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Shushtar in Iran

Thursday, 26 January 2023 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Gulf States / Golfstaaten
Category/Kategorie: General, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  7 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Shushtar is a city and capital of Shushtar County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. Shushtar is an ancient fortress city, approximately 92 kilometres (57 mi) from Ahvaz, the centre of the province. Much of its past agricultural productivity derives from the irrigation system which centered on the Band-e Kaisar, the first dam bridge in Iran. The whole water system in Shushtar consists of 13 sites called Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System which is registered as a Unesco World Heritage.

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.

Read more on unesco.org – Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System and Wikipedia Shushtar (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Johns Hopkins University & Medicine - Coronavirus Resource Center - Global Passport Power Rank - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

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