There are presently 26 registered UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Iran, more than in Japan, the United States and Greece on the roster of places catalogued by the United Nations’ cultural and educational agency. Among them are well-known treasures such as the old imperial capital, Persepolis, the central square of Isfahan and the historic cities of Bam and Yazd. Several other sites of comparable magnitude are on a tentative list, awaiting further evaluation to be inscribed. Examples include the landscape of Alamout, the historic village of Abyaneh and the Great Wall of Gorgan.
Despite this treasure of centuries-old architectural sites, towns and assorted archaeological relics, the Iranian government has consistently failed to safeguard the nation’s cultural heritage, alarmingly oblivious to the need to protect historical properties that constitute the backbone of Iran’s national identity.
On May 16, 2023, the Mehr News Agency reported that authorities in the city of Golpayegan had demolished a remnant of an Achaemenid-era rampart without even consulting cultural heritage authorities.
There are numerous conspiracy theories and arguments about why the preservation of cultural heritage has been subordinated to the Islamic Republic’s ideological mission at home and export of revolutionary ideals overseas. Some believe the ruling clerics see a conflict between the concept of Iranian nationality and Islamic faith, and willfully downplay manifestations of Iranian culture in favor of evangelism of political Islam.
Others say for a government that lacks a long-term development vision and is preoccupied with short-term survival, conservation of cultural heritage is simply not on its radar, let alone a priority. Government agencies nominally tasked with promoting culture and the arts have become sprawling warrens of red tape whose main accomplishment is to pay the wages of their employees on time.
Last year, the Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, Ezatollah Zarghami, revealed how trifling are the resources at the disposal of his department for the protection of cultural heritage. He said the government budget for preservation of each historical site equals 300,000 rials per day (about 50 cents), which he likened to “a joke.” Given the number of sites dotted across the country, it is likely that a large fraction of these treasures is never attended to, and already consigned to neglect.
Situated on the outskirts of Shiraz in southern Iran, Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire with its earliest ruins dating to 515 BC. The complex is considered the epitome of Persian civilization and proof of Iran’s revered position in the ancient world.
For many Iranians, the relics of the historic city evoke a mixture of nostalgia and pride, and there is a popular belief that the current theocratic rulers of Iran have a particular aversion to the 2,500-year-old site. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah ousted in the 1979 revolution, held a notorious celebration there in 1971, flying in hundreds of foreign guests to dine on French wine and French cuisine from Maxim’s of Paris at a time when the region adjacent to Persepolis was suffering from food shortages.
In 2020, former minister of cultural heritage Ali Asghar Mounesan said the annual finances dedicated to the maintenance of Persepolis didn’t exceed 50 million rials ($100). He also said the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicraft was one of two government ministries with the smallest share of the national budget, the other one being the Ministry of Sport and Youth.
In May 2022, Zarghami said the administration had allocated substantially increased funds to the preservation of Persepolis. The exact figure, however, was never made public, and a shadow of uncertainty looms over the old royal metropolis. Last year, local media reported that a total of 70,000 legal and illegal wells had been drilled on the periphery of Persepolis to drain aquifers to be used for nearby rice and wheat plantation. According to experts, this practice has accelerated a pattern of land subsidence that could jeopardize the survival of Persepolis. Mohammad Darvish, a conservationist, said in 2016 that excessive water extraction from aquifers in the area had recast the terrain on which Persepolis is situated into a “plain of death.”
Meanwhile, northeast of Persepolis, the Tomb of Cyrus draws throngs of enthusiastic Iranians wishing to pay tribute to the founder of Iran’s oldest dynasty, a king credited with liberating the Jews of Babylon and inspiring the Cyrus Cylinder. Gatherings in the mausoleum often turn political with the authorities blocking people from visiting the site, especially on October 29, known as Cyrus the Great Day, when massive numbers show up to renew their bonds with the nation’s glorious past. With arrests and periodic crackdowns, the government has tried to prevent the humble tomb from becoming a secular pilgrimage destination.
The neglect and underinvestment in the country’s priceless heritage has deepened a schism between a public that continues to value those traditions and a government that finds this lineage to be at best an annoyance and at worst a threat. The divide extends to the government’s failed efforts to suppress or circumscribe Iranians’ commemoration of pre-Islamic holidays such as Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Ironically, while successive presidents of the United States have rolled out charming Haft Seen tables on the eve of Nowruz and hosted celebrations featuring poetry, music, food and handicrafts, the presidents of Iran typically extend New Year greetings with grim faces and no Haft Seen tables.
It has become conventional wisdom that Nowruz is treated as alien in its birthplace because of the pejorative way in which the Islamic Republic authorities understand it: as a pagan festival of the spring equinox that counters the principles of Islam and drives people away from the remembrance of God. At a time when more countries in Iran’s neighborhood are embracing Nowruz and the United Nations recognizes it as an international occasion, festivities in Iran are kept within bounds even as the entire country essentially closes down for two weeks. Radical clerics have openly denigrated Nowruz as superstitious and atheistic.
The divide over preserving cultural heritage also reflects widespread popular anger over the use of sparse government resources for state-run media and foreign interventions.
Indeed, in a cash-strapped Iran burdened by draconian sanctions, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the state entity with exclusive rights over TV and radio programming, has an annual budget of 79.38 trillion rials ($158 million). Meanwhile, the Center for Services for Islamic Seminaries, tasked with training a new generation of clerics, is the beneficiary of 64 trillion rials ($120 million) in subsidies this year.
Cultural heritage is a concept that has glued Iranians together and helped them preserve a counterculture against the government’s dogmas and religious fanaticism.
Time and again, the authorities have alienated Iranians by refusing to accept and underwrite their priorities, spawning an identity crisis among the youth by belittling their ancestral heritage. The Islamic Republic could earn some modicum of respect if it reversed its dismissive approach to the nation’s culture and history and embraced it instead of allowing it to decay.
Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning journalist and reporter from Iran who contributes to Asia Times, Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, The New Arab and Middle East Eye. He tweets at @KZiabari.
Why the Iranian Government Neglects the Nation’s Cultural Heritage
By Kourosh Ziabari
Middle East & North Africa
Modern-day Iran is the inheritor of a hallowed civilization and ancient monuments that have survived millennia of invasions, natural disasters, and political upheaval. While Iran’s current diplomatic and economic isolation discourages foreign tourism, the country’s cultural heritage remains one of the nation’s key distinctions, cherished by Iranians and many others around the world who hope to be able to explore it in person one day.
There are presently 26 registered UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Iran, more than in Japan, the United States and Greece on the roster of places catalogued by the United Nations’ cultural and educational agency. Among them are well-known treasures such as the old imperial capital, Persepolis, the central square of Isfahan and the historic cities of Bam and Yazd. Several other sites of comparable magnitude are on a tentative list, awaiting further evaluation to be inscribed. Examples include the landscape of Alamout, the historic village of Abyaneh and the Great Wall of Gorgan.
Despite this treasure of centuries-old architectural sites, towns and assorted archaeological relics, the Iranian government has consistently failed to safeguard the nation’s cultural heritage, alarmingly oblivious to the need to protect historical properties that constitute the backbone of Iran’s national identity.
On May 16, 2023, the Mehr News Agency reported that authorities in the city of Golpayegan had demolished a remnant of an Achaemenid-era rampart without even consulting cultural heritage authorities.
There are numerous conspiracy theories and arguments about why the preservation of cultural heritage has been subordinated to the Islamic Republic’s ideological mission at home and export of revolutionary ideals overseas. Some believe the ruling clerics see a conflict between the concept of Iranian nationality and Islamic faith, and willfully downplay manifestations of Iranian culture in favor of evangelism of political Islam.
Others say for a government that lacks a long-term development vision and is preoccupied with short-term survival, conservation of cultural heritage is simply not on its radar, let alone a priority. Government agencies nominally tasked with promoting culture and the arts have become sprawling warrens of red tape whose main accomplishment is to pay the wages of their employees on time.
Last year, the Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, Ezatollah Zarghami, revealed how trifling are the resources at the disposal of his department for the protection of cultural heritage. He said the government budget for preservation of each historical site equals 300,000 rials per day (about 50 cents), which he likened to “a joke.” Given the number of sites dotted across the country, it is likely that a large fraction of these treasures is never attended to, and already consigned to neglect.
Situated on the outskirts of Shiraz in southern Iran, Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire with its earliest ruins dating to 515 BC. The complex is considered the epitome of Persian civilization and proof of Iran’s revered position in the ancient world.
For many Iranians, the relics of the historic city evoke a mixture of nostalgia and pride, and there is a popular belief that the current theocratic rulers of Iran have a particular aversion to the 2,500-year-old site. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah ousted in the 1979 revolution, held a notorious celebration there in 1971, flying in hundreds of foreign guests to dine on French wine and French cuisine from Maxim’s of Paris at a time when the region adjacent to Persepolis was suffering from food shortages.
In 2020, former minister of cultural heritage Ali Asghar Mounesan said the annual finances dedicated to the maintenance of Persepolis didn’t exceed 50 million rials ($100). He also said the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicraft was one of two government ministries with the smallest share of the national budget, the other one being the Ministry of Sport and Youth.
In May 2022, Zarghami said the administration had allocated substantially increased funds to the preservation of Persepolis. The exact figure, however, was never made public, and a shadow of uncertainty looms over the old royal metropolis. Last year, local media reported that a total of 70,000 legal and illegal wells had been drilled on the periphery of Persepolis to drain aquifers to be used for nearby rice and wheat plantation. According to experts, this practice has accelerated a pattern of land subsidence that could jeopardize the survival of Persepolis. Mohammad Darvish, a conservationist, said in 2016 that excessive water extraction from aquifers in the area had recast the terrain on which Persepolis is situated into a “plain of death.”
Meanwhile, northeast of Persepolis, the Tomb of Cyrus draws throngs of enthusiastic Iranians wishing to pay tribute to the founder of Iran’s oldest dynasty, a king credited with liberating the Jews of Babylon and inspiring the Cyrus Cylinder. Gatherings in the mausoleum often turn political with the authorities blocking people from visiting the site, especially on October 29, known as Cyrus the Great Day, when massive numbers show up to renew their bonds with the nation’s glorious past. With arrests and periodic crackdowns, the government has tried to prevent the humble tomb from becoming a secular pilgrimage destination.
The neglect and underinvestment in the country’s priceless heritage has deepened a schism between a public that continues to value those traditions and a government that finds this lineage to be at best an annoyance and at worst a threat. The divide extends to the government’s failed efforts to suppress or circumscribe Iranians’ commemoration of pre-Islamic holidays such as Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Ironically, while successive presidents of the United States have rolled out charming Haft Seen tables on the eve of Nowruz and hosted celebrations featuring poetry, music, food and handicrafts, the presidents of Iran typically extend New Year greetings with grim faces and no Haft Seen tables.
It has become conventional wisdom that Nowruz is treated as alien in its birthplace because of the pejorative way in which the Islamic Republic authorities understand it: as a pagan festival of the spring equinox that counters the principles of Islam and drives people away from the remembrance of God. At a time when more countries in Iran’s neighborhood are embracing Nowruz and the United Nations recognizes it as an international occasion, festivities in Iran are kept within bounds even as the entire country essentially closes down for two weeks. Radical clerics have openly denigrated Nowruz as superstitious and atheistic.
The divide over preserving cultural heritage also reflects widespread popular anger over the use of sparse government resources for state-run media and foreign interventions.
Indeed, in a cash-strapped Iran burdened by draconian sanctions, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the state entity with exclusive rights over TV and radio programming, has an annual budget of 79.38 trillion rials ($158 million). Meanwhile, the Center for Services for Islamic Seminaries, tasked with training a new generation of clerics, is the beneficiary of 64 trillion rials ($120 million) in subsidies this year.
Cultural heritage is a concept that has glued Iranians together and helped them preserve a counterculture against the government’s dogmas and religious fanaticism.
Time and again, the authorities have alienated Iranians by refusing to accept and underwrite their priorities, spawning an identity crisis among the youth by belittling their ancestral heritage. The Islamic Republic could earn some modicum of respect if it reversed its dismissive approach to the nation’s culture and history and embraced it instead of allowing it to decay.
Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning journalist and reporter from Iran who contributes to Asia Times, Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, The New Arab and Middle East Eye. He tweets at @KZiabari.
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