Up through Kashan

This schematic drawing shows the final part of Shah Abbas’ 1601 walk, as well as the later Safavid Royal Highroad (small dots) up to the Mazanderan palaces of Ashraf and Farahabad.

This satellite image shows the last – and longest – section of Shah Abbas’ walk, along the Khurasan Highroad to the Holy City of Mashhad.

Here I am on the Sang Farsh (370km from Isfahan). This causeway is still in remarkably good condition 400 years after its construction.

After the 1601 walk, Abbas ordered the construction of Sang Farsh (literally, ‘stone carpet’): a 30km causeway over the salty mud. Before this was completed, Della Valle describes his horses sinking into the mud up to their girths – in the dry year of 1618. Despite the challenging conditions for any construction, Sang Farsh can still be clearly seen …

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Shah Abbas had to cross 30km of salt mud in 1601.  He halted at Pul-i Shurab (literally, Bridge over the Salty/Sour River: 367km from Isfahan) – the remains of which are shown here. The white ‘icing’ is salt deposited from the water, which is saltier than salty sea-water.

After the Darya Namak, is Qasr-i Bahram (also called Abbasabad and Siyahkuh). This is a unique and very lovely white-stone building, which is reputed to have been constructed as a hunting lodge for Shah Abbas I. The nearby Haramserail apparently provided accommodation for Abbas’ wives and children. Archive images of these buildings are included here.

Yazdi reports that Abbas walked 67km in one stage over the Darya Namak (literally, ‘salt sea’). This distance seems impractical: although I agreed with Pietro della Valle that the walking over this otherworldly landscape is “truly the most agreeable that I can say” – at dusk and in the night, anyway; in 1617, della Valle …

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The bucket well shown here, at Dastkan (273km from Isfahan), has sweet and pure water despite being in sight of the salt plains (look top left, for the white sheen at the foot of the mountains). Although the spot is now desolate, in 1617 Pietro della Valle stayed in one of the two local caravanserais.

At Khosh Ab (literally ‘good water’: 241km from Isfahan), the high underground water table means that watermelons will – in season – grow well in this dusty dip in the ground even without irrigation.

This schematic drawing  shows Shah Abbas’ 1601 route (larger dots), and also the later Safavid Royal Highroad (small dots). It also shows some of the constructions from Abbas’ post-walk building campaign in the salt plain/mud area.