🕕 3 minute read
There is no doubt that Towers of Silence is one of the most impressive historical sites of Yazd. It can make traveling to Yazd very exceptional in terms of being exposed to different religion of Zoroastrianism. This religion has been used by ancient kings of Persia and they have had their own properties all over the country.
For example Towers of Silence has been used as a cemetery. Culturally in ancient days of Iran people were of the opinion that everyone would go to better life after death and here relatives must respect to corpse and even to 4 elements of life such as fire, water, wind and earth. There were not allowed to mix corpse with any of these elements although they were attending to purify corpse and they were strongly believe all human are from nature and would return to nature too.
This was the reason that they left corpse on top of hills or mountains in surrounding of city to be picked up and eaten by big birds such as vultures and crows in order to purify the bones and corpse. Afterwards all bones had been buried by a person who is named Shahriyar (mostly this job was held by priests) under the authority of a priest. It is well noted that during this funeral ceremony all family members, friends and relatives would stay together in such little houses in this area and none of the audience even cried as they all believed the dead member of their family left them toward a better life as he/she well deserved.
Towers of Silence of Yazd is located in southeastern side of the side that belonged to Zoroastrians back in ancient days. At the earlier time of this cemetery, there was only one tower which was called Makji and used to be a burial place. Later on when this one has got full, priests decided to have another next to it with the same shape and function.
This place has been always playing an important role in Zoroastrianism till 20th century that by order of the Pahlavi king, they were forced to change a bit on function of funeral ceremony by burying down the bones under the ground.
As a travel consultant there are few advantages of taking guided tour of Yazd such as getting acquainted better with this religion by climbing at these towers, walking randomly around the spot as well as getting transferred back to city center due to its location.