Say “Khuzestan” and people picture palms, oil derricks and the wide brown Karun. They do not picture this: a cool green highland in the province's far north, fifty thousand hectares of oak forest and wild almond, spring meadows waist-deep in red flowers, a sixty-metre waterfall in a hidden gorge, a bird-loud wetland — a place the Bakhtiari call Shirin Bahar, sweet spring, and everyone else calls the lost paradise of Khuzestan. And carved into the flank of Mount Dela, at the plain's southern edge, twelve figures stand in stone: worshippers cut into the rock two thousand years ago by the Elymaeans, whom the mountains of Khuzestan hid from every empire. Shimbar is a garden with a memory — and its memory includes a war.
In the far north of Khuzestan, where the province climbs into the Zagros toward the border of Chaharmahal-o-Bakhtiari, a broad plain opens out that has no business belonging to the land of date palms and oil. This is Shimbar (دشت شیمبار), also called Shirin Bahar (شیرینبهار, “sweet spring”) — some 50,000 hectares of oak and wild-almond forest, springs and river, wetland and waterfall, hemmed by high peaks and carpeted, in season, with wildflowers. Khuzestani writers call it behesht-e gomshodeh, the lost paradise, and the name is earned twice over: once for the beauty, and once for the sheer improbability of finding it here, in the hot south.
Geologists say the plain was born of a vast landslide roughly ten thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age, which dammed the valley and left this shelf of green. Water is everywhere: the Shimbar river, numerous springs, the reed-fringed Gandikal wetland loud with pelicans and swallows, a lake, and — the jewel — the Negin waterfall, some sixty metres high, plunging in a gorge so hard to reach that its surroundings have stayed utterly pristine. Around it grow oak and almond, wild grape and mulberry, pomegranate and fig, and in spring a flood of flowers deep enough, the Bakhtiari song says, to reach your knees.
But Shimbar is not empty scenery. It sits astride one of the great seasonal migration routes of the Bakhtiari, the nomads who for centuries have moved their flocks between the warm lowlands of Khuzestan and the cool high pastures of Kuhrang and Chaharmahal. Its scattered people — perhaps ten thousand, of Lur and Bakhtiari clans like the Mori, Katak and Lari — keep the old crafts of chogha-weaving, gelim and carpet, and the old foods and games and music. To pass through Shimbar in spring is to move among black goat-hair tents and grazing herds as much as among flowers; the plain is a pasture, a corridor and a homeland, not a park.
And woven through that homeland is a long memory of struggle, carried in Bakhtiari song. The great modern voice of the Bakhtiari, Masoud Bakhtiari (Bahman Alaeddin), gave one of his laments the name Jang-e Shimbar — “the War of Shimbar” — mourning a battle that once turned this green plain to grief:
I do not know who began the War of Shimbar —
the Bakhtiar left in disarray, his belt unbound…
Nadonom jang-e Shimbar ki nahadeh / Bakhtiar ashofteh rahd, kad goshadeh…
Masoud Bakhtiari (Bahman Alaeddin), “Jang-e Shimbar”
So the paradise has two faces in the memory of its own people: the meadow of wild roses, and the field of a half-remembered war. Both are true, and both belong to Shimbar.
Shimbar is a large protected area in Andika County on the Khuzestan–Bakhtiari border; the marker gives the region, not a single point. Tang-e Bata lies on Mount Dela in its south. Roads are partly unpaved — go with local guidance.
At the southern edge of the plain, in a gorge locked into Mount Dela, a rock face carries one of the most singular reliefs in all Khuzestan: Tang-e Bata (تنگ بتا), older sources' Tang-e Botan — the “gorge of the idols.” It is carved in two panels that seem to have been cut at different times. In the larger, nine figures stand side by side, some of them apparently nude, several holding shallow cups; in the smaller, three more stand with the right hand raised. A little apart, a single figure about 1.4 metres tall keeps its own watch. The whole is much worn by two thousand years of weather — but what it shows, and who made it, is extraordinary.
From the pleated Parthian dress, the elaborate hairstyles, and above all five inscriptions in the Elymaic script — texts that praise the gods and curse anyone who would deface the carving — scholars read Tang-e Bata as a work of the Elymaeans, contemporaries of the Parthians roughly two thousand years ago. Elymais was a semi-independent mountain kingdom of highland Khuzestan, heir to ancient Elam, that the great empires of the plains could never quite absorb: the Zagros hid it, and it kept its own gods, its own script, and its own kings while Seleucids and Parthians came and went below. The figures at Tang-e Bata — worshippers, or a king among his court, frozen mid-ceremony — are one of the faces that lost kingdom left on the rock.
It was a wandering Englishman who first brought it to the wider world: Sir Henry Layard, later famous for digging Nineveh, was guided to the relief by local people in 1841. Nearly two centuries on, the carving is a registered national monument — and, as the next section records, one that has only just survived the latest attempt to destroy it.
Tang-e Bata is the historical gem; but the plain around it is a whole basket of them, natural and cultural. These are the things people come to Shimbar to find.
Shimbar's crown: a roughly 60 m waterfall in a steep, hard-to-reach gorge north of the Shahid Abbaspour dam reservoir, fed by a hand-cut tunnel. Because the way in is so difficult, the fall and its oak-draped canyon have stayed completely pristine — a reward for those willing to work for it.
The plain is clothed in oak and wild almond, with wild grape, mulberry, pomegranate and fig, and in spring a carpet of red wildflowers, camomile and mushrooms. This is the “sweet spring” the Bakhtiari sing about — the reason to come in April and May.
A reed-fringed marsh (Gandikal / Gandom-kar) and the Shimbar lake draw pelicans, swallows and many waterbirds to the highland — an unexpected wetland richness in the middle of a Zagros plain, and a fine spot for quiet birdwatching.
Scattered across the plain stand carved stone lions (bardshir), set on the graves of Bakhtiari warriors and notables as symbols of bravery and valour — a distinctive funerary tradition of the Bakhtiari of the northern Khuzestan and Zagros country.
Beyond Tang-e Bata, the plain and its edges hold bardgur / astodan rock-cut tombs, the water-mill ruins of Tang-e Sanan, and old fortresses — Qaleh Dokhtar, Qaleh Kalleh-Qandi, Qaleh Ahangari — echoes of a country lived in for millennia.
The living culture is itself a sight: black tents, weaving, herds and music along the migration route. Meet it as a guest — greet people, ask before photographing (especially women), buy the local cheese, honey and weaving, and tread lightly through a working homeland.
Shimbar's beauty and remoteness are also its danger: the plain holds hundreds of monuments and almost no guards, and Tang-e Bata sits alone in rough country, an easy target for the treasure-hunters who plague Iran's unprotected sites. The threat is not abstract. In September 2024, following a tip-off, Khuzestan's heritage-protection unit and police reached the relief on Mount Dela to find that looters — imagining treasure hidden behind or beneath the carving — had planted explosives to blow it up. Bomb technicians defused the charges set in the drilled holes; generators, a hilti drill and digging tools were seized. The two-thousand-year-old faces survived, this time, by a margin.
It is the sharpest recent example of a chronic wound. The same figures Layard admired in 1841, that carry the Elymaeans' own curse against those who would deface them, now depend on a handful of overstretched guards and the vigilance of local people. If you visit, you are among the relief's protectors: touch nothing, take nothing, dig nothing, and report any sign of damage or illegal digging. A place that has survived two millennia of weather should not be lost to a generation of dynamite.
Shimbar is scored as what it is: a genuinely wild, hard-to-reach highland whose reward is landscape, culture and a rare ancient relief rather than adrenaline — though the rough tracks, the trek to the Negin waterfall, and the sheer remoteness push its Adventure well above that of a roadside site. Its Legacy is carried by the Elymaean relief, the depth of Bakhtiari culture, and the “lost paradise” atmosphere of the plain itself.
You come up out of the heat — the palms and refineries and the wide brown river of lower Khuzestan behind you — and the road climbs, and the air cools, and then the plain opens and you simply stop the car. It is green, impossibly green for this province: oak forest to the ridgelines, a river threading through, and in spring wildflowers so thick they brush your knees when you walk out into them, red and white to the tree line. Somewhere a waterfall you'll have to earn is falling sixty metres into a gorge no road reaches. Black tents stand along the slope; a herd moves; woodsmoke drifts. You understand, standing there, exactly why they call it the lost paradise — and why the Bakhtiari gave it the tenderest name they had, sweet spring.
Then you climb to Mount Dela, to the gorge of the idols, and the paradise acquires a depth that goes down two thousand years. Twelve figures stand in the rock where an Elymaean carver left them — worshippers with their cups raised, a king perhaps among them, their Parthian robes and curled hair worn soft by twenty centuries of rain, their five inscriptions still cursing, in a script almost no one now can read, whoever would harm them. A hidden mountain kingdom that outlasted the Seleucids and kept its own gods put its face here, in this green fold, and here it still is. You reach up toward a hand raised in prayer from the age of the Parthian kings, and the plain of wildflowers below you suddenly feels less like scenery and more like a very old, very patient home.
And that is what stays with you: that Shimbar holds both at once, and holds them lightly. The meadow and the war-song. The wild roses and the stone lions on the graves. The sweet spring and the two-thousand-year-old figures — and, if you know the news, the dynamite a looter packed against them just last year, and the bomb technician who picked it out of the drilled holes so the faces could keep their watch a little longer. It is a garden with a memory, and the memory is the whole history of a people written into one green bowl of the Zagros. You came for a waterfall. You leave having stood in a paradise that remembers everything.
A green paradise hidden in the hot heart of Khuzestan — wild roses to the knee, a sixty-metre fall, and twelve weathered figures of a lost mountain kingdom keeping watch over it all.
Spring is Shimbar at its name: wildflowers carpet the meadows, the waterfalls and river run full with snowmelt, the oak is in fresh leaf, and the weather is mild. This is unquestionably the time to come — the “sweet spring” the whole plain is named for.
September and October bring cooler air, turning leaves, and far fewer visitors — a calm, golden alternative to the spring bloom, with the tracks generally still passable and the plain at its most peaceful.
The lower parts of the region get hot in high summer, and the crowds of spring have gone. The high meadows stay cooler, but this is not the plain at its best; if you come, focus on the shaded gorges and water.
Winter can be cold and wet, and the unpaved access roads difficult or impassable after rain and snow. Beautiful, but for the well-prepared only — check conditions and travel with a capable vehicle and local advice.
The wonder is the plain in spring and the faces on Mount Dela. What follows is the planning detail — gear, logistics, and the questions people ask — tucked away so you can open only what you need.
Shimbar rewards effort. It is remote and partly roadless, so treat every figure as an order of magnitude and lean on local knowledge.
In Andika County in the north of Khuzestan, on the border with Chaharmahal-o-Bakhtiari, on the Andika–Shahrekord road — about 100 km from Masjed Soleyman, 45 km from Qaleh Khwaja, ~220–280 km from Ahvaz. The main access is the newer Masjed Soleyman–Shahrekord road (asphalt then dirt); the Andika–Bazft road cuts through the middle and is better for wildlife. A capable vehicle and a local guide are recommended.
Khuzestan is known for palms, oil and the Karun; few expect a cool, green highland of oak forest, springs, waterfalls and wildflowers in its far north. Shimbar — also called Shirin Bahar, 'sweet spring' — is that surprise: ~50,000 hectares of forest, water and meadow, largely untouched because it is remote and hard to reach. Its beauty, rarity and seclusion earn it the name.
A rock relief carved into Mount Dela in the south of the plain, one of Khuzestan's most distinctive. It shows twelve figures in two panels — nine standing (some with cups), three with a raised hand — plus a separate 1.4 m figure. From the dress, hairstyles and five Elymaic inscriptions, it is dated to the Parthian era and the local Elymaean kingdom, ~2,000 years ago. Henry Layard first recorded it in 1841; it is a registered national monument.
Oak and wild-almond forest; the Shimbar river and springs; the Gandikal wetland, rich in birds like pelicans; the Shirin Bahar lake; and above all the Negin waterfall, ~60 m high in a hard-to-reach gorge, left pristine by its inaccessibility. Wild grape, mulberry, pomegranate and spring wildflowers fill the meadows.
It sits on a main Bakhtiari migration route between the warm Khuzestan lowlands and the cool highlands of Kuhrang and Chaharmahal. Its people are Lur and Bakhtiari of clans such as Mori, Katak and Lari, keeping traditions of weaving (chogha, gelim), dairy, and local games and music. Stone lions (bardshir) stand on graves as symbols of bravery, and the plain is sung about in Bakhtiari music, including Masoud Bakhtiari's lament 'Jang-e Shimbar.'
Yes. It lies in remote country with almost no on-site protection. It has been targeted by illegal diggers, and in September 2024 heritage forces defused explosives that looters had placed to blow up the relief in search of imagined treasure — the latest of several threats. Visitors should treat the site with the utmost care, take nothing, and report any damage or digging.
Spring, roughly April to early June, when the plain earns its name Shirin Bahar: wildflowers, full waterfalls, mild weather. Autumn is pleasant and quieter; summer is hot in the lower parts and winter makes the tracks difficult. Go with a local guide and a capable vehicle whenever you come.
Shimbar belongs to a story this collection tells across lowland Khuzestan and up into the Zagros: the long life of Elam and its highland heirs. Down on the plains to the south-west lie the great Elamite centres — Susa, capital of Elam and later an Achaemenid seat, and the towering ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil — and the astonishing engineered water of Shushtar. Tang-e Bata is what became of that world in the mountains: when empires took the plains, the Elymaeans, heirs of Elam, kept their gods and their script in folds of the Zagros like this one, and carved them on the rock. And Shimbar's other face — the black tents, the stone lions, the migration route, the war-song — connects it to the whole Bakhtiari Zagros, the same nomad world whose summer ice fills the gorge of Chma further north. Come for the paradise; leave having met a kingdom the mountains kept.
The heart of the lowland world Tang-e Bata's makers descended from: capital of Elam and an Achaemenid royal seat, one of the oldest cities on earth, on the plains south-west of the mountains. Read the article →
The colossal 3,250-year-old Elamite ziggurat, the greatest monument of the civilisation whose Elymaean heirs carved the figures of Mount Dela — the plains version of the same deep story. Read the article →
Downstream in the Khuzestan lowland: a UNESCO-listed “masterpiece of creative genius,” a 2,000-year-old system of channels, dams and mills that watered the plains below Shimbar's mountains. Read the article →
North in the Bakhtiari Zagros: a high gorge of permanent summer ice beside the black tents of the same nomads who migrate through Shimbar — the cold high end of the Bakhtiari world. Read the article →
Come in spring, with a guide and a vehicle that can take the tracks, and give Shimbar two days: one for the paradise — the oak, the wildflowers to your knees, the long walk to the Negin waterfall in its hidden gorge — and one for the memory, the climb to Mount Dela where twelve figures of a lost mountain kingdom still stand in the rock, still cursing, in a dead script, whoever would harm them. Stand in the meadow at dusk among the black tents with the stone lions keeping their old watch over the graves, and hear, if you listen, the oldest thing the plain has to say: that it has been paradise and battlefield, homeland and sanctuary, for longer than anyone can remember — and that it is, still, sweet spring.
Untamed Iran prefers official, scholarly and first-hand sources, and is careful to separate what is established from what is tradition. Shimbar is well covered in Persian travel and heritage writing but thin in English; this page is built from Iranian encyclopedic, heritage and news sources, cross-checked, with uncertain points flagged. The following are the sources this page rests on:
Facts last reviewed July 2026. Established: a large (~50,000 ha) protected green plain in Andika County, northern Khuzestan, on the Chaharmahal-o-Bakhtiari border; oak and wild-almond forest, springs, the Shimbar river, the Gandikal wetland and the ~60 m Negin waterfall; a Bakhtiari nomad migration route with distinctive stone lions and rock tombs; and Tang-e Bata (Tang-e Botan) on Mount Dela — a rock relief of twelve figures plus a single 1.4 m figure, with five Elymaic inscriptions, attributed to the Parthian-era Elymaean kingdom (~2,000 years ago), first recorded by Layard in 1841, national monument no. 25989, whose looters' explosives were defused in September 2024. Traditional / cultural: the exact nature of the “War of Shimbar” in Masoud Bakhtiari's lament is folk-historical memory rather than precisely dated event; the song is quoted here in a short excerpt with translation. Approximate: the coordinates (the marker gives the region, not a point), the ~50,000 ha area, the ~60 m waterfall height and the various road distances, which vary between sources. Deliberately not claimed: a precise date or identification of the figures at Tang-e Bata beyond their Elymaean/Parthian attribution, and any exact reading of the eroded Elymaic inscriptions.