A Maiden is in the Castle: Maiden Castles and their Tales

‘Qalʿa-ye dokhtar’ (Maiden Castle) is a name given to some castles in Iran and adjacent countries. As for the reasons behind the naming, there are two main arguments. Conceiving those castles as impregnable ones, an older argument builds a connection between the virginity of girls and alleged invulnerability of those castles. In a totally different direction, a modern argument interprets ‘dokhtar’ as a title of Anahita, the river-goddess of ancient Iran, and considers qalʿa-ye dokhtars as vestiges of pre-Islamic temples of that goddess. Due to a contemporary tendency to project pre-Islamic themes on historical monuments, this latter view has gained vast popularity among Iranians and has influenced the identification of some Zoroastrian and Muslim shrines as once-upon-a-time Anahita temples. This paper assesses the validity of these two views, and arguments in favor of a new theory. It demonstrates that such naming is the product of fantasies of common people nurtured by folk stories featuring some popular motifs of ‘maiden(s) in the castle’. An endeavor to outline types of folk tales associated with those castles is undertaken in this paper.