TEHRAN—A new round of archaeological excavation has recently commenced at Saheli Street of the Qasr-e Shirin city, western Kermanshah province, the provincial tourism chief has said.

This is the second archaeological season that is aimed to study and explore the antiquity of the city and the relics discovered during previous excavations, Mohammadreza Soheili said on Tuesday.

A budget of 3.1 billion rials ($11,000) has been allocated to the project, the official added.

The ancient city of Qasr-e Shirin has always played a pivotal role because of its strategic geographical position and its location on the Silk Road; as a crossroads, it connected ancient Persia’s plateau from East, including Rey, Hamadan, and Kermanshah to Western civilizations such as Chaledea and Babel.

The city was a metropolitan during the Sassanid era (226-651 CE). Qasr-e Shirin, a city with over 2000 years of history, was famous for being the city of love. Khosrow II known as Khosrow Parviz (590 to 628 CE), the twenty-second Sassanid king, built a castle for his lifelong beloved Shirin in the city. The folklore has it that Shirin was the daughter of the Queen of Armenia who fell in love with the Sassanid king. Shirin followed her love to Khosrow and settled in Qasr-e Shirin, before sending a messenger to the King in Ctesiphon informing him of her move.

The king, who was engaged in a battle with the invading Arabs, decided to build a palace for his beloved Shirin. The story of this love has become the most famous classics in Kurdish and Persian literature, and the great poet Nizami Ganjavi has created his epic tragedies ‘Khosrow and Shirin’ and ‘Shirin and Farhad’ based on the two different versions of the story.

The rivalry between the powerful king who was victorious in his wars with the Byzantine Empire and Farhad, a master stone carver, who carved the palace of Shirin on the hard rocks of Mount Bisotun and fell in love with the queen provides a pretext for Nizami to explore various psychological, spiritual, and philosophical aspects of the human being. The discourse between Khosrow and Farhad is considered one of the literary masterpieces of the world.

ABU/AM