Iran's Wolf Wall, Second-longest in the World, is Still Shrouded in Mystery

[Judi Lynn]

By Paul Cooper | July 27, 2018 10:58 am



Golestan Province in Northern Iran is a unique landscape. Sandwiched between the temperate forests of the Alborz Mountains and the Caspian Sea, a narrow corridor connects Persia with the desert steppes of Central Asia. The passage measures 120 miles across from sea to mountain, and it’s made of fertile rolling plains rising to windswept hills. The ancient name for this place was Gorgan (گرگان , meaning “land of wolves”, and wild wolves can still be found here, along with roe deer and bounding goitered gazelles.

For centuries, Golestan lay at the northern border of one of the world’s first superpowers: the Sassanian Empire. For 400 years, from their ascension in the 3rd century until they fell to Muslim conquerors around the year 600, the Sassanians ruled a vast stretch of the ancient Near East from their capital in Ctesiphon, just south of Baghdad. While the Western Roman Empire struggled in Europe, the Sassanians brought a golden age to the region now covered by Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Wolf Wall
Here in Golestan, the scope of this empire’s ambition left its mark on the landscape in a remarkable way. Across the plain stretches a mighty border wall, surpassed in size and scale only by the Great Wall of China. It’s known as the Wall of Gorgan, and unlike its Chinese counterpart, much of its construction remains an unsolved mystery to this day.

Powerful as it was, the Sassanian Empire also had formidable enemies. Chief among these were the vast horse-borne armies of the Huns, who regularly menaced their northern borders. And the most dangerous were the Hephthalites, the so-called “White Huns”. They left no written records behind, so who they were, what language they spoke and where they came from is a mystery. We do know, though, that their swift armies routinely made forays out of the harsh desert lands deep into the Sassanian Empire. The flat, fertile Gorgan region was the main corridor through which they mounted their attacks.

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