Qasr-e Shirin - History

History

The city was a metropolitan during Sassanid dynastic era (226-651 AD). Ghasr-e Shírín a city with over 2000 years of history was famous for being the city of love. Khosrow II (590 to 628 AD) the twenty-second king of Sassanid dynasty built a castle for his lifelong beloved Shirin in the city. The folklore has it that Shirin was the daughter of the Queen of Armenia who fell in love with the Sassanid King. Shirin followed her love Khosrow and settled in Ghasr-e Shirin, before sending a messenger to the King in Ctesiphon informing him of her move. The king who was engaged in a battle with Arabs, decided to build a palace for his beloved Shirin. The story of this love has become the most famous classics in Kurdish and Persian literature, and the great Kurdish poet Nizami has created his epic tragedies Kosrow-vo-Shirin (Khosrow and Shirin) and Shirin-o-Farhad (Shirin and Farhad), based on the two different versions of love, one characterized by happiness, glory and power, and the other by sadness, struggle, and purity. The rivalry between the powerful king who was victorious in his wars with the Byzantine empire and Farhad a master stone carver, who carved the palace of Shirin on the hard rocks of Mount Bistun and fell in love with the queen provides a pretext for Nizami to explore various psychological, spiritual, and philosophical aspects of the human tragedy.

The ruins of the castle were further damaged as a result of the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) that turned the area into an active battlefield. The city was occupied during eight years of war between the two countries. When Iraqi Army withdrew from the city they made sure that not a single wall stood before they left the town.

In June 2006, archaeological excavations in Shirin’s castle resulted in the discovery of the dais of the castle which was used as the seat of the king.

The city is located near the international border between Iran and Iraq, Khosravi border terminal. The famed Silk Road passes through Ghasr-e Shirin, connecting the highlands of the Iranian Plateau through a natural opening in the Zagros mountain chain with the lowland Mesopotamia and whence, the Levant and the Mediterranean basin. Being at the foothills of Zagros has made the city an important trade connection. For centuries the town has hosted the caravans of Silks and goods from far east to Arabia and Byzantium and up until 1980, when the Iran - Iraq war devastated the area, Qasr-e Shirin had a large secondhand clothes market where items, ranging from American plaid jackets to Russian leather military motorcycle coats, could be obtained. The Jews were first forced to migrate to East through Ghasr-e Shirin during ruling of Assyrian Empire in 800 BC.

Alexander the Great made his way through the same road to invade Persia in 331 BC. The waves of Arab Muslim armies advanced into the Iranian Plateau after the Battle of Jalula via Ghasr-e Shirin. The destructive invaders, the Mongols, passed through the city in 1258 on their way to destroy Baghdad and the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate. Ghasr-e Shirin has been the center of the house of the Kurdish tribe of Bajalan. The city served as the host to the Ottoman and Iranian delegates in 1639, signing the Treaty of Zohab (rather, the Armistice of Zohab) that ended the 120 Years' War between the two waring Islamic empires. The treaty fixed the border between the Ottoman and Persian empires which more or less lasts to the present day. The Treaty of Zohab left Ghasr-e Shirin in Persia/Iran but allocated the neighboring town of Khanaqin to the Ottomans, and thence Iraq.