From the road it looked like a few heaps of mud in a field. When we approached it and looked more closely at it, it turned out to be centuries old ruins of one of the hundreds of caravanserai's which used to dot the landscape in this part of ancient Persia, along the Silk Road (Khorassan Province). I ended up taking about 50 photographs of those ancient remaining archways and walls, which were still sticking out of the ground. It was a truely marvelous discovery, diving deep into history without the usual tourist circus around us, feeling free to roam the site at our pleasure.

I've done some reading. It seems that the ruins of the caravanserai might date from the period of the Safavid Shah Abbas I. (1587 - 1629). He is credited with building a network of 999 caravanserais all over his empire. The Safavid era is considered the 3rd great empire of Persian history. It produced a great flowering of Persian art and architecture - many of the finest monuments of today date from that period.