Kharraqan Towers

The two towers stand at Kharraqan, about 33 km west of Ab-e Garm on the road from Qazvin to Hamadan, near the village of Hesar-e Armani, later Hesar-e Valiasr^1,2,4. The eastern tower is dated 460 AH (1067-68) and the western 486 AH (1093-94)^1,2,3. Korn takes them to show that by the end of the 11th century the possibilities of Persian brick architecture were being fully used for, or by, Turkic patrons³. A 2020 Tehran Times report says that until the early 1960s they were taken for the tombs of two descendants of the seventh imam⁶. Local stories spoke of a murdered holy man and his sister, honoured each spring by people from nearby villages⁴.

S. M. Stern published the inscriptions in 1966, the year David Stronach and T. Cuyler Young's study brought the towers to Western attention⁴. Makovicky calls the patrons' names less certain; the Tehran Times report names the dead as Seljuk Turks, Abu Sa'id Bijar and Abu Mansur Iltaiti^4,6. By 2002 groundwater and damp had damaged the bases and stripped the lower walls of ornament, and little was left of the eastern tower's original dome, though Makovicky found both expertly restored without additions to the old brickwork^1,4. Weeks later the Changureh (Avaj) earthquake of June 2002, by his account locally the strongest in about 900 years, caused what he calls their 'overwhelming destruction'⁴.

Each tower is an octagonal prism of buff-fired brick about 13 m high, with a heavy round buttress at every corner; the Tehran Times gives each face as 4 m wide^4,6. Korn notes that the eight sides and the corner buttresses carry different brick patterns, and Makovicky, who recorded them before 2002, sees this ornament as the canon of Iranian brickwork before glazed tiles came into use^3,4. On the eastern tower large blind arches fill most of each face under a broad frieze; on the western tower each blind arch is divided into a tall rectangular lower panel and an arched upper panel, separated by a row of three small panels under trefoil arches⁴.

A band of Kufic inscription runs round both towers above the arches, broken only by the corner buttresses; on the eastern tower it quotes the closing verses of Surat al-Hashr (Qur'an 59)¹. The inscriptions also name the builders, but readings differ: Archnet gives Muhammad ibn Makki al-Zanjani and, on the later tower, Abu'l-Ma'ali ibn Makki al-Zanjani, probably his son or brother, while Makovicky reads Muhammad ibn Makki al-Zanjani on the western tower and credits both towers to one architect^1,4. Both towers were roofed with double domes^1,3. O'Kane calls the eastern tower's the first masonry double dome known in Iran, and Korn notes that the double shell let the builders give both the interior and the exterior harmonious proportions^2,3.

Each tower encloses a single octagonal chamber with plastered walls, and spiral stairs rise inside two of the eastern tower's buttresses and one of the western tower's¹. Archnet describes early Seljuk wall paintings in the eastern tower: a mosque lamp hanging from three chains under a keel arch, inscribed in Kufic 'Blessing to its owner', and birds in the branches of a pomegranate tree¹. Before 2002 Makovicky recorded a mihrab wall inside the western tower: a flat panel of geometric brick ornament crowned by a smaller panel under a pointed trefoil arch⁴.