TEHRAN - A local official has announced the commencement of a restoration and protection project for the ruins of Jorjan, an ancient city located in Gonbad-e Kavus county, northern Iran.

On Tuesday, Golestan province’s deputy tourism director Morteza Hoseinqolizadeh stated that the project involves organization, protection, and restoration of excavation fields and other sections of the ruined city.

The project is being carried out by contractors with a budget of 8 billion rials (some $13,000) from national funds, the official said.

Hoseinqolizadeh highlighted that this phase of the project includes the organization and cleaning of excavation workshops, the repair of perimeter fencing around the site, the organization of the architectural spaces within the heritage base building, and the improvement of sanitation facilities and electrical and mechanical systems.

He explained that the ancient city of Jorjan, once a vast and thriving center of Islamic culture, civilization, and art from the early Islamic centuries until the end of the 14th century AH, is located in the southwest of Gonbad-e Kavus, near the northern side of the Imamzadeh Yahya bin Zayd shrine.

Moreover, the official noted that this ancient city was registered as a national monument in 1938 under number 40 and has designated protective boundaries. The archaeological remains discovered at the site include brick-paved pathways, water channels, sewage wells, residential areas, a mosque, and more.

Jorjan (also known as Astarabad), lies at the southeastern corner of the Caspian Sea. The city, in existence since Achaemenian times, long suffered from inroads of the Turkmen tribes who occupied the plain north of the Qareh River, and it was subjected to incessant Qajar-Turkmen tribal conflicts in the 19th century. It was renamed Gorgan in the 1930s after being devastated by an earthquake.

Furthermore, Gorgan is famed for being home to an ancient defensive wall of the same name (“The Great Wall of Gorgan”) which stretched some 200 km in length and was built to prevent the invasion of the northern tribes.

AM