Caravanserai, Chaparkhaneh general notes
updated 06/06/2026
Coordinates - I have published this Caravanserai including Chaparkhaneh html page as this may be more useful than the existing kml page in Google Maps. Like all my other work, my intention has been to put coordinates to each location.
The Iranian National Register of National Monuments records the location of thousands of archaeological sites, historical landscapes, and ancient monuments using exact GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude) to map and protect them. While the Iranian government compiles and holds this data for archaeological research and heritage management, access to exact coordinates is highly restricted.
Sources - A lot of these sites have been determined from travellers route descriptions, some from the work done by Bijan Rouhani at EAMENA that fills in the gaps, the iDIA web sites, some from the works of Heinz Gaube, Maxime Siroux and Wolfram Kleiss, some from old topographical maps and the NIMA/GNS database which contains a lot of "RHSE" or "RESTHOUSE" signifying a caravansrai or khan but not always accurately, but mostly from Google Maps, again sometimes inaccurately.
Kleiss and Kiani - The most comprehensive work on caravanserai is Kleiss, Wolfram, Karawanenbauten in Iran. Materialien zur iranischen Archäologie, Materialien zur iranischen Archäologie, D. Reimer, Berlin, 1996 (Kleiss, Wolfram, Caravan Buildings in Iran. Materials on Iranian Archaeology, Materials on Iranian Archaeology, D. Reimer, Berlin, 1996) in six volumes. There is also Kiani, M. Y. and W. Kleiss, Iranian Caravansarais, Cultural Heritage Organization of Iran, 1994.
I have been cross-checking these sites with the works of Wolfram Kleiss. Unfortunately the location details of the caravanserai in these works are poor in comparison to the description of the caravanserai themselves and urban development over the past 50 years has expanded dramatically in many instances obliterating partially or completely the caravanserai sites. In addition to caravanserai Kleiss has included a substantial number of forts, towers and cisterns in his Caravan buildings in Iran. There is more than 100 locations of this nature, some I have included. I have also added items that Kleiss included but no longer exist and others without sufficient detail to be located, these I have marked up as "Kleiss Lage, location not found". The Kiani and Kleiss book reports on about 500 caravanserai, most of which are from Kleiss original works. Unfortunately location is limited to general figures of provinces.
Location - Most of the sites are located in Iran, some in Iraq on the route from Iran to Baghdad and a few more in Afghanistan also from Herat and Kandahar.
Illustration - present coverage below.
