Yakhchal ice house
Yakhchal (nevera de adobe)
- Date
- s. XVII (tradición anterior) · confidence low
- Place
- Meybod, Yazd, Iran
- Credited to
- Builders of the Iranian plateau
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
An insulating conical mud-brick dome over a pit, beside a wall that shades pools where water freezes on winter nights through radiative cooling. It produced and stored ice all year round in the middle of the desert.
They are often said to date from c. 400 BCE, but there is no archaeological proof; medieval sources mention ice stores, and the surviving yakhchal are Safavid and Qajar. Comparable to European ice houses, but they produced ice as well as storing it.
What it led to
- ice and sherbets (sharbat) in desert cities
- food preservation without external energy
- modern studies of passive radiative cooling