The Road south to Shiraz

Isfahan to Shiraz, Iran

We left in the morning to drive south. I had said goodbye to Alireza reluctantly and had met the guide who would be with me for the next two weeks. It was not to be an altogether happy partnership for either of us; his old womanish, fusspot ways drove me quite insane as I knew would be the case from the moment I laid eyes on him, and he undoubtedly thought I was his worst nightmare come true. Our first stop was Yazdikhast of which Ibn Battuta had written;

".....a small town substantially built, and with a fine bazaar; the congregational mosque in it is a marvel, built of stone and with arcades of stone also. The town is on the edge of a valley, in which are its orchards and its streams. In its outskirts there is a ribat in which travellers are lodged; it has an iron gate and is of the utmost strength and impregnability, and inside it there are shops where everything that travellers may need is on sale."

Bridge over the ravine which if removed, effectively sealed off the town. Ibn Battuta used the Moroccan/Maghreb word 'ribat' meaning "fortified monastery" when usually in Iran he used the word 'hospice' meaning caravanserai. It is possible given the size of Yazdikhast, that this had at one time been the entrance to the ribat he mentions and that the town was further along the edge of the cliff as its ruins still are today.

I found a bridge 'over a chasm' but the door was wooden although there were iron pieces in the stone wall. The door was clearly the only way into the now-ruined village, and indeed had the bridge been removed, the village was impregnable with defensive ramparts having been built around the spur of rock to which the village clung. The door was tightly locked shut so the guide, to my complete amazement, climbed up a rock face and over a gap in the wall and I followed, abaya and all. We then walked through the town, most of which was in a parlous state, and found the mosque although it did not appear to have been built of stone - the village consists of houses built of adobe and those actually hewn from the cliff. The whole time we were there the guide fretted; it was forbidden, we did not know who was watching, he could lose his licence - the litany of dire possibilities that surely awaited him never varied for the next two weeks. I became convinced he had been arrested and tortured either by Savak or by the post-revolutionary 'Robespierres' - I could imagine no other reason for such perpetual fearfulness.

As we pottered around trying to find Ibn Battuta's buildings, we met an old man riding a donkey on the dusty streets above the cliff, who invited us to his house for lunch. He pointed out some old buildings to us from the rim but we could not positively identify those Ibn Battuta had mentioned.

Yazdikhast as seen from the 17th century Safavid-built caravanserai. It is possible that it was built over Ibn Battuta's 'ribat' or caravanserai, although given his description it sounds more likely to have been at the far end of town described above. The town still overlooks 'streams and orchards' although all is now abandoned.

We eventually left for Surmak. Ibn B got the order of his towns a little mixed up - the order from Isfahan is Yazdikhast, Surmak and Kalil - but otherwise he was, as usual, remarkably accurate;

"we continued our journey from Kalil on the same day and came to a large village called Surma where there is a hospice supplying food to all comers and goers, funded by the same Khwaja Kafi."

Surmak is on the main north-south Isfahan-Shiraz highway and nobody stops there any more. But a huge cemetery behind the main street with old Islamic headstones indicated it had once been a place of considerable importance. In addition, a whole town situated behind the modern town, built of adobe had now been wholly incorporated into the villagers houses, such that it was impossible to tell if there had once been a caravanserai. We asked one ancient, dessicated crone about a caravanserai but she told us it had been destroyed years ago. There appeared to have been some impressive 19th century Qajar-style housing there too suggesting that only in the last century had Surmak withered to nothing.

An old Islamic headstone in a corner of the huge cemetery in Surmak.

From Surmak we continued south off the main highway to Kalil which the translators' notes says has 'not been identified' but according to Alireza, who had looked up his Persian sources, is now called Eqlid, and which in olden times was not only on the main road between Isfahan and Shiraz, but was considered a controlling 'gateway' between north and south. It was also only a short distance from Surmak as Ibn Battta describes above;

"we came to the town of Kalil....a small town with running streams, gardens and fruit trees. I saw apples being sold in its bazaar......we alighted there at a hospice which was founded by the headman of this town known as Khwaja Kafi."

This was the first place on my itinerary that was not written on the guide's Farsi itinerary, and he was anxious. Fortunately for him we did not spend much time there as there was nothing to see, although a river, the Bruk, still runs through town and the region is still famous for its apples.

Father and son, or perhaps grandfather, trundling home at the end of the day in Eqlid.

On our way back to the highway we saw a square building which could have been Ibn Battuta's Khwaja Kafi-built caravanserai but again it was difficult to say with certainty. The last place on our route before Shiraz was Mayeen. Years before when I had visited Persepolis I remembered seeing a road sign for Mayeen so I knew it still existed. Ibn Battuta writes;

"We went on from there by way of the Dasht al-Rum, which is open country inhabited by Turks, and then travelled to Mayin, a small town with many streams and orchards and fine bazaars. Most of its trees are walnuts."

Mayin or Mayeen was not marked on any map and it was not on the guide's itinerary, but to his credit, and a lot of stopping for directions, we found it after driving for miles on country roads through fields of wheat and barley and irrigated rice fields. This time Ibn Battuta's caravanserai was still there, in a semi-derelict state but definitely identifiable. There were even ancient walnut trees surrounding it.

Domed entrance to Mayeen's caravanserai.

It is always a thrill to come across something obscure written about almost 700 years ago and be able to identify it because all the details are still the same. Even the guide was excited as he had never been there himself - actually he had never been to almost any of the places we were going to. I would not have needed him at all had I been able to speak the language. What irked me yet further was that the driver not only spoke passable English and certainly good enough for my purposes, but he also spoke Arabic, so the guide whose particular character traits grated on me beyond reason, was entirely superfluous. Many days were to be marked by the gritting and gnashing of teeth.....