page_title: Shushtar
section_title: Band-e Kaisar
hierarchical_section_title: Shushtar / History / Band-e Kaisar
caption_attribution_description: English: UNESCO MAP of Shushtar
context_page_description: Shushtar is a city and capital of Shushtar County, Khuzestan Province, Iran.
  Shushtar is an ancient fortress city, approximately 92 kilometres away from Ahvaz, the centre of the province. Much of its past agricultural productivity derives from the irrigation system which centered on the Band-e Kaisar, the first dam bridge in Iran. The Mayor of Shushtar is Ahmad Asefi.
context_section_description: The Band-e Kaisar ("Caesar's dam") is believed by some to be a Roman built arch bridge [since Roman captured soldiers were used in its construction], and the first in the country to combine it with a dam. When the Sassanian Shah Shapur I defeated the Roman emperor Valerian, he is said to have ordered the captive Roman soldiers to build a large bridge and dam stretching over 500 metres. Lying deep in Persian territory, the structure which exhibits typical Roman building techniques became the most eastern Roman bridge and Roman dam. Its dual-purpose design exerted a profound influence on Iranian civil engineering and was instrumental in developing Sassanid water management techniques.
  The approximately 500 m long overflow dam over the Karun, Iran's most effluent river, was the core structure of the Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System, a large irrigation complex from which Shushtar derived its agricultural productivity, and which has been designated World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2009. The arched superstructure carried across the important road between Pasargadae and the Sassanid capital Ctesiphon. Many times repaired in the Islamic period, the dam bridge fell out of use in the late 19th century, leading to the degeneration of the complex system of irrigation.
caption: Map of the Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System
exif: {}