Dahan-e Gholaman

Dahan-e Gholaman is the site of a town of the Achaemenid era on the plain of Sistan, south-east of Zabol, close to the border with Afghanistan. Its name means “the gateway of the slaves”, a later folk name for a place whose ancient one is not known for certain. In Achaemenid times this area belonged to Drangiana, the satrapy of the Zranka, one of the provinces of the Persian empire listed in the inscriptions of Darius I.

The site was excavated in the 1960s by an Italian mission led by the archaeologist Umberto Scerrato, and later by Iranian archaeologists, notably under Seyyed Mansour Seyyed Sajjadi. They uncovered a planned town laid out along a line, with large public buildings of mud brick as well as houses, workshops and storerooms. It appears to have been occupied for a relatively short time before it was abandoned, perhaps when the course of the Helmand river shifted.

The most remarkable building, known as Building 3, is a large square structure with a central courtyard surrounded by porticoes. In the courtyard and the porticoes stood large altars, some with traces of burning and ash. Scholars have interpreted it as a religious building, perhaps connected with fire rituals, and it is one of the most important pieces of evidence for religious practice in the eastern Achaemenid world, though how it relates to later Zoroastrian fire temples is still discussed.

Today the site is a field of eroded mud-brick walls on a flat, wind-swept plain. Sistan is famous for its fierce summer winds, and they have shaped the ruins, but the plan of the town can still be read from the ground.