Advertisement
Published: March 5th 2017
Edit Blog Post
YAZD, MARCH 3, 2017
Today we are in Yazd. This is an ancient city whose origin is uncertain. It is at the confluence of two great deserts. It is at the foot of the the Shir mountains. For centuries water has been brought down to this town by a series of “ganats”. These are series of channels dug to capture the water from the mountain and bring it down to large underground reservoirs.
It is the center of Zoroasterism in Iran. This religion is extremely old and has about 10,000 followers today all over the world. It was the first religion to embrace monotheism. It is fairly simplistic and somewhat mystical. One of the unusual elements of their beliefs is that at death, we should not defile the earth with our rotting flesh. So they put their dead high on ”Towers of Silence” and wait for the birds to eat their flesh. They then take the bones and put them into a pit with lime dust. This practice was outlawed during the Shah”s time.
We first went to see two large towers of silence. These are several hundred feet high. There are a few adobe houses built at
the base of the towers where the families stayed during their mourning period. These houses are very interesting, have small dome roofs and intricate brickwork on the inside of the domes. This was a very interesting place.
We then went to the Zoroastrian Fire temple. This building houses the sacred fire which was brought to this building in the 1940’s. It has been burning continuously for 2500 years.
We then went to see the Friday Mosque (masjed e-jomeh) built in 1375. This has a highly decorated portal with two high towers on each side. Then an inner courtyard. To the left is the actual mosque which was built by the same man that built the beautiful mosque in Samarkand. It has a large circular dome that had two layers with 3 feet between the layers. Beneath the dome is a square room. The Persians figured out how to put a round dome on a square base by putting in “squinches” in the corners increasing the number of pieces in the square to 64 so that it was almost round.
We then took a walk through the old city of Yazd. All of the houses are adobe. This
whole area is preserved with some of the houses being over 400 years old. The oldest house there is Khan-e-Lari . We went to visit it. It was quite beautiful with a central courtyard and intricate wooden doors leading from the rooms into the courtyard.
Yazd is known for its cooling towers which are tall “chimneys” that set up air currents by conducting the hot air upward and thus creating a constant breeze in the room below. Yazd has a typical desert climate, much like Arizona, hot in the sun and very cool in the shade.
We then went to lunch at a very nice restaurant where we had the choice of multiple hot dishes. It was quite good.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.389s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 50; dbt: 0.1159s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mike
non-member comment
This is really stunning!