The Study of Popular Beliefs about the Persepolis and the Tomb of CyrusBased on Written Sources of Qajar Era

History of mentalities is one of the approaches in Historiography and one of the branches of Cultural History, which seeks to understand the mentality and beliefs of ordinary people towards different issues. One can use this approach to understand the history of Iranian architecture. As the Persepolis Complex and the Tomb of Cyrus are amongst the important works of Iranian architecture, the question of this study is whether the attitude and mentality of the people of the past, for example the people of Qajar era towards them have been the same as us. To answer this question, one can use the history of mentalities approach while using interpretive-historical research method and by studying written sources of Qajar era recognize the architectural mentality of people of that era. Accordingly, it seems that the people's perception and mentality towards monuments is very different from that of the present-day mentality. In the people’s general mentality, these works have closely been linked to myths and other common beliefs of their time.