A Note on the Monumental Cemetery at Siraf

ABSTRACT

The excavated ninth-tenth century monumental cemetery at Siraf is one of the earliest necropolises in the Islamic world, yet the burials exhibit practices at stark variance to orthodox Islam. Analysis of the best preserved tomb enables a theoretical reconstruction of a two storey multi-chambered mausoleum some seven metres or more in height, making it probably the earliest tomb in Iran and one of the earliest in the Islamic world.

KEYWORDS:

• Siraf
• tombs
• necropolis
• Islam
• Zoroastrian

Notes

1 The excavations were published in a series of detailed interim reports in Iran, a series of monographs (still appearing at the time of writing) and a wide range of discussions in the scholarly press. See Whitehouse 2009 for a bibliography. See Simpson 2013 and 2019a for Whitehouse's obituary and summary of the excavations.

2 Whitehouse, Siraf. History, Topography and Environment, Fig. 11 and 46-51.

3 Ibid., 9.

4 I worked at Siraf for the last three seasons, between 1970 and 1973, responsible for supervising and recording the excavation of Site O, the monumental cemetery, in the 1972/73 season. I subsequently worked on the Siraf material in Rome in 1975 and 1976 as research assistant to David Whitehouse, then Director of the British School at Rome, when I prepared the Tomb D drawings in the present article. When the Siraf archives were transferred to the British Museum following David's death in 2013, these drawings were not among them. I had, however, kept copies, which were then sent to the archive.

5 The contents were subject to flotation and sieving: the results are not known to the present author but are presumably with the excavation records.

6 Photographs and drawings of these will be among the small finds records in the Siraf archive.

7 Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, 155-60.

8 Ibid., 155-60.

9 Whitehouse, “Excavations at Sīrāf”, 29.

10 E.g., Priestman, “The Rise of Siraf”; Simpson, “Nomads and Monks, Soldiers and Sailors, Farmers and Fishermen”, 292.

11 See Simpson “The Land behind Rishahrfor” a summary of Sasanian funerary practice on the Persian Gulf.

12 Summarised in Whitehouse, Siraf. History, Topography and Environment, Ch. 2.

13 Whitehouse, “Excavations at Sīrāf”, 29.

14 Lowick, Siraf XV, 113, no. 62.

15 Ibid., 112, nos 60 and 61, Pl. XXVIII. The practice of placing graves in a palace is also very unusual in Islam, again suggesting that the Siraf elite might have had some religious status.

16 I am acutely aware that this brief note does not give justice to the importance of these mausolea: further research of comparative material, the religious background and possible alternative explanations is a priority, particularly in view of the fact that Siraf of all early entrepots was wide open to influences from further east. However, in view of current research priorities elsewhere, my aim here is simply to make the material available as quickly as possible.