A wonderful Pillar at the Center of the Circular City of Gor
This minar was like a tower which is built in the middle of the Sasanian City of Gor, named Milo Sassanid Ancient Tower. That is very famous among travelers and orientalists. This structure is first found by Pascal Coste and Eugène Flandin. It was a unique tower in Iranian Architecture and is called the legend of Iranian history. That was Alexander, the part of the Persian Territory, defeating its regions and its cities, ending in the capture of the Persepolis in the year of 330 BC.
He constructed a dam in a close-by gorge, keeping the water of the river connected to the plain, where the city is located. That is fully flooding it and making a lake that stayed until the end of the 3rd century AD. After that, king Sassanid Persian tunneled to drain it and destroyed it.
The site of the ancient city of Gor with the pillar at its center. Photo: Amin malekzadeh/WikimediaHe founded the new capital at the same place, that is called Khor Ardshir or Gor. He made it famous on a circular plan (many centuries before the well-known circular city of Baghdad) with an amazing measurement that the famous Persian writer named Ibn Bakhi wrote that it was designed with a compass.
The diameter was 1,950 meters and was covered by a protective moat 35 meters wide, which could only be avoided using four bridges that provide access to its four gates, and a wall of clay, and each part has cardinal points. The city was distributed into 20 parts by an accurate geometric system of several concentric ones and twenty radical streets.
There is another walled circle inside it, its radius was 450 meters, in which the palaces and the royal buildings were built. The current area that is landscape shows the old setup of the city. The length of the largest tower is 45 meters and its structure remains the same.
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It is called Terbal by Arabs, but according to Persians, they said it as Minaret or Minar like a pillar. The design of this pillar had unique in Persia and an external spiral staircase and it is not the same purpose of it, there are many hypotheses about it. If we calculated its width, it would be around 20 meters adding the destroyed stairs and the outside wall.
The Takht-e-Neshin called the fire Temple and the Minar were the only two designs in the city that are made of granite masonry. The first time a two-person explained the uniqueness of its structure in Persian architecture was a Westerner named Eugene Flandin and Pascal Coste, but another person who explained the systematic study was Ernst Herzfeld. According to him, it is like a stair tower. Before the study of Herzfeld, it is known as Takht-e-Neshin itself, for the prevention of dust contamination, there was a temple with a blessed fire placed on the top.
The opinion of some authors is that it explains the ideology of Ardacher’s state with the symbolized the divine and centralist kingship, and the use of it is very practical, then it showed its visual contact with defenses find the main access road to the plain, in the gorge of Tang-an. The tower is also used as an observation tower, while its work for the plan predicted by Ardacher for the new city and plain was achieved. The whole scheme is centered on the Minar, and the radial pattern and concentric of the city were 10 kilometers away, where traces of roads, canals, and walls have been found.
A study explained that it may have been a water tower, getting water from nearby sources flowing through the hollow core and the pipes of the minar to its dome, and going to other points in the city.
Photo: akhodadadi/Wikimedia_-_panoramio.jpg){kind=link}
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