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The Sasanian caravanserai of Dayr-i gachīn, south of Ray, Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Mehrdad Shokoohy
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Extract

Numerous Arab geographers and Persian literary texts refer with a variety of detail to an important desert caravanserai known as Dayr-i gachīn (Ar. Dayr al-jiss), situated to the south of Ray. The word dayr, meaning in Arabic ‘monastery’, or perhaps ‘hospice’, seems a natural term for a caravanserai. That the term could also mean a domed building and a fire temple is suggested by both the Burhān-i qāti' and the Farhang-i Ānandrāj. The Burhān-i qāti', under ‘Khwarnaq’, states:

Khwarnaq is the arabized word for Khuwarna, and this was a most excellent building which was built for Bahrām-i Gūr by Nu'mān b. Mundhir … and the other palace, which had three domes, one inside the other, and was built as a temple and a place of worship, they called Si-dayr since in Pahlavi they call a dome ‘dayr’.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , October 1983 , pp. 445 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1983

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