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| Panorma of Yazd |
There is no river in Yazd, the
town stands in the middle of a desert and at first a traveller
doesn’t know where the trees lining the street take their water
from. Or the orchards of pomegranates that are sold at the fruit
stands – where they take the water from? Not from the rain, it
doesn’t rain here, certainly not in summer. The water is hidden
somewhere, or what? It is indeed, the town seems to be proud of that
and the traveller very quickly learns all about it. The water is
brought to the city in underground canals from distant mountains.
Underground, so the water doesn’t dry up in the desert air. This is
the system known to Iranian peoples from millennia, in Yazd one can
see the canals built in the middle ages and earlier. Everywhere in
Iran mosques have ponds in the middle of courtyards so the faithful
can make their ablutions before they pray, but in the Friday Mosque
in Yazd the faithful have to go down three storeys underground.
The
Friday Mosque is one of those building which make the town famous as
The Pearl od the Desert. It is a gem of mediaeval architecture, built
at the same time as The Notre Dame in Paris, it shines even today
with the mosaic of glazed tiles. The main gate, slender and tall, is
flanked by two tall minarets covered with sky-blue tiles. This is the
characteristic feature of the city, other mosques built in later
times also have the tall gates flanked with two minarets. The
traveller can see them over the panorama of flat roofs if he climbs
one of those minarets.
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| The Zoroastrian temple in Yazd |
But it is not the minarets that
attract the travellers here, nor the underground canals. The biggest
magnet is a inconspicuous building in the outskirts of the town: the
shrine of an everlasting flame.
An everlasting flame in the middle
of the desert? What is that?
The flame of the religion of
Zoroaster, which has been burning here for millennia. Zoroaster was
an Iranian prophet, the founder of the first monotheistic religion in
history. Nobody knows when he lived, maybe a thousand years before
Christ, maybe more. He was born in Azerbaijan, there he had his first
vision: the archangel Vohu Manah appeared to him and told him to
proclaim the Good News to the world. Obedient to the order Zoroaster
travelled around all of Iran, until in the city of Balkh, in today’s
Afghanistan, the local ruler accepted the new religion. Soon the new
teaching spread to all corners of Persian speaking lands, emperors
Darius and Xerxes were among the followers. Zoroaster was the first
prophet who maintained that one can only worship one God, whose name
is Ahura Mazda, while the other deities of Iranian Pantheon, known as
“deva”, were really evil spirits (this is where the English word
“devil” comes from, via Greek and Latin). He was the first
prophet known in history, who connected the divine worship with
morality, the first who taught about the judgement after death and
about the punishment of sins and reward for good deeds (the word
“Paradise” also comes from Persian). He was the first to teach
about the Saviour who would come at the End of Time, born of a virgin
mother. He was the first to identify God with light which shines in
darkness. Of course he meant the Spiritual Light, but as a symbol in
Zoroastrian temples there is always a burning fire, the everlasting
flame. For millennia those flames were being tended by priests known
as Magi. They tended the flame and waited for the coming of the
saviour born of a virgin.
In the eight century after Christ
the Zoroastrian world was brutally shaken by the invasion of camel
riders. The riders brought with them a new religion proclaimed in
another desert by another prophet. Ever since that time the number of
Zoroastrians systematically fell. In the twentieth century the
everlasting fire was only kept aflame in Yazd and the surrounding
area. It is still being tended today.
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| The everlasting flame. |
Something else also happened
during the twentieth century: Iranians suddenly remembered their
history. They remembered that before the Arab invasion Iran was a
powerful empire. Of course Islam still rules in Iran with an iron
fist, conversion from Islam to another religion is punishable by
death, but a large part of Iranian intelligentsia realises now that
Islam was brought to the country with a sword and that before that
time Iran had another religion, its own. And remembers that somewhere
in the heart of the country there are people who still are faithful
to this religion and who tend the everlasting flame in their temple.
Some people even go to Yazd to visit that temple and look into the
flame.
The temple stands away from the
centre, by the road leading to the East, towards Pakistan. The
building itself is not old, the flame was brought here from another,
older temple. Above the entrance a picture of an eagle with
widespread wings:symbol of Ahura Mazda. Inside is the still living
symbol of Iran: its everlasting flame.
You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".
