Sarmaj Castle

Iran, Iran

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Sarmaj Castle is a historic fortress in western Iran, located in the village of Sarmaj-e Hossein Khani in Harsin County, Kermanshah Province, and it is registered as a national monument (No. 6989).

The site is built on a natural hill about 20–22 meters higher than the surrounding land and originally had a square plan roughly 288 by 295 meters, surrounded by a wide water-filled moat fed by a nearby stream. Its construction likely began in the late Sasanian period under Khosrow II (590–628 CE), possibly as the stronghold known in Arabic sources as “Dukkān,” a legendary meeting place where Khosrow hosted rulers from China, Rome, the Turks, and India.

In the 10th century CE, the Kurdish founder of the Hasanwayhid dynasty, Hasanwayh, rebuilt and fortified the castle on the earlier Sasanian base, using it as a major political and military center for nearly a century. The castle’s walls are made of carved and uncarved stones, rubble stone, brick, clay, gypsum, and straw, with massive outer facades of large stone blocks and inner sections of rubble stone set in gypsum mortar.