Hand and heart work; Another story about the formation of the hand-made stone cave of Jahrom Fars

South of Jahrom, Fars province, is a cave that is magnificent to the people and travelers; We have arrived.

The rock-breaking cave or rock-breaking cave, which is located at the beginning of Qalat valley in the south of Jahrom, under the Alborz hills of the southern mountains, and the exact date for its construction and digging tunnels has not been determined yet, although most experts and locals date it to the Safavid period.

This cave with more than one hundred stone pillars and twelve openings, numbered 10117, has been nationally registered and is one of the historical and tourist attractions of Jahrom city. The length of the cave is about 350 meters and its width is 150 meters, with an area of ​​about four hectares and its height is three to four meters and at the end it reaches less than one meter. Each of these openings was called a “factory” or “cell.” Knowing the history and history of the stone-breaker has a great impact on knowing the history and culture of Jahrom, for example, the surnames of many people derived from work in this cave have been: stone-cutter, stone-breaker, Naqshvar, mountaineer, mountaineer and….

Historical and news reports always pay attention to the building, history, and physical characteristics of ancient and historical monuments, and less attention is paid to who made and paid for this work. While according to Abolghasem Anjouinejad Shirazi, a researcher and one of the founders of the study of people’s culture, we should also pay attention to the oral traditions and folk culture of the people in this regard. In addition, if these oral traditions are not recorded and preserved, there is a fear of forgetting and forgetting the builders of historical monuments and their anonymity.

A popular folklore in Jahrom says about the construction of a stone-breaking cave. Three hundred and one years ago, a boy named Kazem fell in love with a Jahrom stone-breaking girl and his father announced the condition of marriage to dig a mountain in Jahrom. Kazem accepted the condition and thus one of the largest caves in the world was created. Other people such as Ustad Ali Akbar or Khajeh Ali Akbar, Khajeh Assadollah, Khajeh Noorullah, Ustad Naghi, Khajeh Fathollah, Haji Naghshvar Jahromi, Ezatullah Naghshvar Jahromi, Nawazullah Naghshvar Jahromi, Agha Reza Koohkan, Ismail Khan Koohkan, continue the work of Master Kazem and expand the cave They gave.

One of the newer narratives of the construction of this cave has been narrated by the late “Ali Hassanzadeh”, the son of the diggers of Sang-e-Ashkan Cave, which was given to IRNA by a lover of Jahrom’s heritage named “Bahram Pakrouh”.

The eight Jahrom stone-breaking factories each had a name, which was as follows from the bottom of the cave to the top: Areza factory (Agharreza Koohkan) -Mish Gholum factory (Mashhadi Gholam Rezaei) -Mishtakbar factory (Mashhadi Akbar Naghshvar) -Abram Gholi factory (Ebrahim Gholi) Sahraei), which was the cleanest of all the factories and had a fig tree in its mouth. Ali Hakuni (father of Ismail Awsat) and the last factory belonged to Ali Mohammad Khodaei.

The diggers of the rock-breaking cave were divided into two groups. Some were mining inside the cave with very basic tools with indescribable difficulty, and the second group of one or two people in the city worked with the master to install the factory products.

The first group went to the mountain every morning with cloth tablecloths containing a few loaves of bread with some dates, cucumbers, tomatoes, curds and onions, and spread the tablecloth at the entrance of the cave, and everyone put everything they had in the middle, and all with They also ate breakfast. One of my old memories in Sang-e-Ashkan cave is when I was 5-6 years old, when the owners of the factories had breakfast of cucumber, curd, onion and onion, and with laughter and jokes, and with what eagerness, they did the hardest work by eating bread and cucumber.

The inside of the crusher was very dark.

The floor used to extract the building stone in the cave was made of limestone and 3 meters. First, the middle of it was cut horizontally by 30 cm with the famous ax of Kunar. With Kunar, the short handle was used. He was thrown out.

When the depression reached about 1.30 to 1.50 cm, the horizontal digging was closed and on one side of the vertical groove a seven-Persian groove was made with a cone, which was called Khorehdan. Then, with a tool called a tonoke, each piece of which was an iron rectangle 15 inches long, 5 inches wide, and 5 inches in diameter, they would place 4 to 4 from bottom to top inside the jugs and hammer the tonokes in place.

Then, with a tool called a akhi (cow), for each row of 4 tonuks, two of them were pounded one up and one down in the middle. In this way, due to the pressure of the cows, the desired piece of rock was separated from the mountain.

This was called “bottom work” because they had separated the lower part of the roof by 1.30 meters. The upper part was now hanging. To access it, they had to build a platform from the stones they had dug from below.

But to separate the upper part, there was no need to create a horizontal groove, because the lower and upper part of the roof is separate from the mountain. The vertical riders separated the upper part from the mountain with tonoke and akhi. Now there are two pieces of rock to cut a large piece of rock separated from the mountain was called “Yelhvar”.

The jaws were placed vertically and crossed for cutting on both sides and opposite. A thin rope with a diameter of about 5 mm was used to line the uneven surface of the stone. In this way, they first prepared soot from the chimney that all the houses had. And the bottom of the rope was held by two people on a stone, and the third person with a plumb line perpendicular to the rope and pulled and released the one whose head and bottom were firmly in the hands of the other two, as soon as the rope was released on the stone, a black line was drawn.

In the same way, the entire width of the stone was marked with a diameter of 4, 5, 6, or 7 cm, or whatever diameter they needed, and in the same way it was marked on the opposite side. Now the stone is ready to be cut.

Two-person saws with a length of more than 2 meters in the shape of H. If two vertical lines H are assumed to be two ends of the saw, each line would be in the hands of one person and the middle line of H would be a 2 meter saw.

The two of them alternately pulled the saw towards themselves, and in the same way, the stone was cut into the desired sheets. These stones were used for paving houses, roofing, pond and pool stones, floors inside the closet, house entrances that are still present in some parts of the city and other uses. Of course, in the pond and pool, L-shaped stones were cut at angles. The use of crushing stones was not limited to Jahrom and was exported to other cities and provinces as well.

The narrator said, “I remember one of the old drivers of Jahrom brought his dump truck from Abram Gholi Factory No. 5, which was empty and clean, into the cave and slept in the cool rock, and my father and the workers loaded the whole truck to Isfahan.” They made different stones. The stone was carried into the city by donkeys. Each of the factories had its own cattle (quadrupeds). Our shepherd was Mr. Nematullah Samari and he had 5 or 6 donkeys.

The sheets of stone were each one to two meters long and 50 to 70 cm wide. These sheets were known as blood (to the first conquest). Each donkey loaded 4 sheets of blood 1.5 to 2 meters so that even the head and neck of the donkey could not be seen. (Saab wood) To smooth and straighten the cutting area, a flat tail ax and a toothed ax and a hammer for engraving on stone, the same pen and hammer were used to make embossed patterns and beautiful windows.

These windows can still be seen in some of the old houses. They were decorated with stone-breaking stones in the corridors of the houses of the nobility and aristocrats. .

Also, the facades of the houses of the aristocracy were decorated with rhombus and square plates and other geometric shapes. Special stones were cut for the stairs, that is, the stone was a single and stepped staircase. Fireplaces and fireplaces were all beautifully made of crushed stone, and sometimes the installer was installed in a house for two months.

The conical stones on the wall of the National Garden and the old governorate were made of crushed stone. The public baths, the chairs in the squares and the streets were made of the same stones. Many people were also workers in stone-breaking factories, whose names I unfortunately do not remember.

Jahrom city is located 193 km southeast of Shiraz.