Some connection issues. Resolved for the moment.
Naein and Yazd. From Abyaneh we returned to the main north-south highway. As we reach the plain, we pass a mud-brick castle which was built by Shapur II as a hunting lodge (which raises a few questions about ecological change - I'll have to get back to that). I remark that, although it is a ruin, it's pretty good for a mud brick building over 1600 years old. Well, no: it was maintained and in use until 1906, when it was blown up to stop bandits using it. A lot of old fortifications suffered the same way.
We then drove to Naein, which is a medium-sized industrial city which began around another oasis, at an intersection between caravan trade routes: part of the western end of the silk road. All of the country arid plains, bordered by steep rough mountains.
Naein has a crumbling tower, which is all that remains of city walls which were rebuilt over Sassanid originals a century or so after the Arab conquest. The main mosque is a very early one, built before the standard design had been settled. It replaced a Zoroastrian fire temple and uses its ground plan, which includes four archways, one on each side, instead of the modern plan with one arch, at the end nearest Mecca. The mosque (and the temple before it) were fortified outside the city walls, and joined to the city by an underground tunnel, part of which still exists, connecting to underground chambers. More bandit problems.
Then to Yazd, which was a similar city, further south-east on the caravan route, perched in a strip of merely arid country under the mountains and between deserts north and south. Now, however, it is a metropolis of a million people and a hive of industry.
It is also the home of the biggest remaining Zoroastrian population. There is a fire temple, of which the foyer can be visited, from which you can see the perpetual fire burning in a big brass pot, and maintained by a priest. Although it is quietly impressive and set in a traditional garden of cypresses, the temple is new, built with money sent by the Parsees in India, and not traditional in design. There is no literature to explain or recommend their faith: Zoroastrianism is well tolerated, but not anything which looks like attempt to convert Moslems. Outside the town are the towers of silence, also relatively new, but traditional in design, now disused for sanitary reasons. The bodies of the dead were exposed there for the birds to pick clean. The towers are on the top of two steep hills. Each is a circular stone wall about 12 feet high and 100 feet across, with a paved floor. It must have been pretty grim when it was in use. Under the late Shah, the Zoroastrian community accepted a form of burial in which the bodies are placed in sealed concrete graves, so do not pollute the earth, and there is now a graveyard near the old towers.
The hotel we stayed at is a very large old private home set in a garden with flowing water and lots of trees, now converted into a very comfortable and stylish 50+ room hotel. The layout, at least as now converted, is a series of staircases, each leading from the garden to a small group of rooms: more like a block of flats than one house. They got an award for the conversion, so they must have respected the original layout, to a degree. Perhaps it was suitable for an extended family.
The other highlights of Yazd were the mosque, sunset over the mosque, the water museum and a Persian garden. The Fin garden at Kashan is beautiful, but small and strictly a decorative garden: mostly grass and cypress trees. This one has the same basic layout, with crossed paths, running water and a summer-house, but it is much larger, and a working orchard. One end is planted to grape vines, the other to fruit and nut trees: pomegranates, pistachios, olives and a lot more, with a few hibiscus and other decorative plants, and a couple of rows of cypresses to give it definition. Not as pretty, but a pleasant garden. And they serve good coffee.
The water museum is another old mansion, built over a qanat in the basement, and displays which describe the qanats, and explain a lot about central Iran. The country is mainly arid, just parched earth, with the odd low bush. Even goats and camels are scarce. Wherever there is water, the country supports trees, crops and towns: it is a bit like coming across Port Augusta every 50 miles. There are a lot of mountains, which obviously attract heavy rain from time to time: the highway crosses numerous culverts, and there are miles of almost continuous banks shaped to direct floodwater into the culverts. But the mountains are mostly much too steep to farm, or to hold water. Even the valley at Abyaneh is terraced. To get water from the mountains to the plains, they dug wells to tap the water table in the mountains, then tapped the wells from the bottom by driving underground tunnels for miles (up to 60 miles) to where the water was needed. The tunnels went partly through rock, and partly through porous materials, where they needed to be lined. This was a huge and difficult job, but the qanats provided a reliable water supply, which allowed farms and towns to exist where otherwise there would only have been scanty pasture. This is why the oases and towns mainly sit at the feet of the mountains. Nowadays, the qanats have mainly fallen out of use (even maintaining them was expensive) and water is pumped from wells in the places where it is needed. I suppose that is why Yazd can now be a city of a million people, which would have taken a large number of qanats to supply with water. Perhaps it also means that new towns and farms can be developed in places which are now waste ground.
The climate in Yazd is pretty bracing. In winter, they used to let water freeze in shaded tanks and saved the ice for summer. Now, in early summer, the temperature is reaching the high 30s. In late summer, it must be hotter than a Melbourne heatwave, maybe even hotter than Broken Hill. They used a lot of tricks to manage the heat: thick walls, underground sitting rooms, shady gardens, shady streets, and wind towers. A wind tower is a hollow tower like a chimney with a big Tudor chimney-pot, usually 10 to 20 feet higher than the house (higher works better, and is more prestigious) with two or more fixed grilles under the cap at the top, angled to catch the wind and funnel it down into the house, where it is routed through doorways or ducts through the main sitting rooms. In function it is roughly the reverse of both a chimney and a roof vent. It really does provide the same sort of cooling as a fan, and the air is surprisingly cool. I expect we could use them to provide passive cooling even now: start by reversing the design, as well as the function, of a roof vent.
Tonight, we are staying in the Zein-o-din caravanserai, 70km south-east of Yazd, which is 500 years old. It was one of 999 caravanserais built at 20 mile intervals along the trade routes to encourage trade. Like nearly all of them outside the towns, it fell into disuse in the C20th, but has been renovated after a huge effort, and offers accommodation of a kind now unusual. We have beds (mattresses on the floor) in a big room with a skylight but no windows, open to the passage and a dozen more rooms, except for a brocade curtain, with three huge rugs and eight big cushions, and no other furniture, though there are electric lights and a power point. There are two telescopes for star gazing: the sky here is ideal for the purpose, though tonight there will be a half moon. Later: no astronomy last night, but slept well. The rooms were cool yesterday, and not too warm last night: no doubt because the walls are 3 or 4 feet thick.
No comments:
Post a Comment