Lake Maharlu

Maharlu lay in the depression southeast of Shiraz, between the city and Sarvestan. Fourteenth-century geographer Hamd-Allah Mostawfi, repeating an earlier account by Ibn al-Balkhi, described Lake Mahluya as a salt marsh twelve leagues in circumference. In spring it received floodwater from Shiraz and the surrounding country.

The description placed this saline basin within the seasonal water landscape of medieval Fars. Its brackish expanse contrasted with the cultivated land around its margins, and the name Mahluya was associated with the village on its southern shore. For travellers and geographers approaching Shiraz from the southeast, the lake was a distinctive landmark, defined as much by salt and spring floods as by open water.