Fīrūzābād, Iran

History

Gor dates back to the Achaemenid era. It was situated in a low-lying area of the region, so, during his invasion of Persia, Alexander the Great was able to drown the city by directing the flow of a river into the city. The lake he created remained until Ardashir I built a tunnel to drain it. He founded his new capital city on this site.

Ardashir's new city was known as Khor Ardashīr, Ardashīr Khurrah and Gōr. It had a circular plan so precise in measurement that the Persian historian Ibn Balkhi wrote it to be "devised using a compass". It was protected by a trench 50 meters in width, and was 2 kilometers in diameter. The city had four gates; to the north was the Hormozd Gate, to the south the Ardashir Gate, to the east the Mithra Gate and to the west the Wahram Gate. The royal capital's compounds were constructed at the center of a circle 450 m in radius. At the center of the town there was a lofty platform or tower, called Terbal. It was 30 m high and spiral in design. The design is unique in Iran, and there are several theories regarding the purpose of its construction. It is thought to have been the architectural predecessor of the Great Mosque of Samarra of Iraq and its distinctive minaret, the malwiya. In the Sasanian era, the abbreviation ART (in Inscriptional Pahlavi) was used as the mint signature to refer to Gōr.

From the History section of Firuzabad, Fars on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.