Kermānšāh

Kermanshah stands in a fertile valley of the central Zagros, on the road that links Baghdad and the Mesopotamian plain with Hamadan and the Iranian plateau. Wheat fields and orchards surround the town, and the rock reliefs of Taq-e Bostan, carved by Sasanian kings in the hills nearby, remind travellers of its long history. For centuries Kurdish clans, Ottoman governors and Iranian shahs competed for this border country.

By about 1340, after earlier devastation, the geographer Hamdallah Mostawfi described Kermanshah as a village rather than the town it once was. Its revival came as a frontier stronghold. Ottoman forces occupied the city in 1723, leaving many villages in the province empty. Nader Shah recovered it in late 1732 and built a heavily armed fortress to its west. New building began in 1806, when Fath Ali Shah appointed his son Mohammad Ali Mirza governor. From his court at Kermanshah he enlarged the walls and raised a fortress, caravanserais and merchants' houses. Trade, army administration and the passage of Shiite pilgrims to the shrine cities of Iraq together kept the city important.