TEHRAN -- Several graves of Mongolian shamans have been discovered near the Soltanieh Dome, an Islamic monument registered on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List.

The graves were discovered by an archaeological team near an Islamic cemetery located around the Jomeh Mosque, the Persian service of CHN reported on Friday.
The bodies have been placed in the graves in Islamic style, but the architecture of the graves is unique and even their gravestones differ from the Muslims’, team director Abdorreza Mohajerinejad said.
The graves have been built on a hillock beside the Muslims’ cemetery and this indicates that they had enjoyed high social status during the reign of the Ilkhanids, Mongol descendents of Genghis Khan who controlled large parts of Iran from 1256 to 1349, he explained.
The graves were excavated and the gravestones, bearing floral motives and geometrical shapes, had been placed vertically, Mohajerinejad added.
He said that no presents were found at the graves. However, a bead has been unearthed from one of them that archaeologists are currently examining.
A Christian cemetery dating back to the Mongol era had previously been discovered near the Soltanieh Dome in 2007.
Encarta describes a shaman as a religious practitioner, originally found in hunter-gather cultures, which are loosely structured, homogeneous and technologically simple.
The word shaman is derived from a word in the Tungusic language of Siberia, one of the areas in which the classical form of shamanism is found. Several forms of shamanism have been observed in widely scattered illiterate societies located in Central Asia, North America, and Oceania.
Although a shaman can achieve religious status by heredity, personal quest, or vocation, the recognition and call of the individual is always an essential part of that individual’s elevation to the new status.
The main religious duties of a shaman are healing and divination. Both are achieved either by spirit possession or by the departure of the shaman’s soul to heaven or to the underworld.
Photo: Soltanieh Dome