Deir-e Gachin Caravansarai is a historic caravansarai in Iran, located in the center of Kavir National Park. Because of its history and unique qualities, it is sometimes called the "Mother of Iranian Caravansarais". It is located in the Central District of Qom County, 80 kilometers north-east of Qom (60 kilometers into Garmsar Freeway) and 35 kilometers south-west of Varamin. This monument was registered in Iran's National Heritage List on September 23, 2003. The caravanserai was originally built in the Sasanian era and underwent restorations and reconstructions in the Seljuk, Safavid and Qajar eras. Its current form belongs to Safavid era. This caravanserai is situated on the ancient rout from Ray to Isfahan.
The structure of this caravansarai is in Seljuk four-iwan form and covers an 12000 square meters wide. The interior spaces of the caravansarai include human, livestock, service and convenience, and security spaces. There are four circular towers at the corners and two half-oval towers at both sides of the main gate which is situated in the middle of the southern wall. Also, there are 44 rooms or chambers, 4 big halls (stables), mosque, private shabestan, fodder barn, gristmill, bathroom and toilet. The materials used in Deir-e Gachin are brick, lime, adobe and plaster. The mosque of the caravanserai was probably built in the place of the Sasanian fire temple and there are no decorations in it. There are a number of structures around the caravanserai as a collection including two Ab anbars behind the western side and close to the bathroom, a brick furnace, a dam, and a graveyard in the south-western side in which the graves are covered with bricks and that goes back to the Islamic era. There is a brick-clay-made structure in the form of a fort 500 meters east of the caravanserai which has only one entrance gate and its structure goes back to the Qajar era.
Etymology
The word ‘deir’ in Middle Persian (Pahlavi) language, as Shams Gheis-e Razi puts it in Shams Gheis Dictionary, means a in Persian (dome in English) which is built for the purpose of prayer, and this structure was called Deir-e Gachin because it had a that was made of plaster (gach). Today, however, there is no such in the structure.
History
The construction of the structure is attributed to Ardashir-e Bābakān (Ardashir I) and so it has also been called Kardashir (done by Ardashir). Ya'qubi attributes it to Anushiruwān (Khosrow I). In History of Qom by Hasan ibn Mohammad Qomi, it is attributed to Anushiruwān but it can be implied by the text that he did not build the initial structure, and probably the structure was built in the beginning of Sasanian era (Ardashir I) and it was rebuilt in the Anushiruwān era. As Qomi mentions, the king of Rûm sent a group of Amalek, which were the survivors of the ʿĀd tribe and had enormous bodies, to Anushiruwān to serve him and he appointed them to construct this structure.
After the Sasanian period, the caravanserai underwent major restorations and reconstruction on at least two occasions. Under the Seljuk sultan Sanjar (), the vizier Abu Nasr Ahmad Kashi repaired the road from Ray to Qom and restored the caravanserai. He established an endowment (waqf) which drew revenues from the nearby village of Kaj and earmarked them for the upkeep of the caravanserai. During the Safavid period the structure was restored again. Most of its vaults were rebuilt with new, smaller bricks, while many of the old Sasanian bricks were left aside and later re-used in other buildings.
Location and importance
Deir-e Gachin Caravansarai, one of the biggest caravansarais of Iran, is located in the center of Kavir National Park. Its unique qualities is the reason it is called “Mother of Iranian Caravansarais”.
From long ago, the location of Deir-e Gachin on the ancient rout from Ray to Isfahan has been the gathering point of the connecting routes between east and west, and the northern, western, southern and eastern routes to Rey traversed in this spot. In the Medes and Achaemenid eras, this place connected the eastern, northern, southern and western states, and it had a defensive importance. In addition, in the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian eras, the commercial importance of this place increased. It has counted as a part of the Silk Road which extended from Ctesiphon to Balkh, Samarkand, and Bukhara. This route started from the capital of China (Xi'an) and continued to Hotan and Kashgar, and then arrived at Rey and Deir-e Gachin, and from there it went through Saveh or Qazvin to Kermanshah and Hamadan and then to Ctesiphon and Babylon, and continued from there to Antakya in the shores of Mediterranean Sea.