Takht-e Suleiman, an Iranian wonder

Seven Wonders and One Deception

The great religious center of the Zoroasterian Orthodoxy Adhar Ghushnap – Praaspa – (today’s Takht –e Suleyman) in the northern confines of the Iranian province of Kurdistan existed already at the times of Callimachus.

However, that part of Iran had not been invaded by Alexander, and for 80 years (330 – 250 BCE) his successors, the Seleucids, only nominally ruled that province that rose to religious and architectural significance in the later Arsacid (Parthian, 250 BCE – 224 CE) years and was promoted to foremost sacredness mostly in the Sassanid times (224 – 651 CE), when every newly invested Shah of Iran, immediately after his coronation had to walk on foot from Tesifun (Ctesiphon, in the south of today’s Baghdad) to the Great Sacred Enclosure of Adhar Ghushnap (a distance of more than 500 km through the almost impenetrable Zagros mountains).

It was there where the Holy Fire was never extinguished, it was there were Marc Anthony failed against the Parthians, it was there where the Original Copy of Avesta was preserved. Around an until recently believed as bottomless lake out of which flows an unusually warm, healing water, several sacred buildings were located within an enclosure built at a height of 3000 m. Many remains and the entire enclosure have been preserved down to our times, as the Islamic invaders did not destroy a markedly monotheistic religious center.

Certainly Takht-e Suleyman is far more important as achievement and as contribution to the formation of the World History than places like Machu Picchu, Colosseum and Chichen Itza. Simply Iran is highly unpopular, and tourism in Iran was never a major concern for the voting masses who never heard of Takht-e Suleyman – let alone saw a picture.

Of course, it was wise for UNESCO to take some distance from the debased effort to offer the right to select to those who have no such right, but one may wonder whether this statement is truly enough.