Pol-e Sardar in Zanjan

Pol-e Sardar, or Sardar Bridge, is one of three bridges built over the Zanjanrud River, which spreads around the city of Zanjan and is located along the route between Takab and Takhte Solieman. It is a monument from Qajar dynasty and is registered as a national heritage of Iran. In the local dialect, this bridge is also known as Qoltuq. Qoltuq is the name of a village in central regions of Zanjan, which has a Qajar fortress.

Pole- Sardar was built in 1915 by the order of Sardar Zolfaghar Khan Asad ol-Dowleh, who was a known landlord of Zanjan and son of Hossein Gholi Khan Nezam ol-Dowleh, over the Zanjanrud River.

Pol-e Sardar is as long as eighty meters, twelve meters tall, and has been built with a width less than five meters. The stone piers and the buttresses of the bridge, are six meters wide and built with the height of two meters. The middle buttress is in the form of polygon but the side ones are half-circles. This bridge has three arches with pointed barrel vaults. The widest clear span belongs to the middle arch with eleven meters and a half-width and half meter height.

Each of the side arches are five meters and a half wide and more than five meters tall. The structure of Pol-e Sardar consists of layers of bricks that each is twenty-five in twenty-five centimeters and their depth is five centimeters. The glazed tiles and ornamented brickworks can be seen in the middle and side arches. There is also a description engraved in a part of the bricks that shows the year 1915 as the beginning date of the construction of the bridge. This description is located on the middle vault next to a religious Kufic calligraphy.

There are two arches in the pillars of the bridge that are decorated with vaults. In the past, the pillars were covered with stones to be protected from decay by the water in the bed of the river. There are many hollow spaces in the bridge that help the structure to withstand the pressure.