Zāveh

Zaveh was a district of Khorasan whose name is associated with the Sufi master Qutb al-Din Haydar. His tomb gave the later town of Torbat-e Heydarieh its name: torbat means a burial place. Haydar's followers became known for their ascetic practices, and his resting place drew visitors to a settlement that grew separately from the older town of Zaveh.

In the fourteenth century Hamdallah Mustawfi described Zaveh as a fortified town supplied by river and underground channels, producing grain, silk, cotton and fruit. Under the Safavids, the fort at Torbat guarded the route towards Herat and faced raids by Uzbeks and others. Sultan Mahmud Torbati rebuilt the principal shrine in 1614, and a congregational mosque followed in 1630. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Ishaq Khan Qarai ruled the region with considerable autonomy and encouraged the town's development.