Graftombe van Baba Taher

Baba Taher, known as ’Oryan, was a dervish poet from the Hamadan area, remembered for his do-baytis, quatrains in a simple metre, probably in the local dialect of his day¹. His dates are disputed, with estimates from the 10th to the 13th century; the one account Iranica finds convincing, in Ravandi’s Rahat al-sudur (completed 1206), describes his meeting with the Seljuk conqueror Toghril, which would fall in 1055-58¹. His tomb, where his companion Fatema is also buried, is first mentioned in Hamdallah Mostowfi’s Nozhat al-qolub^1,6. Iran’s tourism portal says the old tomb was an octagonal brick tower of the 12th century; it stood on a hilltop on the north-western edge of the city^2,6.

The tower fell into ruin in the early 20th century, and a simple tomb replaced it in 1938-39; it was restored in 1950-52^1,6. In 1967 the Society for National Heritage began the present monument by order of Mohammad Reza Shah, one of the tombs it built after 1961^4,6,7. Mohsen Foroughi (1907-1983), who had designed the Society’s tomb of Saadi in Shiraz, drew up the building and the plan of the surrounding square, which Hamadan’s municipality carried out^3,4,6,8. The work was completed in summer 1970, on a site of more than 100,000 m²^5,6. When the old tower was replaced, a 13th-century inscription in Kufic script was found in it².

Iranica notes that the monument imitates Avicenna’s tomb, rebuilt in the same city in 1951². Iran’s official tourism portal describes a tower on an octagonal base, rising about 25 m above street level^6,7. According to the portal, the tower’s eight piers are of carved granite and its outer faces of white stone, while the tomb itself, 10 m by 10 m, is a cluster of prisms pierced by entrances and light openings, built of brick with concrete ties on foundations of stone and lime^6,7. The portal adds that carved granite was also used for the steps around the tower, the floor and the gravestone^6,7.

Inside, according to the same portal, the tomb chamber is lined with tile mosaic and fine ornament in the banna’i (mo’aqqal) manner^6,7. Twenty-four of Baba Taher’s do-baytis are inscribed on twenty-four marble slabs set around the lower part of the walls, and the gravestone and the floor are of carved granite^6,7.