Minar (Firuzabad) instance of tower
Description and history
The structure is known as Minar (منار, literally "pillar") or Minaret (مناره) in New Persian, while the medieval Arabic-language Islamic sources referred to the structure as Terbal (طربال Ṭirbāl).
Similar structures, i.e., staged tower with an outside ramp, have been recorded by ancient historians, including a tower mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus at the Nahar Malka (near the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon; he compared it to the Lighthouse of Alexandria), several towers at Pirisabora (al-Anbar) mentioned by Zosimus, and the Borsippa tower near Babylon. These in turn may have been based on the ziggurats of the ancient Near East.Ardashir I's new city of Gor had a circular plan with the official buildings located at the centre of an inner circle 450 metres (1,480 ft) in radius. The tower-like structure of Terbal was located at the very centre of this circle. Together with Takht-e Neshin, these are the only structures of the city that are made of granite-mortar-masonry. According to Iranica, these two structures may have been confused in medieval Islamic sources, and it is unclear that the names Aywān kiyākhurra (ایوان کیاخوره) (Istakhri), Gunbad-i Kīrmān (or Gīrmān; گنبد گیرمان) and Īrān Garda/Girda (ایران گرده) (Ibn al-Balkhi) mentioned in these sources refer to which structure. Terbal was a 9 metres (30 ft) square structure with more than 30 metres (98 ft) high and spiral in design. It was the core of a stair-tower, and was compared by Ibn Hawqal to a similar edifice at Balkh (a reference to a Buddhist stupa, or possibly a ziggurat). With the width of the destroyed stairs and outer walls added, its actual width is estimated to be about 20 metres (66 ft). The remaining structure is hollow, according to the Qajar period writer Forsat-od-Dowleh Shirazi. Ernst Herzfeld (1907) had described it as a tower of a square ground plan with a spiral outer ramp. According to Dieulafoy (in his L'Art Antique de la Perse), who had examined the structure, it was "composed above the platform, of four stages ... Each stage is square and recedes from the preceding one by a space equal to 1⁄10 of the base".
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