TEHRAN – Iran is seeking UNESCO World Heritage status for its centuries-old Asbads, traditional vertical-axis windmills primarily located in South Khorasan province, a senior official underlined on Saturday.

Ali Darabi, deputy minister and acting head of Iran’s Cultural Heritage Organization, said the structures represented a unique part of the country’s industrial history and required coordinated provincial support. He made the remarks during a meeting with South Khorasan governor Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemi on Saturday.

“These windmills are a significant cultural asset, and South Khorasan holds the majority of them,” Darabi said, urging provincial authorities to help advance the nomination dossier.

He also proposed establishing an “Agricultural Museum” and promoting desert tourism and sand trekking as part of efforts to expand the province’s tourism economy.

Hashemi said the province, with 2,600 registered historical sites, could use heritage and tourism as a platform for investment and job creation. “South Khorasan has remarkable capacity in this sector,” he told reporters.

Seyyed Ahmad Barabadi, director-general of the provincial tourism department, announced that for the first time, an operational Asbad will begin grinding wheat in October as a demonstration project for visitors.

Iran’s Asbads, believed to be among the world’s earliest industrial machines, date back more than a millennium. South Khorasan, regarded as their main hub, contains more than 310 surviving structures, about 79% of the country’s total.

Designed to harness the region’s powerful seasonal winds, the Asbads differ from the horizontal-axis windmills later developed in Europe. Historical accounts trace the invention to Iranian engineers in the early Islamic period.

As mentioned by UNESCO, vertical-axis windmills spread from Iran to other parts of the Islamic world, including Egypt, and were later introduced to China during the Mongol era. By the 11th century, they had reached Spain, Portugal, and the Aegean islands.

According to technology historian Robert Forbes, the windmill was originally an Iranian innovation that became a key energy source across Islamic territories in the 12th century for grinding grain, pumping water, and processing sugarcane.

AM