Cypress of Kashmar

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The Cypress of Kashmar is a mythical cypress tree of legendary beauty and gargantuan dimensions, celebrated in the Iranian epic Shahnameh and other sources. Although the story of its genesis seems of pure mythical origin, the fact of its existence and the incidence of the felling is historically proven.

In the Shahnameh it is said to having sprung from a branch brought by Zoroaster from Paradise and to have stood in today's Razavi Khorasan Province in northeastern Iran and to have been planted by Zoroaster in memory of the conversion of King Vishtaspa to Zoroastrianism. According to the Iranian phyisicist and historian Zakariya al-Qazwini, King Vishtaspa had been the patron of Zoroaster had planted the tree himself. In his cosmology, he further describes how the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutawakkil in 247 A.H. (861 A.D.) caused the mighty cypress to be felled, and then transported it across Iran on camels, to be used for beams in his new palace at Samarra. Before, he wanted the tree to be reconstructed before his eyes. This was done in spite of the protests of the Guebres, who offered a very high sum of money to save the tree. Mutawakkil never saw the cypress, because he was murdered by his son on the night when it arrived on the banks of the Tigris.