Reconstruction of the Divisions of Sasanian Province of Bišābuhr Based on the Discovery of Some New Topo-Names from the Administrative Bullae of Tole Qaleh Seyfabad, Kazeroun, Fars

The Tole Qaleh Seyfabad (henceforth, TQS) is one of the Sasanian key sites, which is located in the very heart of the Sasanian empire in southwestern Iran, in the center of Kazeroun County. The site is situated in the rural district of Balian, 330m north of the new Seyfabad village on the natural mounds known as Tol-e Pahn. The site is 40m higher than its surrounding plain and located 868m above sea level, and covers an area of about 150 hectares. TQS is situated 29 km south-east of Bishâpûr city, 7km south-east of Kazeroun city, 109km north-west of Ardashir Khurreh or Firuzabad, 35km north-west of Jereh, 88 km west of Qasr-i Abu Nasr and 214km north of Siraf. The site was partly damaged by a gas pipeline which was constructed through it in the 1980s. In 2005, as part of surveys conducted in the Kazeroun plain, this site was registered by Parsa Ghasemi with the site code KZ 92. The site of Tole Qaleh Seyfabad (TQS) is located in the north of Seyfabad village, near the western part of the Parishan Lake on the Kazeroun Plain, is one of the most important Sasanian sites in southwestern Iran. Due to the gas-pipeline construction, the most upper part of the southern mound of TQS was completely destroyed and after that the illegal excavation by antiquity looters has been started. In 2014, the first season of excavations at this site was conducted by Parsa Ghasemi, Reza Noruzi and Azizollah Rezaei. The general aim of the excavation at TQS was to conduct a salvage operation in order to prevent further looting and damage to the site, and to facilitate identification of layers of different periods in order to determine a reliable chronology for the site. The finds indicate that this site was a major active administrative, economic and commercial center of the Sasanian province of Bishâpûr, in the heartland of this empire and the abandonment of it must be dated to the late Sasanian period, before 651A.D. The most important discovery of this season of excavation were 371 Sasanian clay sealing, out of which 75 bear an impression of an administrative seal while the others wear only personal seal impressions. More than three hundred of them were in the room 2 in trench I, it means that this room was the most important room for archiving the clay bullae. Preliminary inspection of the administrative bullae with the cooperation of Rika Gyselen has provided several new data. Among the nine administrative seals two belong to a provincial administration of Bišābuhr, one to a regional administration and six to the district administration of the mowūh. As the name of this administration shows, it was headed by a member of Zoroastrian clergy. Of the six mowūh districts, four are attested here for the first time. With these four mowūh seals the number of districts known for the province of Bisābuhr reached to seven. The mowūh seal of one of the districts — Ābād-Šābuhr — is attested by more than fifty bullae. No doubt this was the name of the district in which Tole Qaleh Seyfabad was situated. This article is a short preliminary report on this important discovery of the Sasanian period in Fars.