1 · POSITION
The Persian caravanserai is the roadside inn of Iran, and in 2023, at the World Heritage Committee’s meeting in Riyadh, fifty-four of them across twenty-four provinces were inscribed together as The Persian Caravanserai. They gave shelter, food and water to caravans, pilgrims and other travellers on the routes that joined Iran to Asia and Europe. The register holds the type as the most complete surviving system of pre-modern road hospitality. [1, 2]
2 · THE PLAN
A caravanserai is typically a central courtyard ringed by arched storerooms, ramparts, a prayer room, a bath and stables for camels and horses, entered by one great iwan gate that made the building as much fortress as inn. Most were built of baked brick and gypsum, with a well inside the walls. [2]
3 · A NETWORK OF A THOUSAND
Iran holds more than a thousand caravanserais, seven hundred of them on its national heritage register; the inscribed fifty-four are a selection across thousands of kilometres and many centuries. The type may reach back to the Achaemenids, and it flourished under the Safavids, from 1501 to 1736, when new caravanserais were commissioned with mosques and other monuments. Robat Sharaf in Khorasan is Seljuk, built in 1114–15 and turned into a palace in 1154. [1, 2]
4 · NAMES ON THE LIST
Among the fifty-four are Sa’d al-Saltaneh in Qazvin, of the late nineteenth century and called the largest in Iran; the Shah Abbas caravanserai in Kermanshah province; Zein-o-Din in Yazd province; Qasr-e Bahram in the Dasht-e Kavir; and Deir-e Gachin near Qom, which the register holds under its own code. [2]
5 · ⚑ CANDOUR
⚑ Checked on 22 October 2026. The fifty-four caravanserais of the listing run from the Sasanian to the Qajar period; the count of thirty-one Safavid was not found. Most are courtyard plans and a rare few polygonal. Zein-o-Din is not circular: it is square with round towers about a sixteen-sided court, and it is an inn again. The note now says so. Robat Sharaf is dated 1114–15 by one source and 1144 by another. [1–4]
Sources & Further Reading
Sources checked 22 October 2026.