Dezful Bridge Company

The spark for this study was the discovery of a collection of unseen documents from the British Foreign Office regarding the establishment and activities of the “Dezful Bridge Company,” which was founded during World War I and transferred to the Iranian government in 1923. Despite scattered and sometimes inaccurate narratives about this company, no precise and detailed information had been previously available. The study of the newly found documents highlighted the necessity of examining the condition of the Sassanid bridge prior to the establishment of the Dezful Bridge Company and marked the beginning of a comprehensive effort to gather historical documents from various archives worldwide, some of which had not been properly categorized. The first part of the book briefly addresses the historiographical challenges of the Dezful Bridge to show the scarcity of reliable information about the ancient and medieval history of the bridge. Then, the two main sections of the book, relying on extensive document research, attempt to contribute to the new historiography of the Sassanid Dezful Bridge and provide a relatively clear picture of the bridge’s status from the mid-18th century to 1923.