Meymand Cave Village
Meymand (also spelt Maymand and Maimand) is a village of troglodytes - cave dwellers - located in the south-eastern Iranian province of Kerman. Meymand (Maymand, Maimand) village has been continuously inhabited for 2,000 to 3,000 years making it one of Iran's four oldest surviving villages. By contrast the troglodytic village of Kandovan in northwest Iran is said to have been inhabited for 700 years. Some claim that Meymand / Maymand village has been inhabited for 12,000 years,
that is,since the middle stone ages, making it a mesolithic village. Reportedly, 10,000 year old stone engravings and 6,000 year-old pottery have been discovered at the site.
The village is a UNESCO world heritage site and was awarded UNESCO's 2005 Melina Mercouri prize. UNESCO compares Meymand / Maymand with villages of Kandovan, Hille Var, Sour, Ghorveh, Vind, Tamin, Kharg Zoroastrian hypogea, Zoroastrian houses around Tabas, Jahlkhaneh in Bushehr, Kapadocia, Metra, some regions in south of England, Jordan and China.
While many Iranian desert villages are fairly non-descript in appearance most of the time (their beauty is found within the courtyards and homes), Maymand is in comparison stark in appearance and perhaps even unattractive in the usual sense. The villagers have done little to add colour to the natural earth tones of the landscape. They homes and streets have no potted flowers or ornamental plants. The village's stark appearance is complimented by Spartan life of its inhabitants. Adults wear sober coloured clothes and visitors have noted in their travel logs that they could hear no music.
The village has a present peak population of between 130 and 150 people many of whom are semi-nomadic shepherds, living in the village caves during the winter when the population is at its highest and migrating to higher pastures in the summer leaving about 60 residents in the village.
Links to Zoroastrian and Pre-Zoroastrian Customs
According to local tradition, Meymand was a Zoroastrian settlement before the advent of Islam and that prior to become Zoroastrian, the residents worshipped the sun.
One of the cave units is that is now a museum has a sign post stating that was an atash-gah, a fire temple (also called Kicheh Dobandi), and there are claims that the ancient inhabitants also worshipped pre-Zoroastrian Mithraism.
It is said that the original inhabitants did not bury their dead, but placed them in crypts carved into the mountainside. In addition, the village contains a 400 square metre complex of fifteen circular rooms where bones and personal belongings have been found, suggesting that it too was used as a crypt or even an ossuary.
The local language retains elements of Sassanian Middle Persian (sometime called Pahlavi).
Maymand / Meymand village is located some 35 kilometres northeast of the town of Babak - Shahr-e Babak, a Kermani town on the road that runs between Tehran in thenorth and the port of Bandar Abbas in the south. Shahr-e Babak means Babak's city and Shahr-e Babak is said to be the birthplace of the founder of the Persian Sassanian dynasty c.200 CE (see Timelines). The road from Shahr-e Babak ri
ses into the surrounding mountains until it reaches Meymand at an elevation of 2240 metres.
Layout & Facilities
We do not know if any of the cave units have been adapted from natural caves, for most of the cave dwelling units have been dug out by hand. The cave units line two sides of a shallow valley and in some areas, the cave apartments are five stories high.
The are a total of 406 residential cave units with a total of 2560 rooms. A large number of the units have been abandoned.
The community structures include a bath (a hammam), public toilet, school, restaurant, museum, store and handicrafts store. While there is a eight-roomed guest house called the Meymand Guesthouse near the entrance to the village, visitors can sometime find lodging with some of the residents. Travellers (cf. Lonely Planet) report that the guesthouse rooms have "namad (pressed wool felt) carpets on the floors, beds carved into the walls and warm lighting, it's easy to be transported to another time. Bathrooms are shared but clean, with steaming (hot water) showers."
Climate, Water & Vegetation
The winters in Meymand are cold and harsh. The summers are hot and dry. Rainfall is variable, fluctuating between 300 and 500 mm per annum.
The village is supplied by water by two underground kareez (qanat) aqueducts that bring water down from the water catchment areas on the upper slopes of the surrounding hills.
Local vegetation consists of hardy plants and wild mulberry, pistachios and almonds trees. According to UNESCO, "the ravines (surrounding Maymand) are dotted with tiny oases where hazel tre
es, vineyards, jujubes, almonds and other trees are grown. The oases are surr
ounded by tilled fields some of which have suffered from successive periods of drought."
Living & Livelihood
The economy of the villagers is based on agriculture, herding, animal husbandry, carpet weaving and tourism. The orchards consist of pistachio, almond, walnut, and pomegranate, and mulberry trees. Meymand's carpets have an international reputation. Carpet weaving spawns supporting and ancillary crafts such as dyeing, felt-making, kilim-weaving (kilims, also spelt gilims or gelims, are flat tapestry-woven carpets or rugs), and crochet lace work.
Meals consist of flat bread, yogurt and a thin soup made from milk and dried herbs. The custom is to tear the bread into bit-sized pieces and throw them into the bowl of soup. The meals supplemented by a diet of dairy products, nuts and traditional breads. Eggs are a treat and meat is eaten on especial occasion only. The diet while simply is nevertheless healthy and nutritious.
The villagers are learning to take advantage of tourists and some of Meymand's elderly women have begun to sell local woven baskets and wild herbs. They also sell, for about IR60,000 in 2008, traditional nomad hats made from a handmade felt called namad - a matted felt made by soaking and pressing together wool.
Annual Migration
A little over half of Meymand's population lead semi-nomadic lives, dwelling in the caves and during the winter, moving with their herds of goat & sheep to the plains in the spring and then to higher pastures and cooler climes during the summer. The nomadic range is about 120 square kilometres with Meymand at its
centre.
The nomads spend their winter months in Maymand, living in their cave homes with the women weaving carpets and the men tending to the herds.
In the spring they move to the lower plains as the grass in the pastures will have started to grow here first. The spring camps are, according to UNITAR twelve (another source, Kiarash Eghtesadi, director of Maymand's research center, says eight) designated areas called aghols or sar aquls. Some nomads choose to camp at the foot of the hills in camps called eshams. Each residences is owned by a family.
During the summer, the weather in the plains and Meymand gets quite hot and the nomadic herders find relief from the heat as well as fresh pastures in the higher altitudes around Meymand. There they also harvest wild herbs and stay until early autumn. The mountain camp areas are called abadis and house up to 40 nuclear family
units. There are, according to UNITAR 38 (35 according to Kiarash Eghtesadi) abadi sites dotting the hillsides.
Those residents that remain in the village occupy themselves with animal breeding and the tending of the orchards.
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