The burial place of kings
Nader Shah Afshar was one of the most powerful rulers in Iranian history, ruling as Shah from 1736 to 1747 when he was assassinated during a rebellion. He was the son of a poor peasant, who lived in Khorasan and died while Nader was still a child. Nader and his mother were carried off as slaves by the Ozbegs, but after death of his mother in captivity Nader managed to escape and became a soldier.
The Achaemenid kings of ancient Persia—such as Darius the Great, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes—were usually buried in monumental rock-cut tombs carved into cliffs. The best-known examples are at Naqsh-e Rostam near Persepolis and at Pasargadae, where Cyrus the Great was placed in a freestanding stone tomb. These tombs were designed to symbolize royal authority and divine favor: high on the cliff face, inaccessible to ordinary people, with carved façades showing the king standing before the sacred fire—an important symbol of Zoroastrian religion, which shaped Persian royal ideology. Inside these tombs were chambers where the king’s body was laid to rest, sometimes along with objects believed to have symbolic or ritual value.
