, and she
entered and placed her face next to his. Her clothes were already scented with
camphor as she swallowed her poison, and when her death was discovered another
tomb was constructed for her, and the tomb of Khosrow II was sealed up again.68
The last Sasanian ruler, Yazdgerd III (r. 632–51 c e ), was murdered at Merv and cast
into a pond, but when his body was recovered it was treated with camphor and
wrapped in brocade, and a tomb ‘reaching up to the clouds’ was constructed for
him.69
These practices can be contrasted with those associated with other prominent
deaths described in the Shahnameh. When Alexander died, he was embalmed,
wrapped in brocade, and placed in a golden coffin, but as a Greek his body was
destined for an anachronistic Christian burial, and the bishops decided that this
should occur in Alexandria.70 Nushzad, a Sasanian prince whose mother was a
Byzantine princess, converted to Christianity and on his deathbed asked for a
Christian grave instead of a great tomb and the musk and camphor that were used to
preserve kings.71 And the body of the rebellious general Bahram Chubin (r. 590–91
c e ) was wrapped in brocade and placed in a narrow silver coffin with camphor
poured over him; the treatment of this high-ranking individual thus has some of the
elements of royal practice, but the ultimate destination of the silver coffin was not
described, so he presumably was not thought to have been placed inside a
mausoleum.72
Another source that shows how the Bavandids would have perceived Sasanian

funerary practice is the Qabusnameh (the Caspian Mirror for Princes), composed by a
grandson of the Ziyarid ruler Qabus ibn Vushmgir (and son of a Bavandid princess).
An anecdote involving the mausoleum of the Sasanian shah Nushirvan goes as
follows:
I have read in the annals of bygone Caliphs that the Caliph Ma’mun once
visited the tomb of Nushirvan the Just and found his body reposing on a
throne [takht] which had crumbled to dust. Round the wall of the building
there was an inscription in gold ink written in the Pahlavi character.
Ma’mun gave orders that scribes with a knowledge of Pahlavi should be
summoned to translate the inscription.73
Although the story itself may be apocryphal, it does echo the tradition enumerated
in the Shahnameh of placing the body of the monarch on a platform, or takht.
Interestingly, Pahlavi inscriptions are associated with the royal mausoleum, but on
the interior rather than the exterior of the building. This may have been a narrative
device to suit the trajectory of the anecdote, as the protagonists were already inside
the building when they saw the body, but it may also reflect the author’s perception
of actual practice. This story is also an interesting counterpart to the historical visits
of Adud al-Daula and other Buyid rulers to Persepolis, the ancient Achaemenid
capital, where they summoned Zoroastrian priests to read the inscriptions of their
royal forebears and added their own to record their visits, as Sasanian rulers had
done before them. It shows a deeply embedded association of royal architecture
with the practice of kingship, including the visitation of the monuments of earlier
rulers. It also vividly demonstrates how closely the inscriptions were connected to
royal practice, so that both the creation of inscriptions and the ceremonial reading
of earlier inscriptions visibly reinforced a ruler’s status. The Buyid inscriptions at
Persepolis, however, were in Arabic only; the Bavandids’ use of Pahlavi as well as
Arabic on their tomb towers even further reinforced their link with the Sasanians.
So the practices associated with the Bavandid tomb towers can be discerned
through literary sources, showing how these unusual structures were utilized and
how they dramatically reinforced the Bavandids’ royal identity. The Qabusnameh
and the Shahnameh combine to give a detailed image of how the funerals of
Sasanian kings were perceived in the eleventh century. The royal corpse was

embalmed, wrapped in brocade and placed on a platform composed of some
precious material – such as gold or ivory – inside a mausoleum with grave goods
scattered about the chamber; the door was then sealed to prevent entry. The
mausoleum was located in a remote spot and was of great height, with a high and
inaccessible entrance; a foundation inscription above the door identified the
incumbent and extolled his greatness. Subsequent rulers would go out of their way
to visit these mausolea and ruminate upon the inscriptions; in rare cases a tomb
would be reopened. The Siyasatnama described a very similar building for a wealthy
tenth-century Zoroastrian who may well have wanted to imitate Sasanian practice
himself; it also described a creative reuse of the structure by individuals who wished
to keep their activities a secret.
It is possible that this eleventh-century perception of Sasanian funerary
practice was basically correct. After all, the essential elements of the funerary
rituals described in the Shahnameh do correspond with the known rituals of the
kings of the earlier Achaemenid dynasty. There had always been a tension between
the requirements of the Zoroastrian religion and the desire of kings to memorialize
themselves by preserving their bodies in monumental structures.74 These structures
took a wide variety of forms in the Achaemenid period – from the tomb of Cyrus at
Pasargadae to the rock-cut tombs at Naqsh-e Rostam and the classically styled
monuments constructed by Greek craftsmen for Persian nobles in Lycia.
All of these structures have certain elements in common with one another and
with the Bavandid tomb towers (figs 4.21, 4.22). These features include an elevated
location (either natural or man-made), single inaccessible entrances, lack of
windows, dark, undecorated chambers and, for the free-standing structures, double
roofs; in other words, the same features that differentiate the Bavandid tomb towers
from other Islamic mausolea. Such architectural choices suited the functions of a
mausoleum in a Zoroastrian context, when compromises needed to be made to
lessen the sin of preserving a corpse.75 The elevation, inaccessible entrances and
distance from habitation kept the corpse away from the living and away from the
good creations – namely, earth and water. The lack of windows and double roofs
and the use of impermeable materials for construction (for example, stone or baked
brick) also isolated and contained the pollution of the corpse.

4.21 Achaemenid tomb, Naqsh-e Rostam, Fars, Iran.

4.22 Interior view of Achaemenid tomb, Persepolis, Fars, Iran.

These same features were of course redundant in an Islamic context, but they
do provide further evidence that helps to explain the lack of bodies in the Bavandid
tomb towers. From the image of Sasanian funerary practices revealed in the
Shahnameh and the Qabusnameh, the correlation between the formal characteristics
of the tomb towers and the descriptions of Sasanian mausolea, and the lack of
bodies buried beneath the tomb towers, it appears that the Bavandids were
emulating what they perceived to be Sasanian royal practice. In other words, they
were placing the embalmed bodies on platforms made of an impermeable material,
which in a Zoroastrian context would have served to isolate the pollution of the
corpse further by keeping it off the floor.
This does not imply that these Caspian dynasts were Zoroastrians or even
insincere Muslims; local sources such as Ibn Isfandiyar are clear on the fact that the
Bavandid rulers were Muslim – following the conversion of Qarin ibn Shahriyar in
841 c e – and there is no other evidence to cast any aspersions on their religious

beliefs. Their mausolea all have Arabic inscriptions with a Muslim content,
including the Qur’anic verses at Resget. But as mentioned earlier, many of their
subjects were Zoroastrian, and religion in their realm seems to have been more of a
private matter than an element of public dynastic identity. And in such a
conservative social context as Tabaristan in the tenth and eleventh centuries,
funerary practices styled upon those of the Sasanians would not have been
controversial. Indeed, this would have served to emphasize the distinguished
lineage of the Bavandids and to assert their continuing right to rule. Whether or not
the practices actually corresponded with those of the Sasanians was less important
than the fact that they were perceived as a continuation of Sasanian practice. The
Bavandids presented themselves to their subjects as Iranian rulers first and
foremost, and they consistently stressed the longevity of their rule.

e mu lat io n

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o t h e r t o mb t o w e r s

While the Bavandids’ royal imagery was most potent within their own realm, the
architectural form that it spawned exerted a wider influence on Iranian funerary
architecture. An examination of the relationship between the Bavandid tomb
towers, other contemporary Iranian tomb towers and those of the Saljuqs further
elucidates the uniqueness of the Bavandid structures and the strength of the visible
Sasanian connection the buildings represented. The siting of the towers in the
landscape, visible at a distance and yet far from any trading routes, shows that the
message of these monuments was aimed primarily at the Bavandids’ subjects rather
than their rivals. Those rivals did take notice, however, and the basic outline of the
tomb-tower form was imitated by other Caspian dynasties with larger regional
pretensions – namely, the Ziyarids and the Buyids. Other examples of tomb towers
emulate those of the Bavandids, but with a loss of some of the characteristics most
closely linked to perceptions of the past; even the Gonbad-e Qabus does not use
Pahlavi inscriptions. Although it is earlier than any of the extant Bavandid towers, it
must be modelled on Bavandid examples that have not survived: emulating the
Bavandid tomb towers (albeit in a more grandiose form in accordance with how
Qabus wished to present himself), as well their funerary practices, would have
emphasized Qabus’s own links to the Sasanians through his Bavandid mother.

It is unfortunate that we do not know whether bodies are buried inside the
Gonbad-e Ali, the Pir-e Alamdar and Chehel Dokhtaran. It is likely that burial did
occur at the Damghan monuments, but not at Abarquh. The Gonbad-e Ali is sited in
a similar way to the Bavandid monuments: on a rocky outcrop, away from any centre
of habitation and with a high and inaccessible entrance. It differs from the Caspian
examples in its octagonal shape, its building material (stone) and its lack of Pahlavi
inscriptions. It was constructed for a Firuzanid emir: this minor dynasty had its
start when Hasan ibn Firuzan was made the deputy of Makan ibn Kaki, one of the
Dailami adventurers associated with the rise of Buyid and Ziyarid power. Both
Hasan and his son, Firuzan, became implacable enemies of the Ziyarids and, by
extension, the Bavandids. Hazarasp ibn Nasr, the incumbent of the tomb tower
together with his wife, was a grandson of Hasan ibn Firuzan and had come to
Abarquh as a Buyid vassal, although by the time the tomb tower was constructed in
1056–7, rule of the area had passed to the Kakuyids as Saljuq vassals (1008–19 c e ).
The tomb tower recalls their Caspian origins and shows how deeply this type of
mausoleum was embedded as a symbol of Persian sovereignty in the Caspian
region. Its faithfulness to the Bavandid models indicates that it was probably used
in a similar way, without bodies buried beneath the floor.
The Damghan monuments further modified the Bavandid prototype, although
they are located virtually in the shadow of the Elborz. They were sited on flat land
not far outside the city, with entrances almost level to the ground. The Pir-e
Alamdar also has an interior inscription, indicating that perhaps it would not have
been sealed up to discourage entry. Constructed during the reign of Manuchihr ibn
Qabus (r. 1012–29 c e ) for the Ziyarid governor of the region, Abu Jafar Mohammad
ibn Ibrahim, by his son, Bakhtiyar, this relatively modest tomb tower is modelled
more upon the Bavandid prototypes (such as the Lajim tower) than the Gonbad-e
Qabus. Already, however, the features most associated with Bavandid funerary
practices have been lost, indicating that a more conventional Muslim burial took
place here. This governor’s mausoleum makes visual reference to the Caspian
tradition, but in the context of a more mainstream Muslim culture. Likewise, the
nearby Chehel Dokhtaran, constructed 30 years later, is clearly modelled upon the
Pir-e Alamdar; the patron, Abu Shuja Asfar Begi, constructed this mausoleum for
himself and his sons. Again, the patron had strong Caspian connections, but the

tomb tower has lost many of the unique Bavandid features.
The Saljuq Turks also adopted the tomb-tower form, but without any of the
uniquely Iranian features of the Bavandid towers – features that undoubtedly lost
their significance outside of the Bavandids’ conservative realm. Soon after the
Saljuq invasion of Iran, the changes seen at Damghan quickly evolved further into
something quite different from the Bavandid mausolea. Already at Kharraqan, the
interior of the earlier mausoleum (built in 1067–8 c e ) has a stucco revetment with
wall paintings, while the latter of the two towers (built in 1093 c e ) has an interior
staircase. In the Saljuq examples, the interiors are lighter and sometimes decorated,
the buildings are sited on flat, open land where these still-nomadic rulers and their
followers would have brought flocks to graze, the proportions of the towers are
squatter in comparison with their conical domes, and crypts were added at the base
to accommodate the burial of bodies. Their lavish exterior brickwork, which could
reasonably be compared to textiles, lends credence to the comparison of Saljuq
tomb towers with the tents of these Central Asian nomads. In both form and
function, however, the Saljuq towers differed from those of the Bavandids. The
Bavandid tower at Resget, built several decades after the Kharraqan towers, is
therefore an excellent example both of the isolation of the Bavandids in their
mountain stronghold and of the importance to this dynasty of constructing symbols
of their continuity with the Sasanian past.
The Bavandid tomb towers, as funerary monuments that do not contain burials,
are unique in the history of Islamic funerary architecture. Viewed in that context,
they appear strange and suspiciously unorthodox, as do better-known related
structures like the Gonbad-e Qabus. By viewing them instead as monuments of
Iranian kingship, which were instrumental in forging dynastic legitimacy, their
unusual features can be explained and their purpose can be understood. For the
Bavandids, a royal funerary ritual that comprised of placing the brocade-wrapped
body on a platform, or takht, and then sealing the door of an inaccessible structure
emphasized their place in a long line of Iranian kings just as much as their
coronation rituals. The visibility of these structures and the foundation inscriptions
ringing their exteriors – significantly repeated in Pahlavi as well as in Arabic –
served as a more permanent manifestation of their royal Iranian status and
historical Sasanian connections.

The surviving tomb towers of the Bavandids were constructed in an era when
other Iranian dynasts were reimagining the past in order to legitimize their
independent rule. The Samanids and Buyids had adopted Sasanian titulature and
constructed claims to Sasanian descent, which pushed hard at the bounds of
believability. The Samanids also promoted the Persian language in a region where
Sogdian, another Iranian language, had historically been spoken, and they
constructed a dynastic funerary monument that appropriated elements harking back
to the Sasanian past in a region where the Sasanians had never ruled.76 The
Bavandids, in a process that was no less creative for all its apparent conservatism,
strove for a perception of a direct and literal continuity by emphasizing their
Sasanian descent. Their rule was justified by its very longevity, and the plausible
Sasanian connections that other Iranian dynasties lacked. This can be demonstrated
in every arena where dynastic identity was constructed: titulature, dynastic
foundation myths, coronation rituals, artistic and literary patronage and, most
dramatically, through the monuments that represented individual rulers for
posterity.
no tes
1 In the early Islamic period, most of Iran was controlled by the caliphs until their power was eclipsed by the
invasion of the Saljuq Turks, who took Baghdad in 1055. Saljuq power was in turn replaced by the next
nomadic invasion, that of the Mongols, who ruled Iran from 1256 to 1353 as the Ilkhanid dynasty.
2 See Mohammad bin Hasan Ibn Isfandiyar, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, ed. Abbas Iqbal, 2 vols (Tehran, 1941–2), pp.
92–95; Kaykavus Ibn Iskandar, Qabusnameh (Tehran, 1972), p. 3.
3 Ibn Isfandiyar discusses his sources in his preface: see Ibn Isfandiyar, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, p. 3.
4 Ibid., pp. 93–4.
5 George Miles, in C.E. Bosworth (ed.), Iran and Islam, in Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky (Edinburgh,
1971), pp. 444–5. See also P. Casanova, ‘Les Ispehbeds de Firim’, in T.W. Arnold and R.A. Nicholson (eds), A
Volume of Oriental Studies Presented to Edward G. Browne (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 117–26.
6 Casanova, ‘Les Ispehbeds de Firim’, p. 125.
7 See: Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia (London, 1908); Richard Frye, ‘Notes on the renaissance of
the 10th and 11th centuries in eastern Iran’, Central Asiatic Journal i (1955), pp. 137–43; G. Lazard, ‘The rise
of the New Persian language’, in Richard Frye (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4: From the Arab Invasion
to the Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 595–632.
8 Richard Frye, ‘The new Persian renaissance in western Iran’, Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honour of Hamilton
A.R. Gibb (Leiden, 1965), pp. 225–31; see also J. de Menasce, ‘Zoroastrian literature after the Muslim
conquest’, in Richard Frye (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs

(Cambridge, 1975), pp. 543–65.
9 Wilferd Madelung, ‘The minor dynasties of northern Iran’, in Richard Frye (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran, vol.
4: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 206–12, 219–22; see also Melanie Michailidis,
‘Pilgrims and patrons: Ziyarat under the Bavandids and Samanids’, Proceedings of ‘The People of the
Prophet’s House’, British Museum 26–8 March 2009 (London, 2012).
10 Although this title usually indicates a descendant of the Prophet, that was not the case with the Bavandid
princess, and hence it is not clear whether this title may have had other meanings and nuances for the
Bavandids.
11 Madelung has suggested that this must be Mohammad ibn Vandarin Bavand, the patron who ordered the
tomb tower known as the Mil-e Radkan to be constructed in 1016–21; see Wilferd Madelung, ‘The minor
dynasties of northern Iran’, p. 218.
12 Ibn Isfandiyar, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, pp. 17, 28.
13 Ibid., pp. 152–3.
14 Ibid., pp. 48–9, 55, 57, 58, 78–83.
15 R. Soleiman, Vezarat-e Farhang, personal communication, July 2003. Mr Soleiman was responsible for the
ongoing restorations at Lajim; he informed me that excavations into the foundations carried out in
conjunction with earlier restorations on the Bavandid towers had revealed that bodies were not buried
inside.
16 A.D.H. Bivar, ‘The tomb at Resget: Its architecture and inscriptions’, in A. Tajvidi and M. Kiani (eds), The
Memorial Volume of the Vth International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology, Tehran – Isfahan – Shiraz,
11th–18th April 1968, vol. 2 (Tehran, 1972), pp. 15–23.
17 See Melanie Michailidis, ‘The lofty castle of Qabus b. Vushmgir’, in Edmund Herzig and Sarah Stewart (eds),
Early Islamic Iran: The Idea of Iran, vol. 5 (London, 2012), pp. 120–38.
e

18 Chahriyar Adle and Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, ‘Les monuments du XI siècle du Damqan’, Studia
Iranica (1972), pp. 282–3; see also Sheila Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions from Early Islamic Iran and
Transoxania (Leiden, 1992), p. 124.
19 The reading of ‘Kashmir’ for the name of Naz’s father is not certain; see Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions,
pp. 126–7.
20 Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, trans. B.A. Collins
(Reading, 1994), p. 210.
21 Ernst Diez, Die Kunst der Islamischen Völker (Berlin, 1915), p. 73; Ernst Diez, Persien, Islamische Baukunst in
Churasan (Hagen, 1923), pp. 51–5; Ernst Diez, in A.U. Pope (ed.), Survey of Persian Art, vol. 3: The Architecture
of the Islamic Period (London and New York, 1964), pp. 926–7: here he also describes the legend of Qabus ibn
Vushmgir, who, according to al-Jannabi, was placed in a glass coffin that was suspended by a chain from the
dome inside the Gonbad-e Qabus. Diez incorrectly attributes this to Avestan practice.
22 Katharina Otto-Dorn, L’Art de l’Islam (Paris, 1967), pp. 137–40. For a study on the influence of the Vienna
School on subsequent Islamic architectural history, see Oya Pancaroğlu, ‘Formalism and the academic
foundation of Turkish art in the twentieth century’, Muqarnas xxiv (2007), pp. 67–78.
23 Guitty Azarpay, ‘The Islamic tomb tower: A note on its genesis and significance’, in Abbas Daneshvari (ed.),
Essays in Islamic Art and Architecture in Honor of Katharina Otto-Dorn (Malibu, 1981), pp. 9–12.
24 Emel Esin, ‘Al Qubbah al-Turkiyya: An essay on the architectonic forms of the Islamic Turkish funerary

monument’, Atti del Terzo Congresso di Studi Arabi e Islamici (Naples, 1967), pp. 281–313.
25 Abbas Daneshvari, Medieval Tomb Towers of Iran (Lexington, 1986), pp. 9–64.
e

26 Adle and Melikian-Chirvani, ‘Les monuments du XI siècle’, pp. 285–90.
27 Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (Edinburgh, 1994), pp. 275–6.
28 Oleg Grabar, ‘The visual arts’, in Richard Frye (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4: From the Arab Invasion
to the Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), p. 342; Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar, The Art and Architecture of
Islam 650–1250 (New Haven and London, 1987), pp. 221–2; Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar, and Marilyn
Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1260 (New Haven and London, 2001), pp. 113–14.
29 Pope, Survey of Persian Art, p. 1723, pl. 340C.
30 André Godard, ‘Les tours de Ladjim et de Resget’, Athar-é Iran i (1932), pp. 109–21; Pope, Survey of Persian
Art, p. 339.
31 Ernst Herzfeld, ‘Postsasanidische Inschriften’, Archäeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran iv/3 (1932), pp. 146–7;
see also Herzfeld, ‘Arabische Inschriften aus Iran und Syrien’, Archäeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran viii
(1936), pp. 78–81.
32 Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions, pp. 85–90, 208–9.
33 For catalogues of early Islamic funerary architecture, see: Oleg Grabar, ‘The earliest Islamic commemorative
structures’, Ars Orientalis vi (1966), pp. 22–4; Thomas Leisten, Architektur für Tote (Berlin, 1998), pp. 192–4,
238; Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, p. 283, fig. 5.22. For a brief article on the Bavandid tomb towers, see
Mary Burkett, ‘Tomb towers and inscriptions in Iran’, Oriental Art xi/2 (1965), pp. 101–6; see also Bivar, ‘The
tomb at Resget: Its architecture and inscriptions’, pp. 21–3. At the time of A.D.H. Bivar’s visit in 1965, a road
had not yet been built anywhere in the vicinity of Resget, a good indication of the isolation of this building
and the tower at Lajim. Both were accessible only on foot or on horseback; now it is possible to reach these
sites with a four-wheel-drive vehicle, albeit with difficulty, and horses are still the preferred mode of
transport for the locals.
34 See Melanie Michailidis, ‘Landmarks of the Persian renaissance: Monumental funerary architecture in Iran
and Central Asia in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, Ph.D. dissertation (MIT, 2007).
35 Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, pp. 282–3.
36 Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions, p. 123.
37 Al-Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions, pp. 310–13.
38 A modern staircase now provides entry to the Lajim tower.
39 See Melanie Michailidis, ‘Pilgrims and patrons’.
40 The translation is based upon that of Sheila Blair; see Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions, p. 85.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., p. 88.
43 Qur’an 21:35 and Qur’an 112. See Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions, p. 208.
44 See Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions, p. 208.
45 Madelung, ‘The minor dynasties of northern Iran’, p. 218.
46 Shahriyar had requested the caliph’s help with an internecine squabble; this was granted on the condition
that he send two of his sons to Baghdad as hostages to ensure that he was acting in good faith. He was
viewed by the caliph as a tributary ruler, even though his realm was beyond the dar al-Islam.

47 Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions, pp. 88–9. The Pahlavi inscription was read by Herzfeld from Godard’s
photographs.
48 Ibn Iskandar, Qabusnameh, p. 5.
49 Ibn Isfandiyar, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, pp. 256–7.
50 Ibid., pp. 239–40.
51 On Sasanian and Buyid titulature, see Lutz Richter-Bernburg, ‘Amir-Malik-Shahanshah: ‘Adud al-Daula’s
titulature re-examined’, Iran xviii (1980), pp. 83–102; Luke Treadwell, ‘Shahanshah and al-Malik al-Mu’ayyad:
The legitimation of power in Samanid and Buyid Iran’, in Farhad Daftary and Josef Meri (eds), Culture and
Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honour of Wilferd Madelung (London, 2003), pp. 318–37.
52 See Blair, The Monumental Inscriptions, pp. 88–9.
53 See: Erica Cruikshank Dodd and Shereen Khairallah, The Image of the Word: A Study of Quranic Verses in
Islamic Architecture (Beirut, 1981); Sheila Blair, Islamic Inscriptions (New York, 1998); Irene Bierman, Writing
Signs: The Fatimid Public Text (Berkeley, 1998).
54 Rachel Ward, Islamic Metalwork (London, 1993), pp. 44–5.
55 Ettinghausen, Grabar, and Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture, p. 126; see also Louise Mackie and
Ann Rowe, Masterpieces in the Textile Museum (Washington, 1976), p. 12.
56 Ibn Isfandiyar, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, pp. 126–40.
57 Ibid., pp. 157, 237.
58 Ibid., pp. 98–9. Richard Frye discusses this particular trope of kingship and its appearance in dynastic stories
from the time of the Achaemenids through to the Safavids; see R. Frye, ‘The charisma of kingship in ancient
Iran’, Iranica Antiqua vi (1964), pp. 36–54.
59 Ibn Isfandiyar, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, pp. 98–9.
60 For an analysis of such rituals, see Sally Moore and Barbara Myerhoff, Secular Ritual (Amsterdam, 1977).
61 Ibn Isfandiyar, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, p. 255.
62 Al-Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions, pp. 320–4; V. Minorsky (trans.), Hodud al-Alam (London, 1970), pp. 135–6;
Mohammad Abu’l Qasem Ibn Hawqal, Configuration de la Terre [Kitab Surat al-Ard], trans. J.H. Kramers and G.
Wiet (Paris, 1964), p. 366.
63 Ibn Isfandiyar, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, p. 34.
64 Nizam al Mulk, The Book of Government, or Rules for Kings: The Siyasatnama or Siyar al-Mulk, trans. Hubert
Darke (London, 1960), p. 167.
65 Abu al-Qasim Ferdowsi, Shahnameh (Tehran, 2001), p. 1157; Dick Davis (trans.), Shahnameh: The Persian
Book of Kings (New York, 2004), p. 351.
66 Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, p. 934; Davis (trans.), Shahnameh, pp. 221–3.
67 Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, p. 1035; Davis (trans.), Shahnameh, p. 312.
68 Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, p. 1337; Davis (trans.), Shahnameh, p. 488.
69 Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, p. 1361; Davis (trans.), Shahnameh, p. 510.
70 Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, pp. 849–51; Davis (trans.), Shahnameh, pp. 114–18.
71 Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, pp. 1061–2; Davis (trans.), Shahnameh, p. 321.
72 Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, p. 1282; Davis (trans.), Shahnameh, p. 450.
73 Ibn Iskandar, Qabusnameh, p. 44.

74 O.P. L’vov-Basirov, ‘The evolution of the Zoroastrian funerary cult in western Iran’, Ph.D. dissertation
(SOAS, 1995), pp. 111–32.
75 Hellenistic sources, which recount Alexander’s troops entering the tomb of Cyrus, report that the body had
been embalmed with camphor and was resting on a golden platform. Interestingly, the Shahnameh omits this,
probably because it would not have been fitting for a sovereign absorbed into the Persian line of rulers to
desecrate the mausoleum of one of his symbolic forebears.
76 See Michailidis, ‘Landmarks of the Persian Renaissance’, pp. 224–76.

bib lio gr ap hy
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Essays in Islamic Art and Architecture in Honor of Katharina Otto-Dorn (Malibu, 1981), pp. 9–12.
Bierman, Irene, Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text (Berkeley, 1998).
Bivar, A.D.H., ‘The tomb at Resget: Its architecture and inscriptions’, in A. Tajvidi and M. Kiani (eds), The
Memorial Volume of the Vth International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology, Tehran – Isfahan –
Shiraz, 11th–18th April 1968, vol. 2 (Tehran, 1972), pp. 15–23.
Blair, Sheila, The Monumental Inscriptions from Early Islamic Iran and Transoxania (Leiden, 1992).
—— Islamic Inscriptions (New York, 1998).
Bosworth, C.E. (ed.), Iran and Islam, in Memory of the Late Vladimir Minorsky (Edinburgh, 1971).
Browne, Edward G., A Literary History of Persia (London, 1908).
Burkett, Mary, ‘Tomb towers and inscriptions in Iran’, Oriental Art xi/2 (1965), pp. 101–6.
Casanova, P., ‘Les Ispehbeds de Firim’, in T.W. Arnold and R.A. Nicholson (eds), A Volume of Oriental Studies
Presented to Edward G. Browne (Cambridge, 1922).
Cruikshank Dodd, Erica, and Shereen Khairallah, The Image of the Word: A Study of Quranic Verses in Islamic
Architecture (Beirut, 1981).
Daneshvari, Abbas, Medieval Tomb Towers of Iran (Lexington, 1986).
Davis, Dick (trans.), Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (New York, 2004).
Diez, Ernst, Die Kunst der Islamischen Völker (Berlin, 1915).
—— Persien, Islamische Baukunst in Churasan (Hagen, 1923).
Esin, Emel, ‘Al Qubbah al-Turkiyya: An essay on the architectonic forms of the Islamic Turkish funerary
monument’, Atti del Terzo Congresso di Studi Arabi e Islamici (Naples, 1967), pp. 281–313.
Ettinghausen, Richard, and Oleg Grabar, The Art and Architecture of Islam 650–1250 (New Haven and London,
1987).
—— and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1260 (New Haven and London, 2001).
Ferdowsi, Abu al-Qasim, Shahnameh (Tehran, 2001).
Frye, Richard, ‘Notes on the renaissance of the 10th and 11th centuries in eastern Iran’, Central Asiatic Journal
i (1955), pp. 137–43.
—— ‘The charisma of kingship in ancient Iran’, Iranica Antiqua vi (1964), pp. 36–54.
—— ‘The new Persian renaissance in western Iran’, Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honour of Hamilton A.R. Gibb
(Leiden, 1965), pp. 225–31.
Godard, André, ‘Les tours de Ladjim et de Resget’, Athar-é Iran i (1932), pp. 109–21.

Grabar, Oleg, ‘The earliest Islamic commemorative structures’, Ars Orientalis vi (1966), pp. 7–46.
—— ‘The visual arts’, in Richard Frye (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4: From the Arab Invasion to the
Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 329–51.
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—— ‘Arabische Inschriften aus Iran und Syrien’, Archäeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran viii (1936), pp. 78–102.
Hillenbrand, Robert, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (Edinburgh, 1994).
Isfandiyar, Mohammad bin Hasan Ibn, Tarikh-e Tabarestan, ed. Abbas Iqbal, 2 vols (Tehran, 1941–2).
Iskandar, Kaykavus Ibn, Qabusnameh (Tehran, 1972).
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the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 595–632.
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1995).
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4: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 198–249.
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—— ‘Pilgrims and patrons: Ziyarat under the Bavandids and Samanids’, Proceedings of ‘The People of the
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—— ‘The lofty castle of Qabus b. Vushmgir’, in Sarah Stewart and Edmund Herzig (eds), Early Islamic Iran: The
Idea of Iran, vol. 5 (London, 2012), pp. 120–38.
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—— The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, trans. B.A. Collins (Reading, 1994).
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Darke (London, 1960).
Otto-Dorn, Katharina, L’Art de l’Islam (Paris, 1967).
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Farhad Daftary and Josef Meri (eds), Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honour of Wilferd
Madelung (London, 2003), pp. 318–37.
Ward, Rachel, Islamic Metalwork (London, 1993).

5
Sacred Sites of Kingship:
The Maydan and Mapping the Spatial–Spiritual Vision of the
Empire in Safavid Iran
sussan b abaie

5.1 Map of Safavid Persia, c.1629.

Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther
put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner
court of the king’s house, over against the king’s
house: and the king sat upon his royal throne in the
royal house, over against the gate of the house.
(Esther 5:1)

T

h e royal gatehouse of Achaemenid Jerusalem, which the story of Esther
evokes, signifies from a biblical point of view ‘the embodiment of royal power that
mediates the sacred–national space of the temple to the society’.1 In the city state of
Jerusalem–Judah in the fifth century b c e , that social space developed into a
formalized square located outside the temple gate, where civic life took place and
‘the king addresse[d] his citizenry within their place, the square’.2 Such interlacing
of power and authority (imperial and religious in equal measure) in the arena of the

urban square, across the spaces of the sacred, the political and the social, reiterates
in conceptual terms a formula that echoes quite provocatively and with uncanny
verisimilitude a far-distant place and time in seventeenth-century Isfahan, when, as
of 1598 c e , the city was the capital of the Safavid dynasty (1501–1722 c e ) (fig.
5.1).
The story of the Old Testament heroine and the Jewish queen of Ahasuerus –
identified by most ancient historians and biblical scholars as Artaxerxes, the
Persian king from 465 to 424 b c e – is especially relevant as a mental bridge to the
spatial configuration and social practice that I wish to explore here. This chapter
turns to the urban space of the maydan, the ‘square’, that quintessential feature of
Iranian cities, to suggest the kind of longue durée that Jean Guillaume attributes to
formal preferences that ‘are difficult to formulate, and whose origins cannot really
be defined’, but nevertheless persist through changes in style (fig. 5.2).3 The formal
preferences are the kind evoked in the biblical story and made further visible in
countless sources that range from ancient descriptions to medieval poetic–epic
retellings of the stories of Persian kings and kingdoms. The link is not so much
fixed and physical as it is evocative of continuities and memories. Jerusalem in this
instance opens a window onto other lost urban practices for which Achaemenid
examples no longer stand, but which are remembered through such tidbits of stories
and histories as the enigmatic archaeological remains at Susa – one of the
Achaemenid royal cities that was occupied, at least partly, until the arrival of the
Arabs in the seventh century c e – and the descriptions of the city–palace ensembles
in the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings, completed in 1010 by the Persian poet
Ferdowsi).4 The compelling physicality of the proximity of the social and the royal
spheres of action through the space of the urban square is found in references
repeated in the story of Seyavash – the son of King Kay Kavus and protégé of
Rostam, the hero of the Shahnameh.5 There, Ferdowsi enumerates gardens (bagh),
squares (maydan), royal porches (ayvan) and palaces (kakh) as the key ‘ingredients’
of a vast fortified (dej) city (shahr).6 That such maydan–kakh ensembles had
archaeological roots is further evoked in historical retellings, with examples
including the Maydan-e Kasra (the square at the legendary Taq-e Kasra (or Ayvan-e
Kasra), the famous Sasanian Ctesiphon: see further below). An equally intriguing
reference is found in the Tarikh-e Bayhaqi (or Tarikh-e Mas’udi written for the

Ghaznavid Sultan Massoud), another medieval source contemporaneous with
Ferdowsi, where Bozorgmehr, the wise vizier of that same Sasanian king is said to
have been brought to the ‘Maydan-e Kasra’, the square presumably adjacent to the
palace at Ctesiphon.7 These fragments of literary and archaeological renderings of a
space of social interaction between the citizenry and the embodiments of authority
shall refocus our attention later in this chapter. For now, I wish to argue that they
continue to inspire and become most vividly and self-consciously reiterated through
the space of the maydan–square in Safavid Persia.

5.2 Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan, Isfahan. Washed pen drawing by G. Hofsted van Essen (1703).

The thrust of this chapter is to situate the integral link of the idea of a maydan,
the public square in urban Persia, with a spatial–spiritual vision. Interrelated and
concurrent urban and historical events underpin this enquiry. The events began
before the turn of the seventeenth century and peaked by 1611–12; they pivoted
around several large-scale urban-focused building projects in the Mazandaran

region of the Caspian Sea, in Kerman (south-eastern Iran), in Mashhad (northeastern Iran), in Ardabil (north-western Iran) and in Isfahan (central Iran); all date
to the reign of Shah Abbas I ‘the Great’ (r. 1587–1629 c e ).8 Seen from economic,
political and religious perspectives, each was a compelling instalment on the path
towards a model resembling a true planned political economy.9 Each further
solidified royal control over the principal trade goods and raw material (silk in
particular) and the routes and means of global trade and, collectively, promoted
social mobility for the merchant and elite groups close to that imperial centre.10
The economic motivations, however important, must have needed an anchor in
socially recognizable and symbolically compelling markers of meaning just as much
as those who contributed to the production of wealth through infrastructural
interventions. And this aspect of the enterprise lies behind my thinking on the
coordinated urban developments in the two decades bracketing the turn of the
seventeenth century. It is well known that seismic social–spiritual forces were
unleashed by the rise to power of Shah Ismail (r. 1501–24 c e ), his dynasty from the
Safaviyya Sufi order (of fourteenth-century origin) and especially the declaration of
Imami (Twelver) Shi‘ism (which holds a belief in the legitimacy of succession after
the Prophet Mohammad down to his twelfth descendent Imam) as the religion of
the Safavid realms.11 We shall not concern ourselves in this chapter with the
sixteenth-century constructions and urban developments: the interventions in
Tabriz, the first Safavid capital, brief as they may have been; the ancestral shrine of
Shaykh Safi al-Din (1252–1334 c e ) in Ardabil as the dynastic spiritual centre; the
redevelopment of Qazvin under Shah Tahmasb (r. 1524–76 c e ) to serve as the
capital city (after Tabriz) and as an urban nexus of power under the tutelage of the
new religion.12 In 1598 Isfahan was appointed as the capital city, an imperial centre
so grand in Safavid parlance to be called Esfahan nesf-e jahan or ‘Isfahan, Half the
World’ (plate 5.3).
The chronological threshold (the turn of the seventeenth century) for this
chapter requires, at least, a mention of another related and continuously magnetic
site of crucial significance to the Safavid project of Shi‘ification and its centrality to
the imperial agenda: the urban developments in Mashhad. This was focused on the
construction of promenades and access roads, markets and other facilities that
helped maintain and restore vital pilgrimage to the Shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth

Shi‘i Imam (d. 818 c e ), a task that was tied into diverting the faithful’s attention
from Ottoman-held or contested holy sites (Mecca and Medina in Arabia, Karbala
and Najaf in Mesopotamia) towards ‘internal’ spiritual resources.13
Together with additions by Shah Abbas I to the dynastic shrine, the two holy
sites of Ardabil and Mashhad served as a thread – weaving the Safavid past to their
Imami Shi‘i present – made abundantly visible through imperial patronage,
charitable donations (waqf) and ceremonial events and visits, for which pilgrimage
routes were refurbished and made safe.14 Given these building campaigns, it is safe
to say that while the link between the patronage of shrines and the religiously
motivated social engineering may require little argument to situate the spiritual
persuasion in imperial agendas, we rarely consider the urban developments (as with
many contemporary cities in early-modern Eurasia) as similarly motivated ventures
in reaffirming the divine agenda in kingship and, in the Safavid context, as the
social, economic and political refashioning of that particularly fragile attempt at
bolstering the conversion process with lasting power.15 Here, I want to revisit these
urban building works as the collective project of physically centring – in the public
square – and remapping the spiritual geography of the Safavid Empire and as
palpable enunciations of the promise of Imami Shi‘ism.

pe r s ianizing m u s lim k ings h ip
I am aware of the problematic nature of dealing with intangibles, and the
phenomenon of the ‘spirit’ has been used and abused enough to send shudders
down anyone’s spine. My intention is neither to endorse the Sufi-inclinations of
some Persian studies on Persian art and architecture, nor to replace it with another
universalizing concept. Rather, and with the following snapshots of the maydan in
view, I offer a series of observations on patterns of behaviour that take the urban,
architectural, functional and political pulse of the maydan ensembles in the cities of
Isfahan, Farahabad and Kerman and analyse the experiential encounter between the
kinetics of spatial orientation and the stasis of the placement of monuments of
imperial and sub-imperial patronage in these squares. Accordingly, the urban
architectural choices and patterns serve as signposts, remembering and picturing
the ceremonials of kings across the histories of Iran and reconstituting, for the first

time since the advent of Islam, an ideologically and geographically coherent notion
of Iranzamin (‘the Land of Iran’) during the Safavid period. In other words, the
Safavid maydan relates to a cultural thread that weaves through time and space and
serves as one of the generative ideas of the ‘idea of Iran’.
Margaret Root argues in Chapter 1 of this book that the Achaemenid Persepolis
and its neighbourhood of funerary and royal sites as well as its agrarian landscape
should be read as an integrated royal–urban vision, different from a city proper as
we know it, but equally important as an urban centre that visualizes an image of the
empire. In that regard, the spatial, architectural and ceremonial relation among the
elevated palatine platform (takht), its sight perspectives overlooking the terrain of
ceremonial events below and the plain of life beyond would suggest a particularized
Persian idea of kingship and its performative explications of spiritual authority
(Chapter 1, plate 1.2). As Root notes, this vision of the structuring of a vast empire
is different than, for instance, the Greek model of an acropolis–citadel at a location
so removed that it makes the reciprocities of seeing and being seen immaterial to
the experience of the divine endorsement of kingship.
In thinking about the conceptual dimensions of seeing and being seen, spaced
and placed as the takht and its land extension, one might also recall some of the
general features of the Sasanian royal domains. The late Lionel Bier has argued that
the absence of sufficient archaeological knowledge – in his case, with regards to
early Muslim palaces and the appropriation of Sasanian palatine traditions – makes
it impossible to draw direct links between architectural features and compositions
from the latter to the former. Instead, he suggests that ‘early Muslim rulers looked
to their Sasanian predecessors for means by which to express a concept of kingship
in architectural as well as ceremonial terms’.16 Furthermore, he notes that the
adaptations were neither comprehensive nor sufficiently ‘archaeological’ to isolate
the various components.
Sasanian cities like Ardashir Khwarrah (the ‘Glory of Ardashir’) in Fars,
renamed after the Arab Muslim conquest as Firuzabad (the ‘Land of Victory’), had
implications for the development of the Abbasid imperial city of Baghdad in the
ninth century c e . Firuzabad was a revival of an Achaemenid city and was designed
for Ardashir I (r. 224–39/40 c e ), the ruler of Estakhr (in Fars) and the founder of
the Sasanian Empire (224–651 c e ). The city was constructed on a round plan 2

kilometres in diameter, encircled by a trench and criss-crossed by four avenues
leading to the four gates of the city. At its centre was the imperial cluster of
buildings, including a fire temple to meet Zoroastrian ritual needs. While not clear
as to its other features, the centre implied in conceptual terms a nimbus of divine
kingship. The other important spatial–architectural feature of Sasanian kingship to
inspire Muslim rulers captures the relationship between the locus of the divine king
at the apex of an axial disposition of the halls and courts locating the composition at
the official centre of the palace. As is also well known, the place of honour in such
palatine compositions was articulated in the form of an ayvan porch (or taq) of the
vaulted audience hall, the most famous of which was at Ctesiphon, the royal palacecity in the vicinity of Baghdad, built for the Sasanian Shapur I (r. c.240–c.270 c e )
(fig. 5.4).

5.4 Taq-e Kasra, Ctesiphon, Iraq.

Desirable as it may be to thread the survivals and revivals of the idea of Iran
through the refashioning of Persianness out of the physical remains of her
antiquities – a task taken up by our colleagues Matthew Canepa and the late Melanie
Michailidis in Chapters 2 and 4 – it is, I suggest, the transformations through the

adoption of Shi‘ism and its facilitation of the Persianization of Islam that have
sublimated the traces of the idea (or ideas) of Iran as a spiritual practice. Thus
bridging the medieval and modern periods of Iranian history, this idea in turn had
found its representational value in the urban posture and performance of kingship.17
By spiritual, I do not mean a single religious vision. Rather, the point is a shared
tendency towards spirituality and its representation through a monarchical
structuring of the social order. In such an order, the king stands as a benevolent
agent, coordinating a divine plan on earth. The Safavid project of Shi‘ification was
in reality a phenomenon of Persianization in that the promulgation of the newly
tailored theology of rulership was anchored through royal patronage of practical
instruments of (re)presentation and (re-)education. For instance, at the turn of the
seventeenth century, just as Isfahan was being reconceived on a grand scale and
centred on its maydan, the patronized Shi‘i ulema were busy fulfilling such royal
commissions as the compiling of legal opinions on all matters pertaining to proper
conduct of a Shi‘i Muslim life – birth and death, marriage and divorce, charity,
trade, penal codes. The most popular among them was Shaykh Baha’i’s Jami’-i
Abbasi (Compendium for Abbas; that is, Shah Abbas I).18 The shah had lured this
famous scholar, philosopher and theologian from Jabal Amil in southern Lebanon to
Isfahan, appointing him the shaykh al-Islam (‘chief theological advisor’) of the city
and recruiting him into the service of the Safavid court and society. As has been
noted by Rula Abisaab, his compendium was composed in response to ‘a conscious
attempt to deliver to Persian society a token of a Persianized Shiism’, for which
Shah Abbas I ordered the manuscript to be, according to Shaykh Baha’i, in ‘a clear,
comprehensible language in order that all people, the learned and the lay, would
seek benefit from it’.19
Indeed, the longevity of the idea of spirituality and kingship underpins the
history of the idea of Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis. That idea arguably
still casts its shadow on the post-1979 formulation of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
its theocratic structure of rule and the supreme authority of the learned in Shi‘i
theology, the systemic articulation of the velayat-e faqih (‘mandate of the jurist’),
especially as stipulated by Ayatollah Khomeini (1902–89) as integral to the rahbar-e
enqelab (‘leadership of the revolution’). These are not terribly far from the idea of
spirituality and kingship so deeply rooted in the history of Iran.20 Here, however,

our focus will be on the spatial enactment of that tacit social contract. The ‘space’
component of this discussion draws on the maydan, defined as the public square,
but also as the key organizing element of the urban imprint of kingship in Safavid
Iran.21 This chapter suggests that commerce and community anchor a new political
theory of rule, that Safavid planners articulated the armature of the urban life
through spatial and architectural features and strategies, and that they appealed to
Shi‘i Islamic exigencies as much as to cultural expectations rooted in ancient
Persian practices of kingship. These representations made palpable the longevity of
the abstract idea of Iran, as we have posited in our introduction to this book.

r e me mb e r in g

through

b u ilding

Unlike the quotations and reworked evocations of the visual tropes of ancient
Persian architecture in, for instance, the early medieval Islamic tomb towers (see
Chapter 4) and the pre-modern and modern Qajar (1785–1925) and Pahlavi (1925–
79) revivals and appropriations of Achaemenid and Sasanian motifs and typologies
(see Chapter 6), monumental and vernacular architecture of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in Persia displays little quotable signs of a forensic interest.
Achaemenid-style pillars and capitals or stone panels with Safavid kings in the
guise of ancient heroes carved in the manner of Sasanian reliefs are nowhere to be
found in the public arenas or private domains of Safavid architecture, whether
within cities or in extra urban sites of fortifications, palaces, hunting lodges,
mansions, bridges, caravanserai or other civic monuments.
There are, to be sure, signs of knowing and valorization of ‘pieces’ of the past.
Among those, the ayvan form has been widely used since the seventh century,
especially in greater Iran, as a recognizable reference to the Sasanian king Khosrow
Anushirvan (r. 531–79 c e ). His fame as ‘the Just’ (dadgar) warrior king casts the
aura of legitimacy through intimations of Ctesiphon, his legendary palace with its
majestic ayvan known as the Taq-e Kasra or Ayvan-e Kasra (the audience portico of
Khosrow) (fig. 5.4).
The distinctive talar, the pillared-hall scheme that constitutes the ceremonial
semi-open space in front of the Safavid palaces in Isfahan, has been compared to
the pillared halls of Persepolis and has persisted in scholarship as an indisputable

example of the survival of Achaemenid models (plate 5.5) (see also Chapter 1, plate
1.2 and fig. 1.14).22 The pillared hall, most famously memorialized in the ruins of
the Apadana at Persepolis, was associated with the ceremonials of kingship in the
Achaemenid context. In light of the references to its composition as the Chehel
Menar or Chil Minar (‘forty columns’; that is, a multi-pillared hall) in medieval
Persian literature and history, one may surmise it was understood in later eras to
have functioned as such, given especially the direct appropriation of its form and
function in the palaces of Shah Jahan in the neighbouring Mughal India.23 Thus a
significant facet of the spatial relevance of the takht/talar/ayvan as a viewing stage
seems to have been articulated through observations from outside.
That Shah Jahan and his architects understood the implications of this formula
is borne out by the research and analysis advanced by Ebba Koch.24 In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Persepolis and the Apadana palace had
become widely known as Chehel Menar, through engraved images and descriptions
provided by European travellers to Safavid Persia.25 Koch points out, for instance,
that this familiarity with the ancient monument could have carried with it
reverberations of its symbolic meanings in European architecture, an example of
which is the provocative references to plans for the Schönbrunn Palace by the
architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach for Emperor Charles VI. Koch is also
the source for having located a reference to a fragmentary letter attributed to
Fischer von Erlach which states that the architect had planned
to build the new royal palace at Schönbrunnon a hill in the same way as it
is reported of the royal castle at Persepolis or Tschehelminar, so that His
Majesty [Charles VI] – like Cyrus overlooking his empire – can see as far as
the borders of Hungary.26
Such tantalizing evocations of imperial takht and viewing stages from which the
monarch casts his gaze over his empire is realized in the maydan of Isfahan by the
middle of the seventeenth century.
The formal relationship, traceable through such multi-pillared halls between
the Safavid talar and the Achaemenid Apadana, thus may offer another venue for a
‘survival’ narrative. Just as the ayvan was carried through architectural recreations
and literary reproductions – the signs and somatic marks of a valorized model of

Iranian kingship – so too may have been the multi-pillared hall scheme, which
offers the generic ancestry for the slender wooden columns of the talar at the
seventeenth-century palaces in Isfahan.
Nearly every ayvan in Safavid palaces in Isfahan, as in many other places,
including the Mamluk citadel in Cairo, are compared through literary allusions to
the Ayvan-e Kasra.27 Other such citations of the valorized past are reported by some
of the European visitors to Safavid Persia. The French traveller Jean Chardin noted
the presence of two antique marble column bases at the corner of the Harem Gate in
Isfahan (fig. 5.6). These, as Chardin states, were ‘des pièces tirées des ruines de
Persépolis’, an observation that may point to a deliberate positioning of the pieces in
an implied parallelism between the two imperial ensembles.28 After all, the Harem
Gate was one of the two principal entranceways into the vast royal precinct of
Isfahan when the city was the capital from 1598 to 1722. The precinct known as the
daulatkhana (the ‘abode of felicitous governance’) housed Safavid court life and its
imperial enterprise, and the Harem Gate served as the main thoroughfare into the
inner zone of the precinct, where ministerial messages and royal directives were
relayed to and from the shah when he was not at audiences and ‘cabinet’ meetings
at the official seat of the Ali Qapu Palace, the other main gateway of the ensemble.29
Despite the absence of Persian written references to this feature of the Harem Gate,
the very act of transporting and installing pieces of Persepolis at such an iconically
potent site must be read as indicative of a deliberate reference to a meaningful –
and revered – antiquity. Yet I hesitate to call this Persepolitan spolia, simply
because such definitions tend to be understood as a purposeful integration of
antique features into a structure or an uban scheme.30

5.6 Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan, Isfahan; reconstructed rendering of the west flank with the Ali Qapu Palace Gateway before the addition of the
talar in 1644, the Harem Gate on the left and the talar-fronted Palace of Talar-e Tavila inside the daulatkhana.

The point of such caution, and one in need of emphasis, is related in large part
to prevalent technologies of construction. Building materials and methods – brick
and mortar, arches and vaults – throughout the majority of greater Iran in its postantique period are incompatible with the stone (and even wood, which is scarce
except along the Caspian Sea shore) vocabulary of the Achaemenid antiquity in
Persian architecture. Not surprisingly, the absence of such direct appropriations or
stylistic revivals of antique pieces in the building works of the Safavid period makes
it almost impossible to speak of survivals and revivals in the same way that one
might approach the subject in the structurally more accommodating architecture of,
for instance, Mughal India and the Ottoman Mediterranean – regions where stone
was the principal building material.
Architectural history, it is said, is, in part at least, an exercise in locating
genealogies: of the architectonics of the buildings, and the biographies of those
who enacted the forms, types, techniques and themes, tracing into ‘relevant’ pasts
for the borrowings and inspirations that have informed the presents.31 With this
latter point in mind and with the physical tracings just offered, this chapter aims to
build an argument in which the Safavid revivals or appropriations of recognizably
potent forms – the talar and the ayvan – would also include spatial arrangements
on an urban scale and a ‘consciousness’ towards and ‘interest’ in those antique
pasts as an aspect of cultural memory.
The royal graffiti carved on the ruins of Persepolis from Sasanian times to the

fifteenth-century Timurid and sixteenth-century Safavid kings, and onwards into
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, serve not only as signs of human vanity,
but as the ‘I was here’ markers left by royal deliberation indicative of that sort of
memory continuity.32 Others may be interlaced across divergent times and places:
the tenth-century Buyid claims to authoritative Islamic refashioning of kingship in
Sasanian guise; the dreams of Shaykh Safi (1252–1334 c e ), the spiritual progenitor
of the Safavid dynasty, posing textual parallelism to Sasanian memories; or the
anchoring onto the memories of the Shahnameh, the historical chronicles of the
Safavids, especially during the time of Shah Abbas I, when new texts were
composed and illustrated to record the history of the new ‘king of kings’.33
Collectively, they anchor a sense of group identity and cultural memory, irrespective
of the specificities of race, ethnicity, language or geography. In that sense, our book
too is an act of remembering as synchronicity.
Furthermore, such traces of cultural memory may be gleaned from written
sources that are, in addition, oddly mythical in their imagination, while they are in
fact related to real places. The Safavid historian Afushta Natanzi refers to Estakhr
(near Shiraz) and to Shiraz as the dar al-molk-e solaymani, the ‘Solomonic seat of
rule’, a conjuring of the real and the imagined that is rooted in the operations of
cultural memory.34 Similarly, the point to underscore is that while memories of such
configurations as an urban space of royal–religious–economic triangulation may
not be unique to the Safavid period, it becomes an especially sustained and carefully
articulated feature of urban design in this period and especially in the seventeenth
century.

t h e s afav id m ay dan

in t he

s eventeenth c entury

In order to chart the physical terrain of this discussion, here I offer a series of
snapshot views of the urban public-square projects of the cities of Farahabad,
Isfahan and Kerman (see fig. 5.23).35 As it is, Isfahan has been studied and
documented with greater intensity than any other city in Safavid Persia;36 for this
reason, and my own previous contributions to Isfahan studies, the following
discussion on Isfahan will be brief. Farahabad as a city remains largely in the dark,
although its palatial and garden ensembles have received some attention.37 Kerman

is among the most attractive cities in south-central Iran with rich archaeological
remains and architectural evidence from early medieval to the nineteenth-century
Qajar interventions. Taking advantage of the material gathered during a research
trip in 2000, this segment of the discussion attempts to add to the meagre scholarly
attention dedicated to architectural works of Safavid Kerman.38 The three cities take
centre stage also for the fact that they do not have the ‘natural’ Shi‘i appeal of the
urban building works that focused on Ardabil, Mashhad and Qom (and Najaf and
Karbala in Iraq until the 1630s) during the Safavid period. On the other hand, the
designs of Farahabad, Isfahan and Kerman articulate imperial intentions of a Shi‘i
polity, aiming to create an urban identity hinged on the admixture of the
commercial, the religious and the political. They furthermore preserve the most
prominent examples in Safavid Persia of such urban centres, albeit some to a better
degree than others, and are described and documented, again with varying degrees
of completeness or complexity.
Chronologically, but also politically, symbolically and architecturally, the
Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan in Isfahan takes precedence in this discussion (fig. 5.2,
plate 5.3 and fig. 5.7). It was begun in 1590–1 as one of the two centrepieces of the
urban-renewal campaign – the other, begun c.1596, was the promenade of Chahar
Bagh that linked the old city to the new quarters and developments on the south
side of the River Zayandarud – in anticipation of the transfer of the capital to
Isfahan in 1598.39 The enormous, rectangular maydan anchored the urban scheme
in which a ceremonially enhanced gatehouse (the Qaysariyya, also begun in 1590–
1) on the north side connected the new square, through the covered bazaar
network, to the old Maydan-e Kohna – the Great Saljuq (1037–94 c e ) urban centre
that had survived along with its famous Friday Mosque from that phase of the city’s
central location within a Turko-Iranian polity. Contemporaneously, a two-storey
royal gatehouse, famed as the Ali Qapu (the ‘Lofty Gate’) demarcated the west side
of the square as the royal ‘wall’, beyond which the imperial household and
government took residence at the Bagh-e Naqsh-e Jahan, a complex to be developed
in 1590–1 and 1660s into an ensemble of palaces, imperial workshops, a
chancellery and the harem complex, among other constituent parts of a royal
precinct.

5.7 Sketch plan of Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan, Isfahan, showing
(1) the square,
(2) Masjed-e Jadid Abbasi,
(3) daulatkhana royal precinct,
(3a) Ali Qapu Palace gateway,
(4) Shaykh Lotfallah Chapel Mosque,
(5) Qaysariyya entrance gate,
(5a) the royal bazaar ensemble where a mint, a bathhouse and a hospital stood as part of the complex.

The maydan underwent a major modification in 1602–3 when shops, two rows
deep, regularized the continuous two-storey façade of the maydan, creating a
peripheral wall that remains to this day. It was in this very phase that the plan
began to reveal its grand design conception: a one-room, domed chapel mosque (a
private mosque for the royal household) was built on the east side, possibly

conceived from the start in the name of the prominent jurist and scholar Shaykh
Lotfallah, one of those Amili jurists recruited to assist in the Shi‘ification process;
the Ali Qapu was modified to become a five-storey building that served as the
principal royal and ceremonial entrance into the daulatkhana as well as the seat of
the judiciary. The Shaykh Lotfallah Mosque was completed in 1618–19, and the Ali
Qapu around 1615, before it was modified once again in 1644 with the addition of
its front building and ceremonial talar pillared hall (more on this later) (plate 5.8).
Construction of the Masjed-e Jadid-e Abbasi (the New Abbasi Mosque, better
known as the Royal Mosque or Shah Mosque, and more recently as the Imam
Mosque) began in 1611–12 (plate 5.9). The location of the mosque at the south end
of the square and the layout, which included the unusual incorporation of a pair of
madrasa courtyards flanking the main sanctuary, and the skewed axis, which creates
the very distinctive profile views of the building, together speak of complex advance
planning for this enormous undertaking, requiring, furthermore, the mobilization
of funds, material resources, expertise and labour force, as well as procurement of
land that was already privately owned. The significance of this mosque as the
largest and most prominent of the monuments along the square periphery, and as
the very first congregational mosque to have been sponsored by Safavid royal
decree, cannot be overemphasized. Moreover, it is in the timing of the relevant
constructions coinciding with this mosque that we get a glimpse of the urgency of
spiritual confirmation as an integral feature of the architectural and spatial
articulations of the public square of the principal urban developments in Safavid
Persia.

Legalizing the Friday Prayer
The dynasty’s claim to authority in the absence of the Mahdi, the promised messiah
of the Imamate, faced forbidding obstacles, among them the fact that Shi‘i jurists of
the realm could not agree on the permissibility of the Friday prayer (salat al-Jum’a)
during the absence of the twelfth Imam.40 In the Shi‘i state, the shahs could neither
lead the prayer nor claim legal sovereignty through the khutba, the sermon that
originated with the Prophet and was delivered thereafter in the name of his deputy
on earth – the caliph in Sunni Islam, and the Imams in Shi‘i Islam – at the Friday

noon congregational prayer.41 When Shah Ismail was warned against the
promulgation of the Imami Shi‘i creed among the largely Sunni urban population of
Tabriz – the capital of the Aq Quyunlu (1378–1508 c e ) – whom he had defeated to
ascend the throne, he invoked Imam Ali’s authority through the recounting of a
dream whereby the Imam had advised him to have his armed Qizilbash warriors
(the Turkmen clan supporting the Safaviyya order and the shah) encircle the
worshippers during the Friday prayer so as to contain any unrest during the delivery
of the sermon.42
In the absence of the twelfth Imam in the Imami practice of Shi‘ism, the king
(in this case the Safavid shahs, who were the first to establish an imperial rule in
the framework of Imami Shi‘ism) had to find theological support to justify their dual
role as the chief purveyor of spiritual and temporal authority. The intervention of an
imported and patronized cohort of Shi‘i scholars from Jabal Amil and the holy cities
of Iraq-e Arab (corresponding roughly to the Iraq of today, as against the Iraq-e
Ajam, an area commensurate with the central and western parts of present-day
Iran) played a crucial role. With a juridical philosophy sympathetic to the imperial
designs of the Safavids, the Friday prayer sermon, during the sixteenth century, was
gradually incorporated into a legalistic rendition of Imami Shi‘ism, culminating in
the prominence, albeit not without clerical resistance and debate, granted by Shah
Abbas I to the views of Shaykh Lotfallah Maysi, whom he held in highest regard as
the court mujtahid (‘jurisconsult’), especially for his unwavering support of the
imperial ideology and its legitimatization through Friday prayer, arguing for the
obligation of its performance.43
Popular resistance and protestation to the centralizing of religious authority
and its imperial appropriation was articulated through the debate on the status of
the Muslims’ religious obligations, especially regarding the intertwined authority of
the ruler and the performance of Friday prayer. The objections, voiced by the old
elite of the city underscored the economic as well as political anxiety in the face of
centralizing efforts by the Safavid household. Members of the merchant and guild
communities associated with the old Friday Mosque of the city (the predominantly
Saljuq structure of the masjed-i jum’a at the centre of the old pre-Shah Abbas I
Isfahan) had objected to the authority of Shaykh Lotfallah and had accused him of
fabricating legal prescriptives. The Shaykh’s refutation of those objections is in turn

justified by evidence he offers in his treatise, al-I’tikafiyya (‘Seclusion’, or ‘Spiritual
Retreat’), where he says that Shah Abbas I intended to build him ‘a congregational
mosque which can fit from a thousand to two thousand people, facing my house that
Turks, slaves and every other willing person including myself, may come to you’.44
The intention, if not the actual mosque of Shaykh Lotfallah, which is a small,
single-domed chapel mosque without congregational capacity, speaks to the
significance of the restoration of the Friday prayer as an integral aspect of making
the capital city the imperial centre of the Imami Shi‘i polity, whose legitimacy was
questioned by Sunni rival states, especially the Ottomans and the Shaybanid
Uzbeks.45
As the shaykh al-Islam, his support was sought and rewarded by Shah Abbas I
as an integral facet of the establishment of Isfahan’s maydan and its two mosques,
in particular the large congregational mosque, as an element of statehood. The
foundation in 1603–4 of a royal chapel mosque, which was also affiliated with the
site and functions of the madrasa where Shaykh Lotfallah taught, and its location
directly across from the principal gate into the palace precinct articulated the
primacy of the favourable legal opinion and its capacity to be recruited in lending
legitimacy to the political foundation of Safavid rule. At the same time, such
patronage helped secure the clerical assumption of Imamate authority under their
tutelage.
It is in light of the significance of the spiritual mapping, so resolutely pursued
at Isfahan and its maydan, as suggested here, that we must search for its currency
across the Safavid imaginary of the imperial centring and its capacity to be subtly
evoked in projects carried out simultaneously in Mazandaran and a bit earlier in
Kerman.

Mazandaran
At the Caspian region of Mazandaran, Shah Abbas I sponsored the founding of two
new cities: Farahabad (near Sari, a small village then and a large city today) was to
serve as the principal urban entrepôt for the large-scale silk industry, its production
and processing for distribution from the region; Ashraf (today’s Behshahr) was to
be a regional royal retreat.46 By virtue of their location along the shore of the

Caspian Sea, with fish- and prey-rich environs, a lush, subtropical landscape and
forested mountains, they were more than ‘pleasant retreats’ illustrative of a
presumed peripatetic habit of kingship.47 Indeed, Farahabad was planned on a scale
suited to its function as the principal royal commercial hub and provincial capital
(fig. 5.10). So significant was this urban project that it prompted a transfer of
populations from north-west Iran and the Caucusus, including Armenian, Georgian
and Tabrizi silk-workers and other loyal subjects.

5.10 Sketch plan of the complex at Farahabad, Mazandaran Province, showing
1) the maydan,
2) the congregational mosque,
3) the royal precinct (gardens and pavilions).

Much of Safavid Farahabad is lost to us, but what remains, and what is relayed
through contemporary sources, indicates such grandeur of conception, of which
only fragments survive, still awaiting thorough archaeological investigation.
Nevertheless, the remains clearly demonstrate that it was intended as a fullyfledged city with a plan that included the principal features of a Safavid metropolis:

a public maydan, a daulatkhana, a Friday mosque and bazaars, as well as madrasas,
hammams, houses, roads, bridges, and so forth.
In 1618, when Pietro Della Valle was seeking an audience with Shah Abbas I
while the king was in Mazandaran, Farahabad was already built up enough for the
Italian to note that there were streets so long that they made the city’s un-walled
circumference equal to if not greater than that of Rome or Constantinople.48 He
describes wide avenues with houses neatly facing one another. The avenues were
lined with water channels for the purposes of catching rainwater from the houses.
Unlike the houses that were built using local construction materials and methods
(mud and thatch, for example), as he underscores, a vast new caravanserai, a public
hammam and the shah’s residence were constructed from baked brick and had tiled
decoration. One of the most striking features of Farahabad was the fact that the
river Tajine ran through the middle of the city, providing a riverfront opportunity to
build houses with open talars that utilized the vistas (fig. 5.11). A single bridge
spanned the river at its most concentrated traffic point, presumably accommodating
some major artery.

5.11 Remains of the Safavid bridge over the Tajine River, along which houses were built with balconies and talar porches, Farahabad,
Mazandaran Province.

Della Valle further elaborates on the diversity of the populations brought to
Farahabad, among whom he singles out the Christian Armenian and Georgian silkworkers who enjoyed royal protection and ‘could build as many houses and
churches as they wished’. Such ‘privileges’ as accorded the Christian communities
had parallels in Isfahan, where Julfan Armenian merchants were forcibly relocated
in 1604–5 and where land for the founding of a residential quarter, New Julfa, was
granted by royal decree. In the wake of Ottoman–Safavid conflicts over territories of
historical Armenia, the shahs’ patronage was motivated by pragmatism: the
mercantile and farming skills of these Christian communities provided crucial
support to the economic designs of the court.49
The enormous investment in resources and manpower for developing
Farahabad on such a vast scale and the fullness of the urban planning and the rapid
pace of construction bear witness to the centrality of the city in view of the politicoeconomic plans that included refashioning the imperial household as much as the

administrative structure of the Safavid polity.50 Two features of the new city mark it
as an imperial project of urban–political weight comparable, albeit on a secondary
level, to Isfahan. One is the maydan, described by Molla Jalal Monajjem as a
rectangular space of a ratio suitable for polo playing and for the mixed ceremonial
use we know so well from Isfahan (fig. 5.10).51 The significance of the public square
here is less visible to us as so little is known. But to deduce how important such a
scheme had been, we need to turn to the most surprising building addition in
Farahabad: the integration of a royal-sponsored Friday mosque in the city (figs
5.12, 5.13). The four-ayvan-plan mosque, built on a monumental scale, was
decorated with glazed tiles and had fine vaulting systems executed in typical Safavid
brickwork. Fragmentary survivals of the tilework, the fine brickwork and the
complex brick-patterned vaults bespeak of an impressive building. It is, however, in
the very planning of a Friday congregational mosque of imperial scale along with
the city in 1611–12 that we find a sign of the extraordinary meaning loaded in the
urban project at Farahabad. And again, it is the contemporaneity of the
commencement of construction of the congregational mosques of Farahabad and
Isfahan that denotes the enormity of the politico-religious accomplishment.

5.12 The south qibla ayvan (the porch towards the direction of prayer) of the Congregational Mosque, Farahabad, Mazandaran Province.

5.13 View of the courtyard and north ayvan with remains of the central pool, Congregational Mosque, Farahabad, Mazandaran Province.

Thus, the Farahabad mosque may be best understood as a pendant gesture to
the one in Isfahan, which had been planned earlier but also commenced at the same
time as the one in Farahabad; both were also accompanied by constructions at
Mashhad and Ardabil. Whereas in Farahabad the design and construction campaign
simultaneously completed the maydan, mosque, daulatkhana and other features of
the urban development, at Isfahan the project was so massive that it took nearly two
decades to give the main features of the city’s new sector, including the first
imperial mosque of the Safavids, full shape.

Kerman
The third of the grand maydan constructions of this period is in Kerman, the city on
the south-eastern Iranian plateau with considerable antiquity (plate 5.14). Kerman
assumed its reputation as an important mark on world trade maps in the period
under consideration here. Safavid Kerman was the centre for the procurement,

storage, distribution and export of two of the most important manufactured goods
in Safavid Persia: blue-and-white ceramics and wool carpets.52 Under the patronage
of Ganj Ali Khan (d. 1625 c e ) – the governor appointed by Shah Abbas I, a close
childhood friend of the shah’s and a member of the shahsevan (‘devotees of the
shah’) – Kerman was built up to serve its expanded role as a node on trade routes
linking India and Persia with their European clients of ceramics and carpets through
transport routes to the port city of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. As such,
Kerman constructions partake in the same infrastructural campaigns of building for
the promotion of trade as those that accompanied Farahabad and Isfahan.
In its formal layout, Ganj Ali Khan’s urban centre resembles the great maydan
of Shah Abbas I in the capital city, the construction of which had begun some six
years earlier (fig. 5.15). Even though the maydan in Kerman is much smaller in area
(the one in Isfahan measures more than 85,000 square metres; the one in Kerman
about 5,000 square metres), and though its peripheries are architecturally less
complex in comparison to those of Isfahan, Ganj Ali Khan’s maydan recalls the
Safavid public square of Isfahan in terms of its conceptualization of an urban centre.
The rather obvious link here, however, does not sufficiently explain the
particularities of the Kerman solution and its place within the larger cultural scheme
propositioned in this chapter. The following discussion on the maydan project in
Kerman, therefore, demands a deeper excavation of its component parts and their
social and urban meanings for it to be understood in light of a spiritual–imperial
mapping as I posit in this chapter. For a variety of reasons, including difficulty of
access, this ensemble has attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention despite its
relatively good state of preservation.53

5.15 Sketch plan of the Ganj Ali Khan complex, Kerman, showing
(1) the maydan,
(2) the small private mosque,
(3) the caravanserai,
(4) the bazaar artery,
(5) the mint,
(6) the bath,
(7) the cistern.

Urban renewal of Kerman began in 1596, the year Ganj Ali Khan was appointed
the governor of Kerman. The building campaign included an enclosed, long bazaar
and a maydan with attendant buildings. The two principal components were
spatially and architecturally distinct, but their functional relevance is made visible
by the integration of the bazaar into the peripheral arcades around the maydan,
thus marking the maydan as the navel of the city’s urban space. Indeed, like an
umbilical cord connecting to this navel, the bazaar artery pulled together disparate
urban centres of the old city by linking the venerated fourteenth-century
congregational mosque of Kerman with the old citadel that had served as the seat of
the provincial government in the medieval period through a remarkably straight
line on the maydan’s south side.
The eastern side of the maydan of Ganj Ali Khan is dominated by the façade of a
large and handsomely decorated caravanserai (plate 5.16). This also forms the most

monumental feature of the maydan with its massive rectangular frame of the
vaulted recess of an ayvan. Although the composition is interchangeably used in a
variety of building types, ranging from mosques to tombs to caravanserai, it is rare
to find a façade with an upper zone that soars so high above the roofline of the
adjoining buildings.54 Its location and dominance over the maydan façade endows
this caravanserai with subtle but still legible conceptual and formal significance on
a level not immediately perceptible. One such signal, to which we shall return later,
is the location of a little mosque on the north-eastern corner of the maydan; its
recessed, unassuming entrance is flush with the façade of the adjoining shops that
run along the east side of the square and are dominated by the entrance gate of the
caravanserai.
Tucked behind the arcades on the other cardinal points of the maydan are
buildings that serve public and governmental functions: a mint (zarrabkhana) on
the north side (undated but probably built along with the whole complex between
1598 and 1619), the famed hammam of Ganj Ali Khan on the south side (completed
1611), fed by an underground water channel (qanat) known as Shahrabad which
was excavated by Ganj Ali Khan and gathered at the cistern (abanbar) on the west
side (completed in 1619, but associated with the name of Ganj Ali Khan’s son and
successor) (plate 5.17).55 Unlike the façade of the caravanserai, the other nodal
points of the maydan – the mint, the subterranean cistern and the hammam – are
inscribed on the maydan with tiled, framed arches that rise ever so slightly above
the roofline.
Their principal façades each consisting of a small but intensely decorated ayvan
lie hidden behind the arcades and are structurally and formally welded into the
sequence of bazaar functions and spaces. Each, nevertheless, complements the
grand urban narrative of Ganj Ali Khan’s ensemble. The mint and the cistern,
architecturally insignificant edifices in Persian practice, charge the site with
meanings far more potent than their forms: in the case of a polity where the
imperial centre exerts economic and political control, the mint signifies royal
sanction; in an arid region, the cistern’s facilitation of water supply elicits cultural
significance as an act of charity and piety.
While the mint and cistern are modest in aesthetic terms, the hammam is an
architectural gem still awaiting serious study (plate 5.18).56 Located on the axis of

the mint, it consists of a series of gorgeously tiled and exquisitely proportioned
vaulted spaces that serve as hot and cold baths and gathering halls. The hammam in
Islamic practice is a space consecrated to activities of purification, understood to be
both religious and hygienic in its import. The hammam was, moreover, iconic of
royal privilege in patronage. Following the Romano-Byzantine practices inherited
by the first Muslim dynasty, the Umayyads (661–750 c e ) of greater Syria, the early
histories of building in Islam are bonded with rich representations of imperial
patronage through the construction and decoration of bathhouses.57 Hammams are
ubiquitous throughout Muslim lands, their function integrated into the urban fabric
and especially the market complexes. Often tucked inside an enclosed bazaar and
rarely placed prominently or as a freestanding monumental structure, the hammam
building does not seem to balance on the same axis as a governmental institution
like the mint here in Kerman.
A comparable axially coordinated pairing is found in the Mughal Red Fort
schemes in Agra and Delhi, where the Diwan-e Khass and the bathhouse stand
together, both dating to the mid seventeenth century.58 Ottoman Istanbul acquired a
great many baths commissioned by imperial and sub-imperial patrons alike. Some
have been situated to evoke imperial support for the provision of urban public
amenities.59 None, however, as far as I can tell, partakes in the schema of Isfahan
and Kerman. Closer to home was the pairing in Isfahan of the hammam-e shahi
(royal bathhouse) and the zarrabkhana.60 Those two, however, stood as components
of the complex of the Qaysariyya and were interlinked with the royal dar al-shafa
(hospital). As it is, the imperial patronage was the source of these foundations and
all were integrated into the urban planning of Isfahan at the turn of the seventeenth
century. Unlike the Mughal forts, the Safavid royal hammams, at both Isfahan and
Kerman, stood outside the inner sanctum of the royal precinct. (Their disappearance
or partial preservation makes it difficult fully to understand how they related
spatially). At any rate, the alignment of Ganj Ali Khan’s hammam and mint across
the maydan alludes to the staging of such functions in the context of the imperial
precinct in Isfahan.
Such evocations of royal centre may appear devoid of a persuasive link with the
religious–spiritual authority that must be embedded in its articulation. Here in
Kerman, however, the functional and ritual meanings of the urban-square scheme

articulate the same conceptual narrative as in Farahabad and Isfahan, but they do so
in surprisingly subtle elements and situations, especially revealed through the
caravanserai–mosque pairing.
The caravanserai has puzzled Iranian scholars, with its function as an inn or
madrasa the subject of some disagreement among Iranian researchers (plates 5.19,
5.20).61 The madrasa camp, represented by the late Dr Bagher Shirazi, hinges on a
Qur’anic passage in an epigraphic band whose portions were discovered about two
decades ago. My research into the architectural evidence concurs with the
caravanserai conclusion, but also complicates and enhances the subject by
suggesting that the structure had additionally served the governor as a ceremonial
seat in the city. The edifice behind the façade consists of a two-storey multi-unit
structure composed around a courtyard. In its broad conceptualization, the
caravanserai is laid out on the classic four-ayvan plan with a deep entrance corridor
leading from the monumental gate (on the maydan) through a shallow ayvan into
the courtyard. Deep ayvans open on either side of the courtyard, while directly
across lies a matching ayvan chamber that is elaborately decorated and serves as an
elevated ‘seat’ instead of the ground-level porch form ordinarily associated with the
ayvan.
The location of the main axis on the short side of the courtyard departs from
the norm and thus conceives of the principle facing ayvans along the main axis of
the building as a processional route and a ceremonial space. Such a space is scarcely
suited to the functions of a caravanserai; this was, after all, a temporary depot and
resting place for travellers. My contention that the building also had a ceremonial
function rests on the placement of visual emblems of princely authority along this
processional axis. Before entering the caravanserai, the portal already hints at what
lies ahead. Despite their badly damaged and fragmentary condition, carved stone
panels, tile work, muqarnas elements (the honeycomb- or stalactite-shaped
ornamentation filling the void inside a vault) and especially the foundation
inscription intimate a far more rarefied building than ordinarily expected at a
caravanserai.62 The inscription is signed by Ali Reza Abbasi, the greatest
calligrapher of the age, whose designs also graced the royal foundations at the
Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan in Isfahan.63
Immediately upon entering, two small arched panels in relief stucco flank the

sides of the corridor with a pair of seated figures engaged in a board game, with two
servants fanning them, and a dragon motif. These panels are thematically
recognizable for their princely connotations. The princely decorative scheme of the
entrance corridor – complemented by a complex geometry of the subtly chromatic
brickwork in its vaulting – finds its echoes in the main porch directly across from
the entrance unit. Here again their miserable state of preservation allows only a
glimpse of what must have been an uncommonly opulent space for a caravanserai.
Details of brickwork, tiled inscriptions, carved stucco panels and, most surprisingly,
murals in the reception room behind the ayvan, where the kingly prerogative of the
hunt is the main theme, denote ceremonial functions (fig. 5.21).64 In both style and
thematic import, and through the signatures of the artists and architects, the
paintings and other decorative features of this ayvan seat and the entrance corridor
are associated with Isfahan, the imperial centre of cultural production.

5.21 Detail of wall paintings in the chamber behind the main ayvan seat at the caravanserai of Ganj Ali Khan, Kerman, with textile-like
patterns drawn in delicate lines and a subtle palette with images of hunters on horseback and prey animals.

The preceding emphasis on the royal signals in the caravanserai underscores
what I contend to be an echo of the idea of an imperial emporium for which the
spiritual authority emanates from the Safavid narrative of legitimacy as discussed in
its Imami Shi‘i formulation. The interior markers – mural decoration and a quality
not commonly encountered in caravanserai – are reinforced by the placement of the
little mosque of jewel-like quality on the north-eastern side of the square and
attached to the caravanserai. We can tease out the royal weight, the ceremonial
intentions and the aspirations of the patron of this urban ensemble from this
unusual pairing of the caravanserai and the mosque in Kerman and their intriguing
visualizations of the cultural tonalities that inspired the main urban squares of
Safavid Persia.
The mosque is an enigma: a small vaulted single room with a balcony and a
mihrab inscribed with the name of Ganj Ali Khan as the humble servant and ‘slave’
of the shah (plate 5.22).65 This would not have been curious if it had been tucked
away in some corner of a neighbourhood or if it were not so opulently decorated.
Internally, the tall and narrow space is capped by a soaring vault, its transition from
a square base to the domed apex is facilitated through a sequence of muqarnas-filled
pendentives, a sixteen-sided clerestory zone and a segmented dome interior that
compensates for the small floor space by transferring the experience of largeness
vertically. The theatricality of the architecture is further heightened by the
multimedia articulation of the surfaces with a variety of epigraphic and decorative
motifs and by the placement of a small balcony opposite the qibla wall. The walls of
the balcony are covered in murals of intertwined patterns of animal and floral
motifs. There is indeed no precedence in Persian mosque architecture of the Safavid
or earlier periods for such a balcony and its murals. The balcony can be considered
as an alternative rendition of the protected royal space in mosques (the maqsura),
the type of royal balcony of which the Shaykh Lutfallah mosque provides the closest
parallel, making that mosque a site of imperial devotion by virtue of its maqsura.66
On religious grounds, on the other hand, the figural imagery, even of animals
frolicking amid vegetation, would be anathema in a mosque. The closest parallels to
the mural decoration in this balcony are to be found in the ceremonial spaces of
houses and palaces and indeed are found also in the ayvan-seat at the adjoining
caravanserai.

Single-room mosques are ordinarily small and simple, and are associated with
the neighbourhood’s need for the daily use of a convenient sanctuary, usually met
with limited local resources. The sole example in Persia of a single-room mosque
conceived on a grand architectural and decorative scale is, however, not a
neighbourhood mosque, but the private royal chapel mosque of Shaykh Lotfallah on
the east side of the Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan in Isfahan. Accessed from the palace
precinct either from the maydan or through a subterranean passageway, the Shaykh
Lotfallah mosque in Isfahan, discussed above, is especially noted for its ingenious
vaulting system, its tiled decoration, and its rarely discussed but crucially relevant –
to this discussion – royal balcony that overlooks the domed hall and faces the
mihrab. The design of Ganj Ali Khan’s mosque also eschews the ‘normal’
congregational mosque plan – the courtyard-centred, usually four-ayvan type – in
favour of a single-domed structure, which is rarefied in scale as well as in formal
terms: sophisticated vaulting, epigraphic, painted and gilded decoration and, above
all, the placement of a royal balcony that faces the mihrab. It may be suggested then
that as the royal sanctuary–retreat in Isfahan harmonized with the seat of rule by
spatially communicating across the short axis of the maydan, so too Ganj Ali Khan’s
mosque–caravanserai pairing at one side of a maydan ensemble conflates and
compresses the emblems of a princely seat of authority with its corollary space in
the sanctuary, placing them in close proximity to one another. The architectural
enigma of Ganj Ali Khan’s mosque, indeed of the entire maydan ensemble, may thus
be resolved by looking at it as a collation and reconfiguration of the royal exemplar.
As an urban space, in fact the principal public square of the city, Ganj Ali
Khan’s maydan and its constituent parts configure the stage for a wide spectrum of
action and interaction. As on a theatrical stage, the maydan and its architecture
become the site where public life is ordered, encoded and performed: a zone of
contact and reciprocity between actors and spectators, between the absent ruler and
the daily life of the denizens of Kerman. As in the case of the other Safavid maydan,
it is the performance of kingship – articulated through the privileges of a mint, a
hammam, a ‘royally’ enhanced mosque and caravanserai, and bazaars – in its
conceptual fullness as both spiritual and imperial, religious and political, social and
economic, that animates the urban experience. Here again, the visual and the
ceremonial coalesce into a collective representational enterprise, activating the

architectural space through the prismatic enunciations of authority.
The incongruities in the mosque – the intimate size in comparison to the
grandiose conception of space, the decoration and the collapsing of normative
distinctions between piety and authority in a mosque – indicate at once the
limitations and the extensions of the authority endowed from the centre onto the
shahsevan governor. Above all, however, the melding of the royal, spiritual and
economic at the urban centre in Kerman, and the very fact that the mosque with its
pronounced royal connotations maintains a discretely subsidiary role to the
otherwise public, albeit subtle, enactments of authority in the maydan itself, further
enunciates these ambiguities inherent in the new Safavid imperial paradigm. As a
theatre for the unfolding of human activity, for public rituals and private moments,
the maydan ensemble of Ganj Ali Khan recreates and suggests through the medium
of architectural memory the fixed stage of the imperial maydan in Isfahan.
The maydan’s conjunction of functions and kinetics is most perceptible to the
pedestrian in the space of the shared arcade on the south flank. Viewed from any
other side of the maydan, the clustering of relations between the bazaar artery and
the maydan is signalled by the domed edifice of the chaharsu (the crossing of the
maydan arcade and the bazaar artery) at the south-western corner. As markers of
shift in traffic patterns of bazaars, chaharsu crossings are always crowned with a
monumental vaulted ceiling, but they are rarely if ever given an external visual
prominence such as we find in the maydan of Ganj Ali Khan. So here again
hierarchies of space and their architectural articulation reinforce the functional
centrality of the ensemble as an emporium. The maydan, however, was not simply a
space for commerce. Rather, it stood in the province as the proxy for the Safavid
imperium itself.

t he c once pt

of

p e r f o r mat iv e p u b lic s pac e

Maydan, or a variation on the concept of maydan (Arab. midan) as a public urban
space (akin to the plaza/piazza/place/platz) is a familiar feature of nearly all cities
across the lands of Islam. In contemporary experience, the rise to prominence of the
space of Tahrir Square (Midan Tahrir) in Cairo since the Egyptian revolution in
January 2011 has cast new light on the significance of such urban spaces. Indeed,

even the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, events in Iran, for instance,
document the utility and relevance to public action of major urban squares: the 1978
beginnings of the Iranian revolution unfolded around a series of bloody encounters
at the Maydan-e Jaleh in Tehran; the ensuing anti-Shah protests in 1979, as well as
the uprisings of 2009, took place at the famous Shahyad (now Azadi) Square (the
former was its designation prior to the collapse of the Pahlavi regime, the latter its
name after the revolution); and perhaps most poignantly for our purposes, the
images of the 2009 Green Movement and their representation of the continued
public relevance even of the old maydans, as in the case of the rallies in Isfahan.67
The utility of these contemporary squares as the place of encounter with the ruling
apparatus in the modern era are demonstrably related to the historic location of the
idea of maydan/midan in Muslim cities.
In its most common functional definition, the maydan denoted a public space of
social interaction, especially to accommodate the need for temporary or daily
markets and as a place to showcase the conduct of justice (grants of privilege and
public executions). In the lands dominated by various cultural practices of Islam, the
architectural concept of the maydan may have taken myriad shapes, reflecting also
the etymological hybridity of the term itself. Partly Arabic, partly Persian, the term
and its spatial–urban concept are so malleable and prevalent to make it
unnecessary, in my view, to seek an authentic place of origination. Indeed, the idea
of an articulated public urban space in the early cities of Islam on the shores of the
Mediterranean was also related to the shared urban spaces of Late Antique period,
where newly arrived or converted Muslim denizens assimilated into their urban
planning the functional and spatial possibilities presented by the survival and
memories of the Roman fora and Byzantine hippodromes.
It is in the Persian-speaking side of the Islamic lands, in the terrain we
associate with the changing geographies of the Greater Iran of antiquity, that the
idea of the maydan was more specifically designed to relay representations and
practices of kingship and its public–royal interactions and reciprocities (fig. 5.23).68
The seventeenth-century Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan in Isfahan, with its bazaars,
mosques and the palace, as well as its open public space dedicated to daily markets,
court-sponsored spectacles, martial performances and polo and other equestrian
sports, represents this sort of urban centre at its most complex. This is the maydan

par excellence not only for its assemblage of civic, royal and religious functions, but
also for its potential to exploit the theatrics intrinsic to such a space.

5.23 Reconstructed plans of the three Safavid urban ensembles, evoking the formal and functional variations on the concept of performative
space. Drawn to scale. (For keys to numbering see figs 5.7, 5.10 and 5.15.)

In its aspect as the mediating social space between the seats of authority, at
once political and spiritual, and of public life of the city, the Safavid maydan also
accommodated a variety of daily performances. On the quotidian side, the large
rectangular maydans were fitted with a scattering of important functions: places of
worship and learning (mosques and madrasas); places for public access to personal
hygiene (hammams); daily market stalls about which we hear a great deal regarding
the hierarchies and organization by guild and the placement of tents; the
permanent shops along the peripheral walls of the square; coffee houses and places
of entertainment and sociability – both licit and illicit.69
The maydans in Qazvin and Isfahan originally carried the generic name of
maydan-e asb (‘equestrian square’) in accordance with their primary function as

sites for mustering armies and for military and equestrian exercises. As such, they
stood outside the walled medieval city. The architecturally articulated rectangular
spaces of the squares in Qazvin and Isfahan appropriated that original idea of the
vast maydan and adapted it to the needs of large urban communities. For equestrian
games, the squares were fitted with permanent goal posts for chowgan (‘polo’, of
ancient Persian origin) and for qoboq-andazi (an archery game on horseback), for
which a single post would be raised at the centre of the square.70 The court and the
denizens of these cities watched the matches from balconies or the sides of the field
(fig. 5.2). The Safavid historian Iskandar Beg Monshi reports of the shah’s love for
the Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan, which he considered to be ‘the picture gallery of the
seen [sovari] and the Spring-like place of the unseen [ma’navi]’ and where he and
his courtiers often went to play chowgan and qoboq-andazi.71 Such matches
constituted a part of the entertainment programmes for foreign envoys and visitors
as well.
At a reception given in 1611 in honour of Vali Mohammad Khan, the deposed
Uzbek ruler who was then in Isfahan to garner assistance, the Maydan-e Naqsh-e
Jahan was decked out for chowgan matches and elaborate fireworks, which involved
a poor elephant whose fearful reaction to all the noise was found entertaining by
the khan. The shah and his guests watched the events from the balcony in front of
the palace of Ali Qapu and then went out to stroll in the maydan and the nearby
bazaars.72
Equally impressed by the social functions and urban appeal of the maydan were
the European visitors to Qazvin and Isfahan in the seventeenth century. The
Englishman John Cartwright, famed as ‘the Preacher’, visited Safavid Persia in
1600–1 and described the major public squares in Qazvin and Isfahan.73 Merchant
stalls and the variety of goods preoccupy his description of the one in Qazvin; the
maydan in Isfahan, which he refers to as ‘At Maidan’ (at is Turkish for ‘horse’),
attracts greater attention. That, he notes,
is the greatest marketplace or high street of Esfahan. Round about this
place are erected certain high scaffolds where the multitudes sit to behold
the warlike exercises performed by the King and his courtiers […] In this
place, too, is to be seen several times in the year, the pleasant sight of

fireworks, of banquets, of music, of wrestling, and of whatsoever triumphs
else there is to be shown, for the declaration of the joy of this people.74
Perhaps as significant is the observer’s other point about the square pointing to the
obligation in Muslim kingship of safeguarding justice and its public performance,
for which, as Cartwright says, ‘the King, very often, in this place in the presence of
the peers of the realm, will give judgment in several causes.’
Even before the construction of the Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan, the performative
dimension of the maydan as an urban idea is underscored in the retelling of events
when the shah and the populace meet. When a royal visit took place just before the
issuance of the commission to commence building Isfahan as the capital, the
historian Afushta Natanzi tells us that the shah received the full measure of pishbaz
(also known as esteqbal; that is, ‘welcoming’) ceremonies, a cultural practice of
widespread currency in the Persianate world.75 In this case, the urban guilds and
notables of the city put up a spectacular show along a predetermined route; they
decorated the streets through which the shah would pass; every skilled craftsman
and guild master created, even invented, new objects of wonderment for display
along the route; the urban elite, all decked out, and the denizens prepared to
welcome the shah. With jubilation and much fanfare, the processional began from
the first gathering place just at the entrance to the city. This was the old Maydan-e
Ilchi, a public square located at a major northerly gate into the city, about which we
know little but that served as an official entrance point for many an envoy (ilchi
being the Turkic term for ‘envoy’). Afushta Natanzi adds that one clever person had
built out of wood a kiosk with a platform whereby a camel was installed walking and
turning a grinding wheel. Having thus established the rapport, so to speak, between
the shah and the people of Isfahan, other awe-inspiring inventions accompanied
the shah as he was guided from the maydan to the royal residence. A weaver had
devised a mobile weaving contraption that would turn as the master weaver turned
his attention, and as the shah proceeded, the weaver continued with his business,
finishing at the end of the route a stretch of velvet cloth. Even though the Maydan-e
Ilchi does not seem to have had the fixed royal architectural features of the soon-tobe-built main square of the city, the centrality of a maydan to the ceremonial
encounter between the ruler and his subjects is conveyed in such reports.

Welcoming ceremonies speak to the protocols of reciprocity: power and
authority on the one hand, submission and celebration on the other. Their space of
performance extends across the city but is concentrated in and embodied by the
conceptualization of a square where ‘the king addresses his citizenry within their
place’ as in the story of Achaemenid Jerusalem. A significant component of the
relationship is between the sacred nature of that authority, articulated in the
Safavid case through the language of Imami Shi‘i Islam and its obligations towards
the society it encompasses. Architectural and urban enunciations of this sacred–
civic formula are visible at the Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan in the composition and
spatial relationship established among mosques and the palace. But it is in the
ceremonial or daily evocations of the interlacing of authority and its sacred
legitimacy that the square in Isfahan and other Safavid cities is made so eloquent.
Ceremonies of gifting, for instance, render a conspicuous display of diplomatic gifts
into a subtle performance of royal detachment from worldly things and reliance on
spiritual authority. At the Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan the envoys – in one famous
case those of Muscovy – were obliged to present their gifts in a public processional
that began in front of the great congregational mosque on the south side of the
square and concluded at the Ali Qapu palace. All along, as the Frenchman Jean
Chardin describes, the ambassador’s gifts were carried by 74 men who paraded the
trays in front of the shah and his honoured guests as they watched from the palace
overlooking the maydan in view of the public assembled around the square.76 This
manner of passing the gifts from the mosque to the palace was, Chardin reiterates,
intended to showcase the celestial source of authority to which the shah appealed
and upon which his rule rested.
In short, the Safavid maydan concentrated and concretized, in its architectural
solids and its spatial voids, the social functions of the capital city and its imperial
emplacement. It did so by weaving the functions and symbolics of a social contract
that ties the ruler and the ruled within the parameters of an Imami Shi‘i model of
kingship. As this chapter suggests, both it and its offshoots across the Safavid
dominion capture and disseminate a Persian casting of the idea of urban centring
and the empire in an act of remembering that has its roots in the cultural specificity
of architectural theatrics, notions of kingship and their interlinked operations.
Given this book’s emphasis on the longevity of the ideas of kingship, palaces in

Safavid Persia would offer a natural point of convergence. They have been tried out
as parallel – indeed, almost imitative – representations of the Isfahan talar-fronted
palaces (hypostyle hall with flat roof intended for ceremonial functions) of the
Achaemenid Apadana type. Their architectural representations of familial, formal
relationships remain relevant, but here I wish to reiterate some important
adjustments. One adjustment, based on the contention that Safavid palaces are
simply a variant of an unbroken tradition in Persian architecture, leaves
unexplained the imperative of the historicity of the material evidence: the Safavid
palaces, I have argued, served as both a passive stage and an active conduit for the
social–cultural–historical specificities of the Safavid configuration of rulership and
its performance of authority. We know of no other quasi-Apadana type of palace or
audience hall until the buildings of the talar palaces in the first half of the
seventeenth century in the Mazandaran region of the Caspian Sea and in Isfahan. It
is then the historical location in the Perso-Shi‘i agendas and inclinations of the
Safavid dynasty that must also be considered as the framework for the Safavid
model of kingship in Islam. Safavid shahs and their patronized ulema constructed a
discourse rule distinct from their Sunni contemporaries. Theirs was a rule not only
on behalf of the Prophet, but more importantly on behalf of the Imams, as the
Imams – especially Imam Ali – served as the intercessor, the intermediary link,
thereby necessitating accessibility and the installment of ceremonial conditions that
made such proximity to the body of the king visible and practical.
Particularly the Safavid royal audiences and gifting ceremonies included
convivial gatherings for which new types of palaces were conceived on a massive
scale with their banqueting halls purpose-built. These banquets, with their
impressive shows of illuminations, acrobats, wrestling, martial exercises, dancing
and music, accompanied by a multi-course meal presented on sumptuous tableware
and amid richly clad people and textile-covered surroundings, were set up for
hundreds of high-ranking local officials and foreign guests. The shah resided at and
personally hosted an assembly of codified exercises in sharing food, wine and
conversation, through which the business of the court and the imperial
representations of authority were relayed, displayed and reinforced. Those
ceremonies, I have suggested, occasioned the architectural invention of a new type
of palace in Safavid Isfahan of the seventeenth century. The talar palaces, of which

at least five are documented or surviving, configured out of familiar forms and
typologies a space specifically suited to those convivial gatherings in Isfahan.
That sort of visual or architectonic familiarity – the formula of pillared
hypostyle audience halls – was not exactly a matter of unqualified formal continuity
either. The pillared halls of Persepolis were, in principle, enclosed hypostyles: rows
of equidistant columns supporting a flat roof. It was instead in the pillared hall
porches, in the loggia-like sides of such palaces as the Apadana, opening outwards
through a spatial–architectural ‘extension’, that parallels reside both in conceptual
terms and in architectural–functional appropriations. The point to reiterate here is
that the hypostyle talar of the palaces in Isfahan, while serving as a signal of the
longue durée purchase of a form, are more compellingly invested in the way the form
may have functioned or are imagined to have functioned vis-à-vis vistas and open
spaces.
It is in the way the practices of Persianate kingship and its ceremonials and
symbolics of power drew from deep-seated cultural habits and the practices of
encounter between the king and the citizenry that we find the ritually meaningful
form of the pillared halls (talars) in Isfahan’s palaces relevant to those of the
famous Apadana and other halls at Persepolis (and, presumably, Susa).
Seventeenth-century descriptions of nowroz (Persian New Year) audiences locate
ceremonies at the talars in the palaces of Isfahan, where paying homage to the king
included the offering of gifts, and protection and favour was reciprocated by the
grant of nowrozi (gifts in celebration of New Year). Indeed nowroz audiences
underscore the ritual parallels between the Safavid pillared halls and the
Achaemenid Apadana, on the great staircase of which the famous march of nowrozi
gift-bearers appears in low relief.77
One can also cite a suspected but never contextualized formal revival of
valorized Persian antiquity in the presence of finely carved, softly rounded lowrelief stone bases that support slender wooden pillars on the four corners of an
ornamental pool in the talar of the Chehel Sotun Palace in Isfahan (fig. 5.24). With
the exception of passing notes on their charm, these lions have received little
scholarly or historically ‘appreciative’ attention. Such sculptural stone bases with
animal motifs may be found elsewhere in the vast Persianate cultural region and
history (including in post-Achaemenid Asia Minor and in the nineteenth-century

stone carvings of the Qajar period).78 Yet it is in their two-pronged royal
associations that we might locate the significance of the Persepolitan references to
the animal motifs and the pillared halls: the embodiment of the seat of authority at
the ceremonial space of this largest of the Isfahan palaces where the talar and the
ayvan embrace the throne, where the king sits in majesty at nowroz audiences and
oversees the protocols of gift exchange.

5.24 Looking out onto the large pool and gardens at the Chehel Sotun Palace, Isfahan, as seen from the side of the small pool in the middle
of the talar with the stone-lion bases of the wooden pillars.

The column bases, carved of stone in low relief, in an architectural ensemble of
brick and wood, stand out as a visual marker of a different sort of remembrance than
direct quotations or spolia appropriations. Indeed, the point to highlight is the task
at hand: to take the architectural pulse of that difference, to rely not so much on
tracing the physical imprint of an antiquarian interest, but on its survivals in a
category one might label ‘taste’, a penchant. Yet the unmistakably ‘antique’ stylistic
and formal evocations of slender pillars with animal motifs are also a conduit for
reappropriations of conceptual links to the first Persian king, Jamshid, and the
Iranian world’s Islamicate traditions of connecting Jamshid to Imam Ali, the king of
the faithful for Shi‘as, especially those of Safavid Persia. The interlaced meanings

and images here are especially compelling, for Imam Ali is remembered as asadallah, the ‘Lion of God’, the title bestowed upon him by the Prophet. This brings us
back to the suggestion that the architectural and urban features of Safavids in the
seventeenth century subtly provoke remembrances of an understanding of kingship
that is alert to the multiple strands in its make-up, the representations of which also
depend on images, spaces and performances.
Cities in Safavid Persia witnessed the predominance of the urban model of
organization centred on the functional triangulation of the royal, religious and
commercial, through the geometry of space at the principal maydan. The
particularity of that geometry of space in Safavid maydans further lent them a
certain spiritually singular experience that suggests the coeval performances of
urban kingship and social action analogous to what we encountered in the story of
Esther. Although Isfahan represents an apogee, it has been in fact the phenomenon
of the maydan – in principle and in the principal cities of Safavid Persia – that helps
solidify this argument. Taking the urban–architectural–functional–political pulse of
the maydan ensembles in the cities of Isfahan, Farahabad and Kerman help us better
imagine the experiential encounter between public space and the placement of
imperial monuments in their main squares. Collectively, they evoke the means for
remembering and picturing the ceremonials of pre-Islamic kings and reconstituting
notions of Iranzamin through urban life at the maydan.
no tes
1 John W. Wright, ‘A tale of three cities: Urban gates, squares and power in Iron Age II, Neo-Babylonian and
Achaemenid Judah’, in Philip R. Davies and John M. Halligan (eds), Second Temple Studies III: Studies in
Politics, Class, and Material Culture (London and New York, 2002), p. 47.
2 Ibid., p. 48.
3 Jean Guillaume, ‘Styles and manners: Reflections on the longue durée in the history of architecture’, in
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Elizabeth Pilliod (eds), Time and Place: The Geohistory of Art (Hampshire and
Burlingston, 2005), pp. 37–58, esp. p. 42.
4 Interpretations of the archaeological evidence are in constant flux, an observation especially applicable to Iran
for the instabilities of the past three decades. For an overview and a good example, see Encyclopaedia Iranica,
s.v. ‘Susa i. Excavations’, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/susa-i-excavations.
5 Dick Davis, The Legend of Seyavash (London, 2004).
6 Yeki shahr did andar an dej farakh [He saw a city in that vast fortress] / por az bagh o maydan o ayvan o kakh
[full of gardens, maydans, ayvans and palaces] (author’s translation).

7 See below, note 27.
8 The main empirical data for the following discussion of public squares in Safavid Persia were gathered during
successive field trips to Iran, the last of which focused on Kerman. Preliminary considerations of the idea of
the public square in Kerman and Farahabad were delivered as papers, while the Isfahan maydan has
preoccupied my ‘urban’ thinking for a long time and has been especially central to my understanding of
Isfahan in the seventeenth century; Sussan Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the
Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran (Edinburgh, 2008), especially ch. 3. For a study of early
Kerman, including a brief consideration of the Safavid period, see Lisa Golombek, ‘The “citadel, town,
suburbs” model and medieval Kirman’, in Salma K. Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli and André
Raymond (eds), The City in the Islamic World (Leiden and Boston, 2008), pp. 445–63.
9 While the notion of a planned economy and its validity in the Safavid case has been the subject of some
disagreement, my point here is to emphasize the significant timing and functional planning of these projects,
all of which were enormously effective as infrastructural economic ventures. They included road, bridge and
caravanserai constructions and facilitated extra urban safety and the mobility of trade activities that
emanated from cities.
10 These have been amply demonstrated by historians of Safavid economy; see: Rudi Matthee, ‘The East India
Company trade in Kerman wool, 1658–1730’, in Jean Calmard (ed.), Etudes Safavides (Paris and Tehran, 1993),
pp. 343–83; Rudi Matthee, Willem Floor and Patrick Clawson, The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids
to the Qajars (London and New York, 2013); Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The
European Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India (1530–1750) (Atlanta, 1999).
11 Much scholarship has been devoted to the process of turning Safavid Persia into the Shi‘i state apparatus it
became and continues to be as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the sole predominantly Shi‘i state. For a classic
study of the historical processes leading to this phenomenon, see Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God
and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Organization and Societal Change in Shi‘ite Iran from the Beginning to
1890 (Chicago, 1984).
12 For an accessible synthetic overview of Safavid history, including the transition to Shi‘i Islam and transfers
of the capital, see Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London and New York, 2006).
13 Kishwar Rizvi, ‘Sites of pilgrimage and objects of devotion’, in Sheila Canby (ed.), Shah ‘Abbas: The Remaking
of Iran (London, 2009), pp. 98–115.
14 On the significance of Shah Abbas I’s pilgrimage on foot to Mashhad and the site’s politico-spiritual utility,
see Charles Melville, ‘Shah Abbas and the pilgrimage to Mashhad’, in Charles Melville (ed.), Safavid Persia:
The History and Politics of an Islamic Society (London, 1996), pp. 191–230.
15 Waqf endowments generated by members of the dynasty and their close associates played a significant
economic and political role in the process of Shi‘ification in Persia. As an instrument of rule and social
engineering, these charitable endowment deeds bore profound social implications for the Safavid dynasty’s
narrative of authority. Studies of the waqf documents may be found in Alexander H. Morton, ‘The Ardabil
shrine in the reign of Shah Tahmasp’, Iran xii (1974), pp. 31–64; and Alexander H. Morton, ‘The Ardabil shrine
in the reign of Shah Tahmasp (concluded)’, Iran xiii (1975), pp. 39–58. The architectural campaigns and
transformations of the Ardabil shrine have been studied by Kishwar Rizvi, The Safavid Dynastic Shrine:
Architecture, Religion and Power in Early Modern Iran (London and New York, 2010). For Mashhad, see May
Farhat, ‘Islamic piety and dynastic legitimacy: The case of the shrine of Ali al-Rida in Mashhad (10th–17th
century)’, Ph.D. dissertation (Harvard University, 2002).
16 See Chapter 3 of this volume.

17 On the spiritual in Iranian kingship, see Abolala Soudavar, The Aura of Kings: Legitimacy and Divine Sanction
in Iranian Kingship (Costa Mesa, 2003). For the Safavid articulation of spiritual authority and statehood, see
Rula Jurdi Abisaab, Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire (London and New York, 2004).
On its implications for notions of Persianate kingship, see Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs:
Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge, MA, 2003). Babayan makes an especially important
argument regarding the survival of ancient Persian traditions into the Safavid period and the interweaving of
Mazdean and Shi‘a thoughts as narratives of loyalty to Imam Ali through popular mystical practices such as
that represented by the noqtavi (or nuqtavi) movement; see Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs, pp. 66–
70.
18 Shaykh Baha’i, Jami’-i Abbasi (Tehran, n.d.).
19 Abisaab, Converting Persia, p. 58; Abisaab quotes from Baha’i, Jami’-i Abbasi, p. 3. For further discussion of
Shaykh Baha’i’s role in Isfahan’s urban planning, see Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, pp. 98–9.
20 Since the 1980s, the subject has been extensively studied; however, see especially the translation of the
writings by the Ayatollah in Hamid Algar (ed.), Islam and Revolution: Writing and Declarations of Imam
Khomeini (1941–1980) (Berkeley, 1981).
21 The etymology of the term maydan, variously transliterated and spelt in Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Urdu –
as well as its translations and adaptations in French, Italian and Portuguese – is discussed by Philip Durkin,
‘Loanword etymologies in the third edition of OED’, in Christian Kay, Carole Hough and Irené Wotherspoon
(eds), New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics, vol. 2: Lexis and Transmission (Amsterdam and
Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 78–90, esp. pp. 83–4.
22 Arthur U. Pope, ‘Isfahan palaces’, in Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman (eds), A Survey of Persian Art,
vol. 2 (Tokyo and London, 1965), p. 1192; Ingeborg Luschey-Schmeisser, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Čehel
Sotūn, Isfahan’ [online]; Eugenio Galdieri, Esfahan, Ali Qapu: An Architectural Survey, Restorations 5 (Rome,
1979), p. 28; Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid architecture’, in Peter J. Jackson and Laurence Lockhart (eds), The
Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 759–842, esp. p. 797.
23 Ebba Koch, ‘Diwan-i ‘Amm and Chihil Sutun: The audience halls of Shah Jahan’, Muqarnas xi (1994), pp. 143–
65, esp. p. 152. Also see her most recent discussion of these Mughal pillared halls and a suggestion that they
may have preceded the Safavid ones in ‘The wooden audience halls of Shah Jahan’, Muqarnas xxx (2013), pp.
351–89.
24 Here, I wish to acknowledge the centrality of Ebba Koch’s research to this argument. Her work and our
conversations over the years have been a constant source of inspiration.
25 Lindsay Allen, ‘“Chilminar sive Persepolis”: European reception of a Persian ruin’, in Christopher Tuplin
(ed.), Persian Responses: Political and Cultural Interaction with(in) the Achaemenid Empire (Swansea, 2007), pp.
313–42.
26 This provocative point is found in two footnotes in Koch, ‘Diwan-i ‘Amm and Chihil Sutun’, pp. 161–2, notes
42 and 44, with references to the Persepolis-Tschehelminar engraving added to Fischer von Erlach’s Entwurf
einer historischen Architektur in Abbildung unterschiedener berümten Gebäude des Alterthums und fremder
Völker, which was published first in 1721 in Vienna and presented to the Emperor Charles VI. Independent of
this point, I had the chance to see and study an original of the Entwurf during my residency at the Getty
Research Institute (2008–9), where I developed a research project linking the idea of the Baroque drama of
public space in urban design to European knowledge of Safavid Isfahan and especially its maydan. This image,
too, constitutes a constant in European descriptions and images of Safavid Persia and especially of
seventeenth-century Isfahan. Since then, aspects of my project on Fischer von Erlach and the European

representations of the maydan of Isfahan have been presented in two conference papers; an essay is
projected for publication in the near future.
27 The Ayvan-e Kasra or Taq-e Kasra is described and referenced in many Arabic and Persian sources. A famous
qasida (poem) by the Persian poet Khaqani Shirvani (c.1121–c.1190 c e ) provides an elegiac contemplation of
the ruins at Ctesiphon; see Julie Scott Meisami, ‘Khāqānī, elegy on Madā’in’, in Stefan Sperl and Christopher
Shackle (eds), Qaṣida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa, vol. 2: Eulogy’s Bounty, Meaning’s Abundance: An
Anthology (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1996), pp. 162–9. In a eulogy for Shah Abbas II and in celebration
of the completion of the Chehel Sotun Palace at Isfahan, the Safavid poet Sa’eb-e Tabrizi draws on the trope
of the great ayvan of the Ayvan-e Kasra; see Lotfallah Honarfar, Ganjina-ye asar-e tarikhi Esfahan (Isfahan,
1344 [1965–6]). For its evocations of Cairo in Mamluk architecture, see Bernard O’Kane, ‘Monumentality in
Mamluk and Mongol art and architecture’, Art History xix/4 (1996), pp. 499–522.
28 Jean Chardin visited Isfahan twice, each time residing in the city for an extended period of time. His
chronicle of Safavid Persia and especially the city of Isfahan is among the most detailed, believable and
fascinating of the travelogues of this period of Iranian history; see Jean Chardin, Voyages du Chevalier
Chardin, en Perse, et autres lieux de l’Orient, ed. L. Langles, 10 vols (Paris, 1811), vol. 7, p. 338.
29 For the Safavid royal precinct and these two gateways, see Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, pp. 78–80, 113 ff.
30 Ottoman Istanbul is perhaps the most compelling of the contemporary urban scenes into which the past is
almost archaeologically integrated; see Çig
̆dem Kafescioğlu,
Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter,
Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital (University Park, 2009).
31 Andrew Leach, What is Architectural History? (Cambridge, 2010), p. 75.
32 Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, ‘Le royaume de Salomon: Les inscriptions persanes de sites
achéménides’, in Le Monde Iranien et l’Islam i (1971), pp. 1–41; here the discussion of the graffiti is in the
context of Solomonic tropes. See also Priscilla P. Soucek, ‘The influence of Persepolis on Islamic art’, in
Études arabes et islamiques, Histoire et Civilisation 4 (Paris, 1975), pp. 195–200.
33 Dream narratives and their utility as links to mythical and historical kings of the ancient Iranian pasts and as
instruments of legitimacy are features of the historiographic interventions of Safavid chronicles. Sholeh
Quinn has analysed the subject in Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas: Ideology, Imitation and
Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (Salt Lake City, 2000), esp. pp. 63–76. See also Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and
Messiahs.
34 Mahmud ibn Hedayat-Allah Afushta Natanzi, Noqavat al-asar fi zekr al-akhyar, ed. Ehsan Eshraqi (Tehran,
1366 s h [1987]), p. 350.
35 The maydan, or city square, is not unique to these or even to major cities. Here, however, the surviving
examples or better-known ones among the principal cities during the Safavid period stand out on multiple
levels: scale, complexity, urban centring, functions, and so on. See also below on the maydan in general.
36 Eugenio Galdieri, ‘Two building phases of the time of Šāh ‘Abbās I in the Maydān-i Šāh of Isfahan:
Preliminary note’, East and West xx (1970), pp. 60–9; Heinz Gaube, Iranian Cities (New York, 1978); Heinz
Gaube and Eugene Wirth, Der Bazar von Isfahan (Weisbaden, 1978); Stephen P. Blake, Half the World: The
Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan 1590–1722 (Costa Mesa, CA, 1999); Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces.
37 Farahabad is briefly discussed with some references to archaeological studies in Wolfram Kleiss,
Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Faraḥābād’ [online]. See also: Yves Porter, ‘Les jardins d’Ashraf vus par Henry
Viollet’, in ‘Sites et monuments disparu d’après les témoignes de voyageurs’, Res Orientales viii (1996), pp.
117–38; Yves Porter and Arthur Thévenart, Palaces and Gardens of Persia (Paris, 2003); Mahvash Alemi, ‘The
royal gardens of the Safavid period: Types and models’, in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), Gardens in the Time of the

Great Muslim Empires: Theory and Design (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1997), pp. 72–96.
38 On Kerman, see Golombek, ‘The “citadel, town, suburbs”’.
39 Seyed Mohammad Ali Emrani, a recent graduate of the Technische Universität München, suggests quite
convincingly a rethinking of the urban axis, giving the gardens and the Chahar Bagh Promenade greater
prominence; see Seyed Mohammad Ali Emrani, The Role of Gardens and Tree-Lined Streets in the Urban
Development of Safavid Isfahan (1590–1722): A Comparative Approach (Paris and Versailles in the 17th century)
(Munich, 2013). For a discussion of the building history of the city as the capital and a review of the relevant
literature, see Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, pp. 65–112.
40 For the debate on the legitimacy of Friday prayer, see: Devin J. Stewart, ‘Polemics and patronage in Safavid
Iran: The debate on Friday prayer during the reign of Shah Tahmasb’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies lxxii (2009), pp. 425–57; and as a process of conversion, Abisaab, Converting Persia, esp. p. 161.
The intensity of debates regarding the Friday prayer may be gleaned also from the number of treatises
written on the subject, especially in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. For the impact of
the debate on architectural patronage and the building of mosques, see Sussan Babaie, ‘Building on the past:
The shaping of Safavid architecture, 1501–76’, in J. Thompson and S. Canby (eds), Hunt for Paradise: Court
Arts of Iran, 1501–76 (London and New York, 2003), pp. 26–47.
41 For a discussion of the Friday prayer as an instrument for ‘tailoring Shi‘ism to statehood’, see Abisaab,
Converting Persia, pp. 20–2.
42 Quoted in Abisaab, Converting Persia, p. 21.
43 Abisaab, p. 56 and p. 86 for a discussion of the opposition to Shaykh Lotfallah’s blanket approval, a point not
completely espoused even by such close associates of Shah Abbas I’s as Shaykh Baha’i, the other prominent
jurist, scholar and shaykh al-Islam of Isfahan.
44 Translated and quoted in Abisaab, Converting Persia, p. 84, notes 224 and 225.
45 Abisaab’s reading of the self-aggrandizement by Shaykh Lotfallah ignores other contemporary sources and
the architectural features of the mosque. The mosque could not possibly have been intended as a
congregational prayer space to accommodate 1,000 people. For contrary views of the function and intent
behind the construction of the Shaykh Lotfallah Mosque, see Robert McChesney, ‘Four sources on Shah
Abbas’s building of Isfahan’, Muqarnas v (1988), pp. 123–4; Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, esp. pp. 96–8.
46 For Shah Abbas I’s commencement of urban constructions in Mazandaran, see Jalal al-Din Monajjem, Tarikh-e
Abbasi ya ruzname-ye Molla Jalal, ed. Sayfallah Vahidniya (Tehran, 1366 s h [1987]), pp. 333–6.
47 We probably owe our fixation on celebrating the ‘royal retreat’ aspect of the Mazandaran constructions to
the European visitors in the seventeenth century. Della Valle credits the reason for building these cities, in
addition to the region’s exceptional climate and beauty, to Shah Abbas I’s matrilineal links with Mazandaran.
Thomas Herbert in the 1620s focused the chronicle of his journey to the region on the palatine city of Ashraf
and the Caspian Sea, which he states ‘is deservedly ranked amongst the wonders of the world; for greatness,
taste, and colour, resembling the ocean’. Later in the seventeenth century, Thevenot thought that
‘Mazandaran was the only lovely province of all Persia’. The inadequacy and anachronistic aspects of this
reading of the subject have been taken up elsewhere; see Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, pp. 128–9, 169–78.
48 Mahvash Alemi’s publications on the gardens in Mazandaran are important contributions, especially for her
suggested reconstructions. Della Valle’s quotes and my plan of Farahabad derive from Mahvash Alemi, ‘I
giardini reali di Ashraf e Farahabad’, in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), Il giardino islamico (Milan, 1994), pp. 201–16;
‘Documents: The Safavid royal gardens in Sari’, Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental
Design Research Centre i (1996), pp. 98–103.

49 Baghdiantz-McCabe, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver, rightly considers the Armenian role to have been
central, while Rudi Matthee, in The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran, seems more inclined to distribute the
responsibility among European, Muslim Persian and Armenian chief players in Safavid economic affairs.
50 These building campaigns were entrusted to Saru Taqi (d. 1644 c e ), the gholam (the slave elite) governor of
Mazandaran. On Saru Taqi’s architectural patronage, and for the link between these economic and political
motivations and Saru Taqi’s appointment to the governorship of Mazandaran, see Sussan Babaie, ‘Launching
from Isfahan: Slaves and the construction of the empire’, in S. Babaie, K. Babayan, I. Baghdiantz-McCabe and
M. Farhad, Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran (London, 2004), pp. 80–113. Saru Taqi, it is argued
there, was by virtue of his being a eunuch-gholam a member of the royal household who worked as a
surrogate patron on behalf of the monarchs on imperial designs, while also securing his own political career
and social standing through influence and access to funds. Until his assassination in 1644, he remained one
of the most powerful men in the Safavid realms, rising to the position of grand vizier under Shah Safi and
Shah Abbas II. His considerable building expertise and architectural patronage launched from the Farahabad–
Ashraf platform and included works in Najaf and in Isfahan. For a different view on Saru Taqi’s patronage, see
Willem Floor, ‘The rise and fall of Mirza Taqi, the eunuch grand vizier (1043–55/1633–45)’, Studia Iranica xxvi
(1997), pp. 237–66.
51 Monajjem, Tarikh-e Abbasi, p. 335.
52 For Kerman’s ceramic industry, see Lisa Golombek, Persian Pottery in the First Global Age; the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (Toronto, 2013). For the wool trade (and hence carpets) in Kerman, see Matthee, ‘The
East India Company trade in Kerman wool’.
53 Golombek, ‘The “citadel, town, suburbs”’.
54 The transposition of a canonical mosque–façade formula of a pishtaq (an ayvan or vaulted porch, framed, as it
is here, to create a pishtaq) at the maydan façade in Kerman is worth further exploration.
55 See also Mohammad-Ebrahim Bastani Parizi, Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. ‘Ganj-‘Alī Khan’ [online].
56 This bathhouse along with the Ganj Ali Khan complex require a monographic study. For a brief discussion of
the whole complex, see Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid architecture’, pp. 793–4.
57 Qusayr Amra and Khirbat al-Mafjar, both now in Jordan, are perhaps the best known.
58 Ebba Koch, Mughal Architecture: An Outline of its History and Development (1526–1858) (Munich, 1991). The
proximity and axial arrangements of the administrative space (the diwan) and the bathhouse are visible, for
instance, on the plan of the Red Fort in Delhi; see p. 110 (marked with numbers 8 and 9).
59 Kafescioğlu, Constantinopolis/Istanbul; for baths built by Mehmed II, Bayezid II and the members of the royal
household and viziers.
60 For the public Hammam-e Shahi near the hospital and the mint as part of the bazaar entranceway
(Qaysariyya) complex commissioned by Shah Abbas I, see Gaube and Wirth, Der Bazar von Isfahan, pp. 158–60.
Another royal bathhouse is noted by Chardin to have stood to the south of the Harem Gate; see Chardin,
Voyages, vol. 7, p. 328. I had previously thought that to be the only royal bathhouse; here revised in light of
the Kerman scheme, which has made me re-research the functions of the ensemble. See Babaie, Isfahan and
Its Palaces, p. 137.
61 In personal conversations, in Bamberg and Tehran during the summer of 2003, Dr Bagher Ayatollahzada
Shirazi suggested that this was a madrasa and not a caravanserai, although he was ready to ‘change his mind’.
His deep and vast erudition on the architectural heritage of Iran was unmatched and is sorely missed. The
Kerman historian Mohammad-Ebrahim Bastani Parizi, relying on Safavid histories of Kerman and the
endowment document of Ganj Ali Khan, has upheld the caravanserai function.

62 Royal caravanserai are indeed rarefied and very elaborately decorated; an example is the mid-twelfthcentury Rabat-e Sharaf in north-eastern Iran. The point here, however, remains tied to the location and
distinctive integration of the ‘fancy’ caravanserai into the urban ensemble of Kerman.
63 Honarfar, Ganjina, pp. 401–15, 427–42, for the epigraphic programmes at the Shaykh Lotfallah and the Royal
Mosque respectively.
64 Additionally, a series of panels with inscribed poetry are located in an odd room behind this ayvan; they
clearly allude to palaces – a subject not yet fully digested.
65 The slave status of Ganj Ali Khan is discussed in Babaie, ‘Launching from Isfahan’.
66 The idea of a royal zone, a maqsura, is most famously examplified at the Great Mosque of Córdoba; see
especially Nuha N N. Khoury, ‘The meaning of the Great Mosque of Cordoba in the tenth century’, Muqarnas
xiii (1996), pp. 80–98. An example closer in form and indeed in architetcural pedigree is the royal balcony at
the Yeșil Cami in Bursa, built in 1419–21 c e for Sultan Mehmed I.
67 For a jaw-droppingly impressive aerial photograph of a pre-‘Green’ assembly of people at the Maydan-e
Naqsh-e Jahan in Isfahan, taken at a rally just before the elections in June 2009, see
http://windowsoniran.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/isfahan-greets-khatami.jpg (accessed 23 November 2013).
Given the pre-modern relevance to public life of the maydan, it would be misleading to ignore the historical
place of the square as an urban space of action in favour of attributing its social role to European
constructions of urban encounter. While this may be true for the Tahrir experience in Cairo, as Nasser
Rabbat has suggested in ‘Circling the square’, Art Forum (April 2011), pp. 183–91, it does not apply to the
experience of other cities in the lands dominated by Islam, either historically or in a modern and
contemporary context.
68 The Ottoman urban engineering of Istanbul represents a number of parallel spaces of social encounter.
There, however, the overlaying and intersecting of pre- and post-Ottoman city makes for a very different and
complex narrative; see Kafescioğlu, Constantinopolis/Istanbul.
69 For the guilds of Isfahan see, Mehdi Keyvani, Artisans and Guild Life in the Later Safavid Period: Contributions
to the Social-Economic History of Persia (Berlin, 1982). For the bazaars and especially the organization of
trades, see Gaube and Wirth, Der Bazar von Isfahan.
70 Safavid historians report that Shah Abbas I both played and watched such games; see below. See also:
McChesney, ‘Four sources’, p. 106; Mahvash Alemi, ‘Urban spaces as the scene for the ceremonies and
pastimes of the Safavid court’, Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research
Centre i (1991), pp. 98–107, an especially useful (albeit brief) overview, drawing mostly from the important
letters by Pietro Della Valle, the Italian traveller to Safavid Persia.
71 Iskandar Beg Monshi, Tarikh-e alam ara-ye Abbasi, ed. Iraj Afshar, 2 vols (Tehran, 1350 s h [1971]), p. 838.
72 A similarly elaborate welcoming ceremony accompanied by fireworks, decked-out shops and the shah’s
evening stroll through the bazaar is reported by Monajjem, Tarikh-e Abbasi, pp. 330–2.
73 Kenneth Parker (ed.), Early Modern Tales of the Orient: A Critical Anthology (London and New York, 1999), pp.
113–21.
74 Ibid., p. 116.
75 Afushta Natanzi, Noqavat al-asar fi zekr al-akhyar, p. 373–4. Given that the historian is writing ex post facto,
his retelling, just before he reports on the royal order for the vast building campaign in Isfahan, of the events
of the entry and welcoming ceremonies and the great display of wealth and ingenuity of the people of Isfahan
seems like an appropriate preamble to – and a compelling justification for – the shah’s decision.

76 Chardin, Voyages, vol. 3, p. 170; Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, pp. 238–9.
77 For these references and their discussion, see Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, pp. 233–4.
78 For the appropriation of these lion motifs in the Qajar period in the 1916 Anjoman fire temple in Tehran, see
Talinn Grigor, ‘Parsi patronage of the Urheimat’, Getty Research Journal ii (2010), pp. 53–68, esp. p. 60.

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Ottoman Capital (University Park, 2009).
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Persia (Berlin, 1982).
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pp. 80–98.
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(accessed 22 November 2013).
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—— ‘The wooden audience halls of Shah Jahan’, Muqarnas xxx (2013), pp. 351–89.
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McChesney, Robert, ‘Four sources on Shah Abbas’s building of Isfahan’, Muqarnas v (1988), pp. 123–4.
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—— The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver 1600–1730 (Cambridge, 1999).
—— Willem Floor and Patrick Clawson, The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars (London and
New York, 2013).

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Islamic Asia and Africa, vol. 2: Eulogy’s Bounty, Meaning’s Abundance: An Anthology (Leiden, New York and
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6
Kingship Hybridized, Kingship Homogenized: Revivalism
under the Qajar and the Pahlavi Dynasties
talinn g rigor

6.1 Map of Iran under the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties, 1796–1979.

A

r t i s t i c appropriation as a mode of identity formation has been a deeprooted tradition in the politics of Persian kingship. As this volume reveals, rulers
from antique, Islamic and modern periods were keen on borrowing artistic
vocabulary from the past in order further to construct an expressly Iranian cultural
and political distinctiveness. This espousal often involved a highly self-aware
process of adoption and synthesis that produced a renewed definition not only of
forms and icons, but also of kingship and Persian identity as malleable categories of
knowledge. By focusing on a shifting moment in Iran’s modern history – the decline
of the Qajar dynastic rule between the 1890s and 1910s to the formation of the
Pahlavi secular monarchy in the 1920s and 1930s – this chapter aims to divulge a
fundamental paradigm shift in the use of architecture as a signifier of royal
legitimacy (fig. 6.1). While Qajar visual adoption of the pre-Islamic past was
primarily iconographic, under the Pahlavis a morphological dimension was added to

this Qajar innovation. An ideological shift underpinned this architectural
development that nevertheless remained committed to an enduring idea of the
conception of Iran. The former invested in the grandeur of Iran’s monarchical (art)
history in order to promote the opulence of the Qajar court and the prosperity of the
weakening empire under its rule, while the latter secularized and nationalized the
domain of patronage and kingship not only to legitimize itself as the rightful owner
of the Persian crown, but also to transform the Qajar Empire into a modern nation
state.
While by no means a survey of the architectural history of Qajar and Pahlavi
revivalistic structures, this chapter explores the various techniques deployed by the
Qajar and later the Pahlavi royal court and upper class between 1823 and 1979.
Each in its own manner appropriated Iran’s pre-Islamic architectural and visual
culture so as to shape a royal image, while at once coming to terms with the
untamable forces of colonialism and modernization. In both cases, the commitment
to the institution of Persian monarchy was unyielding. For each, select visual
imagery proved a source of inspiration for the invention of a new language to
mediate the invention of the modern self. The rapidly shrinking kingdom under the
Qajars and the hastily secularized nation state under the Pahlavis were recast
through architectural tropes into the everlasting vision of Persian kingship: the
Qajar ‘Guarded Domains of Iran’ and the Pahlavi adoption of the Sasanian Iranshahr
(‘Dominion of the Aryans’).1 These visual appropriations were varied in form and
had a distinct purpose for each royal court. Ultimately, this chapter aims to tackle
the rather problematic and fragmented historiography of artistic revivalism in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Iran in relation to the Persian institution of
kingship.
The three major dynasties that ruled the Iranian high plateau before the Arab
conquest of the mid seventh century were the Achaemenid (559–331 b c e ), the
Parthian (247 b c e –224 c e ) and the Sasanian (224–651 c e ) dynasties. Both the
Qajar and the Pahlavi ruling elite admired the cultural, linguistic, sociopolitical and
even genetic material of the Achaemenids and the Sasanians. While antique Iran
had attracted rulers from Alexander the Great to Shah Jahan, it was not until the
early twentieth century that, with the exception of Susa, the Achaemenid and
Sasanian palatial and funerary complexes – the most prominent among them

Persepolis (Takht-e Jamshid), Pasargadae and Naqsh-e Rostam – were brought into
the realm of scientific knowledge. Between the 1890s and 1925, explorers,
geologists and archaeologists like Captain Truilhier, Sir Henry Rawlinson, William
Kenneth Loftus, Jane and Marcel Dieulafoy, as well as Jacques de Morgan, excavated
Susa.2 The Délégation française en Perse, directed by de Morgan, has been described
as ‘the most important archaeological expedition that has left Europe’.3 Subsequent
quarrels over excavation rights between Western interest groups and the Qajar
authorities yielded an official agreement.4 In May 1895, exactly a year before his
assassination, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848–96) decreed an agreement, signed
on 11 August 1900 by his son, Mozaffar al-Din Shah (r. 1896–1906), which
‘conceded to the French Republic the exclusive and perpetual right to excavate in
the entire expanse of the empire’.5 The diplomatic concessions between Qajar kings
and Western governments resulted in the French authorities having monopoly on
all archaeological sites within the borders of modern Iran in the 1910s and 1920s.
Containing 11 articles, the treaty gave French scholars and scientists a free hand to
excavate wherever they deemed necessary except ‘the holy places, mosques, and
Muslim cemeteries’.6 However, the French focused their excavation efforts on a
single site: Susa, also known as Shush, the Achaemenid capital in south-western
Iran.
Since the 1850s, the choice of Susa had been politically significant both for the
French and the Iranian states. The reign of the Achaemenid dynasty, founded by
Cyrus II (r. c.559–529 b c e ) and expanded by Darius I (r. 522–486 b c e ), stretched
from Egypt to India from 559 b c e to its defeat by Alexander the Great in 331 b c e .7
Susa was the first capital city of what was considered the first ‘Persian Empire’, the
empire to which the Sasanians linked themselves and thus invented a myth of
lineage: the Iranshahr. This was, it was believed then, where Iran’s art and ethnic
history had begun. This period of the country’s past, furthermore, became
significant for Iranian reformists and Westerners alike, for whom the Achaemenids
embodied the lost and forgotten splendour of Persian monarchy. Alluding to the
spirit of the nation, this selected history became the source for the invention of
national heritage supported by those who excavated the site and those who
propagated the revival of its cultural and military might.
As the central authority of the state and the court declined in the first two

decades of the century, both Iranian and various Western powers began to find ways
to disregard the 1895 agreement and encroach upon French rights to excavate
archaeological sites. By the late 1920s, when the accord was reassessed by members
of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s (r. 1925–41) first cabinet (most of whom were also founders
and members of the Society for National Heritage), the very notion of cultural
heritage and its relationship to the institution of monarchy had altered.8 By then,
while most of these archaeological sites were singled out for their merit as evidence
of Iran’s ancient grandeur, purported to have been wrecked and neglected by 13
centuries of Arab Muslim domination, the selections were in part conditioned by
their superior architectural qualities, large-scale and fine craftsmanship,
persistence over the centuries, enduring legacy in both oriental and local oral and
written histories and, above all, their accessibility within the modern borders of
Iran. They were now chosen to express – through patronage, excavation and display
– the modernity of the Pahlavi king and that of the secular nation state.

q ajar h y br idit y
During much of the nineteenth century, allusions to Iran’s antiquity, including the
reproduction of its stylistic motifs, were a pivotal aspect of Qajar royal taste and its
strategy of political legitimacy. In a characteristically nineteenth-century manner of
collage and eclecticism, Qajars were also incorporating in their art and architecture
the Safavid patrimonial legacy, which, as Sussan Babaie has demonstrated, since the
fourteenth century had masterfully retooled the language of kingship in order to
bind ancient Iranian and Shi‘i Muslim identities into a discernible and unique
whole.9 The formal appropriation and adoption of such historic architectural
elements as the talar (pillared hall) and the pishtaq (portal projecting from the
façade) demonstrates Qajar ingenuity to eclectic malleability in navigating Europe’s
hegemonic cultural and political clouts throughout the Long Century. Edifices
bearing a mix of pre-Islamic and Safavid iconography were erected in urban centres
as of the turn of the century. The second Qajar king, Fath Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834),
whose personality coincided with the mandates of royal extravagance, initiated the
appropriation of pre-Islamic visual culture into contemporary practices. The need to
shift from a tribal ruling system to a model of kingship gave further impetus to this

new artistic movement. Given the Western colonial pressures on various Qajar
kings, the ‘formal façade’ of their rulership as dubbed by historian Abbas Amanat,
was as pivotal to the sovereignty and survival of the Persian Empire as the informal
processes of running the empire.10 Architecture, thus, was essential to this
representation of royal power, of this formal façade. One could push further and
argue that the appropriation of ancient visual culture in the nineteenth century was
the representational expression of the three major paradigm shifts that occurred in
the Long Century: the replacement of tribal loyalties with those of monarchy and
bureaucracy; the sociopolitical and cultural encounters with European powers; and
the engagement of various social groups in state affairs which questioned the
legitimacy of the monarchical system.11 Moreover, the pressures brought upon the
ulema by various reformist movements during the second half of the nineteenth
century, for instance by Babism, created an urgency in Qajar kings to legitimate
their reign as a time-honoured Shi‘i monarchy.12
For those at the helm of Iranian society, the heaviest psychological blow was
inflicted in the aftermath of the Perso-Russian Wars by the signing of the treaties of
Golestan (1813) and Turkmenchay (1828). These effectively rendered Iran, an
impressive empire under the Safavids, a colonial plaything in Europe’s Great Game.
The very image of Iran as a superpower was debased to a ‘weak and vulnerable
buffer state’.13 While before that Europe was marginal to Iranian self-perception,
now it served as ‘a model of change’, as noted by Monica Ringer.14 Upper-class
Iranians began to see and probe the reasons for Iran’s ‘deficiency’ in relation to
Western civilization. Military, institutional, infrastructural, as well as socio-cultural
ways of doing things were scrutinized to determine the malaise that had befallen
the empire. Subsequent patronage of architecture, as one of the most visible of
these healing attempts, aimed to restore the image of Iran as a civilized nation with
an enduring tradition of kingship.
It should come as little surprise then that it was precisely at this moment that a
revivalistic architecture was initiated, took an explicit form and occupied a special
place in the politics of patronage.15 To (re)present the empire as majestic was to
cling to its sovereignty. To emblemize the nation as such was to counter-narrate the
colonial discourse on oriental decadence and backwardness. Throughout the course
of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, upper-class Iranians – be they

conservative members of the royal household or vocal advocates of liberal reforms –
practised the evocation of ancient imagery as a symbolic confirmation of
monarchical and national worth. This served the double purpose of fortifying
domestic legitimacy by perpetuating the Persian tradition of kingship and
simultaneously repudiating Western cultural and political expansion in Iran. The
interpretation of the structures with explicitly pre-Islamic iconography must be
seen in the larger context of imperial strategies of power – foreign and domestic
alike. In adapting a new architectural language to express royal might, Qajar kings
were instituting a paradigm shift in the domain of representation. Akin to the
espousal of European dress, furniture, artistic technology, and so on, the need for
the representation of royal might went beyond the military need for the defence of
the empire into the domain of cultural signs. The new architectural formulas
expressed ‘a Qajar desire to set forth a new example of monarchy’, notes Amanat,
‘that was more disciplined and forceful, an image deemed necessary to mend the
injured legitimacy of the monarchy and mindful of Iran’s need to bridge its growing
material gap with the outside world’.16
Fath Ali Shah masterfully deployed visual imagery to transform the tribal image
of rulership into a full-blown tradition of Persian monarchy. Having at his disposal
the financial and institutional tools necessary, the royal image was enhanced by his
own claim ‘as the rightful heir to a tradition of Persian kingship rooted in the
past’.17 Of the eight known Qajar rock carvings that have survived – duplicating the
techniques and styles of the Sasanian reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam and other preIslamic sites – seven were executed under Fath Ali Shah’s patronage: his portraits
and those of his heirs near the Qur’an Gate in Shiraz and in the Sasanian grotto of
Taq-e Bostan (fourth century c e ) (plate 6.2).18 His two rock reliefs at the Cheshmeye Ali in Rayy – The Court of Fath Ali Shah (1823) and Fath Ali Shah at the Hunt
(c.1820–30) by Abdollah Khan – while distinctly Sasanian in style and composition,
were meant as an expression of the king’s status as Persia’s legitimate monarch and
the Qajar adoption of the imagery of monarchy (fig. 6.3).19 Rather than exalting the
nation’s pre-Islamic history through a peculiarly orientalist classification of
knowledge that perceived the birth of Islam as a point of partition and an essential
marker of difference, these reliefs denoted the ideal image of Persian kingship. In
Rayy, Kermanshah and other similar reliefs, Fath Ali Shah was ‘responding to the

challenge of Iran’s imperial past’, as noted by Layla Diba, ‘fashioning an image as
resplendent as anything mythologized in the Shahnameh or memorialized in
Sasanian rock-reliefs’.20 While in the Muslim political context the Qajars were not
unique in utilizing the power of figural painting as a tool of propaganda and
legitimization, their deployment of figural portraits in painting and figural reliefs in
architecture emerged as an ‘emblem of the monarchy’ peculiar to nineteenthcentury Qajar visual culture.21
Elsewhere during this same period, revivalism of ancient Persian architecture
among the affluent Parsis of West India was as active as that in Iran, if not more
so.22 Noted examples of Neo-Achaemenid and Neo-Sasanian fire temples that were
commissioned by philanthropists and industrialists include: Thuthi Adrian in
Bombay (1859); Vachha Adrian in Fort, Bombay, by Dinshaw Mistry (1881); Manekji
Sett Adrian in Fort, Bombay (1891); Iranshah, Athornan Anjoman Atash Bahram in
Udwada, again by Mistry (1894); Anjoman Atash Bahram, Bombay (1886–97), and
Modi Atash Bahram in Surat (1931), by Mistry and Bhedwar. While meant to project
an ethno-national lineage to ancient Persia, the Parsi temples reinforced the
discursive endurance of a tradition of Persian kingship outside the borders of Iran.
Operating from multiple margins, wealthy Parsis did not just rework Indo-Persian
politics by challenging Qajar autocracy: they envisioned a new kind of revivalistic
architecture that claimed to be very pure, very old and authentic. Parsis often prided
themselves on never having been affected by Islam, and thus saw themselves and
their new architecture as the truthful carriers of ancient Persian traditions –
including, above all, that of kingship.
In comparison, we witness a parallel but different kind of revival in Iran by the
Shi‘i aristocracy and in India by Parsi philanthropists. Qajar kings and aristocrats
copied and affixed Achaemenid and Sasanian reliefs onto Muslim structures. Parsis
injected revived – often from inaccurate (Western) sources – architectural attributes
into radically modified Sasanian palatial floor plans and classical Western
morphologies. In Qajar Iran, that architecture confirmed and reinforced the image
of a ruling aristocracy and the prosperity of the empire under its command. On the
Indian subcontinent run by the British Empire, the style enabled a tiny congregation
of Parsis among a sea of religions and sects to begin to see itself as a noble (white)
race, heir to a civilization foundational to the development of modern Europe.23

While appealing to the allure of Persian kingship, the practice of revival aimed at
establishing an ethno-national linkage between the Parsis of the British Raj and the
kingdoms of ancient Persia. In so doing, an ethno-historical legitimacy was
provided to the self-perception of progressive Parsis, who were given a special place
in the larger matrix of the British Empire. In the Parsi context, revivalistic
architecture served a fundamentally different function.24
The political use of pre-Islamic imagery in Qajar Iran was so well ingrained into
the monarchic description of identity that it was carried on by Fath Ali Shah’s
grandson, Mohammad Shah (r. 1834–48), when he ascended the throne.
Contemporary orientalists who began to focus their studies on Iran and thus helped
shape a discourse on the racial superiority of Iranians as a branch of oriental Aryans
further encouraged the revival of pre-Islamic art as a form of self-assertion.25 As
early as the mid nineteenth century, the main advocate of Nordic superiority, the
French diplomat and aristocrat Joseph-Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, had remarked
about Iranians’ self-perception as a nation ‘very ancient, and as they say
themselves, perhaps the most ancient in the world that had a regular government’.26
Insisting that Europeans ‘are indebted to the Oriental Aryans’, Gobineau believed
that the migration of ancient Iranians from Central Asia had exposed them to the
Semitic tribes of Mesopotamia.27 He went as far as to suggest that the Sasanians,
esteemed by the Qajar aristocracy, were tainted by these contacts and hence were
already in decline. The invading Arabs, according to him, sealed the fate of Aryan
Iran with the import of Islam. In 1893, the English scholar and renowned orientalist
Edward Granville Browne similarly elaborated on the topic. It was in this ideological
context that the first Persian-language translation of Darius’ cuneiform script at
Bisotun, located near Kermanshah, was presented to Mohammad Shah by Sir Henry
Rawlinson in 1835 and 1843 (fig. 6.4).

6.3 Rock-cut carving of Fath Ali Shah and his successors, Cheshmey-e Ali, Rayy, 1823.

6.4 Darius’ cuneiform script in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian languages, Bisotun, near Kermanshah, 521 b c e.

Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848–96) continued this practice of revival and
hybridization during his long and influential reign. He revamped Tehran with a
lucid awareness of both contemporary and distant historical aesthetics.28 In the late
1860s, his government destroyed parts of Tehran’s city walls and decreed the
expansion of the royal palace of Golestan, borrowing its design ideas from antique,
European and Safavid architectural repertoires. The ‘fateful Perso-European style’
of these new additions to the palace aimed to enhance the image of the Qajar house
under his rule and hence ‘reflected the spirit of the age’.29 He then ordered his
architect, Mohammad Ali Kashi, to erect the 1867 Sun Palace on the eastern edge of
Golestan Palace. It connoted his aspiration to monumentality, eclectic opulence and
royal prestige, rather than a peculiarly nationalist exaltation of the pre-Islamic past.
The mechanical clock, visible from the royal courtyard on one side and the public
Naser Khosrow Avenue on the other, was ‘a manifestation of the king’s conception
of “progress” as a device to be purchased and brought to Iran’ (fig. 6.5).30 The use of
the clock in the larger context of urbanism was not necessarily an exclusively
European influence on Qajar architectural practices; rather, Naser al-Din Shah was

looking back to Safavid Isfahan, where the royal bazaar faced the ceremonial and
social space of the Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan.31 As in the Safavid case, Qajar royal
architecture and strategies of urban signage – displayed to the public and carrying
either a historical or a technological message of travel through time – aimed to
evoke the everlasting claim of the king and his monarchy. The clock was a symbol of
much wider shifts in the realm of royal representation. Naser al-Din Shah and his
reform-minded advisors aimed to provide a model of cultural restructuring that
would restore the image of the monarchy as ancient, forward-looking and powerful.

6.5 Street façade of the Sun Palace (shams al-emareh), showing the mechanical clock tower, Golestan Palace, Tehran, 1867.

The anxiety to restore Iran’s international status in diplomatic and military
spheres prompted a cultural outburst among the small but influential intelligentsia
that came of age during the late nineteenth century. By the 1880s, Qajar aristocratic
residential houses outside the capital city followed the desire for visual richness and
artistic synthesis of Islamic, Western and Achaemenid–Sasanian architecture.

Commissioned in 1879 by Ebrahim Khan, the governor of Fars, Shiraz’s
Narenjestan Palace was completed in 1886 by another member of the aristocracy,
Mohammad Reza Khan Qavam (plate 6.6).32 Restored by the patronage of Empress
Farah Pahlavi (r. 1959–79) in 1965–6 to house the Asia Institute – a research centre
and library founded by American art historians Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis
Ackerman – it borrowed its decorative programme from Persepolis and its general
morphology from Achaemenid and Safavid palaces, employing an amalgam of
Perso-Islamic craftsmanship and the chahar bagh model of landscape design. In the
details of the decorative programme and the general layout of the structures, a
masterful play between Safavid mirror-work (ayneh kari) and tilework (kashi kari),
Qajar and Zand reinterpretation of Safavid talar design, and Achaemenid relief
architecture is revealed with an awareness of modern artistic media, such as
photography (plate 6.7, fig. 6.8).33

6.8 Decorative arch above doorway showing Safavid-style mirror-work framing Naser al-Din Shah’s photograph, main hall, Narenjestan,
Shiraz, 1886.

Commissioned by the Qavam family in Shiraz, the Afifabad Palace was similarly

inspired by ancient palace typology, with a blend of Achaemenid, Sasanian, Safavid
and Qajar architectural and decorative motifs and construction techniques (plate
6.9). On the principal façade, a typically Qajar-style pishtaq carries a multicoloured
tile reproduction of Ardashir I’s investiture from Naqsh-e Rostam (fig. 6.10). The
loan of the relief was comprehensive not only in the change of material from rockcut to multi-glazed tile, but also in formal details and composition. A deliberate
process of ‘cut and paste’ was operational here. In its nineteenth-century
(re)appropriation the figures were multiplied, and a sun along with a calligraphic
inscription was added at the centre of the image, now decorated by lush landscaping
as background composition. As in Qajar royal ceremonies and their setting, the
narrative is embellished with objects and stories. The pishtaq, in turn, was
supported on four Persepolitan bull-headed capitals in Achaemenid style, forming a
Safavid-style – or rather transformed Safavid – talar overlooking a large shallow
pool. Within the talar, stone reliefs run below the ceiling on three sides. Here
again, one of Naqsh-e Rostam’s best-known reliefs is replicated: the triumph of the
Sasanian king Shapur I over the Roman emperor Valerian and Philip the Arab
(plates 6.11–6.12). With little ambiguity, the selection of this image reveals the
nobility’s anxiety over the fate of the Qajar Empire.

6.10 Rock relief of the investiture of Ardashir I, Naqsh-e Rostam, Fars, 226–42 c e.

On this same façade, a series of individual reliefs decorate the ground floor.
These depict standing soldiers from the various periods of Iran’s military history. As
Judith Lerner demonstrates in other such constructions, these copies, far from
being ‘fakes’, are ‘genuine works of Persian art – but of the 19th century a . d . , that
is, art of the Qajar period’.34 What is of further importance here is not exclusively
the binary that juxtaposes a fake against an original – a predominantly Western
concern premised on aesthetic and economic parameters. Instead, what is important
is the mechanics of assimilation, appropriation and adaptation of fragmented parts
into a holistic visual discourse in order to contest a politico-aesthetic metanarrative of colonialism. The prominent display of high reliefs depicting
nineteenth-century British and Iranian soldiers on the main façades of both
Afifabad and Narenjestan indicate a local awareness of contemporary political
reality and an up-to-date artistic contribution to it.35 The images revived at Afifabad
and Narenjestan not only paralleled Achaemenid and Sasanian reliefs, but also echo

the iconography of the numerous Qajar larger-than-life royal portraits. As Layla
Diba has demonstrated, this was an artistic tradition as enduring as that of
kingship.36 Such figures were set in a parallel architectural context – as opulent and
as majestic as the paintings themselves.37
The art and architecture that synthesized the ancient and the contemporary
deployed the opulence of visual imagery in order to restore the injured image of the
Persian monarchy under the Qajars. Valerian’s prostration in front of Shapur I was
perhaps the most telling of these selections. That as late as the sixteenth century
Valerian’s humiliating defeat at Edessa was vivid in elite European imagination – as
in Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1521 painting – speaks to the potency of an event
that was produced and reproduced in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
Iran.38 The recycling of old images to perpetuate deep-rooted stereotypes and thus
to demonstrate supremacy of power, at least symbolically, remains very much an
enduring practice. Zack Snyder’s 2007 blockbuster movie, 300, which exalts violence
by vilifying the Achaemenid royal court and army amid the United States’ invasion
of Iraq is a case in point.39
As the tradition of Iranian kingship stepped into the twentieth century, the
practice of synthesizing Islamic and pre-Islamic images proliferated among the
upper classes and began to trickle down. With the rise of the bourgeoisie, the
members of the secularist middle class deployed the revival of pre-Islamic icons as a
manifest form of nationalism. After the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–6, the
authority of an absolute monarchy was challenged by a new social force, which
reused images to claim power for itself. During the last two decades of Qajar reign,
reform-minded members of the ruling class commissioned residential buildings,
predominately in the capital city, with neoclassical features. A few exceptional
examples still stand, which elsewhere I have described as the hybrid style.40 The
Seyr al-Eslam building on the east side of Naser Khosrow Avenue in Tehran of
c.1915 displays an amalgam of Italian early-Renaissance sculptures, classical
Corinthian columns and Islamic tilework and brickwork. Below a Greek entablature,
the Zoroastrian faravahar (the ‘Guardian Spirit’) appears prominently on its street
façade. The pediment is composed of three figures, probably Shem and Japheth,
who cover their drunken father, Noah, mocked by his older son Cam. Japheth –
who, according to the Bible is the forefather of the northern, white peoples of

Europe – had a son, Madai, of the Median dynasty, who after a century of rule over
greater Persia conceded power to Cyrus and formed the Achaemenid Empire.
The façade is further adorned with four niches: in the southern one, a seminude female is seated at the foot of a young man. It is probably a reinterpretation of
Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes, commissioned for the Palazzo Medici Riccardi’s
garden. Originally placed next to Donatello’s David (1430), both sculptures depicted
tyrant-slayers and were perceived by the Medicis as triumph over despotism. In the
midst of a constitutional struggle where Iranian reformists were bent on curbing the
absolute power of the Qajar kings, the pedestal inscription – ‘Kingdoms fall through
luxury, cities rise through virtues. Behold the neck of pride severed by the hand of
humility’ – might have had a special resonance in spite of the fact that the formal
appropriation of the Italian composition was total. Next to this, the figure of Saint
Christopher, the Christian patron saint of pilgrims and travellers, carries Christ on
his shoulder and leans on a large staff, as in numerous medieval and later
depictions of the saint. In the northern niches, two female figures recall those in
Bernini’s Tomb of Pope Urban VIII (1627–47 c e ) in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican
City, located on the northern wall of the main apse. The allegorical figures of
Charity and Justice that flank the tomb have been transmuted into the northern
niches of Seyr al-Eslam. These and the entire façade are organized within
horizontal and vertical bands of polychrome ceramic tiles, multicoloured glazed
tiles, floral stuccos and decorative brickwork typical of contemporary Qajar
architecture.
Further north, near the vicinity of Ferdowsi Square in Tehran, the Fazel alEraqi House (now the hospital belonging to the Ministry of Justice and known as
bimarestan-e dadgostari) of the same period is another example of late-Qajar
hybridity in architecture (plate 6.13).41 The building erected on a late Safavid plan,
and probably initially a symmetric floor plan with an outdoor and an indoor shallow
pool (hoz), was bought by Masum Fazel al-Eraqi, a reformist judge in the postrevolutionary Ministry of Justice. Disinheriting his daughter over a family dispute in
the 1940s, he endowed the building to the Ministry of Justice to be used as a
hospital for women.42 The brick elevation of the extended courtyard, similar to Seyr
al-Eslam’s brickwork, is decorated with some 30 tile medallions, depicting
Achaemenid and Sasanian reliefs, framed in bands of glazed tiles and strategically

positioned on top of openings or corners. A manifestation of a sophisticated, highly
self-conscious mind, its makers did not move from Tehran for its production.
Instead of roaming around Persepolis, they instead browsed through Mohammad
Naser Forsat Shirazi’s Asar-e ajam, published by a Parsi press in Bombay in 1896.43
Fazel al-Eraqi House was, in fact, an architectural manifesto of Asar-e ajam, itself
one of the most influential revivalistic texts of nineteenth-century Iran.
Like the book’s methodological conception, the structure underpinned a
pedagogical intent, where the inscriptions spell out that ‘this is the likeness of’ soand-so, providing the exact site and location of the ancient reliefs where, too, the
very language of the inscriptions is identical to Forsat’s textual descriptions.
However, this copying was not mimetic: an autonomous practice of collage and
framing governs the decorative programme of the façade. Craftsman and patron had
freely and self-consciously picked from the pages of Asar-e ajam and placed selected
images in a new visual order that reinforced the aesthetic and narrative quality of
the architectural experience. The faravahar, the slaying of a lion, the investiture of
different Sasanian kings, as well as various sceneries from archaeological sites are
given a new architectural narrative by their collage on a single façade. Inside, the
walls of the main hall are covered by a series of ten tile portraits of various preIslamic and Muslim monarchs of Iran. They included Shapur I, Shah Abbas I (r.
1571–1629 c e ) and Karim Khan Zand (r. 1749–79 c e ). As in the reuse of Zand
architectural elements and imagery in palaces and portraits commissioned by Aqa
Mohammad Khan Qajar (r. 1794–7 c e ) and Fath Ali Shah, the late Qajar nobility
methodically incorporated ancient and modern rulers as signifiers of ‘the ideal
image of Persian kingship’.44 In so doing, they confirmed the notion of an enduring
institution – notwithstanding its differing religious affiliations. The selected images
and their modern reproductions – for instance, Valerian kneeling in front of Shapur
I and the investiture of Ardashir I – further speak to the technique of reproduction
as well as a specific politics of self-description (fig. 6.14, plate 6.15). Qajar
revivalism then returns to its own history. The same images were often recycled and
re-recycled as if to strengthen the royal attempts to reclaim majestic grandeur,
while at once resisting Western cultural and military hegemony in Iran.

6.14 Decorative medallion on the upper east façade of the Fazel al-Eraqi House, depicting the triumph of Shapur I over the Roman emperor
Valerian and Philip the Arab, Tehran, early twentieth century.

The style and craftsmanship of both the Seyr al-Eslam and Fazel al-Eraqi
houses, while lending itself to a reading of artistic or technical amateurism, does
not evoke a naive political representation. Their patron-builders were fully aware of
the implication of their aesthetic and design choices in terms of modern imperial
politics. While novel in their compositions, vocabulary and social meanings, these
examples also reveal a commitment to the continuity of Qajar architectural
constants, such as an emphasis on exterior façades, employment of familiar
architectural elements, embellishment of ‘overpowering richness’ and urban setting
as a signifier of power and class.45 That the duplication of historical motifs often
seems a bit off the mark owes as much to the technique of their transference and
means of reproduction as to intentional aesthetic choices. It is worth noting, too,
that most of the examples analysed here were duplicated either from memory by
those who had returned from European or domestic trips – not unlike Naser al-Din
Shah’s own travels and architectural commissions – or from photographs and

etchings. Therefore, while distinctly Western-, Islamic- or pre-Islamic-looking,
these reproductions do not qualify as simple, poor imitations; their effectiveness in
synthesizing pre-Islamic, Western and Islamic traditions has rendered them
original works of the late Qajar era. Therein resides their artistic ingenuity.
Furthermore, while explicitly Achaemenid and Sasanian in looks, these Qajar
palaces, aristocratic houses, rock-cut reliefs and decorative programmes were by
and large intended as ‘eternal expressions of kingship’ and thus were
accoutrements to royal and class power. Qajar kings who revived Iran’s antiquity
and formulated its first artistic expressions upheld Islam, Shi‘ism and the ulema as
central to their power and legitimacy.46 Their artistic revival as a modern visual
language of taste and fashion was, therefore, the manifestation of an appeal to a
rich monarchical tradition, regardless of religious affiliations. Or, rather, the
celebration of kingship was equated to the perpetuation of Shi‘ism as profoundly
and uniquely Iranian. It was a belief in the tradition of an Iranian kingship that
enabled its longevity. As Pio Filippani-Ronconi argues, ‘ancient Persians did not
actually consider the kingship necessarily dependent on a particular religion’,47
further adding that ‘this was the attitude that allowed the royal ideology to pass
almost unscathed from Zoroastrian antiquity to the Islamic Middle Ages, and safely
reach modern times’. As the rulers of the Shi‘i Empire, they not only did not reject
Islam in lieu of a monarchy, but rather celebrated Shi‘ism through the visual
language of the distinctively Iranian kingship, as argued by Babaie.48 This is evident
in the postage stamps printed on the occasion of Ahmad Shah’s coronation in
1914–15, which depicted architectural elements from Persepolis (plate 6.16). In
fact, Shi‘ism and Iranian monarchy were so intertwined that when in 1924 Prime
Minister Reza Khan urged the parliament to abolish the Qajar dynasty and institute
a secular republic in its place, the ulema mobilized the masses and pressed him to
take the royal throne. Unlike the architectural economy and historiography that was
instituted by the Pahlavi royal house, few of the revivalist tendencies under the
Qajars underpinned or were supported by exclusivist theories that strictly
segregated Islam, nationalism and Iran’s long history of kingship.

p ah lav i h o mo g e n e it y

The reigns of the two Pahlavi kings, Reza Shah (r. 1925–41) and Mohammad Reza
Shah (r. 1941–79), were characterized by a resolute commitment to industrial,
economic and infrastructural expansion, invariably pushing architecture to the
forefront of the nation-building project. Technological and infrastructural
development in administration, judiciary, economy, education, transportation and
communication were seen as a concrete means of modernizing the Iranian society.
Nevertheless, Reza Shah’s commitment to rapid industrialization was paralleled by
an equally steadfast sanction on political growth and liberalization. His son and
successor also sustained a similar policy of control on political narratives. While
modernization dominated, the early Pahlavi visual discourse on kingship was linked
to the aspirations to the royal throne of Reza Shah, an officer with valiant military
but common cultural background. He surrendered himself with a group of highly
educated and culturally sophisticated reformists who set the structural and artistic
parameters of modern Iran. In Reza Shah they found an iron fist that was willing to
eliminate the ulema from the equation of monarchy and to racialize the
Persianization of the Iranian life-world. Thus, what distinguished these reformists
from their Qajar sovereigns was their demand for rapid, heavy-handed and acrossthe-board secular reforms – that is, a utopic burning desire to erase ‘everything’
and ‘start over again’, as later noted by Abdolhossein Teymourtash, Reza Shah’s
court minister.49 Their reforms were conditioned by secular, constitutional and
nationalist ideologies that marginalized the ulema, the tribes, the traditionalist
merchants and the conservative segment of the landed aristocracy, upon whose
consensus hinged much of Qajar power.
In order to legitimize Reza Shah’s ascendancy to the throne and to justify their
own radical policies, the reformists began to portray the entire Qajar era as ‘an age
of decadence and corruption’, ‘a time when the chance for reform and equality with
the West was missed’.50 Kings were mocked in the early Pahlavi historiography of
the long Qajar century, as in the case of Naser al-Din Shah’s depiction as the
‘ignorant tyrant’ who neither resisted Western imperialism nor made an effort to
modernize Iran. Fath Ali Shah was accused of having been ‘an unqualified calamity
to Persian art’ and a man with ‘no taste’.51 Mozaffar al-Din Shah’s capitulation of
the archaeological excavation rights to the French was portrayed as ‘the ignorance
of a Sovereign who […] had no right to traffic […] the nation’s heritage’.52

Orientalist fantasies and personal gains fused with a civilizational discourse at
whose core stood the epistemic bond between king and culture. European as well as
Iranian scholars, diplomats and ideologues, who helped formulate these
conceptions of the past, were often its direct beneficiaries. To legitimize the reign
of Reza Shah, who had no claim to the Persian throne other than military genius
and strength of character, the recent past was demonized and a return to the
grandeur of antiquity was promised. It was believed that through this kind of return
– this kind of purification – genuine modernity would be accomplished. Well into
the 1980s, both inside and outside Iran, the Qajar epoch was known as the dark
ages and a time of ignorance and backwardness.
The radical break with the Qajar past and the linkage with antiquity relied on
the successful appropriation of the Persian tradition of kingship. Reza Shah’s failed
attempt to make Iran a secular republic in 1924 was an expression of how that
tradition was malleable enough to absorb the multilayered and multifaceted nature
of Iranian socio-religious and ideological structures. Only after coming to power did
Reza Shah began to hone the tools and tropes of the monarchical institution in
order to create a secular nation state. Thereafter under both Pahlavi kings, not only
a process of erasing the Qajar past, but also a complete reworking of the idea of
kingship – which was secular – was to serve as a link to a modernist utopia. In the
royal use of architecture there was a shift from the Qajar hybrid to a neo-antique
style that corresponded in no ambiguous ways to the change in an outlook
predicated on secularist and nationalist ideology and the heavy-handed policies that
sustained it. In contrast to the Qajar kings, who remained an aristocratic class at the
top of society, the Pahlavi state’s agenda to homogenize that society was pervasive
in most forms of cultural production: language, dress code, schooling, photography
and architecture, among others. A modern middle class was being formulated,
which used royal iconography not only to praise the reigning dynasty, but also to
celebrate a nation with a long history that included one of the legendary traditions
of monarchy.
At the pinnacle of Reza Shah’s rule, when the hybrid style was appropriated as
the official visual language of the nation state, it was stripped of its Renaissance
and Islamic elements, while the Achaemenid and Sasanian features were refined
and perfected. The proportions and decorative details of these new structures were

adjusted to conform more accurately to their pre-Islamic prototypes, which were in
turn going through major excavations during the course of the 1930s. The desire for
linguistic and cultural homogeneity rose from the heterogeneous nature of what
was being portrayed as pure. The cleansing of European and Islamic architectural
elements from the hybrid style was in reality a small part of a much larger project of
manufacturing a homogeneous nation led by a modern reformulation of the
institution of monarchy. In the context of this new formula, the hybrid became
homogeneous; the proto-national, nationalistic.
Erected under the watchful eyes of Reza Shah and his ministers, prominent
examples of the Pahlavi Neo-Achaemenid and Neo-Sasanian architecture consisted
of the first and main post office, the building of the justice ministry (1936), the first
national bank (1935), the police headquarters (1933), as well as the different
ministries, legislative headquarters and secondary administrative and educational
buildings in the heart of Pahlavi Tehran (fig. 6.17). All were syntheses of Western
modernist morphology and pre-Islamic royal iconography. Other examples include
the French architect André Godard’s Archaeological Museum (1939) and Maxime
Siroux’s National Library – both fashioned after the last Sasanian palace at
Ctesiphon in present-day Iraq (fig. 6.18). In October 1934, Reza Shah inaugurated
the new mausoleum of Ferdowsi, the author of the celebrated Shahnameh, the first
among a long list of national landmarks that were undertaken by the Society for
National Heritage throughout the Pahlavi era.53 Revivalistic in form and icon, the
tomb and all the events associated with it occasioned the rewriting of the nation on
the constructs of antique purity, monarchical longevity and national rebirth. The
faravahar along with the bull-headed columns appeared prominently on its main
façades.

6.17 Police headquarters, Tehran, 1933.

6.18 André Godard, main and southern façade of the Archeological Museum of Iran, Tehran, 1936–9.

These revivalist practices served as a backdrop to the state’s public declarations
in official literature. ‘We forget,’ wrote the royalist newspapers Ettela’at and Le
Journal de Téhéran, ‘that we have always been firm defenders of the Aryan race
against the avalanche of Tartars, Arabs, Mongols, and other hordes hostile to our
collective race’ and that ‘we are the architects of that [one] civilization that the
human kind glorifies today.’54 During the following decades, Le Journal de Téhéran
continued to publish articles with titles such as ‘Iranian origins of Gothic
architecture’, ‘Iran’s contribution to Europe’s awakening and global culture’ and
‘Iran and Italy: The two greatest cradles of civilization’, the arguments of which
were supported abroad by, for example, the Neo-Achaemenid pavilion at the
Brussels International Exposition in 1935.55 Until the dawn of the Iranian
Revolution of 1978–9, the official architectural vocabulary of the Pahlavi state was
deeply affected by Qajar and aristocratic models of visual hybridity and revivalism.
However, the need for the consolidation of a nation and its collective sense of

belonging, purification and claims to scientific accuracy precondition the making of
a secular nation state.
Although Pahlavi official architecture was a stylistic development and at times
a direct loan from Qajar eclectic revivalism, any trace of such borrowings was
concealed in subsequent Pahlavi and orientalist art historiography. Embedded in its
modernist ideology was an urge to create a tabula rasa. Modernism erected its
founding myth on the idea that it is new. Pahlavi modernism was no different. To
erase what was identified as hybrid and traditional was not only a modernistic act,
but also one that would, it was hoped, modernize the society.56 As part of the king’s
massive project of urban renewal in the 1930s, Qajar structures in general, and the
hybrid buildings in particular, were targeted for demolition along with one-third of
Tehran’s city fabric. Surviving Qajar examples of the hybrid style that outlived the
urban renewal of this period include: the south-western wing of Golestan Palace;
the Sahebqarai-ye Palace of Ahmad Shah on the grounds of Niavaran Palace; the
building of the Bagh-e Ferdows; the building of the first Tehran Radio Station, used
today as the Cinema Museum; the Qavam al-Saltaneh House, later turned into the
Abgineh Museum of Glassware and Ceramics and the Nobahar Academy; the first
Zoroastrian temple in Tehran, the Anjoman-e Adrian; the four buildings of
Hasanabad Square; Reza Shah’s first commission, the Green Palace on the grounds
of the Sadabad Palace; and the now obscure, but fascinating, Pirnia House in
Tehran.57 Those that are difficult to document include the building of the National
Consultative Assembly or the Parliament in Baharestan Square and the Post and
Telegraph Building in Sepah Square (destroyed in the 1960s).
The urban-renewal project of Tehran was so radical and rapid that those who
had hitherto supported the reformists in their drive for modernization and had
collaborated with them in their architectural undertakings voiced their criticism. In
1932 German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld confessed to Charles Calmer Hart, the
American attaché to Iran: ‘It is a system of ruining established authorities of old,
without replacing them with anything at all. Everything we see [is] a methodic
destruction.’58 By 1940, the American embassy estimated that the number of
residential structures demolished by the state ranged from 15,000 to 30,000.59
Historians have noted, ‘Qajar domestic architecture has been a prime victim of
modern urbanization projects, and outstanding examples of this style have been

suffered to decay.’60 Seyr al-Eslam’s neglected state until the 1990s is a case in
point. Those that survived were noted as manifestations of bad taste because of
their overt eclecticism in an age of nationalism. When the Pahlavi dynasty was
overthrown in 1979, Qajar art was again exposed to vandalism, this time by the
revolutionary crowd who took issue not with its eclectic looks, but with its royal
significance (plate 6.19). Only in the 1990s did the Islamic Republic begin actively
to promote the preservation of the nineteenth-century art of Iran.
As one of the three influential orientalists working in Iran, Arthur Upham Pope
encouraged Reza Shah and his cabinet to erase traces of Qajar culture. Forecasting
– and to a great degree provoking – the elimination of Qajar architecture, he
insisted in 1925 that Fath Ali Shah’s ‘grotesque and stupid carving of himself’ at
Rayy, after a Sasanian original, ‘will remain as one of the greatest artistic scandals
in the history of the world’.61 Again lecturing to state officials and intellectuals in
1934, he maintained, ‘the Qajars know nothing and cared nothing for Persia’s great
tradition in the arts, but were profoundly impressed by […] modern Europe’.62
Linking architecture to race in this new conception of the nation and its
monarchical past, he claimed that ‘the badness of Persian modern architecture is
not a native badness’ and that in order to revive the national artistic spirit ‘foreign
styles […] should be ignored’.63 As numerous art historians after him, Pope carried
on his public efforts to belittle late Safavid and Qajar architecture into private
discussions. In a 1937 letter, he warned Iran’s Minister of Culture, Ali Asghar
Hekmat, that the contemporary architecture ‘threatens to break Iran’s great
tradition, to impose upon her, as if she were a conquered country, the architecture
of another time and place that is wholly contradictory to the spirit of Iranian art’.64
Hekmat had endorsed Pope’s arguments by writing the introduction to the
publication of his 1925 lecture.65
In another dispatch to his good friend, Court Minister Hossein Ala, Pope
confessed, ‘I grieve over the ineptness of most of the architecture being built in Iran
today […] the rebuilding of the country and the revival of Iran’s artistic spirit is
being damaged and deflected.’66 Until the end of his life, Pope pursued the same
rhetoric on Qajar architecture. ‘The palaces of the Qajars in the nineteenth century,’
he wrote in a posthumous publication, ‘were mostly hastily built and of dubious
taste’, further adding that ‘if Persian Architecture […] survived the vicissitudes of

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is not certain that it has survived the
impact of European styles.’67 He finally condemned the hybrid style based on local
‘forgetful[ness]’, ‘vulnerab[ility]’ to novelty and outright ‘propaganda’.68 Exerting a
significant amount of influence on kings and ministers, Pope’s lecture and
scholarship turned out to have a harmful effect on the architectural legacy of the
Qajar era.
It comes as little surprise, then, that since 1926 the study of Qajar art has been
generally neglected due in part to art historians like Pope, in part to Naser al-Din
Shah’s 1867 sweeping reconstruction plan for Tehran and in part to Reza Shah’s
objection to represent Iran in conceptions of the traditional. Most of all, it has
suffered because the orientalist canonical historiography, both inside and outside
Pahlavi Iran, invented the myth that after the fall of the Safavids, Persian
architecture underwent an acute decline and hence is unworthy of scholarly
attention. In A Survey of Persian Art, the history of Persian art stops with Isfahan’s
religious school, the Madrasa-ye Madar-e Shah (1714).69 Furthermore, these specific
buildings – the hybrid buildings – remain outside scholarly interests because, in
terms of chronology, they appeared at a moment of transition and sociopolitical
turmoil. Above all, in the matrix of dynastic historiography they fall between
dynastic rules and are traditionally considered either products of an era of Qajar
decline or a period of Pahlavi formation. While pivotal to the notion of kingship, the
hybrid style was shunned by Reza Shah because it represented a gap: not only a
shift in royal households, but also a conceptual transfer – secularism as a paradigm
shift in the conception of Persian kingship.
In July 1944 Reza Shah died, exiled in Johannesburg. The majority of his
compatriots did not mourn his passing despite the fact that no other king, perhaps
with the exception of Shah Abbas I, had managed to alter the individual lives of so
many ordinary Iranians. Reza Shah was buried in Sunni grounds in Cairo in the
following October.70 With some seven years delay his body was brought to Rayy, the
ancient city south of Tehran and the site of a major Shi‘i pilgrimage destination, the
shrine of Shah Abd al-Azim (Shahzad-e Abdolazim in popular parlance), wherein
on a Sasanian-style rock cut and under an Achaemenid-like parasol stood Fath Ali
Shah as the proud king of Persia. Reza Shah was buried under a modern
reinterpretation of a Zoroastrian fire temple, the chahar taq, consisting of a

drumless dome upheld by a simple cube open on four sides (fig. 6.20).
Archaeologists have now come to believe that ancient Persians did not build freestanding, detached fire temples, for such a structure, open on four sides, would have
negated the strict purity laws that Zoroastrianism requires. The chahar taq of Reza
Shah turns out to be yet another remaking of Persian monarchical and architectural
history, itself belonging to a long-standing tradition of appropriation of the
definition of architecture, Persian kingship and the complex politics of Iranian
identity.

6.20 Mohsen Forughi, Keyqobad Zafar and Ali Sadegh, Mausoleum of Reza Shah, Rayy, southern Tehran, 1951, destroyed 1978–9.

While inaccurately symbolizing Iran’s ancient religious practices, Reza Shah’s
mausoleum masterfully encapsulated the architectural discourse of his reign. It also
represented the paradigm shift in the image and role of Persian kingship under the
Pahlavis, for it exposed the peculiar relation between modern architecture and
contemporary history and delineated Pahlavi conceptions of Iran’s monarchic past.
The architectural problem vis-à-vis the idea of kingship was singular: how to
represent a ruler staunchly devoted to change, while aspiring to revive the various
forms of the long tradition of Persian monarchy. The physical proximity of his tomb

to the Shi‘i holy site of Shah Abd al-Azim rendered the solution more compelling: a
radical break with Qajar iconography of kingship, yet a dual allegiance to both
collective Iranian nationalism and personal Shi‘i convictions. How was the tomb’s
design to signal the perception of the replacement of a disgraced and shrunken
Qajar Empire by a unified and robust secular Pahlavi state? The aesthetics of Reza
Shah’s tomb were set against the opulent architecture of Qajar formal façades. The
austerity of the structure was to project the image of a timely, fashionable and
hence modernist monarch, once at the helm of a progressive bourgeoisie. White
walls, simple forms, visual minimalism and abstinence from ornament: Pahlavi
austerity was set in this specific case quite literally against the background of Qajar
lavish use of ornamentation.
The return of the king’s body to the now secularized land of Iran became a topic
of public dispute. On a number of occasions Mohammad Reza Shah had tried to
convince the government to organize an elaborate state funeral. In 1947 Prime
Minister Ahmad Qavam had vetoed such a request.71 The ulema had rejected the
proposals to bury him in either of the two major Shi‘i shrines in Qom or Mashhad.
The king’s own wish to bury his father in the Sadabad palace complex was denied by
clerics who took issue with the fact that Reza Shah had already been buried in a
non-Shi‘a land and deserved interment near a Shi‘i shrine within Iran.72 Rayy, the
city of Qajar royal burial south of Tehran, was finally agreed upon. The construction
of a mausoleum began in 1948 adjacent to the Shah Abd al-Azim shrine as a
strategic position to legitimize and perpetuate the traditions of Persian monarchy.
Once completed in March 1950, Reza Shah’s body, embalmed in a coffin, was sent
to Cairo to join a group of high-ranking Iranian officials, including his son.73 After
stops in Mecca and Medina, the coffin was placed on a special train from Ahwaz to
Tehran. The trans-Iranian railway was one of the legacies of Reza Shah’s reign – in
architecture, the carrier of avant-gardism from the the metropolis to the peripheries
of the nation. Following a slow procession through the wide streets of Tehran – yet
another physical marker of his rule on the capital city – Reza Shah’s body arrived at
its final resting place. On 8 May 1951, he was buried in a royal yet characteristically
austere ceremony.
Designed by three leading Pahlavi architects – Mohsen Forughi, Keyqobad
Zafar and Ali Sadegh – the mausoleum’s evocation was multilayered: Iran’s leap

into the future under Reza Shah, its renewed bond with Zoroastrian antiquity as
well as its adamant commitment to Persian monarchy and, through it, to Shi‘ism.
The landmark was also deployed as a part of the discourse on the endurance and
merit of the Pahlavi house after Reza Shah’s demise. In his attempt to regain power
and prestige, Mohammad Reza Shah induced potential supporters into his sphere of
influence by strengthening the state bureaucracy and court patronage. He appealed
to the different social strata, particularly the masses, with the public image of a
benevolent sovereign whose reign, in contrast to his father’s, would be marked by
cooperation rather than coercion. Simultaneously, through state rituals, he
appealed to the middle class by establishing forms of continuity – that is, land
reform, women’s emancipation, urban renewal and infrastructural constructions –
between his father’s reign and his own. The tectonics of the landmark was
deployed, along with other strategies of legend-making, to divinize the king, who in
1948 was granted by the national parliament the posthumous appellation of Reza
Shah the Great. His tomb was one of the most symbolic markers of the ideological
rupture and link of the Pahlavi strategy of royal legitimacy – of this presence and
absence. Mohammad Reza Shah’s effort to establish himself as the successor to his
father often symbolically rotated around this monument, which constantly
projected an image of a Derridean différance in continuity and change.
The site of the tomb helped it to gain Perso-Shi‘i sanctity, while the
architectural language and its construction material appealed to the universalistic
taste of modernism. The religious associations of the Shah Abd al-Azim shine and
the spiritual status of the adjoining cemetery enshrined a religious overtone to Reza
Shah’s modern mausoleum. Locally, it invested in the juxtaposition of the building
in relationship to the other Islamic shrines – Shah Abd al-Azim, Emamzad-e
Hamze and Emamzad-e Taher – positioned directly behind it, and in the vicinity,
Emamzad-e Abd al-Hassan and Emamzad-e Abdollah. This proximity to historically
significant Shi‘i and royal landmarks endowed Reza Shah’s tomb with sanctity that
it would otherwise not have emanated.74 Consisting of a dome sitting on a square
room, the chahar taq was first used by the Achaemenids, the Parthians and the
Sasanians for their temples and palaces and was later adopted as a funerary
monument by the Samanids, the Seljuks and the Timurids. Its appropriation
represented a nation which was a worthy member of the post-colonial family of

modern nations, yet at once the proud heir to an antiquity to be envied. Likewise,
the obvious use of the tenets of the ‘international style’ in colour and material was
another aspect of its appeal to the rightful place of the nation and its modernist king
in the ranks of the ‘civilized nations’. An aesthetic difference between the Qajar
past and the Pahlavi present was achieved through the building technology, modern
forms, monumental expression and the use of white marble and concrete as
construction materials. By altering the size, colour and material, and by keeping the
main plan and elevation configuration of the chahar taq prototype, a link to the
antiquity and a break from the immediate past was projected. In this tomb,
architecture also managed to bridge the historical importance of Reza Shah and his
technological and infrastructural achievements – his relevance for Iran’s modernity
and the modern middle class.
During the mid to the late Pahlavi period, avant-garde architecture, best
represented by Reza Shah’s tomb, projected the legitimacy of the ruling monarchy
in its operational différance. Visible to the public, avant-garde and historicist
structures functioned as binary opposites that served the same epistemic regime of a
shift from a traditional monarchy to an expanding bourgeois middle class. Cultural
tropes of civilization – of appearing progressive – produced and represented that
différance, a difference/deferral in taste. Whiteness was central not only to the
making of this new image as modern, but also to the differential effect. It indicated
the new veneer that enshrined the new order as such. All the bodies – from
clothing, to car, to hair-do, to furniture, to houses – were enveloped in this austere
minimalist whiteness. Each in turn operated as a fragment in a larger system of
taste and class formation. White walls provided ‘a recognizable “look”’ to the
middle class.75 This was particularity poignant given the orientalist discourse
linking ornamentation to crime in architectural discussions in Europe during the
first two decades of the twentieth century.76 White architecture further provided a
marked departure and opposition to the opulent buildings of Qajar kings and
nobilities. For the Pahlavi elite, it fed the discourse on racial superiority and modern
hygiene and went on to replicate conceptions of masculinity, intellectualism,
permanence and industry.
Fashion and conceptions of fashionability had much to do with this
relationship between the Pahlavi bourgeoisie and architecture. To be fashionable, to

be up to date was a trope of the modern middle class that it used to the fullest in all
aspects of its new life(style). As architectural historian Mark Wigley notes, ‘Modern
architecture did not simply become fashionable. Rather it was, from the very
beginning, organized by the operations of fashion that underpinned its very attacks
on fashion.’77 Reza Shah’s Uniformity of Dress Code of 1928, revised in 1936, that
outlawed the traditional dress of men, made the Western clothing and the Pahlavi
cap compulsory and, more radically, forbade women the wearing of the Islamic veil
went hand in hand with his architectural and urban policies that aimed to create the
‘Pahlavi man’ in its (modernist) totality. Reza Shah’s tomb, like the villas and
cinemas that he had championed, with their unornamented white walls signalled a
difference in taste that distinguished – and shaped – the differing identity of this
rising social stratum under the secular monarchy. The structure that produced and
reproduced the image of a différance was the architecture of the middle class as the
ultimate consumer of good taste.
The last king of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah, staged the grandest modernist
architectural expression of Persian monarchy. In October 1971 he celebrated ‘the
2,500-year anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great’
(fig. 6.21). The ruins at Pasargadae and Persepolis were chosen not only as the
authentic sites of historical reenactments, but also as the ultimate symbol of Iran’s
monarchy and civilization.78 Throughout three days of royal celebrations in ancient
style, Persepolis became, according to official reportage, ‘the centre of gravity of the
world’.79 International invitees included the rich and famous of the time: a dozen
kings and queens, ten princes and princesses, some twenty presidents and first
ladies, ten shaykhs, and two sultans, together with emperors, vice-presidents,
prime ministers, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and other state representatives
who came to witness a ritualistic speech by the king at Cyrus’ tomb, an unparalleled
sound-and-light spectacle over Persepolis, exquisite banquets in a tent city and a
fantastic parade of national history.80 While the event was ‘the greatest show the
world ha[d] ever seen’, as the monarch promised, it also proved to be the beginning
of an anti-Shah and anti-West revolutionary mass movement.81 A mere show of
political might, the Neo-Achaemenid spaces and rituals that recreated the entire
history of the Persian Empire in effect asserted the endurance of the idea of
Iranshahr.

6.21 Light projectors remaining from the 2,500-year anniversary celebrations at Persepolis in 1971.

Since 1941 Mohammad Reza Shah had been deeply committed to the rapid
modernization of the country’s economy and infrastructure while preventing the
liberalization of its political institutions, much like his father. He was convinced
that a better future for Iran was possible by reviving the ancient institutions and
imagery and simultaneously pre-empting the pitfalls that had plagued Western
modernization by concocting technological ‘shortcuts to the future’.82 The key to the
realization of the king’s ostensibly classless, homogeneous and prosperous Iranian
society under his kingship rested, it was thought, on the cultural tropes of the
Achaemenid dynasty somehow synthesized with the technological advances of the
West. The event in October 1971, therefore, is often remembered in Iran’s
twentieth-century history as the most explicit and extravagant articulation not only
of the grand scheme of social engineering and cultural revivalism – that is, the
king’s Great Civilization (Tamadon-e bozorg) – but also of the last ritualistic and
artistic expressions of Persian kingship.

By 1971 the buried fragments of Persepolis had emerged to the surface as a vast
ancient city with royal palaces and throne halls, residential quarters and harems, as
well as a sophisticated decorative programme with exquisite examples of high
reliefs. The complex was unanimously selected to house the festivities that included
five major events: the inaugural speech at the foot of the tomb of Cyrus at
Pasargadae, two dinner banquets in the tent city followed by fireworks over
Persepolis, the viewing of ‘the Great Parade of Persian History’ under the grand
staircase of Persepolis and, finally, the conclusion of the celebration in the modern
capital of Tehran. Radical architectural and technological measures were
undertaken not only to render Persepolis and Pasargadae user-friendly to
dignitaries, but also to provide them with a modern look without impairing their
antique allure, imagined or otherwise. A finely tuned aesthetic synthesis of the
ancient and the modern was to guarantee the symbolic and pragmatic success of the
entire undertaking.
The juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern was the exhibition of progress
under the Pahlavis. At the end of the third day of celebrations the foreign
dignitaries were flown back to Tehran. This change of location from Persepolis to
Tehran spoke to the direct link between the ancient city of Persepolis as the capital
of the Achaemenid dynasty and the modern city of Tehran as the capital of the
Pahlavi dynasty – a conspicuous evocation of change and continuity, of antiquity
and modernity. As put by a state spokesman, it was a jump ‘out of history into the
nation’s future’.83 This was a utopic future in the making, beginning with Reza
Khan’s 1921 coup that ousted the last Qajar king, Ahmad Shah (r. 1909–25). Since
then, rapid modernization was filtered through the practice of revivalism in an
effort to endorse both international progress and national rootedness. The first
indication of this official policy was revealed when Reza Khan took the ancient
Iranian term of ‘Pahlavi’ as the dynastic name. Decades later, like his father,
Mohammad Reza Shah added to his name the title Aryamehr derived from
Achaemenid inscriptions that were discovered by a nineteenth-century English
archaeologist. Darius I had referred to himself as Aryamehr, the ‘Light of the
Aryans’, and that came to replace the Qajar title of the ‘Shadow of God on Earth’.84
When the second half of the celebration was launched in Tehran, the king
dedicated a large-scale modernistic museum of linear Iranian history at the Shahyad

Aryamehr Monument (fig. 6.22).85 A museum designed especially for the occasion
and commissioned to the then young Iranian-Baha’i architect, Hossein Amanat, the
white landmark in western Tehran was to signal the most ambitious reform
programmes of the king: the 12 points of his White Revolution.86 Until the dawn of
the Iranian Revolution, Shahyad acted as the architectural manifesto of the king’s
monarchy and the vision for Iran’s future. It became the symbol of the modern
nation, marching forward, captured in the dynamic form of the landmark and
connected to the past with the general configuration of the plan and the elevation
along with the decorative details and prototypes. As in the nation, in Shahyad the
new and the old were omnipresent: a gate to the Great Civilization (darvazeh-ye
tamaddon-e bozorg). Through its architecture, both the king and his nation were
remembered and celebrated.

6.22 Hossein Amanat, Shahyad Aryamehr Monument, later renamed Azadi (‘freedom’) following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Tehran, 1971

In October 1971, at Persepolis, the use of the Achaemenid ruins was intended
to continue to legitimize the Pahlavi monarchy as well as the king’s policies of

reform. A publication sponsored by the Celebration Committee maintained: ‘Only
when change is extremely rapid, and the past ten years have proved to be so, does
the past attain new and unsuspected values worth cultivating’, concluding that ‘the
celebrations were held because Iran has begun to feel confident of its
modernization’.87 The celebrations had served their dual purpose, which, according
to the monarch, was ‘to re-awaken the people of Iran to their past and re-awaken
the world to Iran’.88 While past kings had been impressed by Persepolis and
Pasargadae, none had hitherto claimed so explicitly and so directly to be the direct
heir to the throne of Cyrus II. Understandably so, for this kind of return to a golden
age is a modernist pendant to the project of nation-building. None had deployed so
blatantly the proximity of architecture to evoke a historical and racial linkage and
thus cultivate an enhanced foundation of the institution of Persian monarchy. In
that October architecture fully served its monarchical function: after centuries of
admiration, appropriation and examination, it enabled the last king of Iran to stand
in front of the ancient ruins and announce to the world:
Greetings to thee, O Cyrus, the Great King, the King of kings, the
Achaemenian King, King of the Land of Iran, on behalf of myself – the
Shahanshah of Iran – and my nation. Cyrus! We have today gathered at thy
eternal resting place to say to thee: rest in peace, for We are awake, and
will forever stay awake to guard thy proud heritage.89
On 30 March 1979, Iran was declared a republic. Fifteen months later, much like his
father, Mohammad Reza Shah died and was buried in exile.90
Zack Snyder’s blockbuster movie, 300, caused great commotion in Iran and in
Iranian communities around the world. Everyone, from the highest officials of the
Islamic Republic to ordinary Iranians in the streets of Westwood, California, was
appalled by the way the Persian king, Xerxes I the Achaemenid, was depicted with
such vulgarity. As the barbarian personified, he was the ultimate embodiment of the
diseased and the disfigured. In 300, Xerxes was the discursive embodiment of
différance, a difference/deferral in taste. When asked about the film, Empress Farah
Pahlavi told a journalist, ‘I do not think that our rich and ancient culture can be ever
destroyed or belittled by just one film or by the attitude of a government in power
that is against our heritage,’ adding, ‘a regime that for the past 28 years has

struggled against Iran’s historical heritage and culture has suddenly reacted to in
defence of this heritage.’91 Be it at the zenith of power or in the abyss of exile – or,
as a matter of fact, in the most bizarre projection of orientalist fantasy – the ideal
image of Persian kingship, of Iranshahr, persists as a discourse to impress upon
contemporary imagination, as it has always done. It endures as a visual discourse,
despite itself, to influence, synthesize and invent anew the very idea of that image.
Surely architecture – above all, architecture as image – will occupy an important
place in the malleable processes of power politics.
no tes
1 See: Abbas Amanat, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896
(Berkeley, 1997), p. 13; Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804–1946
(Princeton, 1999).
2 W. Loftus, Travels and Researches of Chaldea and Susiana (London, 1857); M. Dieulafoy, L’Acropole de Suse
(Paris, 1890); M. Dieulafoy, L’Art antique de la Perse, 2 vols (Paris, 1884); J. Dieulafoy, Le Tour du Monde: La
Perse, la Chaldée, et la Susiane (Paris, 1883). For a Persian translation of the last of these, see Jane Dieulafoy,
Safarnamah-e Madam Dieulafoy (Tehran, 1982). See also, J. Dieulafoy, At Susa: The Ancient Capital of the King
of Persia (Philadelphia, 1890). The Dieulafoys travelled to and around Iran in 1881 and 1882. Jane Paule
Henriette Rachel Magre Dieulafoy (1851–1916) dressed as a man in order to be able to travel and work at
Susa. They eventually shipped most of their findings to the Louvre. See P.E. Van Der Meer, Mission en
Susiane (Paris, 1935).
3 K.A. Niknami, Methodological Aspects of Iranian Archeology (Oxford, 2000), p. 8. Also see his own impressive
four volumes: J. de Morgan, Mission scentifique en Perse (Paris, 1895–6). Supervised by the French Minister of
Public Instructions, Fine Arts and Culture, it includes details of various archaeological undertakings in Iran,
including ancient Hamadan or ‘Ecbatana’, maps and sketches of the Caspian Sea region, Kurdistan and Elam,
among other topics.
4 See Talinn Grigor, Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs
(New York, 2009), ch. 1.
5 Naser al-Din Shah was assassinated on 1 May 1896, while the archaeological agreement was decreed by him
on 12 May 1895. The signature on the agreement is, therefore, that of his son and successor Mozaffar al-Din
Shah’s. See Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Direction des Affaires Politique et
Commerciales Asie-Oceanie 1919–1929, Perse 66, Fouilles archeologique, E387–3, 17, 11 August 1900, Paris.
6 Ibid.
7 Susa was the first Achaemenid capital city and is located in the south-western region of Iran, directly north of
the tip of Persian Gulf. The two other important Achaemenid cities were Persepolis, excavated by the
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and Pasargadae, excavated by the British Institute of Persian
Studies; both are located north-east of modern-day Shiraz, in the south of Iran.
8 For the history of the Society for National Heritage, see Grigor, Building Iran.

9 See Sussan Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early
Modern Iran (Edinburgh, 2008). Further, on the Qajar treatment of Safavid architecture, see Sussan Babaie,
‘In the eye of the storm: Visualizing the Qajar axis of kingship’, Artibus Asiae lxvi/2 (2006), pp. 35–54.
10 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, p. 13.
11 See ibid., p. 2.
12 I am grateful to Sussan Babaie for pointing this out to me.
13 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, p. 17.
14 Monica M. Ringer, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran (Costa Mesa, 2001),
pp. 53–4.
15 In the context of painting, Diba calls this ‘the first Persian reaction to the very real possibility of foreign
domination’; see Layla Diba, ‘Images of power and the power of images: Intention and response in early Qajar
painting (1785–1834)’, in Layla Diba and Maryam Ekhtiyar (eds), Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch,
1785–1925 (London and New York, 1998), p. 40.
16 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, p. 18.
17 See Diba, ‘Images of power and the power of images’, p. 35.
18 See Judith Lerner, ‘A rock relief of Fath ‘Ali Shah in Shiraz’, Ars Orientalis ii (1991), p. 31.
19 For further discussion and images of both reliefs, see Diba, ‘Images of power’, pp. 40–1.
20 Layla Diba, ‘Introduction’, in Julian Raby (ed.), Qajar Portraits: Figure Paintings from Nineteenth Century Persia
(London, 2001), pp. 9–10; Diba, ‘Images of power’, p. 31.
21 Diba, ‘Introduction’, p. 9.
22 The origin of the Neo-Achaemenid style of the 1930s has also been traced to influences coming from the
Parsi community of Mumbai at the turn of the century; see Cyrus Samii, ‘Stone bulls, plaster griffins, and
pitched roofs: Sources of the Neo-Achaemenian style’, Me’mar Iranian Quarterly on Architecture and Urban
Design xii (Spring 2001). I have traced this influence further back to the nineteenth century; see Talinn
Grigor, ‘Parsi patronage of the Urheimat’, Getty Research Journal ii (2010), pp. 53–68.
23 For the argument of Zoroastrianism as a source for both Judaism and Christianity, see T.M. Luhrmann, The
Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society (Cambridge, 1996), p. 104.
24 See Grigor, ‘Parsi patronage’.
25 C.H. Becker, ‘Archäologische probleme’, Islamstudien (1904), p. 278. Gobineau inspired others such as
Vladimir Minorski, Pierre Loti and Marcel Proust; see Robert Irwin, ‘Gobineau versus the orientalists’, paper
presented during The Study of Persian Culture in the West: Sixteenth to Early Twentieth Century
Conference, State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia, 24–8 June 2004.
26 Artur de Gobineau, Trois ans en Asie (Paris, 1905), p. 268; quoted in Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions, p. 44.
Between 1854 and 1858, Arthur de Gobineau (1816–82) served as first secretary of the French mission and
then as France’s chargé d’affaires at the court of Naser al-Din Shah in Tehran. During his return voyage from
Tehran to Paris, he passed through Ottoman Armenia, Istanbul and Egypt. He developed a theory that
underpinned his basic idea that ‘race created culture’ in Essai sur l’Inégalité des Races Humaines (1853–5;
translated as The Inequality of Human Races, 1915). His other works on Iran include Histoire des Perses (1869),
his memoir Trois ans en Asie (1858), Traité des inscriptions cunéiformes and the short story Nouvelles asiatiques
(1876; translated as Five Oriental Tales, 1925).
27 Gobineau, Trois ans en Asie, p. 268.

28 Naser al-Din Shah was renowned for his enthusiastic import of Western artefacts and architectural fashion
during his European travels, notably during his 1873, 1878 and 1889 visits. For details on the construction
processes and patronage of Golestan Palace and other royal structures, see Jennifer Scarce, ‘The royal palaces
of the Qajar dynasty; a survey’, in Edmond Bosworth and Carole Hillenbrand (eds), Qajar Iran: Political,
Social, and Cultural Changes, 1800–1925 (Costa Mesa, 1983), pp. 335, 339. See also: Jennifer Scarce, ‘The
architecture and decoration of the Gulistan Palace: The aims and achievements of Fath Ali Shah (1797–1834)
and Nasir al-Din Shah (1848–1896)’, in Journal of Iranian Studies xxxiv/1–4 (2001), pp. 103–16; Jennifer
Scarce, ‘The arts of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries: Architecture’, in Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly and
Charles Melville (eds), The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic
(Cambridge, 1991), pp. 890–930.
29 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, p. 435.
30 Ibid., p. 428.
31 See Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, p. 90.
32 See: Terence O’Donnell, The Narenjestan: A Brief History and Interpretation of the House (Shiraz, 1970), pp. 5–
13; Judith Lerner, ‘Achaemenid “fakes”: A re-evaluation in the light of 19th century Iranian architectural
sculpture’, Expedition xxii/ 2 (1980), p. 15. For a discussion on Qajar ‘traditionalism’ vis-à-vis revivalism and
contemporary designs, see Robert Hillenbrand, ‘‘The role of tradition in Qajar religious architecture’, in
Edmond Bosworth and Carole Hillenbrand (eds), Qajar Iran: Political, Social, and Cultural Changes, 1800–1925
(Costa Mesa, 1983), p. 353; A.A. Bakhtiar and Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Domestic architecture in nineteenthcentury Iran: The Manzil-i Sartip Sidihi near Isfahan’, in Edmond Bosworth and Carole Hillenbrand (eds),
Qajar Iran: Political, Social, and Cultural Changes, 1800–1925 (Costa Mesa, 1983), pp. 383–401.
33 The Safavid talar, which was reworked into mainstream royal practices of building, consisted of a wooden
pillared hall that flanked the façade of a royal ceremonial structure that was open on three sides. The Zands
and the Qajars appropriated the Safavid talar into royal, domestic and public architecture. On the Safavid
talar, see Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces, pp. 118, 129.
34 Lerner, ‘Achaemenid “fakes”’, p. 6.
35 For images of the reliefs, see Talinn Grigor, ‘Orient oder Rom? Qajar “Aryan” architecture and Strzygowski’s
art history’, The Art Bulletin lxxxix (2007), pp. 562–90.
36 See Diba, ‘Images of power’, p. 31.
37 See Diba, ‘Introduction’, p. 10.
38 See Hans Holbein the Younger, The Humiliation of Valerian by Shapur (1521), pen and black ink on a chalk
sketch, kept at the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland.
39 Dan Stevens, ‘A movie only a Spartan could love’, Slate (8 Mar 2007).
40 Grigor, ‘Orient oder Rom?’, pp. 562–90.
41 See ‘Fazel al-Eraqi house in Tehran took its place in the national heritage list’, Hamshahri (1 Shahrivar 1379;
22 August 2000).
42 Author’s interview with Farah Zahedi, daughter of Fazel al-Eraqi, 25 June 2009, Tehran. I am grateful for her
generosity in allowing me to see the family archives and photographs.
43 Mohammad Naser Forsat al-Dowleh, Asar-e ajam [Iranian cultural heritage] (Bombay, 1896).
44 Diba, ‘Images of power’, pp. 38–9.
45 Bakhtiar and Hillenbrand, ‘Domestic architecture’, p. 383.

46 Lerner, ‘Rock relief of Fath ‘Ali’, p. 36.
47 Pio Filippani-Ronconi, ‘The tradition of sacred kingship in Iran’, in George Lenczowski (ed.), Iran under the
Pahlavis (Stanford, 1978), p. 56.
48 See: Babaie, Isfahan and Its Palaces; Babaie, ‘In the eye of the storm’, pp. 35–54.
49 British Public Record Office, FO371, 12293, E3909, Clive, 26 August 1927, Tehran.
50 Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, pp. 445–6; Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (New Jersey,
1982), p. 10.
51 Arthur Upham Pope, ‘The past and future of Persian art’, public lecture delivered on 22 April 1925 in Tehran.
For the complete English text of the speech, see Jay Gluck and N. Siver (eds), Surveyors of Persian Art: A
Documentary Biography of Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman (Ashiya, 1996), pp. 93–110. See also
Society for National Heritage 92, Majmu‘eh-ye entesharat-e qadim-e anjoman [Collection of old publications of
the Society] (Tehran, 1972), pp. 99–146.
52 Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales AsieOcéanie 1919–29, Perse 66, Fouilles archéologiques E387–3, 45, Court Minister to French Minister, 24
December 1926, Tehran.
53 See Grigor, Building Iran.
54 See ‘Editorial: Notre but’, Le Journal de Téhéran i (15 March 1935).
55 ‘Les origines Iraniennes de l’architecture Gothique’, Le Journal de Téhéran vii (29 March 1935); ‘Les origines
Iraniennes de l’architecture Gothique’, Le Journal de Téhéran xi (8 April 1935); ‘Une mise au point historique:
Contribution de l’Iran au reveil de l’Europe et à la culture mondiale’, Le Journal de Téhéran dcccvii (20 March
1938); ‘L’Iran et l’Italie: Les plus grands berceux de la civilisation’, Le Journal de Téhéran vidcxxxvi (11
September 1957); ‘Le pavilion de l’Iran à Bruxelles’, Le Journal de Téhéran lxi (2 August 1935).
56 Reza Shah destroyed most of Antoin Sevruguin’s photograph collection depicting Naserid Iran, because,
according to him, it represented old Persia. See Frederick N. Bohrer (ed.), Sevruguin and the Persian Image:
Photographs of Iran, 1870–1930 (Washington and Seattle, 1999).
57 See Grigor, ‘Orient oder Rom?’.
58 US State Department Archives, Hart, dispatch 1393, 891.00/1562, 25 March 1932, Tehran.
59 US State Department Archives, Engert, dispatch 1830, ‘Change in the City of Tehran’, 891.101/3, 10 May
1940, Tehran.
60 Bakhtiar and Hillenbrand, ‘Domestic architecture’, p. 383.
61 Pope, ‘Past and future of Persian art’.
62 Arthur Upham Pope, ‘Architecture in modern Persia’, public lecture delivered in April 1934 in Tehran. For
the complete English text, see Gluck, Surveyors of Persian Art, pp. 283–6.
63 Pope, ‘Architecture in modern Persia’, p. 286.
64 Letter from Pope to Hossein Ala, 2 January 1937, London, Pope Papers, Box 3: General Correspondence 1934,
file ‘1937 A’.
65 Society for National Heritage 92, Majmu‘eh-ye entesharat-e qadim-e anjoman [Collection of old publications of
the Society] (Tehran, 1972), p. 104.
66 Letter from Pope to Hossein Ala, 22 January 1937, London, Pope Papers, Box 3: Personal correspondence
1934, file ‘1937 A’.
67 Jay Gluck (ed.), Arthur Upham Pope Introducing Persian Architecture (Tehran, 1969), p. 115.

68 Ibid.
69 See Phyllis Ackerman and Arthur Upham Pope (eds), A Survey of Persian Art, 14 vols (Tehran, London and
New York, 1964–7).
70 For published primarily sources, see: Center for the Study and Publication of Political Culture of the Pahlavi
Era, Reza Shah-e kabir: Safar-nameh-ye homayuni [Reza Shah the Great: Royal Travelogue] (Tehran, 1971);
Iran National Archives Organization, Culture During Reza Shah (Tehran, 1997); Said Nafisi, Tarikh-e shahriyariye shahanshah Reza Shah Pahlavi [Royal History of Reza Shah Pahlavi] (Tehran, 1965); Mohammed Reza
Pahlavi, Reza Shah-e Kabir (Tehran, 1940); Aghbal Yaghma’i, Karnameh-ye Reza Shah Kabir: Bonyangozar-e
iran-e novin [Report-book of Reza Shah the Great: Founder of Modern Iran] (Tehran, 1971).
71 See Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, p. 243.
72 See Ali Ansari, Modern Iran since 1921 (London, 2003), p. 104.
73 See Donald N. Wilber, Reza Shah Pahlavi: The Resurrection and Reconstruction of Iran (Hicksville, 1971), p.
222.
74 ‘A characteristic peculiar to the architecture of power and wealth in the Muslim world was that its order and
sense appear less in formal compositions than in the relationship of the monument of power to other
monuments.’ Oleg Grabar, ‘The architecture of power: Palaces, citadels and fortifications’, in George Michell
(ed.), Architecture of the Islamic World (New York, 1978), p. 79.
75 Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (Cambridge, 2001), p. 302.
76 See, for example, Adolf Loos, ‘Ornament and crime’, in U. Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century
Architecture (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 19–24.
77 Wigley, White Walls, p. 180.
78 Jacques Lowe, Celebration at Persepolis (Geneva, 1971), p. 6.
79 William Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride: The Fate of an Ally (New York, 1988), p. 39.
80 Ibid.
81 Quoted in Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (London, 1987), p. 326–7.
82 ‘Iran yesterday, today, tomorrow’, Art and Architecture (18 June–19 November 1973), p. 140.
83 Lowe, Celebration at Persepolis, p. 95.
84 See: Mottahedeh, Mantel of Prophet, p. 326; Amanat, Pivot of the Universe, p. 10.
85 On Shahyad, see Talinn Grigor, ‘Of metamorphosis: Meaning on Iranian terms’, Third Text xvii/3 (2003), pp.
207–25.
86 Hossein Amanat was around 30 years old when he designed Shahyad. A graduate of Tehran University’s
Faculty of Fine Arts and Architecture, ‘his professional career and the opportunity to open his own office
came when he won the national competition for design of Tehran’s Shahyad Monument’; quoted in ‘Iran
yesterday, today, tomorrow’, p. 126.
87 Lowe, Celebration at Persepolis, p. 7.
88 Ibid., p. 95.
89 Mohammad Reza Shah’s speech during the 2,500-year celebrations of the Persian Empire in Pasargadae was
delivered on 12 October 1971, standing in front of Cyrus’ tomb chamber. Parts of the celebrations also took
place next to Persepolis. A. Aryanpure, A Translation of the Historic Speeches of His Imperial Majesty
Shahanshah Aryamehr (Tehran, 1973), p. 50. See also Jean Hureau, Iran Today (Tehran, 1975), p. 60.

90 Mohammad Reza Shah died on 27 July 1980 in Cairo. He was buried in the al-Rifai mosque and remains there
to this day.
91 Empress Farah Pahlavi in an interview with Radio Sedaye Iran KRSI, Los Angeles, 10 April 2007.

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Plates

1.2 View of the Marv Dasht looking westwards across the Apadana (left)
and the Gate of All Lands (right) at twilight.

1.3c The Middle-Elamite rock relief at Kurangun, with added Neo-Elamite figures.

1.4b The Middle-Elamite cult scene at Naqsh-e Rostam with flanking royal couple added in the Neo-Elamite period and the figure of the
Sasanian king Bahram II superimposed.

1.7 Royal-hero relief in a door-jamb of the Hall of One Hundred Columns, looking towards a door-jamb relief of the king and crown prince in
the east door of the Central Building.

1.8 Panorama of the Marv Dasht from under the royal tombs
on the Kuh-e Rahmat looking down across the Takht.

1.11 Relief of Persian guards stepping up the stairs of the Apadana east portico.

1.12 Persian nobles in equestrian garb stepping up stairs of the Central Building’s north entrance.

1.17 Persian nobles on Wing A of the Apadana, east portico, lined up behind the king and crown prince.

1.21 Elaborate floral campaniform column base of the Apadana east portico.

1.22 Glazed brickwork (restored) from the superstructure of the Apadana, south side.

1.24 View of the well-preserved Tomb of Xerxes.

1.25 Mount Bisitun, the rock-carved monument of Darius I in the afternoon light.

2.10 View of east terrace, hierothēsion Antiochos I, Nemrut Dağı.

2.12 Colossal head of Antiochos I with royal horoscope relief in background, west terrace, Nemrut Dağı.

2.13 Dexiosis scenes of Antiochos, west terrace, Nemrut Dağı.

2.23 View of the site of Naqsh-e Rostam.

4.3 Mil-e Radkan, Radkan, Iran.

4.4 Portal, Mil-e Radkan.

4.5 Inscription band, Mil-e Radkan.

4.6 Tomb tower at Lajim, Iran.

4.7 Portal, Lajim tomb tower.

4.10 Portal, Resget tomb tower.

4.11 Resget tomb tower, view from west.

4.13 Gonbad-e Qabus, Gorgan (now Golestan), Iran.

4.14 Pir-e Alamdar, Damghan, Iran.

4.15 Chehel Dokhtaran, Semnan, Iran.

4.19 Samanid mausoleum, view from north-east, Bukhara, Uzbekistan.

5.3 Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan, Isfahan, viewed from north-east corner.

5.5 The Ali Qapu Palace, Isfahan, seen from the Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan with the talar on the third floor of the front building.

5.8 Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan, Isfahan, viewed from south flank, with the Ali Qapu Palace on the left, the Shaykh Lotfallah Chapel Mosque on
the right and two of the polo goal posts visible in front of the picture.

5.9 Masjed-e Jadid-e Abbasi, Isfahan (the New Abbasi Mosque, better known as the Royal or Shah Mosque and more recently as the Imam
Mosque).

5.14 Aerial view of the Maydan-e Ganj Ali Khan and its attendant buildings (marked by red arrow), Kerman.

5.16 View of the north-east principal flank of the Maydan-e Ganj Ali Khan with the façade of the caravanserai and the entrance into the small
mosque (marked by a white banner above the door), Kerman.

5.17 View over the maydan with the bazaar arcades, the domed chaharsu (four-way crossing of bazaar arteries) and the entrance ayvan
façades of the hammam (bathhouse) on the left and the cistern on the right, Kerman.

5.18 Interior of the hammam (bathhouse) of Ganj Ali Khan, Kerman.

5.19 Entrance ayvan façade of the caravanserai at Ganj Ali Khan, Kerman, with fine tiles including geometric epigraphic patterns and an
impressive twirl of foliage, tendrils, fantastic birds and wild animals above the pointed arch of the ayvan.

5.20 View of the courtyard of the caravanserai at Ganj Ali Khan, Kerman, with the main ayvan seat (right) across the entranceway.

5.22 Mosque of Ganj Ali Khan, Kerman, looking into the central vault with an unexpectedly high profile rising over a small square chamber,
all luxuriously decorated with muqarnas, tiles and gilt and painted floral and geometric motifs.

6.2 Relief of Fath Ali Shah on his throne, Taq-e Bostan, Kermanshah, fourth century c e and 1820s.

6.6 Main talar of Narenjestan Palace facing the long garden and shallow pool, Shiraz, 1886.

6.7 Decorative details with Safavid-style mirror-work and fireplace with Achaemenid-style relief carving, Narenjestan, Shiraz, 1886.

6.9 Afifabad Palace, Shiraz, 1880s.

6.11 Reproduction of the triumph of Shapur I over the Roman emperor Valerian and Philip the Arab from Naqsh-e Rostam relief, Afifabad
Palace, Shiraz, 1880s.

6.12 Rock relief of the triumph of Shapur I over the Roman emperor Valerian and Philip the Arab, Naqsh-e Rostam, Fars, 241–72 c e .

6.13 Main façade of the Fazel al-Eraqi House, Tehran, early twentieth century.

6.15 Decorative medallion on the central façade of the Fazel al-Eraqi House, depicting the investiture of Ardashir I, from Naqsh-e Rostam,
Tehran, early twentieth century.

6.16 Ahmad Shah coronation stamps depicting architectural fragments from Persepolis, 1914–15.

6.19 Detail of the vandalized painting of a Qajar courtier, Golestan Palace, Tehran, late nineteenth century.