Barda

Barda, known to Armenians as Partaw, stands on the Terter River near the edge of the Kura lowlands. Expanded under the Sasanian king Peroz, it became a capital of Caucasian Albania and later the chief town of Islamic Arran. Roads led from its markets towards Dvin, Tbilisi and Derbent. Tenth-century geographers described a citadel, a congregational mosque housing the provincial treasury, and a flourishing Sunday market; Christians remained a substantial part of its population.

A Rus raid in the tenth century damaged the city, and Barda never fully recovered its former predominance. Yet it continued to be inhabited and to receive investment under the Mongol Ilkhans. A cylindrical mausoleum completed in 1322, faced with patterned brick and turquoise decoration, testifies to the skill of its architect Ahmad ibn Ayyub al-Hafiz. Archaeological evidence suggests renewed decline after the Ilkhanate fragmented in the later fourteenth century, while the funerary tower retained its importance as a place of remembrance.