Mausoleum in Hamadan, Iran
Tomb of Esther and Mordechai
|
---|
|
Tomb of Esther and Mordechai
|
Type
| Mausoleum
|
---|
Location
| Hamadan
,
Iran
|
---|
|
The
Tomb of Esther and Mordechai
(
Persian
:
??????? ???? ? ??????
,
Aramgah-e Ester va Murduxay
;
Hebrew
:
??? ???? ??????
Qever Est?r v'Mord??ay
;
Armenian
:
?????? ? ???????? ?????????
Yest’eri yev Murt’k’ev t’angarany
) is a tomb located in
Hamadan
,
Iran
.
Iranian Jews
and
Iranian Christians
believe it houses the remains of the biblical Queen
Esther
and her cousin
[1]
Mordechai
, and it is the most important pilgrimage site for Jews and Christians in Iran.
[2]
[3]
There is no mention of it in either the
Babylonian
or
Jerusalem Talmud
, and the Iranian Jewish tradition has not been supported by Jews beyond Iran.
[4]
History
[
edit
]
A tomb of Esther and Mordechai is at Hamadan, within a mausoleum believed to have been built in the 1600s,
[2]
and is first attested in the 11th century.
Benjamin of Tudela
visited the city, in which he reckoned there were 50,000 Jewish inhabitants, and described the tomb as in front of the synagogue.
[4]
[5]
Shahin Shirazi
, in his 14th century
Ardashir-n?mah
, was the first known
Persian Jew
to write of the dreams of Esther and Mordechai and of a journey they made to Hamadan, stating they died in the synagogue and within an hour of each other. The narrative of Shirazi may derive from earlier Judaeo-Persian sources, now vanished.
[4]
[6]
According to the
National Library of Israel
, a French explorer at the outset of the 20th century discovered jewels in a niche located in the mausoleum's ceiling, and deposited them in the
Louvre
. A crown among the cache, it adds, is believed by the Hamadan Jewish community to have belonged to Esther.
[2]
Neither of these claims appear to be true.
[2]
In 1850
J. J. Benjamin
visited the place, writing that some 500 Jewish families lived there, with three synagogues. The tombs he described as situated in a magnificent building just inside the city walls, which the local Jews visited monthly, and where on Purim the
Book of Esther
was read and the tombs were stuck with the faithful's palms.
[4]
[7]
Ten years later, Yehiel Fischel Castelman also praised the tombs' magnificence, quoting the locals' tradition that it was built by one Cyrus, Esther's son; a date was inscribed on the dome, but he was unable to read it.
[4]
[8]
Jakob Eduard Polak
, in the same decade, described the shrine as the only place to which Persian Jews made pilgrimages and wrote of it as the centre of the Jewish quarter and their sole national holy place in Persia. He recorded inscriptions on the oaken coffins inside: the final sections of the
Book of Esther
, together with names of three donors who had contributed to refurbishment, and a date of 1309/10 CE. In a separate room, the date 1140 CE was inscribed.
[4]
[9]
The Irani government maintains that the current structure dates back to the
Ilkhanate
, and a Hebrew inscription dating the construction of the structure to "1-4-5-7" (albeit
written incorrectly
) was recorded by a traveler in 1910.
[10]
In 1891, the tomb was described as consisting of an outer and inner chamber surmounted by a dome about 50 feet (15 m) high. The dome had been covered with blue tiles, but most of them had fallen away. A few tombs of worthy Jews were located within the outer chamber.
[11]
Menahem ha-Levi, a rabbi of Hamadan, wrote in 1932 that the building was 20 m high, that there was an inscription of
Isaiah
26
on the doorway, that the first room had been built two centuries previous above the graves of a physician and a messenger from
Hebron
, and that a 19th-century Hamadan chief rabbi was buried in the centre of the room. Between the main tombs he described an opening into a cave beneath, which could be accessed for maintenance.
[4]
[12]
The archaeologist
Ernst Herzfeld
rejected the notion that the
cenotaphs
were connected with Esther and Mordechai, arguing that they were buried in
Susa
, and argued instead it was the tomb of
Shushandukht
, daughter of the
late antique
Exilarch
Huna bar Nathan
, wife of
Yazdegerd I
, and mother of
Bahram V
.
[4]
[13]
According to Stuart C. Brown, the site is indeed more probably the sepulchre of Shushandukht, Jewish consort of the
Sasanian
king Yazdegerd (399?420).
[14]
Local legend has it the pit between the two tombs opens into a way that leads directly to Jerusalem.
[2]
The city of
Hamadan
in which the shrine is located, is the ancient Hagmatana/Ecbatana, the capital of the
Median Empire
which also served as one of the three, simultaneous capitals of the succeeding
Achaemenid Empire
. This is the dynasty to which the Bible assigns the story of Esther and Mordechai which is the basis of the Jewish feast of
Purim
today.
The tomb along with the
Bandar Abbas Vishnu Temple
and a Christian cemetery in
Eslamshahr
were the target of
arson
attacks in mid-May 2020. Destruction was minimal and limited to smoke damage, the blaze itself reportedly resulting in no significant injury to the structure. Although multiple Jewish organizations around the world condemned the incident and demanded a swift investigation, Iran's government did not respond to the report or the calls for arrests.
[15]
Investigation by Hamadanian officials confirmed minor smoke damage and announced restoration work would commence the same week, but refrained from commenting on the cause of the fire. Images of the complex's entrance revealed a
Star of David
located in the entryway's
transom
had been partially destroyed and two small graffiti on either side of the doorpost ? one a picture of
Qasem Soleimani
captioned "hard revenge" and the other a picture of
Hezbollah
general-secretary
Hassan Nasrallah
captioned "the promise, fulfilled" ? although the damage to the Star of David dated to 2017.
[16]
In October 2023, the tombs were desecrated as a consequence of the
war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza
.
[17]
On 3 April 2024, subsequent to the
2024 Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus
, the shrine was again attacked by assailants with Molotov cocktails. The governor of
Hamadan
reported minor damage after the perpetrators were observed on video surveillance. The mausoleum is an important pilgrimage destination particularly for Iranian Jews, but also for Christians and Muslims.
[18]
Alternative location
[
edit
]
Another tradition first recorded during the
Middle Ages
places the graves of Esther and Mordechai in the
Galilean
archaeological site of
Kfar Bar'am
, close to the
kibbutz
of the same name,
Bar'am
, along
Israel
's northern border with
Lebanon
.
[19]
[20]
Gallery
[
edit
]
-
-
Eugene Flandin (1840)
-
Interior (2008)
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Bible Gateway passage: Esther 2:7, Esther 2:15 - New King James Version"
.
Bible Gateway
. Retrieved
2020-07-20
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
'Outcry as Tomb of Mordechai and Esther in Iran reportedly set ablaze,'
The Times of Israel
15 May 2020.
- ^
"Esther's Iranian Tomb Draws Pilgrims of All Religious Stripes"
.
Haaretz
. 2005-03-22.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Netzer, Amnon (2012) [1998]. "Esther and Mordechai".
Encyclopædia Iranica
. Vol. III:6 (Online ed.). New York. pp. 657?658.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
- ^
Benjamin of Tudela,
The Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela
, ed. and tr. A. Asher, New York, 1840, p 57.
- ^
W. Bacher, "Le Livre d’Ezra de Schahin Schirazi,"
Revue des etudes juives
55, 1908a, pp. 280-313; I
dem
.,
Zwei judisch-persische Dichter Schahin und Imrani
, Strasbourg, 1908b.
- ^
Israel Joseph Benjamin II,
Cinq Annees de Voyage en Orient 1846-1851
, Paris 1856, pp. 153-56.
- ^
Y. F. Castelman,
Masa?ot ?aliya? ?efat be-ar?ot ha-mizra?
, Jerusalem, 1942, pp. 71-72.
- ^
J. E. Pollak, "Die Juden in Persien und Mordechais und Esthers Grambal,"
Jahrbuch fur Israeliten
, Wien, 1856, pp. 142-52.
- ^
[Matzevat Mordekhai ha-Tzadik ve-Ester ha-Malka...] [Purim Picture]
.
The National Library of Israel
. 1910.
- ^
Bishop, Isabella L.
(1891).
Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan : including a summer in the Upper Karun region and a visit to the Nestorian Rayahs; with portrait, maps and illustrations
. Vol. II. London : Murray. pp. 153?154.
- ^
M. ha-Levi,
Mordechai ve-Ester be-?u?an
, Jerusalem, 1932.
- ^
E. E. Herzfeld,
Archaeological History of Iran
, London, 1935, pp. 104-7.
- ^
Stuart Brown (1997). "Ecbatana". In Eric M. Meyers (ed.).
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East
. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. pp. 186?187.
- ^
Weinthal, Benjamin (17 May 2020).
"Holy Jewish site of Esther and Mordechai set ablaze in Iran - reports"
.
The Jerusalem Post
. Retrieved
3 February
2024
.
- ^
"?????????? ? ???? ?????? ????????? ??? ?? ?????? ??????+???"
[Anti-Semitism and Hatred Organized in the Islamic Republic + Photo] (in Persian). 1 June 2016. Archived from
the original
on 31 August 2021
. Retrieved
3 February
2024
.
- ^
"Iranians desecrated tombs of Mordechai and Esther, Jews asking for protection"
.
Israel National News
. 26 October 2023
. Retrieved
3 February
2024
.
- ^
"Iranians desecrated tombs of Mordechai and Esther, Jews asking for protection"
.
Iran International
. 3 April 2024
. Retrieved
4 April
2024
.
- ^
Freund, Michael (9 March 2009).
"Where is the Tomb of Mordechai and Esther?"
.
OU Life
. Retrieved
3 February
2024
.
- ^
Tal, Rivka (28 February 2001).
"Dei'ah veDibur"
.
www.chareidi.org
. Retrieved
3 February
2024
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
|
---|
Bible
chapters
| |
---|
Places
| |
---|
People
| |
---|
Phrases
| |
---|
Analysis
| |
---|
Manuscripts
| |
---|
Sites
| |
---|
Sources
| |
---|
|
34°47′53″N
48°30′46″E
/
34.79809°N 48.51290°E
/
34.79809; 48.51290