Karaj Abi Dulaf

Karaj Abi Dulaf belonged to western Iran's Jibal, later called Persian Iraq, in the country east of Nihavand. Its name commemorated the Arab commander Abu Dulaf and his family's estates. The medieval place was distinct from the later city of Karaj near Tehran, and its surrounding district appears in geographical accounts linking Hamadan and Isfahan.

Around 1340, Hamd Allah Mustawfi described Karaj together with the Karah-Rud district in his Nuzhat al-Qulub. North of it stood Mount Rasmand. At the mountain's foot, he recorded a large spring associated with the legendary king Kay Khusraw and broad pastures known as the Marghzar of Kitu or Kisu. Nearby stood the strong fortress of Farzin. Mustawfi assessed the district's revenues at eleven thousand dinars. His account places water, grazing land and a fortified site within the same fiscal landscape. In his table of routes, Karaj lay forty-five leagues from Isfahan, giving the district a place within the measured communications of fourteenth-century Persian Iraq.