The Zoroastrians call the graves “Dakhma”. They believe that the human corpse is a devil because the devil tries to haunt the corpse after one’s death; the better a person was the more evil his body would be because the devil will try harder to get the body. In Zoroastrianism, death is considered a demon, and the soil is divine and is regarded as the mother of men. Therefore instead of burying, they used to put their corpses in the Zoroastrian Tower of Silence to be baited for animals and carnivore birds after their death.
Zoroastrian Tower of Silence of Yazd is one of the same ones that remained. This Dakhma is located in the Safaieyeh quarter in the South of Yazd city, on a low-altitude mountain. In the past, this place was called The Tower of Silence (Borj-E-Sokout or Borj-E-Khamoushan in Persian) and there were two Dakhma in this place, each was used once every six months.
