Persian Gate

The Persian Gate, Darband-e Pars, was a narrow mountain pass on the road from Susa to Persepolis, the route by which Alexander of Macedon advanced into the heartland of the Achaemenid empire in the winter of 331–330 BCE. There, a Persian force under the satrap Ariobarzanes blocked the way and held it against the Macedonian army, in one of the last stands of the Achaemenid defence.

The ancient historians Arrian, Curtius Rufus and Diodorus describe the scene. Ariobarzanes built a wall across the narrowest point of the gorge and posted his men on the heights above, and when Alexander's troops entered, the defenders rained down arrows and rocks and drove them back with heavy losses. For days the pass held. Alexander finally found a way round, guided by a local shepherd along a mountain path, and attacked the Persians from behind and in front at once. Ariobarzanes and his remaining men fought on to the end, and the way to Persepolis was opened.

Where exactly this happened is still debated. Scholars have proposed several gorges in the Zagros between the plains of Fahlian and Persepolis. One widely discussed identification places the battle in the Tang-e Meyran, a gorge north of Yasuj, the capital of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, and the name Persian Gate is used locally for that pass; other scholars prefer sites further south, in Fars.

Whatever the exact spot, the story of the Persian Gate has a strong hold on memory in the region. Ariobarzanes is honoured locally as a defender of his homeland, and the high, wooded gorges around Yasuj give a vivid sense of the terrain that faced an invading army.