The Thousand-Year Shrine: Ancient Roots of a Modern Holy Place in Afghanistan’s Desert
Author(s): Mitchell Allen; William Trousdale; Ghulam Rahman Amiri
Year: 2023
Summary
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Ziyarat-i Amiran is a contemporary shrine dedicated to one of the founders of Islam in Afghanistan. Located in the barren Sistan desert of southwest Afghanistan and supported by food, water, and fuel brought in by pilgrims and truck drivers, it seems an unlikely place to support an ongoing religious institution. Documented by the Helmand Sistan Project in the 1970s, ruined buildings in the complex suggest its foundation dates to the eleventh century or earlier and may have been sponsored by the occupants of a large estate nearby. This presentation will outline what we know about the history of the shrine and its current occupants based on ethnographic, historical, and archaeological evidence found there.
Cite this Record
The Thousand-Year Shrine: Ancient Roots of a Modern Holy Place in Afghanistan’s Desert. Mitchell Allen, William Trousdale, Ghulam Rahman Amiri. Presented at The 88th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2023 ( tDAR id: 474448)
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Keywords
General
Archaeology of religion
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Ethnohistory/History
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Islam
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Mortuary archaeology
Geographic Keywords
Asia: Central Asia
Spatial Coverage
min long: 46.143; min lat: 28.768 ; max long: 87.627; max lat: 54.877 ;
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 35927.0