Sangtarashan Cave, Jahrom

🧭What kind of place is it?

The cave is about 350 metres long and 150 metres wide, covering nearly 4 hectares. Most parts are about 3 to 4 metres high, but the ceiling gets lower towards the end. The floor slopes and is covered with a layer of limy soil, and the further you go from the openings, the less light there is.

🏛️What was it built for?

Stonecutters split off the soft layer of limestone with hand tools and cut it to size before it hardened in the open air. To keep the roof from falling, they left parts of the rock untouched as columns. The stone was used for facades, gravestones, pools, steps and decorative work.

👀What you will see

• Crossing passages and 12 openings, each of them once part of a quarrying route.
• Stone columns of different sizes, left in the quarry to hold up the roof.
• Small niches in the walls and columns, where the stonecutters kept their oil lamps.
• Light limestone layers beside the dolomite rock of the roof and floor, showing the different kinds of stone in the quarry.

💡Something interesting

The quarrying routes in the cave were called karkhaneh, or workshops. Each stonecutter worked along one route, and these separate workshops side by side make up the network of passages and columns. Stone from here was also used in buildings such as the Atiq Jameh Mosque of Shiraz and Eram Garden.

🎒Good to know before you go

• It gets darker step by step inside the cave and the floor slopes; bring a light and walk in proper shoes.