MUSLIM VILLA - QURAN ONLY

(https://i.imgur.com/t8uX6SW.jpg)


This is called the Gonbad-e- Qabus tower in Gorgan city, Golestan province, northern Iran - a UNESCO world heritage site - and a huge tourist attraction with some excellent restaurants in the vicinity offering family meals and very close to the biggest park of the city.   

Gonbad-e-Qabus tower is the mausoleum of the ruler of the Emir Ziarid dynasty, Abul Hassan Qabus ibn Wushmagir, who died in 1012.  He ordered it to be built during his lifetime in 1007.  That's how old this tower is.   It's quite a wonderful display of human skill and professionalism.  Two hundred feet high and visible from a distance of 20 miles, Gonbad-e-Qabus tower is by far the tallest brick-built structure still standing in the world.  The tomb was constructed entirely of fine-quality baked brick of pale yellow color that gradually turned gold-brown with exposure to sunlight.   That's the only change visible in more than a thousand years.  The old Kufic inscription in Arabic still stands at the bottom of the tower that reads "this tall building Amir Qabus ibn Wushmagir ordered to build during his lifetime."   When trade & commerce began to proliferate in the Islamic world in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Gonbad Qabus tower was an important landmark to guide traders passing through the silk road.   If you stand on the white stones of the steps or anywhere inside the tower, you can hear a loud and clear echo to everything you say.

As you may know, at the time this tower was built Shiia Islam hadn't yet spread in Iran.  The rulers of the Emir Ziarid dynasty were Sunni Muslims.  Shiia Islam spread in the 1500s during the era of the Safavids and became the official religion of Iran.  By the 1600s it spread farther and became the religion of the majority in adjoining Iraq and Azer Baijan as well.


(https://i.imgur.com/75d0HP5.jpg)
This is how it looks at night.


(https://i.imgur.com/EJ5PigD.jpg)
And here's how it looks in the freezing winter of Golestan province.

Islam spread in Iran in 640 A.D. ending the Zoroastrian Sasanid dynasty.  Before the Islamic conquest, Persia had a Zoroastrian majority with smaller communities of Christians and Jews.   With the passage of time the population continued to move steadily towards Islam.   The Persian elites and city dwellers were among the first to embrace Islam, and then Islam began to spread quite rapidly in the country's rural areas.  By 1,000 AD by far the majority were Muslims, though some segments of new converts were Muslims nominally and were still borrowing customs and practices from the non-Muslim era. Until this time Iran was officially a Sunni Muslim State. 

Subhan'Allah, what amazing display of beauty!



Exactly.  And you know, many idiots in the mainstream media and the bias Google who are full of flattery for pre-Islamic Persia claim Achaemenid calendar to be more accurate than the Islamic Hejri calendar and also the Georgian calendar.  Those buffoons don't know (or pretend not to know) that the goofed up Achaemenid solar calendar went through a lengthy process of revision and correction by the prominent Iranian mathematician, astronomer and poet, Omar Khyyam (1048 to 1131).   He corrected and changed the Achaemenid calendar so vastly that it was a new calendar altogether commonly referred to as the Omar Khayyam calendar.  It turned out to be more accurate than the Christian Julian calendar in Europe, later changed to the Gregorian calendar.    Thundering goon, the Shah, wouldn't admit that and stuck to the phony title "Cyrus the Great calendar."

Absolutely right sisters. 

That thundering goon, the shah, only loved the polytheists and secularists.

Those bias halfwits claim Acheamnid empire was the biggest.  The Seljuk empire (Turko Persians) was bigger.  Not that the size of the empire has ever contributed to civilization and wisdom.
 

And who were the Qarakhanids?

They were a Muslim Turkic dynasty that surrendered to the Seljuks by the end of the 11th century (that is, the year end of 1000s).

Unfortunately yes.  For those autocratic indecorous thieves, money and power are the end-all and be-all of life.  One of their daughters who was an addict and eventually took an overdose of sleeping pill-drugs killing herself was buried in France in a Christian graveyard.   One of their sons who put a bullet through his head was cremated.

It's well over $10 billion !!!!!!   .....   stolen from Iran after a brutal 38-year totalitarian rule. 

 :o   brigands !!

Ameen.  Insh'Allah.