Shiraz and Persepolis

Tomb of Hafez

Shiraz, city of roses and poets, was reached after a long drive across salt lakes and over moderate mountains, all semi-desert peopled by nomads and occasional oases. The average temperature was 5 deg cooler 2500 years ago and Alexander’s troops had to find their way through forest in this area. So a Sassanian prince’s hunting lodge in the middle of a bare plain at Sarvestan on the way would have made more sense then. Shiraz had few roses in bloom but truly loves its poets. A garden and pavilion dedicated to a lyrical mystic poet, Hafez, in Shiraz was crowded by people of all ages coming to pay their respects and touch his tomb.
A middle-aged lady was propped up against a pillar reading a volume of his works, totally oblivious to the normal mayhem going on around her. As always, lots of kids of various ages doing their thing, mums and dads looking after them and all the latest fashions on display.

Photo shoot

Later we visited an orangerie with a mirrored pavilion with two young women in startling red or blue tribal gear having a photo-shoot

Persepolis, near Shiraz, is a knock out. Darius set out to shock and awe the tributary kingdoms by the grand, enormously high entrance gateway on a huge terrace accessed up symmetrical flights of shallow stairs. The flat ceiling of the entrance hall was held up by carved bulls on top of 20M pillars, the whole (originally) painted in brilliant colours. One Stanley of the New York Herald left his name there in 1870. Round to the hall of 100 pillars, where skeletal stone windows and doors are set in long-vanished mud walls, originally also about 20M. Then to an antechamber in front of where the great King of Kings, Darius, Xerxes or Ataxerxes sat on the next level approached up further symmetrical shallow flights of stairs.

Persepolis gate

The walls of the stairs carry bas-reliefs of the 28 subject nations, each in distinctive caps and clothing and bearing gifts of their local specialty: metal, cloth, food or animals. The king sits enthroned in another hall of enormous height, this time with fluted columns. the rock tombs of three Kings are a short distance away, the facades in the overall shape of a cross. The cave entrance of each is carved to represent the palace; above that level, the 28 nations support the king (and kingdom) under the symbol of Ahura Mazda. Below the palace, the arm of the cross is blank – the nothingness of the pit. Cyrus is buried elsewhere. The whole impression is of the recruitment and organisation of massive resources to emphasise imperial grandeur.

Darius receiving his tributed

Persepolis was connected by fast pony express to all parts of the empire. Darius used the site for ceremonial gatherings, dividing his time with Susa, near Ctesiphon and Basra in Mesopotamia, and with Ecbatana, modern Hamdan. Each transfer is about 500km. In 330 BC, Alexander and his hoplites with their superior spears and shields had sliced through the 10,000 Immortals (bodyguard) and the many other troops to defeat the Sassanian Empire. In a drunken orgy, the treasury was looted and the palace burnt down. The ceiling fell in and the site became covered with earth, protecting the artifacts until they were excavated in the 1939’s.

The Sassanians had their origin with Ardashir in the third century AD. He defeated the Parthians after declaring an independent state based on a well defended hilltop palace & fort. Once he felt safe, he built a palace on the plain near permanent water near what is now Ferozeabad. There, the builders constructed the first dome – double skinned at that - on a square building for the very first time, using kiln dried bricks. The inside parabolic dome had a diameter of 20M and the outer dome started further out and rose at a shallower angle to join the inner dome towards a center aperture. Two of the three domes still stand. His son, Shapur the Great defeated the Roman Governor of Syria, Philip the Arab and defeated and captured the Roman Emperor Valerian as celebrated on rock carvings at Bishapur.

Shapur's Roman built city

Shapur and the Roman emperors

There Shapur built his own palace and city with an enormous dome of about 28M diameter, supported on a Greek Cross. The city was built by captured Roman soldiers, now slaves and included the only mosaics in the Sassanian tradition, now carted off to the Louvre. When the Arabs arrived in the 7^th C, they adapted signal high towers, such as Ardashir’s 35M example, as minarets for the muezzin to call for prayers.