Ali-Sadr Cave
Interesting facts
- The only animal known to live in the cave's water is a tiny blind amphipod of the genus Niphargus.
- The water is too hard and lime-rich to drink, yet its acidity is almost exactly neutral.
- The boat route through the flooded passages runs for roughly 2.4 kilometres, while the water ranges from half a metre to 14 metres deep.
- An inscription indicates the cave was already known in the reign of Darius I, the Achaemenid king of the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC.
- Jugs, pitchers and ancient images found inside point to human use of the cave thousands of years before its modern rediscovery.
- The earthquake that cut off the cave's feeding stream struck the Farsinaj area on 22 December 1957.
- After the entrance was widened in 1974 it measured about 5 metres wide and 3 metres high, and electric lighting was installed in 1976.
- Mohammad Reza Shah visited the cave in September 1976, only a few months after it first opened to the public.
- The ridge that holds the cave is only about 2 kilometres long and reaches about 2,180 metres, its limestone layers tilted at 40 to 45 degrees.
Why it is worth it
Ali-Sadr Cave, in the Zagros highlands of Hamadan province in western Iran, is a cave you explore by boat. Its passages are filled with a network of lakes and water channels, up to 14 metres deep, and boats carry visitors through them in what Iranian authorities describe as the longest boat route inside any cave in the world. A German-British expedition in 2001 surveyed about 11.4 km of passages. The water is cold, hard and rich in lime, and it stays at about 12 °C all year.
The limestone is Jurassic, and the entrance lies high, at nearly 2,000 metres above sea level, beside the village of Ali Sadr. Villagers had known the cave for a long time and even diverted surplus water into it to use as a reservoir, which raised the water level so high that the entrance was nearly blocked. After an earthquake in 1957 cut off the stream that fed it, the water fell back, and in 1963 fourteen members of the Hamadan mountaineering association made the first organised exploration, crossing the lake with their own equipment.
Opening the cave to tourism was largely the work of Abdollah Hajilou, head of the Hamadan mountaineering association, who with local help widened the narrow entrance in 1974. A walking path, lighting and boats followed, and the cave opened to visitors on 25 May 1976. It was entered on Iran's national natural heritage list in 2009 and has been proposed for World Heritage status.
Getting there
The cave is in Ali Sadr village, Kabudarahang county, north-west of the city of Hamadan. Hamadan Airport (HDM) is about 54 km away as the crow flies, and the town of Bahar about 46 km.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Ali-Sadr Cave, originally called Ali Saadr or Ali Sard, is a water cave which attracts visitors every year. It is located in Ali Sadr, Kabudarahang County, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) north of Hamadan, western Iran.
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