Shahdād

Shahdad, historically called Khabis, stands on the western edge of the Lut Desert. Its oasis lies near a remarkable expanse of wind-carved ridges, or kaluts, beyond which the desert becomes exceptionally dry. The neighbourhood was inhabited in the third millennium BCE, when craftspeople worked copper and fashioned vessels and ornaments. Graves and workshops preserve traces of this early centre at the desert's edge.

In medieval times Khabis was a caravan station at the meeting of routes between Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia. Travellers crossing the Iranian plateau could stop at the oasis before facing the arid country beyond. The older Bronze Age settlement and the later caravan town belong to different chapters of a long history of habitation around the margins of the Lut, where the interior offered little water or shelter.