Qadamgah:
Amir had a friend who had a friend who was working on an Ancient Mithra temple outside of Tabriz. We connected with Saede in the foothills outside Tabriz where he showed us a wonderfully constructed beehive temple with a ca. 1 meter occulus. Mithra temples typically have 5 architectural elements: 1) an outside entrance that is so low that you have to bow to get through, 2) a corridor passageway, 3) a step up to the main beehive room, 4) a separate inner chamber and 5) the oculus. All of these elements are present at Qadamgah. There used to be a freshwater spring on the south side of the structure, but it was diverted years ago to provide water for agriculture. No one knows when the beehive was first constructed. Some Iranian scholars believe that it could be as old as 10,000 BCE, but most believe it was from around at the latest 3,000 BCE. It was used as a Mithra temple and for fire worship. Later it was used by the Parthians as indicated by the lotus flowers on the entry doors. When the Sassanids used it, they put niches on the walls for candles. When the inner door was added is a mystery, but above the rivets for the door are niches for candles or torches. There used to be a large precious stone immediately to the right of the entrance, which faces east, but that was taken years ago and is supposedly now in the British Museum, where it is called the Azur Stone. (Look this up!!) After the Islamic period at least one Dervish, Pir Chopan, used the cave and turned it into a meeting place for dervish meditation and practice. Then in the Ilkhanid era (ca. 1400s) it was used as a mosque and the mihrab (altar) was cut into the SE facing wall towards Mecca. According to legend there were gold blocks near the ceiling prior to the Revolution, but they are long gone and no one knows what happened to them. After that the local people used the site as a stable to shelter their goats, sheep and pigs. As in many of these kinds of structures, the acoustics are superb. One can stand anywhere inside the bowl, speak in a whisper and be heard perfectly well on the opposite side.
When Saede was seven, his family took him here and he fell in love with the mystery of the place. He is a young man who has had a successful career on the Iranian National Soccer team and is now a national referee, but his passion is for this site. He has singlehandedly started restoring it, getting rid of the spray painted graffiti, putting in a walkway to the site, and a floor in the temple itself. He is carefully rebuilding everything and wishes to add shady spots and a pool. He is also restoring the neighboring cemetery, which is predominantly Islamic, but they did find at least one Parthian stone with a lotus flower symbol. Among the graves were Pir Chopan’s sister and daughter.
The setting of the site is in a natural bowl looking out at what the elders call “Mt. Zoroast.” On the next mini peak over directly in front of the entrance to the beehive is a modern radar transmission center, which I found fascinating as the signal comes directly into the site. The river now flows in front of the beehive entrance. As one looks up all one sees are mountains. The view to the NE leads across he plains to Tabriz and beyond.
The next site on our day’s adventures was another Mehr (Mithra temple) about an hour south of Qadamgah, in a small village well off the main road. There was a small sign on the corner at the entrance that said in English and Farsi “Mehr Temple” so we assumed we were in the right place, although the entrance appeared to go to a newly constructed mausoleum. The first set of archeological sites was off to the right looked like a meditation cave. The actual temple was a couple of hundred yards further south. It is a large complex with a number of chambers that connect to one another and a number that appear to be separate. The reconstruction work on the main oculus has been done in brick rather than the native stone and is somewhat distracting. One of the side passages off the central temple area has a large central column that rises to the sky/ceiling as if it were a tree of life. Again, there are a series of small niches around the column, just large enough for someone in a sitting position. This is supposedly the largest of the Mithra temples in the region, and it did have a number of separate rooms. It reminded me more of a vihara/monastery with meditation niches than a Mithra temple and I just wonder if there were any interactions between the two groups as they were connected via the Silk Road.
As it was Friday, the farmers and vendors were holding an outside market and we stopped by to see what was going on. I was one of only two women in the entire very large market and it was interesting that the fellow I bought some scents from wouldn’t take the money directly from me, but only from Amir. We bought some strawberries, a melon and bananas and had these for dinner at Takhti e-Solieman, which was our next stop – after about a 3 hour drive.
Takhti e-Solieman is one of the many World Heritage Sites I’m visiting on this trip. It is like a very large hilltop fortress that has been documented since the Sassanian period. It is one of the largest Zoroastrian Fire Temple sites. They have reconstructed the Fire Altar and identified the fire pit next to it with the Anahita Temple behind the Fire Room. The king’s throne/ceremonial room was in front and a bit to the west of the fire rooms and Anahita Temple. The Anahita Temple has 8 major rectangular columns, 4 inside and 4 corners. The inside ones are about 7x8 of my footprints and the corners 11-11.5 x 7 on the backside with the 7 on the inside edges where about one foot print forms a ridge to create a cornered effect. There are about 10 footprints between the columns. There is a periphery corridor behind the columns that is about 12 footprints wide. The water would probably have flowed through a canal from this outside corridor inside then to the fire temple. The layout of this temple is considerably different from her other temples , and is the most recent of the three official temples left.
Besides the Anahita temple there are any number of other rooms, some for the royal family, some for the priests, and some for local people. This site was the Royal Seat for Zoroastrianism during the latter Sassanid Period. The neighboring Zendon e- Soliemann, Solomon’s Prison, had probably been used for sacred rituals from prehistoric times. It is a large cone remnant of a volcano that supposedly had a crater lake at one time. Today, like so many other water sources, it is bone dry. During Piroz reign in the 5th C AD he started construction on this new site that became the official Royal Flame site under the Khorosow I & II in the 6th C. The site was destroyed in either 623 or 627 by the Byzantines; the accounts differ on the date.
The people who were visiting the day I was there appeared to be locals out for a Friday picnic. I photographed a pair of young men in white shirts against the green hillside background and another of a group of women in black being led by a man. As we were leaving the site, a Kurdish woman came up to me and asked “English” I said yes, she said “Welcome”, then gestured that Iran was beautiful. She introduced me to her mother who looked quite frail under all the black cloth. She stroked my face, said something I couldn’t understand, but it was clear that she was giving me some kind of blessing. It was a simple exchange beyond words of people coming together. Her daughter (probably in her late 40s) took a photo of her mother and me with her phone. It was a wonderful exchange.
After we left the site, we followed Iranian tradition and had our fruit picnic by the car in the parking lot before starting the very very long drive to Hamadan. I believe we will arrive around midnight
