Tehran
تهرانThe capital province: Tehran, a town that became a capital under the Qajars and grew into a city of millions beneath the Alborz.
Tehran was a modest town near the ancient city of Rey when Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar made it his capital in 1786. Rey itself is far older, one of the great cities of medieval Iran until the Mongols ruined it in the thirteenth century.
The twentieth century remade Tehran: Pahlavi boulevards, the Azadi Tower of 1971, the Milad Tower completed in 2007, and always the Alborz standing over the city to the north.
Cities and towns
Tehranتهران
The capital, spreading up the foothills of the Alborz
Reyری
An ancient city, now part of greater Tehran
Landmarksبناها و نشانه‌ها
Milad Tower
برج میلادA telecommunications tower about 435 metres tall, completed in 2007
Azadi Tower
برج آزادیThe gateway monument of 1971, designed by Hossein Amanat
Tehran through time
Iranian historyThe Pahlavi century and afterدوران پهلوی و پس از آن
Two Pahlavi shahs built railways, universities and a centralised state, while poets, novelists and film-makers created a new Persian culture. The era ended with the revolution of 1979.
- Shahyad Tower inaugurated in Tehran
- Monument renamed Azadi, “freedom”
- Milad Tower completed
Poets of Tehranشاعران
Iraj Mirza
ایرج میرزاA Qajar prince who brought everyday speech, wit and a sharp social eye into Persian verse at the turn of the 20th century.
Zhaleh Qaem-Maqami
ژاله قائم‌مقامیA woman of the old Qajar elite who wrote, in private and in classical forms, about marriage and a woman's lot. Most of it was read only after her death.
Mohammad-Taqi Bahar
محمدتقی بهارThe last great classical poet of Iran: poet laureate, constitutionalist, journalist, politician and the founder of modern Persian stylistics.
Nima Yushij
نیما یوشیجThe father of modern Persian poetry, who loosened the rules of line and rhyme that had held for a thousand years.
Shahriar
شهریارMaster of the modern ghazal in Persian and author of the best-loved poem in Azerbaijani Turkish. Iran's National Poetry Day marks his death.
Parvin E'tesami
پروین اعتصامیThe most celebrated woman poet of early modern Iran, whose debate poems give voice to the poor, the orphaned and the overlooked.
Ahmad Shamlou
احمد شاملوPoet, translator and editor who freed Persian verse from metre altogether.
Fereydoun Moshiri
فریدون مشیریOne of the most widely read poets of modern Iran, whose gentle love poems kept a foot in both the old music and the new.
Simin Behbahani
سیمین بهبهانیShe renewed the ghazal with new metres and the subjects of modern life, and was called the lioness of Iran.
Siavash Kasraei
سیاوش کسراییPoet of Arash the Archer, who retold an ancient Iranian legend of sacrifice in the new verse of Nima.
Sohrab Sepehri
سهراب سپهریPainter and poet of Kashan, whose quiet, luminous lines are among the most loved in modern Persian.
Hushang Ebtehaj (Sayeh)
هوشنگ ابتهاج (سایه)Writing as Sayeh, he was the great master of the ghazal in the 20th century and an editor of Hafez.
Mehdi Akhavan-Sales
مهدی اخوان ثالثThe poet of Winter, who fused the grandeur of Khorasani classical verse with Nima's new forms and a deep sense of loss.
Forough Farrokhzad
فروغ فرخ‌زادThe boldest voice of her generation, who wrote a woman's inner life with a frankness Persian poetry had not heard.
Tahereh Saffarzadeh
طاهره صفارزادهA poet who went from the international avant-garde of the 1960s to a poetry of faith, and translated the Qur'an into English and Persian.
Mohammad-Reza Shafiei Kadkani
محمدرضا شفیعی کدکنیPoet under the name M. Sereshk and the most influential scholar of Persian literature of his generation.
Qeysar Aminpour
قیصر امین‌پورThe leading poet of the generation that came of age with the revolution and the war, and a master of short, clear lines.
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.
Afsharids, Zands and Qajars
A soldier-king who sacked Delhi, a regent who rebuilt Shiraz, and a dynasty that made Tehran the capital and lived through Iran's Constitutional Revolution.
The Pahlavi century and after
Two Pahlavi shahs built railways, universities and a centralised state, while poets, novelists and film-makers created a new Persian culture. The era ended with the revolution of 1979.
Zahhak and Kaveh the blacksmith
A king with serpents growing from his shoulders, and the blacksmith who raised his leather apron on a spear and brought him down.