| The present study offers an architectural analysis of the buildings at Kuh-e Khwāja, an early Zoroastrian temple complex in Iranian Sistān, and seeks to clarify the date and the functions of this uniquely dramatic ancient site.; Sistān holds a long-standing repute as a region with early and important legendary and Zoroastrian associations. Prior efforts to date the monuments at Kuh-e Khwāja had suggested that the structures in question were constructed at several different times. Previous proposed chronologies, however, were never underpinned by scientific tests: i.e., no Carbon 14 tests were ever conducted. Accordingly, questions that deal with the exact historical setting of the site, and the possible functions that might be attributed to its various buildings, were hitherto never clearly defined.; This dissertation represents an attempt to reconstruct the history of the site. The goal has been to study the site and its architectural remains as a totality, and to look at the broader social and political context in order to see how the site might have functioned as a major religious center. The architectural analysis constitutes the core of the dissertation. It takes into account the site, its origins and development in term of its art and architecture, which took place over three distinctive historical periods. These three periods were based essentially on two new sets of Carbon 14 determinations in: (a) the interval A.D. 80–240 ± 50 (late Parthian to early Sasanian times), and (b) the interval A.D. 540–650 ± 50 (late Sasanian to early Islamic times).; In line with these considerations it is argued that the site of Kuh-e Khwāja functioned as a continuous religious center, and that its architecture, drawn from a combination of Eastern Iranian and Greco-Roman elements, served as one major model for subsequent religious construction in Iran. Moreover, the principle complex has been identified as a major place of pilgrimage, and it is suggested that Kuh-e Khwāja provided, inter alia, training for the priesthood, in an early erbedestān or Zoroastrian “Priestly College”—a center which may itself be seen to have anticipated the parallel role of the early Islamic madrasa. |
