History of caving in Iran

Although locals and other interested people visited the caves in the past, the Tehran and Shiraz
Pykan Mountaineers Club led by Mr Manocher Mehran were the first organized amateur groups
to visit the Shahpour Cave in 1945 (Ravanshad 1995). In 1949, the Power and Truth
Mountaineer Club visited Konto Cave in Kordestan province and several other caves in Zanjan
province, especially Katalekhor Cave in 1948.

Other pioneer Iranian caving clubs were Fars Mountaineer Group (led by Mr. Marefat), Iran
Speleological Group 1946, and Alp Mountaineer Club 1947. Several amateur Mountaineer
groups, which were also interested in caving, were established after 1950 in some of the big
Iranian cities. Mr. Changiz Shikh-ali was the founder of the Speleological Society of Iran. He
established this organisation in 1946 and it was officially accepted by the Iran Mountaineering
Federation in 1955. Mr. Changiz Shikh-ali was the head of the Speleology Committee of Iran
from 1973 to 1977 (Ravanshad 1995). He collected valuable data on about 1,000 caves, but
nothing was published due to lack of sponsorship and budget limitation.

The Iranian caving clubs consistently suffered from lack of equipment, training and international
contacts but managed to render some excellent results like cave maps and cave lists that have
been published in Persian language (e.g. Marefat 1994, Ravanshad 1995, Hajiloo 1998, Salahi
1999). This report is partly based on these lists. Beginning in the early seventies foreign
speleologists started to visit Iran, mainly British teams (e.g. Judson 1972/73, Napier College
1973, Lewis 1977, Smith 1977, Farr 1984) but also French (e.g. Farci 1975, Dumas 1996),
Italian and Polish groups. With a few exceptions their objectives were mainly focused on the
high Zagros where depth records could be expected. The investigations led to the discovery of
the deepest caves of Iran. The extremely successful fundraising of the second British
expedition to the Ghar Parau resulted in the creation of the Ghar Parau fund of the British
Cave Research Association that is still existing today and supports British caving projects
worldwide. Finally, Guidi & Tommasini (1978) published a first speleological bibliography on
Iran, following joint Iranian-Italian speleological investigations in the Mazandaran and Golestan
provinces in 1976, 1977 and 1978 (Guidi, Tommasini & Zorn 1978), namely in the Golestan
national park. Unfortunately, most of these surveying campaigns seem to have been made
without in-depth participation of Iranian speleologists. Furthermore after the Islamic revolution in
1979 foreign speleological investigations came to a complete standstill for nearly 20 years.

Czech cavers again started to conduct speleological projects in Iran since 1997.

Together with the Department of Earth Sciences of Shiraz University and with Qeshm Free

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History of caving in Iran

Zone
Organization, they
organised surveying campaigns every year until 2001. Their projects were dedicated to the
Hormoz region in southern Iran where they discovered remarkably long caves formed in salt.
One of them, Tri Nahacu, is currently the longest cave of the world formed in salt at 6,580 m
(Bosk et al. 1999, 2001; Bruthans 2000a, 2000b; Bruthans et al. 2005, 2006).

During two Iranian-German-British speleological projects carried out in 2000 and

2001 it was experienced that the language barriers appear to be the main reason for the slow
development of applied speleology in Iran and the poor knowledge abroad about the status of
speleology in Iran. The two afore-mentioned projects obtained a detailed map of Ghar Ali Sadr
(11,440 m long, Hamadan province), one of the top ten show caves of the world according to its
number of annual visitors (exceeding 600,000) (Laumanns et al. 2001).

Spanish speleologists from ERE del CEC (Barcelona) conducted a very successful investigation
in the Chahar Mahal va Bakhtiari province (Zentral Zagros) in 2002 (Alexandri 2007, 2008)
where they surveyed Ghar Sarab and Ghar Pa Alam. They also visited Pire Ghar in the same
province. Furthermore they made biospeleological and archaeological observations. They also
provided lists of the deepest and longest Iranian caves in their publications. In 2003 another
speleological project was carried out in co-operation with the Geological Survey of Iran by
Iranian, Swiss and German cavers to Ghar Katalehkhor (Zanjan province). This expedition
firmly established this show cave as the new longest cave known so far in Iran (12,860 m,
Arshadi & Laumanns 2004). It is important to mention that this was one of the first foreign
speleological exploration projects with in-depth participation of Iranian cave experts (Dr. Javad
Ashjari from Shiraz University and Mr. Hossin Akbarzadeh from the Geological Survey of Iran),
who actively participated in the surveying activities. Interesting karst features with even more
interesting photographs of cave entrances as well as sinkholes were published by Cucchi & Zini
(2003) from a gypsum area along the Karkeh River, central Zagros). Concrete cave descriptions
are not provided though.

A Russian reconnaissance project to Iran in 2005/06 was followed by a full scale joint
Russian-Ukrainian-Iranian/German-British exploration project in late 2006 to the Ghar Parau
and Hamadan region. The Russian expeditions were organised by the Russian Geographical
Society and led by Yuri Evdokimov (Moscow). Unfortunately, despite of the good success of the
investigations and startling co-operation with Iranian speleologists, no new cave surveys from
the Ghar Parau area were published up till now (Brooks 2007, 2008). A survey of Ghale-Jogh
(Hamadan province) was also made by the team.

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History of caving in Iran

Simultaneously, several small-scale but very successful exploration projects have contributed
much knowledge on Iranian caves. An Iranian-Austrian team conducted a survey of Ghar
Rood-afshan and started exploration of Ghar-e-Bournic. The survey pushed the length of the
latter cave to 1,080 m but the cave still continues. The team also conducted exploration of
caves in the high mountain region of Zard Kooh (Geyer 2003, 2006; 2008). Other stunning
small-scale investigations were carried out by Iranian- German-British teams in 2006, 2007 and
2008. The investigations in 2006 were partly made together with the afore-mentioned Russian
explorers. Many caves were surveyed, including Sahoolan Cave (near Mahabad), Ghar Sar-Ab
(Hamadan province) and Ghar-e-Danial (Mazandaran province) (Brooks 2007, 2008, 2009).

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