Shoush

Ancient Susa

The ruins beside the modern city preserve 27 superimposed layers of urban settlement, from the late 5th millennium BCE to the 13th century CE. Susa lay where the civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau met, and it served as capital of the Elamite and later the Achaemenid empires. Under Darius I a palace complex with a monumental columned hall, the Apadana, was built on the site; a palace of Artaxerxes II stood across the Shavur River. The city is the setting of the biblical Book of Esther, and the prophet Nehemiah is described as serving the Persian king there.

Islamic period

Susa was taken by the Arab army of Abu Musa al-Ash'ari around 638 CE during the Muslim conquest of Persia, after a siege.^{[citation needed]} An early Islamic mosque dating to the 7th–8th centuries has been excavated in the area known as the Artisans' City. The town remained an important centre of Khuzestan in the early Islamic centuries, but declined after the provincial centre moved to Shushtar; occupation of the site ended in the 13th century.

Excavations

European travellers visited the ruins from the early 19th century, and William Kennett Loftus excavated there in 1851–52. Marcel and Jane Dieulafoy excavated the Achaemenid palace in 1884–86. Under an 1895 agreement with Naser al-Din Shah, renewed around 1900, France obtained an exclusive right to excavate in Persia, and the French mission led by Jacques de Morgan began work at Susa in December 1897. The Majlis annulled the French monopoly in 1927. French excavations continued under Roland de Mecquenem, Roman Ghirshman and Jean Perrot until 1979.

Many of the finds, including the glazed-brick friezes and the bull capitals of Darius's palace, were taken to France and are now in the Louvre.^{[citation needed]} Iranian sources describe the removal of objects in the Qajar period as taking place against the terms agreed with the Iranian government.

Modern town

The modern town grew up around the Tomb of Daniel. Its expansion followed the building of the Tehran–Khorramshahr road and the Trans-Iranian Railway, and a municipality was established in 1956.^{[citation needed]} The Dez Dam, completed in the early 1960s, brought large-scale irrigation and agro-industrial projects to the surrounding plain. During the Iran–Iraq War the area west of Shoush was the scene of Operation Fath ol-Mobin in 1982.^{[citation needed]}

Population

The 2016 census recorded 77,148 people in 21,649 households.

Ethnicity and language

Shoush is home to Lurs, Arabs, speakers of Dezfuli and Bakhtiaris.

Tomb of Daniel

The shrine stands in the centre of the city on the east bank of the Shavur River, opposite the Citadel mound. It is the most widely accepted of several sites claimed as the burial place of the prophet Daniel, and the medieval Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela was the first to describe it. The building may date back to the 12th century. After a flood in 1869 it was largely rebuilt, and its tomb chamber is covered by a vault of 25 tiers of muqarnas cells, visible from far away. The shrine was added to Iran's list of national monuments in 1931.

Archaeological site of Susa

The World Heritage property covers 350 ha (860 acres), with a buffer zone of 600 ha (1,500 acres). It includes the Acropolis and its high terrace, the Apadana with the Palace of Darius, residential and craft quarters, and the palace of Artaxerxes II on the far bank of the Shavur. UNESCO has warned that unregulated urban growth in modern Shoush threatens the edges and setting of the site.

Shoush Castle

The castle on the Acropolis mound was built by the French archaeological mission led by Jacques de Morgan from the late 1890s, partly with bricks taken from the ancient site.^{[citation needed]} It now houses a museum and storerooms of finds from the excavations.^{[citation needed]}

Tomb of Debel al-Khuzai

The town has a tomb attributed to the 9th-century Arab poet "Debel al-Khuzai", known for his poems praising the Ahl al-Bayt. A statue of the poet erected by the municipality in the 1990s was removed a few months later; a new statue was installed at the city's entrance in 2017.

Nearby sites

• Chogha Zanbil, an Elamite ziggurat built around 1250 BCE, was the first site in Iran to be inscribed on the World Heritage List, in 1979.
• Haft Tepe, an Elamite site southeast of the city with a museum of its finds.
• Eyvan-e Karkheh, the remains of a Sasanian city on the Karkheh northwest of Shoush.