Frontline, India
Volume 22 – Issue 08, Mar. 12 – 25, 2005
India’s National Magazine
TRAVEL
In the original home of Zoroastrians
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS:
SUDHA MAHALINGAM
recently in Yazd
Structures made of Adobe, bricks of sun-dried earth and straw, the
most widely used building material in Yazd.
DRIVING through the streets of Teheran, the Iranian capital, during
the evening peak hour is an excruciating experience, especially if
you have a train to catch. “Have oil, will drive,” seems to be the
motto of Teheranians. There is an endless stretch of Paykans before,
behind and beside my taxi – also a battered Paykan – inching their
way down the swanky Vali-Asr avenue. We move at a snail’s pace and
there is a good 30 kilometres to go. My nerves are on edge, but the
taxi driver seems unfazed as he weaves through the traffic lanes,
past flyovers and underpasses, and manages to deposit me at the
Teheran railway station just in the nick of time. Iranian trains are
very clean and the stations virtually deserted – almost a culture
shock for those of us from the subcontinent. I find myself in the
women’s coach where all my fellow travellers are fully veiled in
black chadors. Suddenly, I feel self-conscious in my token headscarf.
I am on my way to a fascinating destination – Yazd – located 690 km
south of Teheran, right in the heart of the vast Iranian desert.
Wedged between Dasht-e-Kavir and Dasht-e-Lut, Yazd is a town unlike
any other. The recorded history of Yazd province goes back to 30
B.C., when human settlements dotted the arid Persian countryside.
Yazd is also the capital of the province bearing the same name. Yazd
town is believed to be the second oldest, continuously inhabited town
in the world, after Jerusalem. It is home to the descendants of the
original Zoroastrians, who refused to convert to Islam when the Arabs
invaded Persia. When the Arab hordes descended on their town in the
8th century A.D., most Yazdis fled to safe havens such as India,
where today there is a distinguished and flourishing Parsi community.
But some stayed back, defying their aggressors and keeping alive
their faith, rituals and practices.
The next morning I take a taxi through the deserted streets of Yazd
to my hotel, which turns out to be a delightful old caravanserai in
the heart of the old town. From outside, the inn looks unpretentious,
and but for the English signpost scrawled in charcoal on the
mud-brick wall, one could not have located it. Winding steps lead you
into a central courtyard with a small pond in the middle, surrounded
by rooms on all sides. Colourful rugs set off the earthy hue of the
walls, roof and the floor. Hookahs and ornamental pitchers blend in
with the setting. I am to share a room with a Lebanese woman from
Chicago. She had given up her lucrative banker’s job to discover the
joys of travelling. She had traversed Asia through the land route
from Japan, stopping in every country along the way, including India.
When I met her in Yazd in March, she had been travelling continuously
for three years.
A view of the Jame Masjid.
The inn is a charming place just to lounge around and spend the
evenings under a brilliantly starlit sky, smoking a hookah or sipping
tea and exchanging notes with fellow guests, almost all of them
foreigners like me. But that will have to wait until evening.
The Mehrab, or prayerniche at the mosque.
I set out on a walking tour of the old town, savouring the leisurely
pace of life in this part of the world. Adobe, bricks of sun-dried
earth and straw, is the dominant building material and the houses
look as though they were built eons ago. Every once in a while the
monochrome of adobe is relieved by brilliant turquoise tiles
embellishing the domes of mosques and minarets. Many houses are
crumbling and look uninhabited, but Yazdis are very much there,
behind those formidable doors. Like many ancient houses in Yazd, the
front door sports two knockers – a slender one for women and a sturdy
one for men. From the sound of the knocker, the inmates would know
whether the visitor is a male or a female and accordingly decide who
should open the door. This practice certainly predates the Islamic
revolution. Now it is just a relic, with electric call bells
supplementing doorknockers. Behind that crumbling facade, most Yazdis
live in modern comfort – with wall-to-wall carpeting and electronic
gadgetry. Many even have computers with Internet connectivity.
A Yazdi woman
Apart from the minarets and domes, what strikes one about the Yazd
skyline are the badgirs – the cooling towers of a pre-electricity,
pre-air-conditioning era. Badgirs are rectangular structures that
rise above the skyline. Sometimes, they were built around a central
dome. The simplest towers contain two or four shelves. The trunk of
the tower contains shafts. The shelves at the top catch the hot air
and redirect it away from the dwelling below. The flaps effectively
redirect the cool air and circulate it. The air currents that enter
the house through these channels pass over a pool of cool water –
usually under the dome.
An alley in the town.
I use one of the female knockers and seek permission to stand under
the dome to judge the effectiveness of a badgir. It is incredibly
cool under the tower, though the outside temperature must have been
around 38° Celsius.
Schoolgirls in Yazd.
Another feature, typical of desert country, is the qanat or
underground water channel – an ingenious irrigation system of Persian
origin. The author Vikram Seth describes a similar channel in Turfan
in Xinjiang province of China in his book From Heaven Lake. There are
also qanats in Morocco and parts of Central Asia, but qanats were
originally conceived and designed by ancient Persians. Along the
length of a qanat, which can be several kilometres long, vertical
shafts are sunk at intervals of 20-30 metres to remove excavated
material and to provide ventilation and access for repairs. The main
qanat tunnel often slopes gently down to an outlet, usually near a
habitation, and from there canals would distribute water to the
fields for irrigation. It is no wonder Yazd is dotted with
pomegranate and almond plantations on apparently arid plains.
The Tower of Silence, where the Zoroastrians traditionally left their
dead to the vultures and the elements.
I spied several qanat outlets in Yazd. They are usually canopied,
with an ornamental circular skylight providing ventilation. At
Meybod, a small town near Yazd, there is an exquisitely decorated
qanat located in the middle of a caravanserai, and next to an amazing
ancient storehouse for ice. There is also a qanat inside Yazd’s Jame
Mosque, but it is barred and barricaded to prevent the feet of
tourists from defiling its pure waters. There are over 50,000 qanats
scattered all over Iran, and invariably the qanat builders came from
Yazd province. Mohammed Kharaji, a 10th century Persian scholar,
wrote a whole chapter on qanat construction, in a manuscript that was
recently discovered.
The Atashkadeh or Fire Temple is the congregation point for all
Zoroastrians in Yazd. The flame in this temple was brought from
Ardakan in A.D. 1474 and has been burning continuously since A.D. 470
in other locations.
Gradually, I wend my way to the Fire Temple – called Atashkadeh in
Farsi – the congregation point for all Zoroastrians in Yazd. The
flame in this temple was brought from Ardakan in A.D. 1474, and has
been burning continuously since A.D. 470 in other locations. It is a
Friday, and in a hall behind the temple, I find a heap of footwear.
After a moment’s hesitation, I enter the premises and make my way
across the row of women seated on the far side. A young priest is
delivering a fiery speech in Farsi, peppered with animated gesturing.
I do not understand a word of what he says, but am mesmerised by his
body language. Everyone listens in rapt attention, at times nodding
vigorously. There are framed paintings of Zoroaster and a huge bowl
of fire in an adjacent chamber. Unlike Muslim women, Zarthushti women
wear colourful headscarves and clothes. The men wear white skullcaps.
The priest’s speech is followed by an elaborate Zarathusti prayer,
with everyone standing and holding both palms outstretched towards
the sky. The men pull out a thread from around their waist – the belt
of humility – and chant more prayers. It seems like eternity when the
prayer finally ends.
The priest of the Fire Temple, a banker by profession.
I befriend the priest, a banker by profession. I was very curious to
know the content of his impassioned speech, but unfortunately he
could not speak English. But he gestures for me to follow him. We get
into his car and drive off to find an interpreter. We find a young
university student and all of us drive to another Fire Temple, where
I am schooled in the rudiments of the Zoroastrian religion, Farsi
traditions and history.
Worshippers in the temple.
Zoroastrianism or Zarthusht – as the Persian followers of Zoroaster
call themselves – was the official religion of the Achaemenids and
the Sassanids, the two great ancient dynasties of Persia. In fact,
during an earlier visit to Iran, I visited Persepolis – the great
capital of the ancient Persian Empire – which Darius built 2,600
years ago, where I saw several bas-reliefs of Zoroaster and the
ancient Zarthusht god, Ahura Mazda. Even though recorded history is
rather skimpy on the details of the religion, Herodotus’ description
of Zoroastrian rituals confirms that the religion as it is practised
today in Yazd is the same one dating back to 4,000 years. After the
sacking of Persepolis by Alexander the Great, Zoroastrianism probably
went underground during the Parthian era until the Sassanid dynasty
revived it in A.D. 228. It is widely believed that the three wise men
who bore gifts for Jesus of Nazareth were Zoroastrian Magi. During
the sixth century, Zoroastrianism spread to Armenia and through the
Silk Route, to as far as China.
A badgir, or cooling tower, built around a central dome.
But the Arab conquest of the Sassanids in the 7th century A.D. saw
Zoroastrians fleeing Persia in huge numbers, with many of them
seeking refuge in western India. Jaidev Rana, a Hindu king, gave them
refuge on the condition that they marry within their community and
desist from proselytising. The Parsi community in India now
outnumbers the Zarthusht in Iran, but because of endogamy, their
numbers are dwindling. In Yazd, the community is said to be
30,000-strong. The language spoken by the Zarthusht in Yazd is
different from the Farsi spoken by Muslim Iranians and Indian Parsis.
A typical doorway in Yazd, with separate knockers for men and women.
While there is no overt persecution of Zoroastrians in Iran, I got
the impression that they are just about tolerated in post-revolution
Iran. There is one member of the community represented in the Majlis.
There are a few special schools where Zarthusht children learn their
traditions and rituals. Zarthusht settlements are found in clusters
in and around Yazd town, although there are a few of them scattered
all over Iran. Inter-religious marriages are rare. There is a
Zarthusht Anjuman Society, where the members gather to discuss issues
of concern. Men and women enjoy equal status in Zarthusht society.
Zarthusht women do not wear chadors, but only a headscarf. After a
long chat with the priest and other members of the Zarthusht
community in Yazd, I felt they were weighed down by the
responsibility of having to keep their identity, traditions and faith
alive, even as their numbers are dwindling at an alarming rate.
A vertical shaft of a qanat, or underground water channel, an
ingenious irrigation system.
The next day, I made a detour to the Tower of Silence situated on the
outskirts of the town. There were two mounds – both were used a
hundred years ago, to leave the dead to vultures and the elements.
Today, the Zarthusht bury their dead in concrete crypts in a special
cemetery. The Tower of Silence seems a misnomer today. Young boys on
motorbikes race up and down the mounds, kicking up a huge cloud of
dust and making a racket. At the foot of the mounds are the ruins of
an old caravanserai. Further away is the new Zarthusht cemetery. I
stroll into the cemetery, where I bump into Fariborz, a Zoroastrian
living in Canada. At last, I can converse freely without the aid of
an interpreter. Fariborz had lived in Mumbai for 20 years before he
shifted to Canada. He visits Yazd every year. He maintains a website
on ancient Iran, and makes a serious effort to bring the Zarthusht
diaspora together through newsletters and magazines.
The ornamental dome of Alexander’s Prison.
I am irresistibly drawn back to the walled city with its ramparts,
towers and tunnel-like streets. It is easy to get lost in its
labyrinthine lanes, but always someone materialises magically to
escort you all the way back. There is a delicious aroma of baking
bread in the numerous little bakeries that dot the old city. I make
my way to the Jame Mosque, which towers over the old city with its
glittering twin minarets. Folklore has it that unmarried young women
used to ascend the minarets on Fridays. From the top of the minaret
they would throw down the key to a lock affixed on their headscarves.
The young man who found the key could claim the girl’s hand in
marriage.
The 14th century mosque was built under the loving gaze of Bibi
Fatema Khatun, the wife of the Governor of Yazd. Its Mehrab (prayer
niche) is intricately patterned in dazzling blue and dappled green,
but the stark interiors appeal to me more. I coax the caretaker to
open the winding stairwell to the top of the minaret, from where I
could get a bird’s eye view of the rooftops. He insists I give him a
written request and I promptly oblige. I am not sure he could read
English, but he seemed satisfied enough to open the door for me. I
wander around on the roof, taking pictures and admiring the view of
the town. But when I get back, I find the door locked from outside.
It took some banging and screaming before the caretaker came and
opened the door rather sheepishly.
Yazd has many traditional houses that are well preserved. One such is
Khan-e-Lari, the mansion of Lari, a rich merchant. It has exquisite
stained glass windows and carved alcoves, and many fruit trees in the
courtyard. Not very far from there is Alexander’s Prison, its
ornamental dome belying its sinister history. I also visit the 11th
century monument of the Seljuk period, called 12 Imams, although not
one is actually buried there.
I wander around Amir Chakmagh Square – the striking landmark named
after the Governor of Yazd. Amir Chakmagh is the most visible face of
Yazd, found in picture postcards and tourist brochures. The monument
is a study in Islamic architecture, an ode to symmetry and form. But
it is just an ornamental facade lacking depth, and seems to serve no
discernible purpose. With no one to explain its origin and purpose, I
saunter off to the nearby bazaar. I had expected Yazd bazaar to be as
glamorous and interesting as the Shiraz and Isfahan bazaars, but it
was a let-down. At the entrance is a vendor selling just-hatched
chickens dipped in lurid pink, green, red and blue colours. Inside
the covered market there are rows and rows of plastic goods, pots,
pans and electrical items. Not a single shop sold Yazd’s famed
brocade or carpets. I retrace my steps back to the Silk Route Hotel
for a well-earned cup of tea under the starry skies.
