Belqeys Citadel

A few kilometres south-west of the town of Esfarayen, a great mound of eroded mud-brick walls and towers rises from the plain. Local people call it Qal’eh Belqeys, the castle of Belqeys, after the Queen of Sheba of the Qur’an and Persian legend. Archaeologists know it as the citadel of the old city of Esfarayen, one of the historic towns of Khorasan.

The site is large, with a citadel standing over the remains of a walled town, a bazaar, a caravanserai, cisterns and an extensive cemetery. The citadel’s walls rise to around eleven metres and are reinforced with many towers. Excavations have uncovered houses, irrigation channels, a cistern and a hall of columns, and pottery and coins showing that the city was lived in from the late Sasanian period into the Islamic centuries, with occupation still recorded in the Safavid era.

Iranian specialists often describe Belqeys as one of the largest mud-brick fortresses in the country after the citadel of Bam. Like Bam, it is vulnerable: rain and wind wear the walls away a little each year, and restoration work has been carried out to stabilise the towers and gateways.

Seen at the end of the day, when the low sun picks out the ridges of the walls, Belqeys gives a vivid sense of what the walled towns of medieval Khorasan were like: a strong citadel rising out of the farmland, built from the earth on which it stands.