Tomb of Daniel

Listen first. Pigeons shift on the ledges above you. Somewhere near the doorway, rubber soles squeak on polished stone, and a low murmur of prayer drifts out from inside. The air here in Shush is warm and heavy, and it carries a faint smell of river water and rosewater. Above it all rises a strange white cone, ribbed like a pine cone, pointing straight into the pale Khuzestan sky.

You are standing at the Tomb of Daniel. Many believers, Muslim and Jewish alike, hold that this is the resting place of the prophet Daniel. He is the same Daniel of the lions' den and the writing on the wall, the dream interpreter of the Hebrew Bible. Other places also claim his grave. But this shrine in the town of Shush has the oldest and deepest tradition behind it, and it has drawn pilgrims for many centuries.

Why here? Look a little way beyond the shrine. Under the modern town lie the ruins of Susa, one of the oldest cities in the world. For thousands of years it was a seat of power. The Elamites, an ancient people of south-western Iran, ruled from here. Later it became a capital of the Achaemenid Persian kings, the dynasty of Cyrus and Darius. The Book of Daniel itself places one of his visions in Shushan, the citadel, beside a river.

That river connection matters, because water runs right past this shrine. The small river beside the tomb is the Shavur. Its banks are green with reeds and palms, a sharp contrast with the dry plain around the town. Take a moment to walk to the edge and look down. Families often sit along this stretch in the evening, and the sound of the water softens the noise of traffic behind you.

Now look up at the dome again. This tall, stepped cone is not unique to Daniel. It belongs to a regional style found across Khuzestan and southern Iraq. Builders stacked rings of small curved niches, called muqarnas, one above another until they met at a point. Muqarnas is a kind of honeycomb vaulting found all over the Islamic world. Here it is turned inside out, so the honeycomb pattern shows on the outside of the building.

The shrine you see today is not the original structure. It has been rebuilt and restored several times, and much of the present building is relatively recent. That is normal for a living pilgrimage site. People keep repairing, extending and decorating places they love. So the age of this site is not in its bricks. It is in the long, unbroken habit of people coming here to pray.

Here is a story that surprises many visitors. In the twelfth century, a Jewish traveller from Spain, Benjamin of Tudela, journeyed through this region and wrote down what he heard. According to the tale he recorded, the river once divided the town in two. One bank held Daniel's coffin and grew prosperous. The other bank felt neglected, and the two sides quarrelled over who should keep the prophet.

In the story, the dispute ended in an unusual way. A ruler ordered that the coffin be hung in the middle of the river, suspended from a bridge, so that both banks could share its blessing. We cannot treat this as confirmed history. It is a travellers' account of local tradition. But it shows something real. Even eight hundred years ago, Daniel was a prophet that different communities of this town wanted to claim as their own.

If you go inside, the mood changes at once. The light becomes softer and more golden. Walls and ceilings are often covered with mirror work, thousands of small pieces of glass set in patterns. This is a well-loved decorative art in Iranian shrines. At the centre stands a metal lattice cage around the tomb, called a zarih. Pilgrims touch it, tie small prayers to it, and press their foreheads gently against the metal.

Watch the people around you, quietly and with respect. You may see a mother lifting a child to touch the lattice. You may see an older man reciting under his breath, or a young couple taking a photograph by the entrance. For local families, a visit here is part devotion and part outing. Afterwards they buy sweets, sit in the courtyard, and talk while the children run around.

One more detail is easy to miss. This is one of the few shrines in the region where the figure being honoured matters deeply to more than one faith. Jewish communities have long revered Daniel, and Jewish pilgrims came to this tomb in earlier centuries. In Islam, Daniel is honoured as a prophet too. So the shrine carries traces of a shared story, older than the borders and divisions of today.

Before you leave, look out across the town. To one side are the low mounds of ancient Susa, where archaeologists have dug for well over a century. Among them stands a castle built by a French archaeological mission in the late nineteenth century, made from bricks and stones gathered from the site. Kings, scribes and soldiers once walked that ground. Now it is quiet, dusty and wide open to the sun.

So stand still for one last moment. Feel the heat in the stone under your feet. Hear the pigeons, the river and the soft voices near the doorway. Then look up once more at that white cone of niches against the sky. As you walk away, turn back once. From a distance, the dome rises above the rooftops of Shush, as it has for generations of pilgrims before you.