Isfahan

Isfahan grew from two settlements on the Zayandeh Rud — Jay and the Jewish quarter of Yahudiyeh — whose roots reach back to Sasanian and possibly earlier times. After the Arab conquest it became a prosperous provincial capital, and under the Seljuks in the 11th century it was the capital of an empire stretching across Iran and beyond. The Friday Mosque preserves that period in its brick domes, one built for the vizier Nizam al-Mulk, and the city kept its importance through Mongol and Timurid rule.

Its transformation came in 1598, when Shah Abbas I moved the Safavid capital here from Qazvin. He laid out an entirely new district south of the old town: the immense Naqsh-e Jahan Square with its mosques, palace and bazaar gate, the tree-lined Chaharbagh avenue leading to the river, gardens, bridges and a canal system. Armenian merchants from Julfa on the Aras were resettled on the south bank at New Julfa and given control of the silk trade. By the mid-17th century Isfahan had several hundred thousand inhabitants and a reputation abroad that produced the phrase Isfahan nesf-e jahan — Isfahan is half the world.

The golden age ended abruptly in 1722, when Afghan forces besieged and took the city, and the capital later moved to Shiraz and then Tehran. Isfahan declined to a provincial town before reviving in the 20th century as a centre of textiles, steel and engineering, its monuments restored and the square inscribed by UNESCO in 1979. During the war that began on 28 February 2026, strikes on 9 March 2026 damaged buildings on and around Naqsh-e Jahan Square, including the Shah Mosque, the Jameh Mosque, Ali Qapu and Chehel Sotoun, and UNESCO called for Iran's heritage sites to be protected.

Isfahan is the capital of Iranian craftsmanship. Miniature painting, hand-painted enamel on copper (minakari), inlaid wooden khatam boxes, block-printed qalamkar cloth, hammered copper and silver filigree are all made in workshops around the square and sold in the bazaar, often by families who have worked the same trade for generations. Carpet weaving from the surrounding villages feeds the same market, and craftsmen are used to demonstrating their work to visitors.

Isfahanis are proverbial in Iran for commercial shrewdness, thrift and a dry, teasing humour, and other Iranians tell endless jokes about all three. Good manners are elaborate: taarof, the ritual exchange of offers and refusals, governs everything from paying a taxi fare to accepting a cup of tea. The city is religiously mixed by Iranian standards — a large Armenian Christian community in New Julfa, with its own churches, schools and calendar of feasts, and a small Jewish community with old roots in Yahudiyeh.

Music has a home under the arches of the Khaju Bridge, where men gather in the evenings to sing traditional songs for the echo. Poetry, calligraphy and architecture are sources of civic pride, and locals quote the old boast that their city is half the world. Football is followed closely through the two long-established city clubs, Sepahan and Zob Ahan, whose derby fills the stadium.

About two million people live in Isfahan, with a metropolitan population considerably larger, making it Iran's third city after Tehran and Mashhad. Most residents are Persian-speaking Shia Muslims, alongside the Armenian community of New Julfa and workers drawn from across the province by the factories on the outskirts.

The economy is unusually broad for Iran: steel mills, an oil refinery, textile plants, cement, engineering and military industry ring the city, while tourism, handicrafts and several universities occupy the centre. Isfahan province is also a farming region, and the shrinking of the Zayandeh Rud has hit farmers downstream hard, producing repeated protests in recent years. Sanctions, inflation and a weak currency shape household budgets as they do nationwide.

Water is the city's defining problem. The river that gave Isfahan its gardens and bridges now runs dry through the centre for much of the year because of upstream diversion and drought, and land subsidence has opened cracks in the plain and threatens historic buildings. Life still turns towards the riverbanks in the cooler hours: families picnic on the grass, children play under the bridges, and the square fills after sunset, when tea and qalyan are carried out onto carpets and the domes are lit.

The city's own dish is beryani — not the Indian rice dish of a similar name but minced mutton, cooked with spices and lung, pressed into a flat patty, browned in a small pan and served on hot flatbread with basil, walnuts, raw onion and a dusting of cinnamon. It is eaten at lunch, often with doogh, the salted mint buttermilk. The other Isfahani speciality is khoresh mast, a cold sweet dish of yoghurt thickened with minced lamb, saffron and sugar, served in small portions.

Everyday eating follows the national repertoire: chelow kabab of lamb or minced kubideh with saffron rice and grilled tomato, dizi at lunchtime in the older tea houses, and rich stews such as gheimeh and ghormeh sabzi at home. Bread comes from bakeries turning out sangak, baked on hot pebbles, and lavash. Ramadan changes the rhythm entirely, with the streets filling after sunset.

Isfahan is best known across Iran for its sweets. Gaz, a nougat of pistachio or almond with rosewater, is boxed and carried home by every visitor; poolaki, thin discs of coloured boiled sugar dissolved in tea, are another local speciality, and the bazaar's sweet shops sell halva, sohan and candied nuts. Tea is constant, served dark in small glasses with sugar cubes, and the New Julfa cafés add espresso and cake to the city's repertoire.