The everlasting flame of Yazd

Panorma of Yazd

Yazd, a town in the heart of Iran, sometimes called “Pearl of the Desert”.

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.

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.

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".