Kohneh Qaleh is one of the best tourist attractions of Meshginshahr and one of the most famous sights of Ardabil province and the history of Iran.
The Kohneh Qaleh of Meshginshahr is from the Sassanid period and has a special strength and has been maintained and used as a shelter in wars and enemy invasions. An inscription in the Sassanid Pahlavi script is located on the northwest front of this building at a distance of 150 meters on the Xiao waterway. This castle with an area of about 15,000 square meters is located at the entrance of Meshginshahr by Ardabil Road and on a natural hill with a height of 50 meters, which consists of six towers with thick brick walls and small manger-like rooms.
The plan of the castle is irregular trapezoidal along the northwest and southwest. The approximate height of this castle is 1416 meters above sea level. The length of the north side of the castle is 95 meters and the south side is 115 meters. The castle consists of 4 brick walls and several towers with a wall diameter of 1 meter. In the two corners of the northwest and south, there are works of circular towers with diameters of 6 meters and 10 meters. At the eastern end of the north side, the remains of two towers can be seen.
On the northern side of the castle, inside Nowruz Garden, there is an inscription on which the date 347 AD (the seventh month of the twenty-seventh year of the reign of Shapur II) is engraved. This inscription is the first inscription of the Sassanid period discovered in Azerbaijan.
According to this inscription, the Kohneh Qaleh Castle was built by order of Narseh Hormoz, the local ruler of Meshginshahr region, and lasted for six years and several repairs were carried out, the last repair of this castle being during the Zandieh era. According to “Mohammad Ali Mokhlesi” in the book “List of historical monuments of Azerbaijan”, pottery and bronze objects obtained from this castle on the northwest side and at the foot of the castle wall belong to pre-Sassanid periods.
According to the mentioned historical sources, Nader Shah Afshar stayed in this fort for some time when he returned from Moghan plain, and this historical statement indicates that the fort was standing about 300 years ago and was used as a cavalry garrison during the Qajar and even Pahlavi eras.
This building was registered in 1345 with the number 618 in the list of national monuments. The excavations of the first season were carried out in this castle in 1987 and the excavations of the second season were carried out in 1988. Archaeological excavations at the Old Fort have also uncovered cultural artifacts from the Iron Age, which belong to the Urartian people.
There is a very large boulder called (Sorushkan Dashi) 150 meters west of the old castle in the western part of the valley (Nowruz Yamaji) inside the Nowruz garden right in front of the old castle, which contains an inscription measuring 30/2 * 10 / 2 cm in two 15-row columns on the left and a 6-row column on the right. A total of 21 lines have been engraved on it in the Pahlavi of the second Sassanid Shapur era.
This inscription was discovered in the summer of 1345 AD by Mr. Kambakhsh Fard, an Iranian archaeologist in Xiao. And among them, Dr. Gird, a famous German archaeologist, succeeded in translating the text engraved on this stone, and personally came to Meshginshahr in the summer of 1346 to learn more about the accuracy of the text of the inscription, and conducted close studies. The subject of this article is about the order and date of construction of the castle, which was written to Narsa Hormozd.
As a result of natural and unnatural erosion, including lighting a fire under it and digging it by unauthorized diggers, according to the superstitious belief of some that there is treasure under this stone, the surface layers of this stone and the inscriptions on it are almost gone.
