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| gas blowoff in Khuzestan |
The city
of Ahwaz is in the center of Iran's oil rich province of Khuzestan.
As I headed southeast towards Shiraz I entered the region of the oil
fields. Seeing the gas flares that blow off from the wells got me to thinking about
fire and energy. [By the way, much of the drama that we are
witnessing in the Middle East today is, I believe, associated with
the planet's hunger for energy. In my own mind, I think of the
ongoing conflicts as the “Energy Wars of the 21st
Century”. Whether to attempt to gain control of and/or exploit oil resources--as in Iraq and potentially Iran--or build a pipeline
across Afghanistan, the conflicts of the area are directly related to
the critical need for the fossil fuel--the "black gold"--that drives our modern energy-dependent lifestyle.]
What I
really want to do here, though, is segue into the element of fire. In the
desert you are constantly conscious of our great ball of fire—the sun. The top banana in our Solar System (yes, Fundies, it doesn't revolve around us) is not necessarily a friendly source of warmth in the desert,
it can be a direct threat of heat stroke if everything isn't up to
snuff as my bike sprocket wasn't. So fire was my constant companion
on this trip, and the gas flares triggered my awareness of it.
With fire on my mind, what should I come across just at this time but
the ruins of a Zoroastrian fire temple.
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| Zarathustra holding the sphere |
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| dome of a fire temple in Esfahan, Iran |
You may
remember my reference, in an earlier post, to the cuneiform inscriptions at Ganj Nameh in Hamadan praising
the Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda. Zoroastrianism was the religion of
Achaemenid Persia. It was founded by a man named Zarathustra most
likely sometime around the 11th Century BC. Fundamentally,
he taught that life was a struggle between truth and falsehood. Man
should overcome falsehood and find truth through Zarathustra's
teachings. Fire and water were used in fire temples for purification
rituals during ceremonies. The inner sanctum of the fire temple,
accessible only to priests, was a square chamber with four pillars in
the corners supporting a domed roof that protected the sacred fire.
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| my very own fire temple |
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| interior looking in and out |
I rode
up to the base of the hill upon which the remains of an ancient fire
temple stood and climbed to the top. Some care had been taken to
preserve what remained of what must have been the inner sanctum—the
place of the sacred fire—with a wattle and daub roof--or, more likely but less romantically, corrugated tin. I could
almost imagine echoes of the old rituals. But, nothing in the
present, no people nor village nor town anywhere in sight, just the
silence and emptiness of the surrounding desert.
Climbed
back down, checked the tension on the chain. The damaged sprocket didn't look any
worse, no broken gear teeth. Put a little more tension on the
chain, applied more lubricant (no more signs of my recent close encounter of the unfriendly kind) and continued on southeast towards
Shiraz and Persepolis.
PS:
Zoroastrianism is still practiced in Iran by a small element of the
otherwise mostly Shiite Moslem population. Their main fire temple is
in the city of Yazd. There is also a fairly large community of Parsis
who practice Zoroastrianism in Mumbai, India.
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| the modern fire temple in Yazd, Iran [Photos of Zarathustra, Esfahan and Yazd fire temples courtesy of Wikipedia.] |
To be
continued...
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