Kojūr

Kojur occupied the Alborz uplands between the Caspian coastal plain and the mountain interior of Rostamdar. Between 1340 and 1346, the Baduspanid ruler Jalal al-Dawla Eskandar rebuilt the town and its fort and made it his capital. This gave Kojur a specific political importance during the fragmentation of Ilkhanid power. In the mid-fifteenth century, the Baduspanid domain divided between rival family branches. Kojur, together with Larijan, first belonged to the branch of Eskandar, but in 1504 it was captured by the branch of Kavus ruling from Nur. The paired names Nur and Kojur thereafter became familiar in administrative accounts. Shah Abbas I ended Baduspanid rule near the close of the sixteenth century, and Safavid sources often treated Nur and Kojur as one unit. The district’s history therefore concerns both a fortified dynastic capital and changing control over an enclosed mountain region.