Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità

The ruins of Estakhr (not far from Shiraz) have been investigated with archaeological excavations in the 1930s by E. Herzfeld and E.F. Schmidt, but only in the 1970s D. Whitcomb was appointed for the publishing of the excavation (Whitcomb 1979). The first Islamic city, east of the Sasanian one, has a square plan (ca. 400 m wide) which follows the same orientation of the Great Mosque; the southern walls had semicircular towers. The southwest quadrant contained the mosque, the bazaar and the palace, while the other three had residential functions.

The mosque is considered one of the oldest of Iran: it was probably built under the governor Ziyad ibn Abihi (659-662), using Achaemenid columns. Whitcomb believes that the employed materials were spolia, rejecting the hypothesis of Herzfeld that the pre-Islamic shrine was incorporated into the mosque. The south walls were probably equipped with towers, although the excavations does not seem to confirm it. The niche of the mihrab bears a stucco and painted floral decoration. Next to the mosque was the bazaar, while to the west of the mosque was the palace (now under the modern Qal`at Takht-i Tavus).

The town developed also outside of the urban grid, in a more free and organic manner; the excavations pointed out that this development occurred above the levels of the Sasanian era (the Islamic pottery which was found is associated with a furnace). Later, during the 9th and 10th centuries, Estakhr was a thriving urban center. In a trial trench conducted in the north of the mosque, a row of bazaar shops was found; behind them three houses belonging to a residential complex were brought to light, sharing a similar plan with narrow entrance showing rectangular buttresses and with rooms opening onto a central courtyard; the floors are in baked bricks and stones.

The aim of the Archaeological Mission of Sapienza is both the historical and the archaeological study of Estakhr as well as the retrieval of excavations, after the U.S. activities of the 1930s, in order to verify the stratigraphy.

This important urban site, Fars provincial capital in the Sasanian and early Islamic period and located a few kilometers from Persepolis, has not been the subject of systematic research programs after the activities of the archaeological mission of the Oriental Institute of Chicago and sporadic activity by Iranian archaeologists.

The Iranian authorities are strongly concerned at the resumption of work and the start of a fruitful collaboration with the Italian archaeologists: the first meetings among ICAR (Iranian Centre for Archaeological Research), Sapienza and IsIAO (Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente) gave rise to this project and provided the conditions for the signing of a memorandum of understanding, which is one of the objectives of this first year of commitment.

Estakhr has important remains of the Sasanian and, especially, Early Islamic period; some scholars also suggest the presence of archaeological layers dating back at latest to the Seleucid and Parthian period, not to mention the hypothesis of an Achaemenid foundation. The wealth of art and handicrafts of the Early Islamic period unearthed in the past and remained largely unpublished suggests that they are to be reconsidered, especially in light of the possibilities offered by the updated diagnostic methods for objective characterization of the materials.

All data collected will be entered into a GIS linked to a relational database.
The activities planned for this first campaign also foresee the creation of a Mission’s website and a series of publications intended both to spread the achieved results, and to the enhancement of the Italian cooperation for the study and the preservation of this important archaeological site.