The people of Shushtar, called Shushtaris, maintain a unique cultural heritage stretching back to ancient times, and a Persian dialect called Shushtari dialect distinct to their group. The devoutness of Shushtar’s people has led to it being nicknamed “Dar al-Mu’minin”. Local tradition attributes certain customs to ancient Roman colonists, as well as the construction of the Band-e Kaisar and the introduction of brocade manufacturing technique.
The Band-e Kaisar (“Caesar’s dam”) is believed by some to be a Roman built arch bridge (since Roman captured soldiers were used in its construction), and the first in the country to combine it with a dam. When the Sassanian Shah Shapur I defeated the Roman emperor Valerian, he is said to have ordered the captive Roman soldiers to build a large bridge and dam stretching over 500 metres. Lying deep in Persian territory, the structure which exhibits typical Roman building techniques became the most eastern Roman bridge and Roman dam. Its dual-purpose design exerted a profound influence on Iranian civil engineering and was instrumental in developing Sassanid water management techniques. While the traditional account is disputable, it’s not implausible that Roman prisoners of war were involved in its construction.
The approximately 500 m long overflow dam over the Karun, Iran’s most effluent river, was the core structure of the Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System, a large irrigation complex from which Shushtar derived its agricultural productivity, and which has been designated World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2009. The arched superstructure carried across the important road between Pasargadae and the Sassanid capital Ctesiphon. Many times repaired in the Islamic period, the dam bridge fell out of use in the late 19th century, leading to the degeneration of the complex system of irrigation.
