Pol-e Kashkan

Pol-e Kashkan is the ruin of a great medieval bridge across the Kashkan river, south-west of Khorramabad, on the old route that linked the uplands of Lorestan with the plains of Khuzestan and Mesopotamia. The Kashkan is a fast, powerful river that floods in spring, and a crossing here was a matter of real importance for travellers, armies and trade.

The bridge is attributed to Badr ibn Hasanwayh, a ruler of the Hasanwayhid dynasty, a Kurdish family who governed parts of the central Zagros around the end of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh. Badr was remembered by medieval writers as a builder of bridges, mosques and caravanserais across his lands, and an inscription on the bridge is reported to name him and date the work to around the year 1000.

The bridge was built of cut stone and mortar, with a series of pointed arches carrying the roadway over the river and smaller openings in the piers to let floodwater through. Several of the arches and much of the structure have collapsed over the centuries, but the surviving piers and spans still stand high above the water and show the ambition of the work.

Bridges of this kind, at the meeting of mountain and plain, are some of the most characteristic monuments of Lorestan, a province shaped by its rivers. Pol-e Kashkan is registered as a national monument, and it is a striking sight from the road, especially in spring, when the river runs brown and full beneath it.