|Tehran Milad Tower|
Tehran is the capital of Iran and the Tehran province, with a population of around 11.3 million and overcoming 14 million in the wider metropolitan area, Tehran is the largest urban and urban area of Iran and the Largest city of West Asia.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, Tehran was the subject of a mass migration of people from all over Iran. The city houses many historical mosques, churches, synagogues and Zoroastrian temples of fire. However, modern structures, especially Azadi (freedom) tower and the Milad Tower, have come to symbolize the city. Tehran is ranked 29th in the world by the population of its metropolitan area. During the history of Iran, the capital has been relocated many times, and Tehran is the 32nd national capital of Iran, although it has been the capital of Iran for about 220 years. Although a variety of unofficial languages is spoken, about 99% of the population and speak Persian. The majority of people in Tehran identify themselves as Persians. In the pre-Islamic and early Islamic period, Tehran was an unimportant village and a part of today's Tehran was occupied by Ray (who appears in the Avesta in the form of Ragha), now part of the city of Tehran, who played her role after the destruction of Ray The Mongols took over in the early 13th century.
A significant historical city in the area of today's Tehran, which is now absorbed by it, is known as Ray, which is etymologically associated with the Ancient Persian and Avestan Ragha. The city was an important area of Iranian-speaking Medes and Achaemenids.
In the Zoroastrian Avesta, Videvdad, I, 15, Ragha is mentioned as the twelfth holy place created by Ahura-Mazda. Ragha appears as a province in the ancient Persian inscriptions (Behistun 2, 10-18). From Ragha, Darius sent the Great Reinforcement to his father Hystaspes (Vishtaspa), who laid down the rebellion in Parthia (Behistun 3, 1-10).
The Damavand Mountain, which is near the city, also appears in the Shahnameh as the place where Freydun limits the dragon devil Zahhak. Damavand is important in Persian mythological and legendary events. Kayūmarṯ, the Zoroastrian prototype of the people and the first king in Shahnameh, is to live in Damāvand. In these legends, he was credited with the founding of the city of Damavand. Arash, the archer who had sacrificed his body, giving his whole force to the arrow that demarcated Iran and Turan, shot his arrow from Damāvand. This Persian legend was celebrated every year at the Tiregan Festival. A popular festival is held in the city of Damavand on 7 Šawwāl 1230 or the Gregorian calendar, 31 August 1815. During the alleged feast, the people celebrated the anniversary of Zahhak's death. In the Zoroastrian legends the tyrant Zahhak is finally to be killed by the Iranian hero Garšāsp before the last days.
In some Middle-American texts, Ray (Ragha) is given as the birthplace of Zoroaster, although modern historians usually place the Zoraster in Khorasan. In a Persian tradition, the legendary King Manūčehr was born in Damavand.
During the Sassanid era, Yazdegerd III in 641 from Ray issued his last appeal to the nation before fleeing to Khorasan. The shrine of Bibi Shahr-Banu, which is located in the modern Tehran spur and is accessible only to women, is connected with the memory of the daughter of Yazdegerd, who became the wife of al-Husayn after the tradition. Ali, the third Shi'ite Imam. Ray was the fief of the Parthian Mihran family and Siyavakhsh, the son of Mihran, the son of Bahram Chobin, resisted the Arab invasion. Because of this resistance, when the Arabs conquered Ray, they ordered the city to be destroyed and ordered Farrukhzad to rebuild the city.
In the tenth century, Ray is described in detail in the work of Islamic geographers. Despite the interest of Baghdad in Ray, the number of Arabs there was insignificant, and the population consisted of Persians of all classes. The Ghuzz Turks abandoned Ray 1035 and 1042, but the city recovered during the Saljuqid and Khwarazm era. The Mongols brought beams to complete waste, and according to Islamic historians of the era almost all their inhabitants were massacred. The city is mentioned in later Safavid Chronicles as an unimportant city.
The origin of the name Tehran is unknown. Tehran was known as a village in the 9th century, but was less well known than the town of Rhages (Ray), which flourished in the early era. Najm al-Din Razi known as Dayya gives the population of Ray as 500,000 before the Mongol invasion. In the 13th century, after the destruction of Ray of Mongols, many of its inhabitants escaped to Tehran. In some sources of the early era, the city is referred to as "Rhages Teheran". The city is later mentioned in Hamdollah Mostowfis Nuz'hat al-Qulub (written in 1340) as a famous village.
There is also a shrine dedicated to Princess Shahr Banu, the eldest daughter of the last ruler of the Sassanide empire. She bore Ali Zayn al Abidin, the fourth holy Imam of the Shia faith. This was through her marriage with Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. A nearby mountain is also named after it. However, some sources wrote the shrine of the goddess of water and fertility, Anahita, claiming that it was renamed in Islamic times to protect it from any harm after the Iranians' conversion to Islam.
Don Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo, a Castilian ambassador, was probably the first European to visit Tehran and in July 1404, while on a trip to Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan), the capital of Timur, which ruled Iran at that time. At this time, the city of Tehran was unfamiliar.
In the early 18th century, Karim Khan Zand ordered a palace and a government office that was to be built in Tehran to possibly declare the city its capital but later transferred its government to Shiraz. Tehran eventually became the capital of Iran in 1795, when the Qajar king Agha Mohammad Khan was crowned in the city. It remains the capital until today.
In the 1920s and 30s, the city was essentially rebuilt from the ground up under the rule of the Shah of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi. Reza Shah believed that ancient buildings such as large parts of the Golestan Palace, Takieh-ye Dowlat, Toopkhaneh Square, the city fortifications and the ancient citadel should among other things not be part of a modern city.
They were systematically destroyed and modern buildings in the pre-Islamic Iranian style, such as the National Bank, the Police Department, the Telegraph Office and the Military Academy were built in their place. The Tehran bazaar was divided into half and many historic buildings were destroyed to build wide, straight ways in the capital. Many Persian gardens have also fallen victim to new construction projects.
During the Second World War, Soviet and British troops entered the city. Tehran was the site of the Tehran conference in 1943, attended by US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet Prime Minister Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
In the sixties and seventies Tehran developed under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Modern buildings altered the face of Tehran and ambitious projects were presented for the following decades. The majority of these projects continued after the Islamic revolution of 1979, when Tehran's urbanization had reached its peak, and the new government began many other new projects such as the Milad Tower.
During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, Tehran was the target of repeated Scud missile attacks and air raids.