Introducing and Studying Graffiti of Baba-Afzal Kashani Tomb

Baba-Afzal Kashani tomb is located in the highest point of Margh village western end in Kashan is among Iranian tombs of Mogul era with some attachments of later periods decorated with tile and carved plaster. Baba-Afzal was one of the distinguished philosophers, poets and scientists in second half of 6th century and first half of 7th century. A plaster molded altar and a precious inlaid box on his tombstone as well as several writings are the important traits of his tomb. A large number of its graffiti have been destroyed. The purpose of this research is answering this question: “what is the content of Baba-Afzal Kashani tomb graffiti?” Here I intend to investigate these writings considering their content and language at the aim of recording them. These writing, mostly found at the western side of the tomb today, are exposed to the danger of destruction and a small number of them has been preserved. Therefore, after studying all investigated samples, just a limited number of them whose content, date and handwriting were intact and readable were selected and their photos and content were included in this paper due to their multiplicity (54 samples) and space limitation of this paper. Rest of them has been just named here. The applied methodology was historical-descriptive conducted based on some field studies and written references. The results show that there are some writings with historical, religious, literal, blessing and advising content in Persian. The names of some famous poets such as Saadi, Hafez and Abu-Sa’id Abul-Khayr as well as Arabic traditions, narrations and poems can be seen. The handwritings are mostly Thulth. A number of them describe an incident or pilgrimage trip to Baba-Afzal tomb and only in one of them a picture can be seen. Considering the names, titles, family relations and dates used by the writers of the graffiti, it can be perceived that most visitors of this well-known gnostic were from Kashan and the villages around Margh village such as: Joshaghan, Niasar, Kamo, Bidgol, Vorkan, Ghamsar and Naragh and the names belong to Borujerd, Khoi and Tabriz cities and Mazandaran province. Merchant, grocer, eulogist, preacher, tragedian of passion plays and tiler were among the jobs mentioned in graffiti. Some names such as Abd Al-Azim Joshaghani, Nasrollah the son of Sedgh Agha Esmail Agha Kazem, Seyed Mohamad-Taghi  Attar Neishabouri were written several times. The dates are between 1130-1311AH which shows most visits occurred in 13th century (1208-1299AH), Rabi’ Al-Thani (repeated 6 times), Rajab (repeated 3 times) and Jumada Al-Awwal, Jumada Al-Thani, Rabi’ Al- Awwal (each repeated twice).