TEHRAN – Iran is completing preparations for the UNESCO World Heritage nomination of its historical Asbads, traditional vertical-axis windmills located in the provinces of South Khorasan, Khorasan Razavi and Sistan-Baluchestan, a senior cultural heritage official said on Saturday.
Ali Darabi, deputy minister of cultural heritage, said coordination efforts involving the three provinces and national authorities were in their final stages.
Speaking on the sidelines of a coordination meeting in Mashhad, Darabi said the nomination required cooperation among multiple government bodies because the heritage sites are distributed across three provinces.
“The necessary planning has been carried out to advance the nomination dossier,” Darabi told reporters.
Darabi said approximately 1,400 Asbads have been identified across Iran. He described the structures as a symbol of the knowledge and ingenuity of earlier generations in harnessing the region’s seasonal winds and managing natural resources.
Iran’s Asbads, believed to be among the world’s earliest industrial machines, date back more than a millennium. South Khorasan, regarded as their main hub, contains more than 310 surviving structures, about 79% of the country’s total.
Designed to harness the region’s powerful seasonal winds, the Asbads differ from the horizontal-axis windmills later developed in Europe. Historical accounts trace the invention to Iranian engineers in the early Islamic period.
As mentioned by UNESCO, vertical-axis windmills spread from Iran to other parts of the Islamic world, including Egypt, and were later introduced to China during the Mongol era. By the 11th century, they had reached Spain, Portugal, and the Aegean islands.
According to technology historian Robert Forbes, the windmill was originally an Iranian innovation that became a key energy source across Islamic territories in the 12th century for grinding grain, pumping water, and processing sugarcane.
Made of natural clay, straw, and wood, an Asbad is typically comprised of eight chambers, with each chamber housing six blades. As the area’s strong, steady wind enters the chambers it turns the blades, which then turn grindstones. The structures reach up to about 65 feet in height.
The Islamic Republic designated the Asbad as a national heritage site in 2002.
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