The Vakil Bazaar in Shiraz has stood here since time immemorial, although in it’s current state with it’s high vaulted arches and covered corridors only for the last 300 odd years. It houses not one, but four separate bazaars, a mosque and caravanserai complex, and it was here that I first caught a glimpse of silk, on our Silk Road odyssey.
It would appear that we had entered through the fabric and haberdashery souk so that was most exciting for me and quite distressing to the rest of the team, and it was not long before this butterfly was taken by the elbow and escorted at great speed away from my happy place... boo!
The bazaar itself was a seemingly endless maze of connected corridors, lined with stalls flaunting a never ending mixture of spices, samovars, electronics, household goods and clothing...
Along with an incredible abundance of all things in bright shiny orange copper… so much in one place we’d never seen before...
I guess they really like their copper in this town?
The highlight however was stumbling across not one but two caravanserais adjacent to the bazaar and that gets me excited because the silk road is not actually a single road per se, but actually a network of connecting paths along which caravans of camels laden with silk, spices, ceramics and gold would journey to caravanserais such as these, to offload into the bazaar or onto another camel caravan to continue the journey… a sort of camel relay if you like. So it’s here where all the fun would have be had.
Caravanserai literally translates from Persian for travelling group “caravan” and house/place “saray”, and are synonymous with the Silk Road routes. They would have been stationed every 30-40km, which would be about the max a loaded camel caravan could have travelled in a day. The nice thing about them is that they were open to traders of all nationalities, religions and trades… so a real melting pot, and a real party place!
Back here in the Vakil Bazaar, one was small and petite, nicely renovated with shops skirting around the sides of the ground floor, which is where the goods would have been stored and the animals tethered. It had such a nice atmosphere, and with its courtyard, full of trees, a beautiful marble fountain and a coffee stand - it was certainly inviting!
The other caravanserai was still in a state of renovation, and what a task they had on their hands! It was massive and I’m not joking … seriously I can only begin to imagine the scene here back in the day… how many camels? How many mules, merchants? How much money was changing hands, or goods being bartered? At a guess, by counting the arches, I would estimate that maybe 40/50 caravans could be accommodated here. But the complex had obviously laid abandoned for a very long time, and it was really exciting to see the renovation work that was unfolding in front of our eyes.
Back inside the bazaar, as our eyes readjusted from the glare of the midday sun, it became apparent that not all of the family had the stamina to handle the heat or to explore anymore of this curious bazaar…
So off to find lunch we went…
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