Qazvīn

Qazvin stands on a fertile plain south of the Alborz, where routes from the Iranian plateau lead towards Azerbaijan and the Caspian mountains. Its old city grew around the Friday mosque and bazaar. Among its scholars was the historian and geographer Hamdallah Mostawfi, whose writings recorded the lands and peoples of fourteenth-century Iran. A century earlier, Mongol forces had sacked the city, an event remembered in his history.

In the sixteenth century Shah Tahmasp I established the Safavid court at Qazvin, farther from the Ottoman frontier than Tabriz. A royal precinct of gardens and pavilions rose near the older city, and the court attracted painters, calligraphers and scholars. The Chehel Sotun pavilion and the Ali Qapu gateway recall this period, when Qazvin served as the centre of the empire. Tahmasp also promoted Shiite religious institutions in a city long known for its Sunni learning, making the city an important setting for debates over religious authority and the practice of Friday prayer.

Shah Abbas I later turned his attention southwards. During the 1590s he travelled repeatedly between Qazvin and Isfahan, and by the end of the decade the latter had become the principal Safavid capital. Qazvin nevertheless retained its gardens, markets and position on the road to the northwest, together with the buildings that recalled its years as a royal city.