"Just off Imam Khomeini square in Hamadan, Iran ..."

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maghshoosh
by maghshoosh
09-Mar-2012
 

On the occasion of the Jewish festival of Purim, depicting mythical events in ancient Persia, a relevant article would be this recent one by Sohrab Ahmari, which states,

"There is quite possibly only one Star of David on Earth visible from space. Coordinates: 34.797924 N, 48.512927 E. Location: Hamadan, Iran ... The problem is that the shrine that houses the prominent star has fallen into disrepair at the hands of the local government, and last year anti-Jewish mobs rallied at the shrine, calling for its demolition. In the absence of a Jewish community capable of defending it, a U.S. organization called Diarna (Judeo-Arabic for “Our Homes”) has decided the only option is to restore the site — virtually.  For centuries, Persian Jews marked the holiday of Purim by traveling to the shrine in Hamadan. There they were often joined by Christian and Muslim supplicants seeking divine cures to infertility and other human ailments. According to Persian-Jewish lore, the biblical queen Esther and her uncle Mordechai — celebrated in the Book of Esther for having prevented a mass slaughter of their fellow Jews during the time of the Achaemenid emperor Xerxes I — are buried at the shrine. But construction of the site most likely post-dated by a few centuries the events depicted in the Book of Esther. A different Persian-Jewish queen — Shushan Dokht, wife to the 4th-century Sassanid emperor Yazdegerd I — may actually be buried there."

Diarna has posted this clip on the Esther-and-Mordechai shrine, and its physical and virtual restorations,

with further elaboration at their website, including this account by the architect of the shrine's 1970s restoration, who "rooted his design in Persian and Islamic architecture. For instance, the site’s once iconic fence with a “Jewish” or “six-point star, combined of two triangles” motif was an homage to an Isfahani mosque ceramic,"

A video tour of the tombs was posted here last year.

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