Walking Through Iran’s Forgotten Stories

When I reflect on Iran, I do not merely envision the outlines of a nation-state on a modern political map. Rather, I perceive a vast and layered cultural landscape shaped by extraordinary geographical contrasts. Within the expanse of the Iranian Plateau coexist snow-capped peaks, arid deserts, temperate forests, and fertile valleys—a concentration of ecological and climatic diversity rarely paralleled elsewhere in the world.

The Zagros Mountains, running diagonally across the western plateau, function historically as both a protective barrier and a life-giving system. Their valleys, rivers, and fertile soils sustained agricultural communities for millennia, anchoring some of the earliest village settlements and urban centers in the region. To the north, the Alborz range rises abruptly along the Caspian littoral. At its heart stands Mount Damavand, the tallest peak in Iran and a dormant stratovolcano. Beyond its geological prominence, Damavand occupies a central place in Persian myth, poetry, and national imagination, enduring as a symbol of strength, resistance, and resilience across centuries of storytelling.

In striking contrast, the central plateau reveals the stark expanses of the Dasht-e Kavir and the Dasht-e Lut, salt and sand deserts that once formed the beds of ancient inland seas. These environments, though harsh, became sites of human ingenuity. Communities confronted scarcity not through abandonment but through architectural and technological adaptation: the construction of qanats—underground aqueducts that transported water across long distances—and the invention of windcatchers, or badgirs, which harnessed natural air currents to cool homes and public spaces. These interventions stand as testament to Iran’s long history of environmental engineering, where necessity inspired enduring innovations in urban design and ecological adaptation.

Taken together, these geographical zones—the mountainous, the fertile, and the desert—do more than define Iran’s physical landscape. They provide the structural conditions through which cultural memory, architectural forms, and artistic traditions developed, binding environment and civilization into a continuous dialogue that persists to this day.

An ab anbar (water reservoir) with windcatchers (openings near the top of the towers) in the central desert city of Yazd, Iran

Stories Before Archaeology

Long before the discipline of archaeology was formally established, Iranians preserved their past not only in stone and monument but also in the realm of memory and oral tradition. History in Iran was transmitted through poetry, epic narrative, and storytelling, ensuring that cultural identity endured even when physical traces eroded. One of the most profound examples of this preservation is Shahnameh (“The Book of Kings”), composed by the poet Ferdowsi around the year 1000 CE. Spanning some 50,000 couplets, it remains among the longest epic poems in world literature.

The Shahnameh is more than a literary achievement; it is a cultural archive. Within its verses, Ferdowsi gathered myths, legends, and fragments of collective memory, weaving them into a continuum that links mythical kings and heroes with historical dynasties. Though infused with imagination and allegory, the poem preserves echoes of earlier political, social, and moral realities. In this sense, it functioned as a repository of identity, sustaining cultural continuity during centuries of upheaval and foreign domination.

By the time European explorers and archaeologists began excavations at sites such as Susa in the 19th century, they encountered layers of material culture that seemed to validate stories already long inscribed in Iranian consciousness. What they unearthed in soil and artifact was not entirely new knowledge but the physical counterpart to what Iranians had safeguarded in verse and oral tradition. The epic narratives of the Shahnameh had, in effect, served as a bridge between the immaterial realm of memory and the material record of antiquity.

Sultan Mohammed. Kayumars' Court. Miniature, detail. "Shahnameh" by Ferdowsi. 1525-1535. Geneva, Collection of Sadruddin Aga Khan.

The Desert That Hid a City

One of the discoveries that continues to fascinate me as both an artist and researcher is the relatively recent revelation of the Jiroft culture, announced just over two decades ago. Situated near the Lut Desert in southeastern Iran, Jiroft was brought to scholarly attention in the early 2000s after a series of excavations uncovered an extraordinary assemblage of carved chlorite vessels. These objects, decorated with intricate motifs of animals, serpents, architectural forms, and mythological beings, immediately challenged previous assumptions about the cultural map of the ancient Near East.

Dating to the late fourth and early third millennium BCE, the artifacts suggest the presence of a highly developed urban culture that flourished contemporaneously with Mesopotamia. Their iconography reveals complex symbolic systems and artistic traditions that were neither peripheral imitations of neighboring powers nor isolated innovations, but part of a sophisticated cultural network. The scale and quality of the finds have led some scholars to associate Jiroft with the legendary land of Aratta described in Sumerian texts, though this hypothesis remains debated. Regardless, the evidence points to a society with political organization, artistic refinement, and a vibrant symbolic language that deserves recognition as a major center of early civilization.

For me, Jiroft exemplifies how deserts—often imagined as barren voids—are in fact repositories of history. Beneath layers of sand and salt, they conceal archives of human creativity, waiting for rediscovery. These landscapes are not empty but instead function as vast, silent libraries where fragments of forgotten cultures lie dormant until unearthed. Jiroft reminds us that history is never complete; it is always capable of surprising us with new chapters that rewrite our understanding of the past.

Jiroft vase, 2800-2300 BC

Art Without Signatures

What has always struck me about Iranian art is the degree to which it emerges from anonymous hands. The monumental reliefs of Persepolis, the illuminated manuscripts with their jewel-like pigments, the glazed ceramics of Kashan or Nishapur—very few of these works bear the name of their makers. Unlike in the Western canon, where individual genius and artistic authorship are foregrounded, much of Iranian art evolved within collective workshops, dynastic patronage, and long-standing traditions. The artist, while central to the act of creation, often remained hidden within the lineage of a craft.

This anonymity does not diminish their achievement; rather, it enhances it. These artisans were contributing not to individual fame but to a continuum of cultural expression that valued the preservation of harmony, proportion, and symbolic meaning. The reliefs at Persepolis, for instance, embody a vision of cosmic and political order; the manuscripts, with their geometric balance and miniature details, express an aesthetic of precision and devotion; the ceramics, with their luminous glazes, carry the refinement of everyday life into the realm of beauty. Each of these forms reflects a collective commitment to ideals greater than the self.

Paradoxically, it is precisely through their anonymity that these works achieved a form of immortality. They stand not as monuments to individual ambition but as enduring expressions of cultural values that continue to shape how balance, harmony, and beauty are conceived. For me, this is one of the defining characteristics of Iranian art: its ability to transcend the artist’s name and enter directly into the shared language of civilization.

A bas-relief from the Apadana Palace depicting Delegations including Lydians and Armenians[42] bringing their famous wine to the king.

Iran as a Crossroads

Iran has always functioned as more than a bounded nation-state; it has been a cultural bridge linking vast regions of the ancient and early modern world. Positioned at the heart of the Iranian Plateau, the land served as a central corridor for caravans moving along the Silk Road and its many tributaries. These networks carried not only textiles, spices, and precious materials but also philosophical ideas, artistic motifs, and scientific knowledge. As traders and travelers moved between Mesopotamia, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and the Mediterranean, Iran became both a recipient and a transmitter of cultural exchange.

This role as a crossroads endowed Iranian culture with its distinctive layered quality. Religious architecture demonstrates this synthesis: mosques and madrasas incorporate pre-Islamic structural traditions, Central Asian decorative schemes, and innovations that later spread westward into Ottoman and Mughal forms. Music, too, bears the marks of hybridity, with Persian melodic modes (dastgah) intersecting with Arab, Turkish, and Indian traditions to form a shared but locally distinct soundscape. Even the diversity of dialects and languages within Iran—Persian, Kurdish, Azeri, Arabic, Baluchi, among others—reflects the country’s long history as a zone of cultural encounter.

The result is a civilization that is simultaneously cosmopolitan and rooted, a culture that continuously absorbed external influences yet reinterpreted them into uniquely Persian forms. This layered identity is one of Iran’s enduring strengths, visible across its artistic, linguistic, and musical heritage, and it continues to shape how Iran is situated within the broader narrative of world history.

The Izadkhast caravanserai (early 17th century), Fars province, Iran

Closing Thoughts

As both an artist and a researcher, I do not regard Iran as a singular, closed narrative but as an ongoing archive—one continuously written, erased, and rediscovered. Its geography has always been more than backdrop; mountains, deserts, and rivers created the conditions for settlement, exchange, and survival. Geography shaped the culture, culture shaped the art, and art, in turn, became the vessel through which memory has endured.

This layered continuity is visible across Iran’s heritage. In the epic verses of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, myth and history are interwoven to preserve identity across centuries. In the monumental ruins of Persepolis, the visual language of empire still speaks of order, ritual, and cosmopolitan encounter. In the technological ingenuity of qanats and windcatchers, we see how adaptation to extreme environments became aesthetic as well as functional. And in the more recent revelations at Jiroft, we are reminded that the desert, often thought of as silent, conceals archives of human creativity still waiting to be unearthed.

For an international audience, I believe this serves as a necessary reminder: Iran is not reducible to headlines or politics. It is, and has long been, a cradle of human creativity, resilience, and imagination. Its past is not an artifact locked in museums—it is alive, resonating in poetry, architecture, music, and collective memory. To engage with Iran is to listen carefully, for every ruin, every verse, and every pattern carved in stone or painted on a manuscript continues to whisper a different piece of a story that belongs not only to Iranians, but to the shared heritage of humanity.

by Keyvan Shovir