Literally
"windcatcher", or wind towers, a traditional structure
used for air-conditioning of buildings. In desert areas
Windcatchers are found throughout the Middle East , from Pakistan
to North Africa, where they have been built since antiquity.
In construction and design they exhibit a great deal of regional
variety but they all perform a similar function, channeling prevailing
winds trapped in vents above the roof of buildings down to cool
and ventilate the rooms below. Windcatchers are built in many
regions of Iran, predominantly on houses in areas with a hot and
dry arid climate. In Bandar-i-Abbas and other ports along the
Persian Gulf they are normally square towers built on the roofs
with vents on one side open to the sea-breeze.
Light bamboo screens are often placed across the vents over which
water may be thrown on summer afternoons to cool by evaporation
the air passing down into the rooms below. In Khorasan and Sistan,
rooms have simple unidirectional vaulted vents over them called
locally Mehna. In the Sirjan region, houses have distinctive unidirectional
barrel-vaulted vents with slatted openings. Khuzistan has many
fine windcatchers like Ahwaz are famous. Windcatchers are also
built in Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran, Qom, Semnan, and Damqan
but they are most widely
most widely used in the cities, towns, and villages to the south
of the central desert in the Kashan, Nayin, Yazd, Kerman, and
Tabas regions. Yazd is known as "shar-i-Badgir" (the
city of windcatchers)
and is renowned or the number and variety of its windcatchers,
some of which date back to Timurid period.
Major
attractions:
1- Jame Mosque ( Friday
Mosque ) belongs to 1457 A.D.
2- Yazd- Fire-Temple ( Zoroastrian fire-Temple, 5th
century A.D.)
3- Dolatabad complex ( Gardens, buildings & badgers ) belong
to 1747 A.D
4.-Mirchakhugh Mosque ( 1437 A.D.)
5- Mirror & lighting Museum.
6- Tours of Silence.
