Civilisation in the Crossfire: Iran’s Heritage at Risk

The history of a particular place is entwined with histories of several places across the world. Conquerors, merchants, missionaries, artisans, and travellers have carried with them ideas and influences that have linked each piece of history with several others in the criss-crossing chain of human history. In such a scenario does the loss of a single piece cause a ripple effect that threatens to eventually erase the vast record of humankind? This reality looms large whenever wars or religio-political propaganda target historical sites. The recent military strikes on Iran, causing damages to several of its monuments, are a grim reminder as to how our tangible past is endangered by ideological warfare and militarised action. Some of the historical sites in Iran that were damaged are a testament to the interconnectedness of human history while others were cradles of human civilisation itself.

The Golestan Palace in Tehran, a true palimpsest carrying the imprints of the Safavid, Qajar and Pahlavi eras was damaged during the strikes. Within the palace library is preserved a fascinating 17^th century album assembled by Mughal emperor Jahangir. Muraqqa-e-Gulshan, famously, Gulshan album is a collection of brilliant calligraphy and stunning illustrations. What makes this album unique are the calligraphic folios that have human figures in the margins drawn by artists in Jahangir’s atelier. The most well-known of these folios carries calligraphic verses of the Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Mirza and the Sufi poet Maulana Jam’i. In the margins are drawn the figures of some of Jahangir’s artists that worked on the illustrations of the album. The figures drawn by the artist Daulat (Fig. 1) show him in the bottom left corner supervising the work of Govardhan, Bishandas, Manohar, and Abu'l-Hasan. The collection started by Jahangir when he was still a prince was significantly enlarged by Jahangir’s successor Shah Jahan, eventually came to grace the library of Mirza Farahani, the vizier to the last of the Zand monarchs of Iran and was subsequently passed on to Nasir-al-din Qajar the 19^th century ruler of Iran. Just like the palace that houses the Muraqqa-e-Gulshan today, the muraqqa is a palimpsest encapsulating histories not just across centuries but across distant empires. The delicately preserved folios of this 400-year-old album are now also under threat.

Similarly, the  Chehel Sotoun (literally, forty columns) in Isfahan has also sustained damages due to the ongoing strikes on Iran. A marvel of Persian architecture, the Bagh-e-Chehel Sutoon is a seventeenth century royal pavilion enclosed in a garden that was built by the Safavid Shahs for royal entertainments and receptions. The walls of the pavilion are adorned by four frescoes, one of which is a detailed painting showing the reception of Mughal emperor Humayun by Shah Tamasp I in 1544 CE (Fig. 2). After receiving a crushing defeat at the hands of the Afghan warlord Sher Shah Sur at both Chausa and Kannauj, Humayun was forced into exile by Sher Shah who became the new emperor of Hindustan. Humayun and his family took refuge in Safavid Iran, which was also the natal home of Humayun’s wife Hamida Banu Begum. The painting depicts Humayun (on the left) wearing a pale red jama with a printed yellow overcoat and is shown darker in complexion and shorter in stature than the Safavid Shah. Such depictions were not always accurate and were representative of the power dynamics between the kings. Few courtiers attending the reception are shown to have outlandish handlebar moustaches. The bombings have damaged this fresco causing a large crack to appear on the wall that features it. Besides the stunning frescoes, Chehel Sotoun also has exquisite muqarnas, a regular feature of Persian architecture that often adorns niches and ceilings in a honeycomb pattern. The famous golden muqarnas vaulting of the pavilion now stands damaged.

Another architectural marvel in Isfahan, the Bazar-e-Buzurg or the Grand Bazaar was also one of many historical sites of Iran that was hit in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Developed in the Safavid era, this bazaar was the origin point of the 1979 Islamic revolution against the Pahlavi Shah because the bazaaris feared the death of their traditional businesses due to the growing industrialisation under the Shah’s reign. Interestingly, this was also the site from where the December 2025 protests erupted against the Iranian regime by the people of Iran who started by protesting the fall of the Iranian currency, Rial.

To the south of the Bazar-e-Buzurg lies the Masjid-e-Atiq, one of the largest congregational mosques of Iran. Its earliest construction can be dated to the eighth century under the Abbasid caliph Al Mansur Al Mansur. Since then the Buyids, Seljuks, Safavids and Qajar enlarged and refined the mosque in their own unique ways, making this another palimpsest that was damaged during the strikes on Isfahan.

One more significant historical site that sustained damages was the Khorramabad Valley located in the Zagros Mountain range of Iran and featuring prehistoric rock shelters dating back to 63000 years. The site greatly informs the history of human evolution, particularly the stone tool industry of the Neanderthals. The Zagros mountains of Iran along with Iraq, Turkey and the Levant formed the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of human civilisation where settled agriculture first came into being approximately 10,000 years ago.

An important link in human history is now under attack.

These three sites have the “world heritage site” status conferred upon them by UNESCO and therefore its muted response to the damages caused to these sites has been disappointing.  Under the 1954 Hague Convention and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2347, attacks on heritage sites are considered violations of international law and allows the organisation to conduct investigation into alleged violations. However, UNESCO in a statement has merely acknowledged damages to these sites with the feeble assurance of closely monitoring the situation.

This is not the first time that full-fledged wars, minor skirmishes, and wanton terrorism have wreaked havoc on cultural property. The most egregious example of this was the destruction of the Palmyra ruins in Syria by the terrorist organisation ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) in 2015. The temple of Baalshamin, built in the second century CE and dedicated to the pagan deity of the sky was converted into a church in the fifth century CE after Christianity started gaining ground when the Germanic invasions hastened the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The temple-church was part of the UNESCO world heritage site and after ISIL captured Palmyra in 2015, it vowed to destroy any historical site that they deemed to be “polytheistic”. Accordingly, ISIL placed a large number of explosives inside the monument and the temple was blown into smithereens. 

Earlier, in 2001 another UNESCO world heritage site, the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban for again in deference to Islamic iconoclasm. Over a hundred feet tall, these Buddhas were carved in the seventh century in the Gandharan style. In order to destroy these gargantuan marvels of sculptural history, the Taliban ordered holes to be drilled in these statues in which explosives were placed and detonated.

The idea of obliterating the diverse history of a land to serve current religio-political sensibilities also caused the destruction of the Babri mosque in India. Built during the 15^th-16^th century, the mosque has been a contested site since the 19^th century. Ahistorical claims of the mosque being built over the temple of a popular Hindu deity Ram allowed Hindu extremist organisations to garner support for their communal ideology of Hindutva that looks at India’s Islamic heritage purely through the lens of oppression and conquest. On 6^th December 1992, mass gatherings organised by such parties around the mosque, led Hindu nationalists to destroy the mosque with pick axes, hammers and iron rods. This destruction was later claimed by Hindu nationalist organisations as a win against perceived historical “wrongs”.

What is common in all these instances is the wanton destruction of a piece of heritage for presentist notions. The ISIL, Taliban and Hindutva organisations sought to erase a past that did not align with their exclusionary, sectarian ideologies. Such destruction attempts to negate a history of diversity and mutual coexistence. It also raises some important questions: do we own our histories enough to destroy parts of it that no longer suit our narratives today? Furthermore, whose history is it anyway? Does it belong to the religious groups, state governments, community organisations that lay claim to it, or is all history just a history of humans, a shared global asset that must be preserved by one and all?

The US-Israeli strikes damaging Iran’s historical sites encapsulating the history of humans that spans millennia are not claimed as intentional. The perpetrators of such strikes justify the harm to these monuments as collateral damage. A similar explanation was given when Israel bombed Gaza's Omari Mosque in 2023. Built initially as a temple to Philistine gods and then as a church in the fifth century, the building was converted into a mosque in the seventh century. For the next 900 years the edifice was at times a church, other times a mosque. The Ottomans in the sixteenth century sealed its form as a mosque. This was then severely damaged due British bombardment in World War I. Restored in 1925, the mosque was largely destroyed by Israel’s bombing of Gaza in 2023. Israel alleged that the mosque housed a “militant tunnel” and was therefore bombed, even though the mosque itself was not the target.

Iran claims more than 56 of its museums, historical monuments and cultural sites have so far been damaged due to the ongoing strikes. Each attack on a historical site, whether done intentionally or as a strategic necessity, is an attack on an indelible link in human history. The loss of a historic monument is the loss of centuries of artistry and collective memory. Knowing what is at stake, the destruction of historical edifices cannot be explained away as merely a misadventure. In the age of precision military strikes this justification is a hard pill to swallow. The damage caused to tangible cultural heritage in a military strike is always deliberate, and accordingly must be condemned as criminal.