Rašt

Rasht lies in the humid lowlands of Gilan south of the Caspian Sea, where heavy rain, rice fields, mulberry groves and forested hills set the region apart from the dry Iranian plateau. Its bazaars gathered rice, silk cocoons and raw silk from the villages, and the city became the commercial heart of Gilan, a border town between the Caspian shore and the road up to Qazvin.

Tradition dates the city's founding to 1494, but it grew mainly in the sixteenth century, while Gilan was divided between local rulers. After Abbas I conquered Gilan in 1592, Rasht became the provincial capital and a major centre of the Safavid silk trade, with Armenian, English and Dutch merchants buying silk here for export. In 1669 the Cossack leader Stenka Razin raided the city. Russian troops occupied Rasht and the rest of Gilan from 1722, and many of them died of fever in the marshes. The Treaty of Rasht in 1732 returned Gilan and the other southern Caspian provinces to Persia.