Place:Tehran, Tehran, Iran

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Tehran is a city in Tehran Province and the capital (most important city) of Iran. With a population of around 8.7 million in the city and 15 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most populous city in Iran and Western Asia, and has the second-largest metropolitan area in the Middle East, after Cairo. It is ranked 24th in the world by metropolitan area population.

In the Classical era, part of the territory of present-day Tehran was occupied by Rhages, a prominent Median city destroyed in the medieval Arab, Turkic, and Mongol invasions. Modern Ray is urban area absorbed into the metropolitan area of Greater Tehran.

Tehran was first chosen as the capital of Iran by Agha Mohammad Khan of the Qajar dynasty in 1786, because of its proximity to Iran's territories in the Caucasus, then separated from Iran in the Russo-Iranian Wars, to avoid the vying factions of the previously ruling Iranian dynasties. The capital has been moved several times throughout history, and Tehran is the 32nd national capital of Persia. Large-scale demolition and rebuilding began in the 1920s, and Tehran has been a destination for mass migrations from all over Iran since the 20th century.

Tehran is home to many historical locations, including the royal complexes of Golestan, Sa'dabad, and Niavaran, where the two last dynasties of the former Imperial State of Iran were seated. Tehran's most famous landmarks include the Azadi Tower, a memorial built under the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1971 to mark the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Imperial State of Iran, and the Milad Tower, the world's sixth-tallest self-supporting tower, completed in 2007, and the Tabiat Bridge, completed in 2014.

Most of the population are Persian,^[1] and roughly 99% of them understand and speak the Persian language, but large populations of other ethno-linguistic groups live in Tehran and speak Persian as a second language.

Tehran has an international airport (Imam Khomeini Airport), a domestic airport (Mehrabad Airport), a central railway station, a rapid transit system, Tehran Metro, a bus rapid transit system, trolleybuses, and a large network of highways.

Plans to relocate Iran's capital from Tehran to another area, due to air pollution and earthquakes, have so far not yet received approval. A 2016 survey of 230 cities by consultant Mercer ranked Tehran 203rd for quality of life. According to the Global Destinations Cities Index in 2016, Tehran is among the top ten fastest growing destinations.

The City Council declared October 6 Tehran Day in 2016, celebrating the day in 1907 when the city officially became the capital of Iran.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Archaeological remains from the ancient city of Ray suggest that settlement in Tehran dates back over 8,000 years.

Classical era

Tehran is in the historical Media region of in northwestern Iran. By the time of the Median Empire, part of present-day Tehran was a suburb of the prominent Median city of Rhages. In the Avesta's Videvdat (i, 15), Rhages is mentioned as the 12th sacred place created by Ohrmazd. In Old Persian inscriptions, Rhages appears as a province (Bistun 2, 10–18). From Rhages, Darius I sent reinforcements to his father Hystaspes, who was putting down a rebellion in Parthia (Bistun 3, 1–10).^[2] Some Middle Persian texts give Rhages as the birthplace of Zoroaster, although modern historians generally place the birth of Zoroaster in Khorasan Province.

Mount Damavand, the highest peak of Iran, which is located near Tehran, is an important location in Ferdowsi's Šāhnāme, an Iranian epic poem based on the ancient legends of Iran. It appears in the epics as the homeland of the protoplast Keyumars, the birthplace of King Manuchehr, the place where King Fereydun bound the dragon fiend Aždahāk (Bivarasp), and the place where Arash shot his arrow.^[3]

Medieval period

In 641, during the reign of the Sasanian Empire, Yazdgerd III issued his last appeal to the nation from Rhages, before fleeing to Khorasan.^[2] Rhages was dominated by the Parthian House of Mihran, and Siyavakhsh—the son of Mehran, the son of Bahram Chobin—who resisted the 7th-century Muslim invasion of Iran.^[2] Because of this resistance, when the Arabs captured Rhages, they ordered the town destroyed and rebuilt anew by traitor aristocrat Farrukhzad.^[2]

In the 9th century, Tehran was a well-known village, but less so than the city of Rhages, flourishing nearby. Rhages was described in detail by 10th-century Muslim geographers.^[2] Despite the interest that Arabian Baghdad displayed in Rhages, the number of Arabs in the city remained insignificant and the population mainly consisted of Iranians of all classes.^[2]

The Oghuz Turks invaded Rhages in 1035 and again in 1042, but the city was recovered under the Seljuks and the Khwarezmians.^[2] Medieval writer Najm od Din Razi declared the population of Rhages about 500,000 before the Mongol invasion. In the 13th century, the Mongols invaded Rhages, laid the city to ruins, and massacred many of its inhabitants.^[2] Others escaped to Tehran.

In July 1404, Castilian ambassador Ruy González de Clavijo visited Tehran on a journey to Samarkand, the capital of Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur, the ruler of Iran at the time. He described it in his diary as an unwalled region.

Early modern era

Italian traveler Pietro della Valle passed through Tehran overnight in 1618, and in his memoirs called the city Taheran. English traveler Thomas Herbert entered Tehran in 1627, and mentioned it as Tyroan. Herbert stated that the city had about 3,000 houses.

In the early 18th century, Karim Khan of the Zand dynasty ordered a palace and a government office built in Tehran, possibly to declare the city his capital; but he later moved his government to Shiraz. Eventually, Qajar king Agha Mohammad Khan chose Tehran as the capital of Iran in 1786.

Agha Mohammad Khan's choice of his capital was based on a similar concern for the control of both northern and southern Iran.^[4] He was aware of the loyalties of the inhabitants of former capitals Isfahan and Shiraz to the Safavid and Zand dynasties respectively, and was wary of the power of the local notables in these cities.^[4] Thus, he probably viewed Tehran's lack of a substantial urban structure as a blessing, because it minimized the chances of resistance to his rule by the notables and by the general public.^[4] Moreover, he had to remain within close reach of Azerbaijan and Iran's integral northern and southern Caucasian territories^[4]—at that time not yet irrevocably lost per the treaties of Golestan and Turkmenchay to the neighboring Russian Empire—which would follow in the course of the 19th century.

After 50 years of Qajar rule, the city still barely had more than 80,000 inhabitants.^[4] Up until the 1870s, Tehran consisted of a walled citadel, a roofed bazaar, and the three main neighborhoods of Udlajan, Chale-Meydan, and Sangelaj, where the majority resided.

The first development plan of Tehran in 1855 emphasized traditional spatial structure. The second, under the supervision of Dar ol Fonun in 1878, included new city walls, in the form of a perfect octagon with an area of 19 square kilometers, mimicking the Renaissance cities of Europe. Tehran was 19.79 square kilometers, and had expanded more than fourfold.

Late modern era

Growing awareness of civil rights resulted in the Constitutional Revolution and the first constitution of Iran in 1906. On June 2, 1907, the parliament passed a law on local governance known as the Baladie (municipal law), providing a detailed outline on issues such as the role of councils within the city, the members' qualifications, the election process, and the requirements to be entitled to vote. The then-Qajar monarch Mohammad Ali Shah abolished the constitution and bombarded the parliament with the help of the Russian-controlled Cossack Brigade on June 23, 1908. That followed the capture of the city by the revolutionary forces of Ali-Qoli Khan (Sardar Asad II) and Mohammad Vali Khan (Sepahsalar e Tonekaboni) on July 13, 1909. As a result, the monarch was exiled and replaced with his son Ahmad, and the parliament was re-established.

After World War I, the constituent assembly elected Reza Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty as the new monarch, who immediately suspended the Baladie law of 1907, replacing the decentralised and autonomous city councils with centralist approaches to governance and planning.^[5]

From the 1920s to the 1930s, under the rule of Reza Shah, the city was essentially rebuilt from scratch. Several old buildings, including parts of the Golestan Palace, Tekye Dowlat, and Tupkhane Square, were replaced with modern buildings influenced by classical Iranian architecture, particularly the buildings of the National Bank, the police headquarters, the telegraph office, and the military academy.

Changes to the urban fabric began with the street-widening act of 1933, which served as a framework for changes in all other cities. The Grand Bazaar was divided in half and many historic buildings were demolished and replaced by wide straight avenues, and the traditional texture of the city was replaced with intersecting cruciform streets that created large roundabouts in major public spaces such as the bazaar.

As an attempt to create a network for easy transportation within the city, the old citadel and city walls were demolished in 1937, replaced by wide streets cutting through the urban fabric. The new city map of Tehran in 1937 was heavily influenced by modernist planning patterns of zoning and gridiron networks.^[5]

During World War II, Soviet and British troops entered the city. In 1943, Tehran was the site of the Tehran Conference, attended by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The establishment of the planning organization of Iran in 1948 resulted in the first socio-economic development plan to cover from 1949 to 1955. These plans not only failed to slow the unbalanced growth of Tehran but with the 1962 land reforms that Reza Shah's son and successor Mohammad Reza Shah named the White Revolution, Tehran's chaotic growth was further accentuated.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Tehran developed rapidly under Mohammad Reza Shah. Modern buildings altered the face of Tehran and ambitious projects were planned for the following decades. To resolve the problem of social exclusion, a first comprehensive plan was approved in 1968. The consortium of Iranian architect Abd-ol-Aziz Farmanfarmaian and the American firm of Victor Gruen Associates identified the main problems blighting the city as high-density suburbs, air and water pollution, inefficient infrastructure, unemployment, and rural-urban migration. Eventually, the whole plan was marginalized by the 1979 Revolution and the subsequent Iran–Iraq War.^[5]

Tehran's most famous landmark, the Azadi Tower, was built by the order of the Shah in 1971. It was designed by Hossein Amanat, an architect whose design won a competition, combining elements of classical Sassanian architecture with post-classical Iranian architecture. Formerly known as the Shahyad Tower, it was built to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of the Imperial State of Iran.

During the Iran–Iraq War in 1980 to 1988, Tehran was repeatedly targeted by airstrikes and Scud missile attacks.

The 435-meter-high Milad Tower, one of the proposed development projects of pre-revolutionary Iran, was completed in 2007, and has become a famous landmark of Tehran. Tabiat Bridge a 270-meter pedestrian overpass,^[6] designed by award-winning architect Leila Araghian, was completed in 2014.

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