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May Issue of S & T - Part 2 of 3

Sky & Telescope - May  1999, pp. 12+14

Zoroaster's Meteorite

During my search for meteorite craters in Iran, I have discovered 11
impact candidates. Some look so fresh that I hoped to establish a
possible link between them and any large bolides recorded in the vast
collection of old Persian manuscripts. This resulted in the discovery of
more than 100 cases of large fireballs and meteorite falls and finds,
including two possible crater-forming events.
After reading Bradley E. Schaefer's account of "Meteorites That Changed
the World" (December issue, page 68), I would like to add another case
of a meteorite of religious importance: the Zoroaster Iron of Ardabil in
northwestern Iran.
Zoroaster lived sometime between 1200 B.C. and 650 B.C. as cited in
various sources. According to current traditions in the Zoroastrian
religion, before his emergence as a prophet he was a dedicated stargazer
born in the province of Azerbaijan on the northern skirt of the
snow-capped volcano Sabalan not far from today's city of Ardabil. In a
book of mineralogy written by A.D. 1300, Abolghassem Kashani describes a
curious stone in Ardabil as follows:

And also in Ardabil, which is among the cities of Azerbaijan, there is a
stone, small in volume but heavy in weight, estimated to be 500 Man
[1,500 kilograms], placed in a stall of the Grand Mosque, one half as
black as iron and the other half looking like silver and iron due to
numerous fondlings by hand, and so hard and solid that heating it is not
possible at all, and it does not melt under the heat of fire. And nobles
and dignitaries of the city say that this stone was in the first
fire-temple that Zoroaster built in Ardabil, and it is not clear whether
it fell from lightning or was created in other ways. Because of great
astonishment, [the Mogul ruler] Ghazan Khan ordered his name be carved
on it, though due to great hardness it took several days to write it in
ugly hand script.

A few years later, around A.D. 1340, another author wrote:

Although it looks like stone in shape it is clear that it is forged iron
... because words are written on it and if it was of stone it could not
be forged.

The last written account of this iron appears in Jawaher Nameh, a book
of mineralogy written before 1478. After that it seems to have been lost
during the reconstruction of the old mosque or in the numerous lootings
of the city by Ottoman Turks and Russians, the last and most destructive
of which was in the early 19th century. This last time the Russians
transferred all the treasures of the city to St. Petersburg and later to
the Hermitage of the tsars.
In 1904 Henry Augustus Ward (who had journeyed to Tehran in December
1898 to see the unique mesosiderite meteorite of Veramin) bought the
whole meteorite collection of Count Julien Siemaschko of St. Petersburg,
which contained the main mass of many "Russian and Siberian" meteorites.
Could Zoroaster's meteorite have been among them? Might it still exist?

HOSSEIN ALIZADEH GHARIB
Meteoritical Society of Iran
1.92 Jamzadeh, Karun St.
13546 Tehran, Iran




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