Western Iran - Iran - page 273

Oxiana . In the crypt (narrow steps down from the interior at the back) is the plain-blue
tiled Alaviyan family tomb covered with votive Islamic embroidery.
A useful landmark is the golden dome of the unfinished Imamzadeh-ye Abdollah
(Imamzadeh Sq) .

Hegmataneh Hillهناتمگه هپت
( 822 4005; admission US$1 ; 8am-4pm Tue-Sun, 8am-noon Mon) In the mud be-
neath this scraggy low hill lies Hamadan's ancient Median and Achaemenid city site.
Small sections of the total area have been fitfully excavated by several teams over the last
century, most extensively in the 1990s. The most interesting of several shed-covered
'trenches' allows you to walk above the excavations of earthen walls using plank walk-
ways on wobbly scaffolding. The walls' gold and silver coatings are long gone of course
and it's hard to envisage the lumpy remnants as having once constituted one of the world's
great cities. A nicely presented museum tries to fill the mental gap, showing some of the
archaeological finds including large amphorae, Seljuk fountains, Achaemenid pillar-bases
and Parthian coffins.
A few decades ago when the government relocated inhabitants from the hill and demol-
ished their homes in the name of archaeology, they spared a pair of 19th-century
churches , which remain at the southern edge of the site.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

Other Buildings
More appealing than Imamzadeh-ye Abdollah is the 1883 Imamzadeh-ye Hossein ,
tucked behind Hotel Yass in a little courtyard with an ancient mulberry tree. The 13th-cen-
tury Borj-e Qorban is a classic 12-sided, pointy-roofed tower tomb, but it looks sadly out
of place in its dowdy housing-estate setting.
A vaulted passage of the bazaar leads into the courtyard of the large Qajar-era Masjed-
e Jameh (Jameh Mosque; admission free) . The off-line south iwan leads into a hall (cur-
rently under restoration) over which there's an impressively large brick dome. The north
iwan is lavished with patterned blue tilework that continues on four of the mosque's six
minarets. Some areas are restricted to men only.
Sang-e Shir is a walrus-sized lump of rock eroded beyond recognition by the rubbing
of hands over 2300 years. Supposedly once a lion, you'd never look twice at were it not
the only surviving 'monument' from the ancient city of Ecbatana whose gates it once
guarded. Local legend attaches all manner of significance to this strangely unmoving
lump; supposedly put up by Alexander the Great to commemorate the death of his lover
Hephaistion, bizarrely it now has supposed magic powers to make women pregnant!

HISTORIC BUILDINGS