Hadrians Wall in the north of England is justifiably famous, but less well known is a somewhat longer frontier wall the Gorgan Wall which was built during the 5th century AD adjacent to the Caspian Sea in NE Iran. AHRC have just awarded a grant of £180,851 to a joint University of Edinburgh, Durham University and ICHTO (Iran) Gorgan Wall Project. Dr. Eberhard Sauer (Edinburgh, School of History and Classics) is the project Principal Investigator, and T.J. Wilkinson (Durham University, Dept. of Archaeology) co-Principal Investigator in charge of the landscape investigations. The 3-year project will be conducted in cooperation with Jebrael Nokandeh and Hamid Omrani Rekavandi of the Iran Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization, Golestan Province.
Until recently, nobody knew who had built the wall. Theories ranged from Alexander the Great, in the 4th century BC, to the Persian king Khusrau I in the 6th century AD. Scientific dating has now shown that the wall was built in the 5th, or possibly, 6th century AD, by the Sasanian Persians.
The Great Wall of Gorgan ( ), also called the Gorgan Defence Wall and sometimes Sadd-i-Iskandar, (Arabic for dam or barrier of Alexander) is an ancient defensive facility located in the Gorgan region of northeastern Iran. This wall which is the largest defensive wall in the world after the Great Wall of China, starts from the Caspian coast, circles north of Gonbade Kāvous, continues towards northwest and vanishes behind Pikamar Mountains.
British and Iranian archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a 200 kilometre long wall, the second longest wall in Asia after the Great Wall of China, in northern Iran. Experts believe the Gorgan Great Wall in northern Iran's Golestan Province was built at about the same time as the 'Great Wall' and was used as a defence system against the invasions of the Ephthalites, a nomadic people who once lived in Central Asia.