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Fortress

Furg Citadel

Iran · 18th century

Founded
c. 1750
Style
Afsharid architecture
Heritage status
Iranian National Heritage
Location
Darmian County
Elevation
1,822 m
Coordinates
32.845°, 59.94833°
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Furg Citadel in Iran
Photo: Mehdi Rafiei · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Description

Furg Citadel (Persian: ارگ فورگ, romanized: Arg-e Furg), also known as Forg citadel and Mirza Rafi Khan citadel, is an 18th-century citadel located in Furg Village in Darmian County, South Khorasan province, Iran.

Furg Citadel was constructed by Meerza Muhammad Rafiee Darmiany I (Lama). It was registered in the List of National Works on 18 March 2001.

There are different origin stories for the name of Forg/Furg. One of the more common is that Forg was commonly pronounced "Fork" among the people. The Dehkhoda Dictionary, in a quote from the Encyclopedia, explicitly mentions that "Fork" was the name of the ancestor of a family in Iran, and is an Iranian name.

Other versions suggest that Fork was the name of the daughter of "Ryan Konouj", an Indian king; that Fork was the wife of Bahram Gour (as stated in Borhan); and/or that perhaps the name stems from the Persian word pour, meaning "son". Still other theories attribute Fork to the founder of this village, i.e. Mozafar Keyghobad, and based on an inscription on which the year of 307 is written, they infer that as the founder of this village was initially "Pour Keyghobad", it was first called "Pourg", and then renamed to Fork and then to Forg over time.

Furg Citadel is located on the north side of Fork Village at an altitude of 1840 meters. It is on the edge of the heights of Darmian Valley, leading to the Asadiyeh plain. Furg Citadel covers about 9,200 square meters, extending from east to west.

Section 1 of the citadel contains a barn on the east side that served as living quarters for the staff, as a cattle barn and as a dock warehouse.

This section also includes a citadel entrance, guard towers, water storage and other spaces.

Section 2 is a tall central area that is 50 meters from the storage areas, armory and barracks. The citadel has a brick tower with cruciform or lozenge design decorations in the northeast corner.

Section 3 encompasses two floors overlooking the village and roads of the area. It is located in the west and is separated from section 2 by two towers and fortified and long walls. Most of the second floor has been destroyed.

The tunnel has approximately 100 usable stairs.

The current tunnel was allegedly used during the battle between Mirza Rafi Khan with Mir Alam Khan and his son Amir Asadollah Khan.

Text adapted from “Furg Citadel” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In the rankings

Furg Citadel ranks #4,205 of 9,040 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #45 of the 172 mapped in Iran. Founded c. 1750, it is older than 16% of the atlas's dated landmarks, one of 685 atlas entries founded in the 18th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,001 times in the last 60 days, more than 50% of the atlas. See how Iran compares in the castle statistics.

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