The Asiatic lion and the Lion and Sun

Lions once lived in the oak woodland and river valleys of the Zagros and on the plains of Khuzestan. Travellers and hunters recorded them in the nineteenth century, and the last confirmed sightings in Iran date from the early 1940s. The Asiatic lion now survives in the wild only in and around the Gir forest of Gujarat, in India, a population that has recovered slowly from a very small number. For Iran, the living animal became a memory well within a lifetime.

Lion, and milk

The Persian word shir means both lion and milk, and poets have never stopped enjoying it. The lion also carries stories: the Achaemenid stairways of Persepolis show a lion sinking its claws into a bull, and Rumi's Masnavi retells the old fable of a lion outwitted by a hare, a story about the danger of brute strength and the force of a clever word.

The emblem

The shir-o-khorshid, or Lion and Sun, joins two old ideas: the lion as royal power, and the astrological pairing of the sun with the sign of Leo. The motif appears on coins and metalwork from the thirteenth century. Under the Safavids and Qajars it became an emblem of the Iranian state, later gaining the sword in the lion's raised paw, and it stood on the national flag until the revolution of 1979. The Red Lion and Sun Society, Iran's counterpart to the Red Cross, used it as a protected humanitarian emblem; Iran adopted the red crescent instead in 1980. The emblem survives on old banknotes, tiled gateways and the gravestones of soldiers, and it has become a sign of identity for many Iranians abroad. The lion it shows has a sun rising from its back and a tail curled like calligraphy.