Great Wall of Gorgan
The Great Wall of Gorgan is a series of ancient defensive fortifications located near Gorgan in the Golestān Province of northeastern Iran, at the southeastern part of the Caspian Sea. 37°04′13″N 54°04′36″E / 37.070382°N 54.076552°E[1]
The wall is located at a geographic narrowing between the Caspian Sea and the mountains of northeastern Iran, one of several Caspian Gates at the eastern part of a region known in antiquity as Hyrcania, on the nomadic route from the northern steppes to the Iranian heartland, and the wall is believed to have protected the Sassanian Empire to the south from the peoples to the north.[2] It is 195 kilometres long and 6 to 10 metres wide,[3] and features over 30 fortresses spaced at intervals of between 10 and 50 kilometres. It is surpassed only by the Great Wall of China as the longest defensive wall in existence.
It is also known as as The Red Snake among archaeologists due to the colour of its bricks, and as the Gorgan Defence Wall, Anushirvân Barrier, Firuz Barrier and Qazal Al'an, Sadd-i-Iskandar (Persian for dam or barrier of Alexander), as Alexander the Great is said to have passed through the Caspian Gates on his hasty march to Hyrcania and the east.
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[edit] Description
The barrier consists of a wall, 195 kilometres long and 6 to 10 metres wide,[3] along the length of which are located a number of fortresses, spaced at intervals of between 10 and 50 kilometres. Over 30 forts line up along the length of the wall.[4][5] The wall is made of standardized bricks, made from the local loess soil, and fired in kilns along the line of the wall.[3] The wall lies slightly to the north of a local river, and features a 5 metre ditch that conducted water along most of the wall.[2]
This wall starts from the Caspian coast, circles north of Gonbade Kavous, continues towards the northwest, and vanishes in the Pishkamar Mountains. A logistical archaeological survey was conducted regarding the wall in 1999 due to problems in development projects, especially during construction of the Golestan Dam, which irrigates all the areas covered by the wall. At the point of the connection of the wall and the drainage canal from the dam, architects discovered the remains of the Great Wall of Gorgan. The 40 identified castles vary in dimension and shape but the majority are square fortresses, made of the same brickwork as the wall itself and at the same period.[2] Due to many difficulties in development and agricultural projects, archaeologists have been assigned to mark the boundary of the historical find by laying cement blocks.
A similar Sassanian defence wall and fortification lies on the opposite side of the Caspian Sea at the port of Derbent, with an extraordinarily well preserved Sassanian fort; that wall runs to the Caucausus mountains. Derbent and its Caspian Gates are at the western part of the historical region of Hyrcania. While the fortification and walls on the east side of the Caspian Sea remained unknown to the Graeco-Roman historians, the western half of the impressive "northern fortifications" in the Caucasus were well known to Classical authors. Larger than Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall taken together (two separate structures in Britain that marked the northern limits of the Roman Empire), it has been called the greatest monument of its kind between Europe and China. The wall is second only to the combined walls that make up the Great Wall of China as the longest defensive wall in existence, and although now in substantial disrepair, it was perhaps even more solidly built than the early forms of the Great Wall.[2]
[edit] Dating
Dr. Kiani who led the archaeological team in 1971 believed that the wall was built during the Parthian Empire, simultaneously with the construction of the Great Wall of China and that it was restored during the Sassanid era (3-7th c. A.D.)[2] In 2005 a team excavated samples of charcoal from the many brick kilns along the wall, and samples from the Gorgan Wall and the smaller Wall of Tammishe; OSL and radiocarbon dating indicated a date for both walls in the late 5th or 6th century CE.[2]
"If we assumed that the forts were occupied as densely as those on Hadrian's Wall, then the garrison on the Gorgan Wall would have been in the order of 30,000 men. Models, taking into account the size and room number of the barrack blocks in the Gorgan Wall forts and likely occupation density, produce figures between 15,000 and 36,000 soldiers. Even the lowest estimate suggests a strong and powerful army, all the more remarkable as our investigations focused just on 200km of vulnerable frontier, a small fraction of the thousands of kilometres of borders of one of the ancient world's largest empires."
[edit] See also
- Gates of Alexander
- Iranian Architecture
- International rankings of Iran
- Cyrus the Great in the Qur'an
[edit] Notes
- ^ Kiani, M. Y. Gorgan, iv. Archeology, Encyclopedia Iranica, Online version.
- ^ a b c d e f Omrani Rekavandi, H., Sauer, E., Wilkinson, T. & Nokandeh, J. (2008), The enigma of the red snake: revealing one of the world’s greatest frontier walls, Current World Archaeology, No. 27, February/March 2008, pp. 12-22.PDF 5.3 MB.
- ^ a b c The Enigma of the Red Snake (Archaeology.co.uk)
- ^ http://www.archaeology.co.uk/world-news/the-enigma-of-the-red-snake.htm
- ^ http://www.iranian.com/main/singlepage/2008/great-wall-gorgan
