Qumis (;

Middle Persian Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script: , Manichaean script: , Avestan script: ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasania ...

''𐭪𐭥𐭬𐭩𐭮 Kōmis''), also known as Hecatompylos (, in , ''Saddarvazeh'') was an ancient city which was the capital of the Arsacid dynasty by 200 BCE. The

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

name ''Hekatompylos'' means "one hundred gates" and the Persian term has the same meaning. The title was commonly used for cities which had more than the traditional four gates. It may be understood better as the "Many Gated". Most scholars locate it at Sahr -e Qumis, in the Qumis region in west

Khurasan KhorasanDabeersiaghi, Commentary on Safarnâma-e Nâsir Khusraw, 6th Ed. Tehran, Zavvâr: 1375 (Solar Hijri Calendar) 235–236 (; , ) is a historical eastern region in the Iranian Plateau in West Asia, West and Central Asia that encompasses wes ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...

stopped here in the summer of 330 BCE and it became part of the

Seleucid Empire The Seleucid Empire ( ) was a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 312 BC by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander the Great ...

after his death. The

Parni The Parni (; , ''Parnoi''), Aparni (; Ἄπαρνοι, ''Aparnoi'') or Parnians were an East Iranian people who lived around the Ochus ( ''Okhos'') ( Tejen) River, southeast of the Caspian Sea in Central Asia. It is believed that their origina ...

tribe took the city around 237 BCE and made it one of the first capitals of their

Parthian Empire The Parthian Empire (), also known as the Arsacid Empire (), was a major Iranian political and cultural power centered in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. Its latter name comes from its founder, Arsaces I, who led the Parni tribe ...

. It was mentioned as the royal city of the Parthians by a number of classical writers including

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

, Pliny, and

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

, although the Parthians seemed to have used a number of cities as their "capital" at different periods. Qumis was destroyed by an earthquake in 856 AD, and it was probably abandoned afterwards. The site of this ancient city is now called Šahr-e Qumis (), between Semnan and Damqan in the Semnan Province. In 2011 plans for an "International Project of Tourism & Recreational City" were published, using the name of ''Hecatompylos''. The project envisions using an area of close to the city of

Damghan Damghan () is a city in the Central District (Damghan County), Central District of Damghan County, Semnan province, Semnan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district. It is east of Tehran on the high-road to Mash ...

, which would place the resort at about northeast of the historic site.

Citations

References

* De Quincey, Thomas (1821). ''Confessions of an English Opium-Eater''. Penguin Books. 1979. * Frye, Richard N. (1962). ''The Heritage of Persia''. Toronto. Mentor Books. 1966. * Goodarzi, P., Dehpahlavan, M., Sołtysiak, A. (2018). "Human remains from Shahr-i Qumis, Iran, 1967-1978",
Bioarchaeology of the Near East
' 12:89-94. * Hansman, J. (1968). "The Problems of Qūmis". ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society'' (1968), pp. 111–139. * Hansman, John and Stronach, David (1974). "Excavations at Shahr-i Qūmis, 1971". ''Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society'' (1974), pp. 8–22. * Hirth, Friedrich (1875). ''China and the Roman Orient''. Shanghai and Hong Kong. Unchanged reprint. Chicago, Ares Publishers, 1975. * Tarn, William Woodthorpe (1984). ''The Greeks in Bactria and India''. First published in 1938; 2nd Updated Edition, 1951. 3rd Edition, updated with a Preface and a new bibliography by Frank Lee Holt. Ares Publishers, Inc., Chicago. 1984.

External links

Magiran.com
a magazine named ''Qumis''
Livius.org
a brief history plus photos {{Semnan Province Populated places along the Silk Road Former populated places in Iran Former capitals of Iran Parthian cities Sasanian cities Geography of Semnan province History of Semnan province Populated places destroyed by earthquakes Qumis (region)