Iran - The Great Wall of Gorgan

The Great Wall of Gorgan, Golestan Province, in northern Iran was built from 420s AD to 530s AD; it is then occupied until the 7th century. This was the time when the Persian Empire, under the Sassanian dynasty, was involved in a series of wars at its northern frontier, first against the Hephthalites or White Huns and later against the Turks. The Great Wall of Gorgan stretches for almost 200 km and is lined by 38 forts. It is the longest fort-lined ancient barrier between Central Europe and China, it is longer than Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall put together. It is also more than three times the length of the longest late Roman defensive wall built from scratch, the Anastasian Wall west of Constantinople. The combined area of the forts on the Gorgan Wall exceeds that of those on Hadrian’s Wall about threefold. These figures do not take into account that a substantial section in the west appears to be buried under marine sediments of the Caspian Sea. It may even join up with the Tammisheh Wall, a shorter defensive barrier of strikingly similar design. Both walls employed large fired bricks of similar shape and size, both are lined by an earth bank and ditch (supplied with water by canals) and by batteries of virtually identical brick kilns, both are protected by similar forts and both run from the Alborz Mountains to the Caspian Sea. Whether or not they were parts of a single barrier, the Gorgan and Tammisheh Walls and their associated forts certainly formed part of the same defensive system.