Yazd

Yazd sits in a basin between two deserts in the heart of Iran, a city of mud-brick lanes, wind towers and courtyard houses that grew rich because it was hard to reach. Qanats carry water to it from the mountains, and its Zoroastrian community, which kept its fire temples here after the Arab conquest, lives beside Muslims and Jews. Its remoteness shielded it from many of the invasions that ruined other cities, and refugees from the Mongol wars found a haven here.

Marco Polo, passing through in 1272, praised the good trade in the silk cloth called yasdi. In the fourteenth century Yazd briefly served as capital of the Muzaffarids, whose founder held the city against a siege in 1350 and 1351. The Friday mosque and the tomb of Sayyid Rukn al-Din with its madrasa, finished in 1325, belong to this age of building. Under the Timurids, the governor Amir Chakhmaq and his wife added a mosque, bazaar and caravanserai complex in the 1430s. Safavid Yazd wove silk that was sold in Isfahan, and in the eighteenth century the city came under Bakhtiari khans and later Qajar governors, still a trading stop on the desert road between Isfahan and Kerman.