Kuh-e Khwaja

Kuh-e Khwaja is a flat-topped hill of dark basalt rising from the plain of Sistan, near the Iranian border with Afghanistan. When the Hamun wetlands are full it becomes an island, standing alone in water and reeds; in dry years it rises from a cracked plain. It has been a sacred place for millennia, and remains a place of pilgrimage today.

On its southern slope are the ruins of a large mud-brick complex known as Ghagha-shahr, a palace and temple built around a central courtyard, generally dated to the Parthian and Sasanian periods. Early-twentieth-century visitors, including the archaeologists Aurel Stein and Ernst Herzfeld, found wall paintings here, some of which were removed to museums abroad. Scholars still debate the sequence of building and the identity of the cults practised there.

Sistan is the homeland of Rostam, greatest hero of the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings, and local tradition links the hill with him and his family. Zoroastrian tradition also associates the Hamun with the future saviour, the Saoshyant. On the summit is the shrine of Khwaja Ghalton, a holy man from whom the hill takes its present name, and families climb to it at Nowruz, the Persian New Year.