A cache of gold and the cult of mourning

Khuzestan province, Iran

“We traveled for three nights across open country inhabited by Kurds in hair tents who are said to be Arabs by origin and then reached the town of Ramiz, a fine city with fruit trees and rivers. I stayed only one night in the town of Ramiz after which we continued our journey for three nights more across a plain where there were are villages inhabited by Kurds. At the end of each stage of this journey there was a hospice at which every traveller was supplied with bread, meat and sweetmeats. ”

Ibn Battuta would find Ramiz is now Ramhormuz. And while a large proportion of the population in this part of Iran is indeed ethnically Arab, they are no longer nomadic, although as recently as the 1920’s, tribal Arab attacks in the countryside were such that the government deferred the building of roads. And the Kurds, who are easily identifiable because of their dress; the men wear baggy pants gathered tightly at the ankle called shalwar, are not Arab. The majority of Iran’s Kurdish population lives in the northern province of Kurdistan, although small communities are still to be found in neighboring provinces. In Ramhormuz we went in search of the Tourism Department who we thought might know if any buildings remained from the 14th century. We met the very helpful director who gave us a list of his town’s 77 monuments of which precisely none corresponded to the time of Ibn Battuta. By way of recompense perhaps he showed us, on the computer, items from a recent extraordinary find; a cache of gold jewelry (and a burial site), dating back to the Elamite and Achaemenid periods. Apparently the ground was being dug for the laying of water pipes when workers came across the find; rings, smooth and ridged rings of kingship, bangles, belts, bracelets, armlets, buttons, fibulae, and beautifully-crafted woven and plaited gold belts with dangling pieces studded with agates and other semi-precious stones, were in miraculous shape. A lovely 19th-century Qajar building currently undergoing renovation will house the collection.

Prophets, ziggurats and rusting tanks

Khuzestan Province, Iran

From Abadan we drove north to Khorramshahr which like Abadan is a stone’s throw across the Shatt al-Arab from Iraq. It was virtually levelled during the Iran/Iraq war. Burnt out tanks litter the sides of the road, deliberately left as a reminder. Behind them, tall stands of sugar cane - not an indigenous plant in these parts - is now grown extensively on the flat, once-saline plain.

An ubiquitous sight in Khuzestan.

As was his habit, Ibn Battuta did not mention either the pre-Islamic Susa or Chogha-Zanbil. The former was the winter capital of Elam, an ancient and powerful empire, while Chogha-Zanbil built by the Elamites in 1250 BC, was the largest ziggurat in the world, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It may not look like much now but this massive mudbrick structure faced with brick, was the largest ziggurat in the world when it was built in 1250BC.

It is surprising however that he did not visit the Tomb of Daniel in Susa - a prophet honored by all three monothesitic faiths. The tomb is topped by an unusual and distinctive pyramidal, cone-shaped roof which is visible from the remains of Susa.

The Tomb of Daniel with its distinctive pyramidal, yet cone-shaped roof.

There really are only remains - from 1844 until 1979 a French archaeological mission excavated the site and most of what was uncovered is in the Louvre in Paris. In 550BC Elam became a satrapy (governorate) of the Achaemenid Empire and its capital, Susa, continued as winter capital of the Achaemenids. It was customary in Mesopotamia and surrounding regions for a conqueror to built his new capital atop an old one - Susa is said to have yielded 28 layers of civilizations.

A ceremonial bull, one of the few vestiges of the once-proud capital of Susa.

Susa reached its height during the reign of Darius I. His Apadana, or many-columned hall, had 3 porticoes of 12 columns, each of which was 22 meters (68 feet) high. Razed during the reign of Darius’s grandson Artaxerxes I, it was rebuilt under Artaxerxes II but finally burned to the ground a second time by Alexander the Great in 323BC. (Since he also burned Persepolis to the ground Iranians, understandably, do not consider Alexander remotely ‘great’ and call him Alexander the Macedonian.)

Saddam Hussein’s First March of Folly

Ahvaz to Abadan, Iran

We had waited for 12 hours in Mehrabad airport in Tehran; Ahvaz, our destination, was cut off by a dust storm. We were given breakfast, lunch and dinner but little in the way of information or alternatives. Nobody made a fuss. I made a mental note;  Iranians are very patient.  I struck up a conversation with an Iranian doctor waiting for the same flight, I told her that if such a delay had happened in the US with so little information being given out, there would have been a screaming mob. She told me Iranians had had to develop patience.....  She herself had lost hers and was shortly emigrating to Australia.

Khuzestan dustbowl