A shabestan or shabistan ( fa, ;

Old Persian Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as ( ...

''xšapā.stāna'') is an underground space that can be usually found in traditional architecture of mosques, houses, and schools in ancient

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. These spaces were usually used during summers and could be ventilated by

windcatcher A windcatcher, wind tower, or wind scoop ( ar, برجيل ; fa, بادگیر) is a traditional architectural element used to create cross ventilation and passive cooling in buildings. Windcatchers come in various designs: unidirectional, bi ...

s and

qanat A qanat or kārīz is a system for transporting water from an aquifer or water well to the surface, through an underground aqueduct; the system originated approximately 3,000 BC in what is now Iran. The function is essentially the same across ...

s. During the

Sasanian Empire The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...

and the subsequent Islamic periods, "shabestan" also referred to inner sanctums of the

shah Shah (; fa, شاه, , ) is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies.Yarshater, EhsaPersia or Iran, Persian or Farsi, ''Iranian Studies'', vol. XXII no. 1 (1989) It was also used by a variety of ...

s where their

concubines Concubinage is an interpersonal and sexual relationship between a man and a woman in which the couple does not want, or cannot enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive. Concubi ...

resided. Later these structures came to be called '' zanāneh'' (feminine residence), ''

andaruni Andaruni ( fa, اندرونی) in Iranian architecture, is the inner quarter where the women lived. It has been described as ''harem'' in Arabic. Private space In traditional Persian residential architecture the ''andaruni'' is a part of the h ...

'' (inner private zone) and ''haram'' (from Arabic

harem Harem ( Persian: حرمسرا ''haramsarā'', ar, حَرِيمٌ ''ḥarīm'', "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family") refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A har ...

Cooling

A shabestan can be cooled using a

in conjunction with a

. A windcatcher is a chimney-like structure positioned above the house; the one of its four openings opposite the wind direction is opened to move air out of the house. Incoming air is pulled from a qanat below the house. The air flow across the vertical shaft opening creates a lower pressure (see

Bernoulli effect In fluid dynamics, Bernoulli's principle states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in static pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy. The principle is named after the Swiss mathematic ...

) and pulls cool air up from the qanat tunnel below the house. The air from the qanat was drawn into the tunnel at some distance away and is cooled both by contact with the cool tunnel walls/water and by the giving up of

latent heat Latent heat (also known as latent energy or heat of transformation) is energy released or absorbed, by a body or a thermodynamic system, during a constant-temperature process — usually a first-order phase transition. Latent heat can be underst ...

of evaporation as water evaporates into the air stream. In dry desert climates this can result in a greater than 15 °C (27 °F) reduction in the air temperature coming from the qanat. Windcatchers and qanat cooling have been used in desert climates for over 1000 years.

Footnotes

Architecture in Iran Islamic architectural elements Iranian inventions Passive cooling {{Islam-stub

Cooling

See also

Footnotes