Temple Architecture in the Iranian World before the Macedonian Conquest.

2018

Buildings with religious functions were among the extant buildings of Ancient times. Among the buildings having existed since ancient history in Iran and which were regarded by Iranians as places for worship and rituals, one could refer to fire temples, idol-temples and monasteries, (synagogue and convents). Unlike the aforementioned buildings, Catacombs in ancient times were places for burying the dead. Thus, like the aforementioned buildings, they had religious functions. Many writers of works belonging to Islamic era paid attention to many of these buildings. All of the authors admitted the existence of such buildings and their religious functions although the Islamic authors did not have profound knowledge about these archeological buildings and their descriptions and reports about such buildings were intermingled with legend. The present paper is an attempt to examine the religious functions of these buildings and search in descriptions and reports of Islamic authors with a des...

2019 “The Sasanian Fire Temple of Qaleh-ye DIran. Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 2020

2017

Zoroastrianism like Buddhism occurs among the beliefs that emphasize a philosophical side. The battle between good and evil lays at the basis of Zoroastrianism. In Zoroastrianism philosophy water, earth and fire are considered holy and worship while looking at fire, light or the sun. The Zoroastrians didn’t worship fire, their fire was exalted and, while accepting it as a direction marker, they would pray in front of it. However they believed that it was the light of god or knowledge. Examples of the fire temple which forms the subject of the communique may be found in Azerbaijan too and it is said that the name of Azerbaijan is taken from these structures. According to this, Azerbaijan comes to mean the “home of fires”. When Azerbaijan accepted Islam, the Zoroastrians migrated from here to India and some scattered to other countries. Today it continues its existence from India as “Parsee temples”. The purpose of the communique is debating the examples in Anatolia, Iran and India (M...

Iranica Antiqua, 2010

In prehistoric archaeology, religion is the most popular explanation for finds that have no modern-day equivalent. As such, several 'strange' structures from the Early Neolithic have been interpreted to be 'cult sites', heavily influencing our understanding of the lives of Neolithic peoples in the Middle East. This paper reviews the grounds on which these claims were made in the cases of Çayönü and Nevali Çori, and compares these grounds to the excavation reports. From there it appears that any find that has no obvious functional use, are now believed to be related to 'ritual'. In fact, much of identifying Early Neolithic temples relies on the imagination of scholars and the elimination of any functional purpose, without actual indications for ritual practices being present at the site. This case studies further urges scholars to reconsider the status of these complexes.