When I visited Bedasht, I was taken to see a very lovely little namaskhane (literally ‘prayer house’) – with images of Abul Fazl (just in case any of you still think images are taboo in Islam), and with much more space for women than for men.
There’s also a mosque – this was the only village all along the Khurasan Highway where I heard a call for prayer – and what was a beautiful caravanserai, now converted into a (wind-free) volleyball court.
The satellite image below shows, from top down: the caravanserai (with the typical outline of a Safavid caravanserai), the mosque, the namaskhane, and the earth fort. You can click on any of the placemarkers to see what it’s pointing at – and zoom in and out, or move the image around if you want to see what the neighbours are up to.
Click here, to see a photo of the remains of the huge fort. When Valentine Baker visited this in 1876, he described it as:
“a small one [of the many forts in the area], 640 yards in circumference. These works, composed of solid earth, are raised to a height of from sixty to a hundred feet. There is no ditch round them, but it is evident that the earth of which they are composed has been dug out from the ground for about 200 or 300 yards round, as this is always on a rather lower level than the surrounding country”.
Some of this is discernable on the satellite image – though it does seem amazing that this huge edifice was ever considered small.
View Bedasht in a larger map
This weeks blog has two innovations. First, I’ve been busy mastering satellite images. Now you can see what the earth fort and caravanserai in the village of Bedasht look like – both on the ground, and in a satellite image (click, zoom, move the map wherever you want to go – all is possible!). The satellite shapes are really distinctive – caravanserais are easy when you get your eye in, but I was super-excited to find the fort here after I visited the village . . . and after I read Valentine Baker’s 1876 account and thought I’d have a careful look at Google Earth.
(Second is the Dont Miss section)