Haft Tanan Garden (Stone Museum)

🕰️When was it built?

The garden itself is older than the Zand period, but the pavilion dates from the time of Karim Khan Zand. The paintings in the hall were restored and renewed in 1957 and 1958 by Mohammad Bagher Jahanmiri. The complex was added to the National Heritage List on 6 January 1932 as number 74.

🏛️What was it built for?

The complex was a garden-takyeh holding the graves of seven mystics. Karim Khan placed a large stone with no inscription over each grave. The stone museum keeps examples of inscribed stones from different periods, which are separate from the garden's plain gravestones.

👀What you will see

• The roof of the hall rests on two large single-piece columns, and the paintings are in the niches above them.
• Five scenes are painted on plaster; Moses as a shepherd and the story of Sheikh San'an and the Christian girl are among their subjects.
• The seven gravestones in the garden carry no writing; six graves lie side by side and one lies lower than the others.
• The museum's stones date from the 3rd to the 11th centuries AH and show scripts such as Kufic, thuluth, nastaliq and ta'liq.
• The large central pool of the pavilion was once filled with water from the Roknabad stream and was part of the complex's design.

💡Something interesting

A local tale says seven dervishes promised to bury one another. The last of them is said to have asked people for help before he died, and the next day he was found dead. It is a legend about the graves, not a confirmed account of their lives.