BAM, Iran (AP) – Most of the 30 circular guard towers have crumbled into avalanches of dirt, along with parts of the thick, mud-brick walls. The bathhouses, gymnasiums and a Zoroastrian temple that survived for centuries now resemble a moonscape.

The earthquake that killed nearly a third of this Iranian city’s people last week also devastated its archaeological jewel – the Arg-e-Bam, or Citadel of Bam, the world’s largest mud-brick fortress, parts of which date back 2,200 years.

But even as aftershocks sent more of its walls crashing down, Iran’s government is vowing to rebuild it.

“The citadel was almost as precious as the lives lost in the earthquake,” Fakoor Pass, director of cultural heritage for Kerman province where Bam is located, told The Associated Press on Friday. Officials are “100 percent sure we will” rebuild it.

More than 30,000 people are believed to have died in the 6.6-magnitude temblor that struck before dawn Dec. 26, burying thousands alive as they slept.

Much of the historic citadel on the outskirts of the modern city collapsed like a sand castle.

The citadel, which covered about 21/2 square miles, was made up of a looming fortress on a rocky hill top and the ancient town, encircled by walls standing some 80 feet tall in some spots. Along the walls were the circular watchtowers, with slits for archers, and gates with peaked archways.

The structures were all built of sun-baked bricks and straw – which under the quake’s punishment was reduced to dirt that avalanched down the hill’s slopes.

Now the distinctive square tower that stood as the highest part of the fortress has disappeared. Many of the watchtowers are circular stumps with dirt cascaded down the sides. Upper parts of the walls have toppled as if hit by a barrage of cannon fire. Most of the ancient town’s buildings lie flattened.

The interior of the fortress once housed bathhouses, schools, two mosques and a temple of the Zoroastrians, the religion that dominated Iran before the coming of Islam.

The site is said to have had a citadel city since 250 B.C. but it was rebuilt continually through the centuries. Most of the structures seen by modern-day tourists were thought to range in age from a few hundreds years to perhaps 1,000 years. Much of the fortress was built under the Safavids, the dynasty that ruled Iran from the late 1400s to the 1720s.

Three people were in the fortress when the quake struck: Two guards were crushed at their watchposts at the main entrance, and Pass helped rescue the citadel’s custodian, who survived seven hours under the ruins before being dug out.

With most of Bam’s surviving population sheltering through freezing nights in tents next to the ruins of their homes – and hundreds, perhaps thousands more corpses still buried in the rubble of modern-day Bam – rebuilding antiquity might seem the least of the town’s worries.

But Iranian President Mohammad Khatami vowed to restore the citadel to its former glory, saying last week that a committee of foreign experts would determine how best to rebuild it.

The U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO – which had considered declaring the citadel a protected World Heritage Site – has offered to help reconstruct the fortress, and its officials will visit it Saturday, Pass said. Several countries have also voiced interest in supporting the rebuilding, he said.

The Bam citadel attracted about 30,000 foreign tourists last year – a rare commodity in a country that welcomes few overseas visitors – and as many as three times the number of Iranian tourists, Pass said.

“It’s a terrible thing, not just for Iranians but for all the people of the world because it was a wonder of architecture,” said Mehdi Mirzai, 31, a local government employee. “The citadel was 2,000 years of our culture. Seeing it destroyed is like a death in the family.”

People have lived in the Bam area for more than 6,000 years. The city was once a key trading post in the desert of southeastern Iran, located on routes toward the Indian subcontinent to the east and the Persian Gulf to the south.

The citadel was home to 13,000 people until an Afghan invasion in 1722 signaled its gradual downfall. It was later used as a military barracks, then finally abandoned in the 1930s.

Pass predicts that rebuilding the citadel would take about 10 years and cost more than $20 million.

“Once the clean-up is done, we’ll be ready to start again,” he said, “and this time we’ll make it resistant to earthquakes” – perhaps by inserting beams to support the heavy walls.

Since the quake, the destruction has continued.

Aftershocks on Thursday sent a small part of the perimeter wall and an entrance arch tumbling down, and the citadel – once a popular place to take a stroll for the 100,000 residents of Bam and surrounding villages – has been closed off, deemed unsafe for the public.

Heritage police officers who protect Iran’s antiquities have been posted around the ruined battlements, on guard for treasure hunters. One officer said that six or seven people with metal detectors have been arrested – although no artifacts of great value are believed buried, except some preserved household utensils and carpets dating back a few hundred years.

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