Explore the Zoroastrian Towers of Silence in Yazd

Yazd, known as the city of windbreakers, is one of the most glamorous cities in Iran and the world, and it embraces the inheritance of ancient Iranian culture and civilization. In the southern part of this historic city, right on the top of mountains, known as Dakhmeh. You can find mysterious towers there called Towers of Silence, which have the story of many dead bodies and you can listen to the clamor of the dead.

The afterlife is an essential matter in all religions, as well; every one of them has a different perspective toward it and follows different customs and ceremonies. Towers of Silence is a ground to show how you come from the ground and get back to it. If you are wondering how, stay with us until the end of this article to learn more.

What is Dakhmeh?

As we said, the towers of silence are located on the top of mountains, but what is Dakhmeh? In Persian, it refers to structures made up of raw bricks; this material is one of the common raw materials used in the construction of many structures in ancient times. These structures could be made either naturally or manually by humans. These structures were functioning like the burial ground for Zoroastrians and they used to bury the dead bodies there and perform religious rituals. They were built in height so the vultures and other wild birds could better access the dead bodies.

How Did Zoroastrians Use Towers of Silence?

If you lived at that time, not long time ago, we’re talking about 50 years ago, your dead body or the dead body of your friends and families would be taken by special men with special customs to one of those Dakhmeh and left alone until wild birds come to your corpus. But why Zoroastrians would do that?

They believed that the world is made of four core elements such as water, fire, soil, and air, and if you burn or bury the body of your dead, you would pollute them; therefore, for not doing so, they would have left the body on the height to get decayed.

Different Parts of Dakhmeh

Here, we want to get deeper into the structure of Dakhmeh and learn how it worked. They were made in circle shapes and miles away from the villages; the wall surrounding them was made of stone and cement, and one little metal or stone door was built for passing through. Inside them, deep wells were built, which had access to deeper wells dug surrounding the main Dakhmeh.

Architecture of Different Parts of the Towers of Silence

You may think that if they believed in leaving the dead bodies, they could have just left them up on the mountains and returned to the city. However, you forgot that they were civilized men living in a civilized society, so they could not simply abandon their dead bodies on the hills. They had religious ceremonies and were committed to observing them. Therefore, they built different structures, consisting of various parts, outside the city to prevent the potential spread of diseases and the unpleasant odors from affecting the citizens. 

• Dakhmeh Road

Ordinary people could just come down the mountain to deliver their dead bodies to special men carrying out the religious customs known as Salar.

• Metal or Stone Door

Salar would take delivery of the corpus, bring it to the highest part of the mountain, and enter Dakhmeh through the door placed between the outside and inside to put it down.

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• Circles of Dakhmeh

You may ask if there is any difference in the gender of the corpus. Of course! Based on the gender, they would put the corpus in different parts of the Dakhmeh. They divided it into three sections: the outsider circle, the bigger circle around the Dakhmeh belonging to the male corpus; inside it, another circle was allocated to the female, and the smallest circle within the two former circles belonged to the corpus of children.

• Flooring of Dakhmeh

The floor of Dakhmeh was made up of special stone floorings with spaces between the bricks or stones so that the rain wouldn’t stop on the bodies or the blood coming from the corpus as a result of tearing by the wild birds could move smoothly. It was made inclined to the central well, known as Ostoudan, so the bones could move to the well more easily. Then, the bones would be dissolved by limes. 

• Inscription of Dakhmeh

On the top part of each Dakhmeh, there is a square part describing the date the Dakhmeh was constructed and other historical matters related to the structure.

How Would the Families Take the Dead Bodies if the Weather Was Not Good?

You can find small structures around the Dakhmeh. These structures were built for different reasons. One of them is that the families could stay there if the weather was unstable. Another reason is that people could stay there to perform religious ceremonies. Some of these structures were built for the guards of Dakhmeh. The guards, as we previously mentioned, were known as Salar since they had to keep various corpus until the last bones were available, so those structures were built for them, and people would refer to them for delivering the bodies.

Conclusion

If you are curious about different afterlife rituals in different religions, the Towers of Silence is one of the best places you can visit; you can see this mysterious structure’s easy but wise architecture and learn more about ancient Iranian architecture. Bear in mind that you should travel there in cold seasons. Ceremonies like Nowruz can be a suitable time to travel there. Hope you enjoy!

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