A Drunken Rage, Shapur’s Glory and the Traveler’s Friend

Persepolis, Bishapur, Kazerun, Fars province, Iran

PERSEPOLIS
I have never entirely come to grips with Persepolis despite the fact that my first visit was with Alireza who is one of the finest, most knowledgeable guides I have had the privilege of working with, and Mike Kozuh who, with a Ph.D in Ancient Eastern Civilizations, could read the cuneiform inscriptions on the walls like a newspaper. When Alexander the Great destroyed Persepolis in 330BC, he did not pussyfoot around – excluding the astonishing Apadana staircase, there is little left. It is said that one night he got completely plastered and hoisted some undoubtedly beguiling, equally drunken slattern onto his shoulders who torched the halls. The city, much of which was built of wood, was incinerated. It has also been suggested that it was revenge for the burning of the Athens Acropolis by Xerxes in 480BC, but this seems unlikely since Alexander was Macedonian, not Greek. It is much more likely that Alexander deliberately inflicted this final touch of defeat on the Persians, to indicate to them that their empire, their days of glory were most determinedly over, and to destroy any hope of revival they might have entertained, and remove any vestige of what they once had been, he thoroughly razed their legendary ceremonial capital.

Persepolis was built as a ceremonial capital by the Achaemenid dynasty; begun by Darius the Great in the 6th century BC, continued by his son, Xerxes in the 5th century BC and then his son Artaxerxes, also 5th century BC, it was burned to the ground by Alexander the Great in 330BC. Having defeated Darius III at the Battle of Issus the same year - “all that belongs to you is now mine” - he deliberately destroyed Persepolis, glittering symbol of the empire’s power and might. Iranians are not unbiased or even-handed about this event and call Alexander “the Macedonian” as for them he was not remotely great at all. The Gate of all Lands was a waiting area where notables were led to await their audience with the King. Mounted on stone bases are two human-headed winged bulls who were ‘guardians’ of the city.

There is so little left that I have never been able to get my imagination to bridge the gap between what the eye sees and what the experts tell you must once have been. I dutifully toured the site again but with the exception of the phenomenal carvings of the Apadana staircase, Persepolis leaves me unmoved, I am self-evidently a cultural incompetent. And Ibn Battuta, as was his wont when world-class sites were pre-Islamic, sailed past without visiting or even mentioning them.

Carved on the inner staircase of the Apadana are 'The Immortals' - so-called because there were ten thousand of them and whenever one died he was immediately replaced. In battle they were legendary because it seemed when one fell another appeared in his place - another reason they were feared as 'immortal'.
From there we drove a short distance to where there are some Sassanian rock carvings. The Sassanians used this method to let people know about events in the empire, usually victories of some sort. One of the great carvings is of the powerful Zoroastrian priest Kartir, an unmitigated scoundrel, his right hand in the Sassanian gesture of respect – the curled forefinger.

Kartir, powerful Zoroastrian priest.

SHIRAZ
From Persepolis we drove back to Shiraz where we toured some of the 18th century ‘Regency’ buildings Ibn Battuta would not have seen; the Citadel with its south-east tour leaning at a startling angle, the Vakil mosque with its coil-patterned columns, and the Vakil Bazaar with tranquil brick-paved courtyards and narrow covered alleys selling everything from brightly-colored spangled dresses so loved by the tribes to wondrous woven carpets.

The 'leaning tower of Shiraz' - it has resisted all attempts to straighten it.

Shiraz became the capital of Iran during the Zand dynasty (1750-1794) in 1765. The Zands, a tribe perhaps of Kurdish origin, under the able leadership of Karim Khan became strong enough to form a government with a Safavid puppet Shah. Karim became the viceroy of the puppet Ismail III in 1752, but even after Ismail’s death in 1777 he refused to call himself Shah, preferring instead the title, ‘Vakil al-Roaya’, or People’s Representative. Karim made of Shiraz what Shah Abbas made of Isfahan, a city in his own image, implementing an ambitious building program of mosques, canals, aqueducts, hammams, bazaars, palaces, the citadel, gardens and fortifications. When he died in 1779, internal family disputes regards the succession saw six princes rule within a decade, but only the last Zand ruler, Lotfali Khan, gave any indication of being a wise and courageous ruler and his reign was cut short by Agha Mohammed Khan, first of the Qajar kings, in 1794.

Agha Mohammed was a cruel man, he had Lotfali blinded and tortured before being executed, and he dug up the bones of Karim Khan from his resting place in the Nizam Garden in Shiraz and re-interred them under the steps of his palace in the Golestan in Tehran, so he could walk over them every day. Mind you such enmity may have come from the fact that in his youth he had been castrated by Karim Zand………

In the Vakil Mosque I was asked to wear a chador. I don’t actually know why as I was wearing an abaya, while some Iranians were wearing a short coat and they were not asked to wear the chador. The law is applied very unevenly.

Exuberant tiling and diagonal spiralled columns are hallmarks of the Vakil Mosque.

BISHAPUR & KAZERUN
The drive from Shiraz to Bishapur goes through some magnificent mountain vistas; groves of wild almond and citrus trees broke the horizon of sharply serrated peaks, while little stone cairns (hazrat-e Abbas kahreh) built as talismans stood like miniature sentinels along the highway at the edge of fields. Going down the mountain was fine, the journey back however became a nightmare as the steep single lane switchback road is the only road between Shiraz and the coast and it was clogged with lorries who fairly crawled up the inclines with their heavy loads. Between the heat and the exhaust fumes as we inched along behind them unable to overtake, there being a straight drop of several hundred feet on one side and a sheer rock face on the other, I was thrilled to take a break at a grubby truck stop. We were on our way to Kazerun where Ibn Battuta had gone to visit the tomb of Abu Ishaq;

“Then followed my departure from Shiraz with the intention of visiting the grave of the pious shaikh, Abu Ishaq al-Kazaruni, at Kazarun, which is at a distance of two days’ journey from Shiraz. “

The shrine is still there – a little cubed brick building in a side street and although it is plain and uninspiring, we should be grateful that the old sufi is still there and not under the highway. His story is an interesting one; he founded a missionary order that grew to include devotees in Turkey, India and China. Ibn Battuta relates a story that when passengers on ships in the China Sea feared the passage either due to pirates or the sea conditions, they made promises of money, in writing, to Abu Ishaq. When the ship landed, missionaries from the order would come aboard and take the amount the travelers had pledged. In this way the order fed and clothed the poor as well as feeding any travelers who stayed with them. Ibn Batutta relates that it was the custom of the order to feed their guests a kind of gruel made with wheat, meat and ghee, then called harisa - which is still served in parts of western Iran to this day for breakfast.

Tomb of Abu Ishaq

On to Bishapur, founded by Sassanian Emperor Shapur in 244AD and probably built by captured Roman Emperor Valerian and his army, (some of whom were Assyrians, themselves captives from earlier battles), as can be seen from the city's grid shape instead of the traditional circular shape of Sassanian towns. It is quite difficult to believe as one stands in front of two obelisks, all that remains standing of this showcase city, that in its heyday Bishapur rivaled cities such as Byzantium in prosperity and grandeur.

The two obelisks - all that remains of the city.

The city fell to the Arab invasion in 646AD after stiff resistance – the city had its own mint and the Arabs wanted it to mint their own coins. My guide told me it was destroyed by ‘the Arabs’ but this is not quite the case – in 1066 the city was razed by a local Fars ruler and what he left standing fell in a series of earthquakes two centuries later. (There has always been rivalry between the Arabs and the Iranians.) The people by this time had moved to nearby Kazerun and as they filched the stone from the fallen city for their housing, the city gradually became covered in soil and over centuries turned into a huge earthmound. Excavations were begun in 1955, and today visitors can make out the Palace of Shahpur, the Palace of Valerian, a mosque, and a striking temple to the goddess Anahita. Ancient Iranians worshipped the four cardinal elements: water, wind, earth and fire, with each element having a goddess or god – Anahita was the goddess of water, and also of fertility, love and victory. The Achaemenid King, Artaxerxes II, particularly revered Anahita and during his reign temples were built everywhere in her honor with the theme of running water being paramount. (Consider in Islam, the purifying rites of ablution prior to prayer must be in water that flows.)

A stone’s throw from Bishapur across the highway (which splits the town in two incidentally, right through poor old Valerian’s palace,) is the Chogan Gorge with its dramatic rock carvings of the investitures and victories of various Sassanian kings. The carvings are depicted in vivid detail; the horse’s plaited tail, its ceremonial finery, flowing pennants, the pleated and draped robes of courtiers, the poses and attitudes of captives and victors alike are all rendered with great finesse.

The investiture of Bahram II - with water damage through the middle.....

And so we turned back to Shiraz – Ibn Battuta had at this point continued north towards Zaidan and back to Iraq but I have covered this part of the journey already and I am now setting off to follow what he did after alighting from Oman, several years later into his travels……..