Estakhr

Estakhr (in Persian: استخر) was an ancient city located in southern Iran, in Fars province, five kilometers north of Persepolis. It was a prosperous city during the time of Achaemenid Persia.

History

At first, Estakhr was an Achaemenid city in present-day Fârs Province, Iran. It gained its importance not only from its close association with Persepolis, but commanded the western end of an ancient caravan route that ran from the Indus Valley via Kandahar and Seistan to Persia/Parthia.^[1]

It temporarily became the capital of Sassanian Persia during the reign of Ardashir I before the capital moved to Ctesiphon. During the Sasanid period the royal treasury of the empire known as ganj ī šāhīgān is said to have been in Eṣṭaḵr. In 915-16, Masʿūdī himself saw in a house at Estakhr owned by a Persian noble, "the large and very fine manuscript" of a work copied in 731 from original documents in the royal treasury.^[2]

In 659 CE, Caliph Ali sent Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan to suppress a Persian rebellion in Estakhr. Ziyad succeeded at this and stayed on as governor. For a while, Abdallah ibn Muawiya (the designated leader of a Kaysanites Shia sub-sect) established himself at Estakhr from where he ruled for a few years over Fārs and other parts of Persia, including Ahvaz, Jibal, Isfahan and Kerman from 744 to 748 until fleeing to Khurasan from the advancing Umayyad forces. After being rebuilt, the city lost its importance to Shiraz. Today only an archaeological site remains.

Footnotes

References

• Hill, John E. (2009). Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, First to Second Centuries CE. BookSurge. ISBN 978-1-4392-2134-1. 

External links

• History & Archaeology of Estakhr