The Cypress of Kashmar was a cypress tree regarded as sacred to followers of

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheisti ...

. According to the

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

ian epic ''Shahnameh'', the tree had grown from a branch Zoroaster had carried away from Paradise and which he planted in honor of King Vishtaspa's conversion to Zoroastrianism in Kashmarbalkh. The spreading branches of the tree are used as an allusion to the spread of Zoroaster's creed. On 10 December 861 AD, List of Abbasid caliphs, Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil ordered the tree be felled and transported to his capital in Abbasid Samarra, Samarra where its wood would be used as beams for his new palace. The villagers who lived near the tree pleaded with the caliph and offered money for its protection, to no avail. But one day before the cypress trees arrived, the caliph was killed by his own slaves. The palace and its spiral minaret still stand today.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cypress Of Kashmar 860s individual tree deaths Persian literature Persian mythology Trees in religion Individual conifers Trees in mythology Kashmar County Mythology Abbasid Caliphate Mythological archetypes Zoroastrianism Destroyed individual trees History of Kashmar

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References