Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Zeinab Tamassoki

Independent Researcher

Abstract

Persepolis, the ceremonial Achaemenid complex also known as Takht-e Jamshid, became a central symbol of national identity in Pahlavi-era nationalist discourse. These discourses often structured Iran’s Islamic and pre-Islamic pasts as distinct and discontinuous temporalities, overlooking earlier modes of integration that had once linked Persepolis to Iran’s post-Islamic heritage. This historical compartmentalization also suspended previous reinterpretations of the site that had emerged after the Muslim conquest. In contrast, Ali-Akbar Basiri—a retired official of the Ministry of Culture and head of the National Library of Shiraz—offered an alternative vision. His long narrative poem Partow-e Vahid dar Asrār-e Takht-e Jamshid presents Iran’s past as a unified, continuous whole, mapping the Sufi path of spiritual ascent onto the monumental architecture of ancient Iran. This modern instance of identity formation shows how Sufi metaphysics could weave together Islamic–Shiʿi and ancient Iranian layers of identity into a single mystical worldview, in which time is conceived not linearly but cyclically. In this mystical hermeneutic, the “correspondence between the spiritual stations on the path toward God and the physical forms of Persepolis” becomes possible. Darius, imagined as an embodiment of the insān-e kāmel, guides the seeker on this symbolic journey aided by the Prophet and Imam ʿAlī.

This article reveals a late expression of a long-standing imagination linking Persepolis and Iranian Sufism. By analyzing the poem’s content and its 1950s Shiraz context, it situates Basiri’s work as a forerunner to ideas later theorized under Ali Mirsepassi’s “quiet revolution,” and as a mystical counterpoint to anti-Sufi narratives.

Keywords

• Identity Narrative
• Ancient and Islamic Iran
• Twentieth Century
• Zahabiyya Sufi Order
• Persepolis

Main Subjects

• History