Golestan
گلستانGreen hills and open steppe at the south-east corner of the Caspian, the ancient land of Hyrcania.
Golestan was ancient Hyrcania, Gorgan, the land of wolves. Its plains open north onto the Turkmen steppe, and the province has a large Turkmen community.
Its most famous monument is the Gonbad-e Qabus, a brick tower tomb more than fifty metres high built around 1006 for the Ziyarid ruler Qabus. Nearby runs the Great Wall of Gorgan, a Sasanian frontier wall some two hundred kilometres long.
Cities and towns
Gorganگرگان
The provincial capital
Gonbad-e Kavusگنبد کاووس
The town of the great tower tomb
Landmarksبناها و نشانهها
Gonbad-e Qabus
گنبد قابوسA brick tower tomb more than fifty metres high
Golestan through time
Iranian historyThe Arab conquest and the Persian revivalفتح اعراب و احیای زبان فارسی
Islam reached Iran with the Arab armies of the 7th century. Persian survived, took on a new script and, under dynasties such as the Samanids, returned as one of the great literary languages of the world.
- Gonbad-e Qabus built for Qabus ibn Voshmgir
- Inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage site
Stories from hereداستانها
The Persian leopard
The great cat that never left: the Persian leopard still hunts the mountains of Iran and the Caucasus, sometimes within sight of Tehran's apartment blocks.
The Caspian tiger
The tiger of Mazandaran vanished from Iran in the mid-twentieth century. It lives on in a name, a hero's cloak and a genetic surprise.
Sturgeon and caviar of the Caspian
Armoured fish of an ancient lineage, whose eggs made the Caspian famous and whose decline turned a luxury into a conservation emergency.