Takht-I Suleiman: Lingering Sacrality and Collective Memory

As one of the ancient archeological sites in the north-west of Iran, Takht-I Suleiman (Throne of Solomon), has taken various functions and contributed to the formation of collective memories attached to this site since the seventh BCE. Having been chosen as a ritual site for performing Zoroastrian religious rituals, then appropriated as a Mongol summer resort in the Islamic period and considered for its archeological findings in the recent history of Iran, Takht-I Suleiman has gone through different phases of memory formation and placemaking. In recent years, this tourist attraction has become a meditation place for a group of spiritual tourists who praise this site for its sacredness and its potential meditative character. This paper investigates the role of different elements of both natural and built landscapes constituting this sacrality, to shed light on the lingering sacredness residing in this site. Adopting Maurice Halbwachs’s “collective memory,” I apply the term “palimpsest” to this place to explain how memory has been written into and erased from the architecture and visual motifs of Takht-I Suleiman. On this palimpsest, many layers of stories and memories have been accumulated on top of one another. Each group of occupants has left its imprint on both the monuments and the narratives, rewriting the collective memory to suit its needs and desires. This case study shows how an ordinary space turns into an extraordinary place through the mechanism of constructing each age’s “Topography of remembrance.”