Kashan

Kashan is one of the oldest inhabited places on the Iranian plateau. The mounds of Tepe Sialk on the southern edge of town were settled in the sixth millennium BC, and the pottery found there, painted with animals and geometric patterns, is among the earliest in Iran. Water from the springs at Fin and the mountains behind made settlement possible on the edge of the salt desert, and the town grew where the plateau route between the north and Isfahan met the desert crossings.

In the Islamic centuries Kashan became a centre of craft. Its potters were known for the glazed tilework called kashi, used in shrines across the region, and its weavers produced silk and carpets for the Safavid court. Shah Abbas I is buried here rather than in Isfahan, and the Fin garden was laid out with the spring water in the same period. An earthquake in 1778 destroyed much of the town, and the merchant houses that visitors come to see were built in the prosperous Qajar rebuilding that followed, when Kashan traded carpets, silk, copper and rosewater.

The garden at Fin is also remembered as the place where Amir Kabir, the reforming chancellor of Nasir al-Din Shah, was killed in its bathhouse in 1852 after being dismissed and exiled. In the 20th century the town lived on carpets, textiles and, later, industry on the plateau. Since the 2000s many of its crumbling courtyard mansions have been restored as hotels and museums, turning Kashan into a regular stop between Tehran and Isfahan, and the Fin garden was inscribed by UNESCO as part of the Persian Garden in 2011.

Kashan's reputation in Iran rests on craft and on roses. Carpet weaving is the town's oldest industry, and Kashan rugs, finely knotted in wool or silk, are known well beyond the country; copper, textiles and tilework are made in the bazaar workshops. The spring rose harvest in Qamsar and the neighbouring hill villages is a working festival as much as a spectacle, with families picking before sunrise and distilling through the day; Iran supplies most of the world's rosewater.

The town is religiously conservative and socially traditional, with a strong calendar of Shia observance. Muharram is marked with processions and street kitchens, and the carpet-washing ceremony at Mashhad-e Ardehal, west of the town, draws very large crowds to a ritual with centuries of local history. Daily courtesies follow the national pattern of taarof, the elaborate exchange of offers and refusals, and hospitality towards strangers is pressed hard.

Architecture is a matter of civic pride. The merchant houses, with their sunken courtyards, wind catchers, stained glass and cool basements, are studied as models of building for a desert climate, and their restoration has given a generation of local builders and plasterers work. Poetry and calligraphy are valued, and the modern poet Sohrab Sepehri, born here, is claimed by the town as its own.

About 300,000 people live in Kashan, a town large enough for universities, hospitals and industry but small enough that the old quarter still works at walking pace. The population is Persian-speaking and overwhelmingly Shia.

Carpets remain central: hand weaving in homes and workshops, and machine-made rugs and textiles in factories on the outskirts, which supply much of Iran. The rose and herbal-distillate trade employs whole villages in spring, and farms on the plain grow pistachios, pomegranates, melons and grain wherever water allows. Tourism from inside Iran has grown with the restored houses, and industry on the Tehran–Isfahan corridor provides other work.

Water governs everything. Kashan has depended for millennia on springs and qanats, the underground channels that bring water from the mountains, and falling groundwater, drought and land subsidence are serious local problems. Summer sets the rhythm of the day: business early, a long closed middle of the day, then streets and bazaar lanes busy again into the evening, when families walk in the gardens and courtyards cool down. Younger residents often leave for Tehran or Isfahan for work, and inflation and sanctions weigh on household budgets as elsewhere in the country.

Kashan's kitchen is the food of the central plateau, sharpened by the town's scented waters. Rosewater, golab, is distilled in the hills each spring and goes into sweets, sherbets, rice puddings and tea, and the same workshops distil waters from mint, willow and dozens of other plants, drunk as remedies as much as refreshments. Sherbets of rosewater with basil seed or vinegar and mint are the summer drink.

Everyday meals follow the national repertoire. Dizi, lamb and chickpeas stewed in a stone pot and mashed at the table, is the classic lunch, eaten with flatbread, raw onion and herbs. Lamb kebab with saffron rice, stews such as ghormeh sabzi and gheimeh, and rice cooked with herbs or barberries appear at dinner. Bread comes hot from bakeries making sangak on hot pebbles and thin lavash.

Sweets and preserves are what visitors carry away. The bazaar's confectioners sell baklava, nougat, halva and sugared almonds scented with rose and cardamom, alongside dried figs, pistachios and the local pomegranate paste. Pistachios, almonds and pomegranates from the surrounding orchards are sold loose by the sack, and tea, dark and sweet in small glasses, accompanies the whole transaction.