Caspian Sea

The southern Caspian washes the green shore between Gilan and Mazandaran, where the Alborz mountains rise behind a narrow coastal plain. These humid provinces supplied much of Persia's raw silk. In the seventeenth century Shah Abbas I sought to control the silk trade, and merchants carried the valuable fibre along routes that included the Caspian crossing to Astrakhan. The deep waters offshore form part of the sea's southern basin.