Isfahan & Central Iran

The Zagros valleys of this region hold some of Iran's oldest traces of settled life, and Lorestan is famous for its bronzes of the early first millennium BC. Hamadan, ancient Ecbatana, was the capital of the Medes, who with the Babylonians overthrew Assyria, and later one of the capitals of the Achaemenids. On the road west, Darius the Great carved his account of seizing the throne into the cliff at Bisotun in the years after 522 BC, in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian; copied in the 1830s and 1840s, it helped scholars decipher cuneiform. The Sasanians left their own reliefs at Taq-e Bostan, near Kermanshah.

After the Arab conquest Isfahan grew into a great city and became a capital of the Seljuks in the 11th century, when its Friday Mosque was greatly rebuilt. Qom, settled by Arab Shia families, grew around the shrine of Fatima Masumeh, sister of the eighth imam, who died there in the ninth century. The Safavid Shah Abbas I moved his capital to Isfahan in 1598 and rebuilt it around Naqsh-e Jahan Square, bringing Armenian merchants from Julfa to found New Julfa across the river. The city's golden age ended when Afghan invaders took it in 1722.

In the 20th century Qom's seminaries became the centre of Shia scholarship, and Ayatollah Khomeini, born in Khomein in today's Markazi province, taught there before his exile. Isfahan and Arak became industrial cities of steel and engineering, and during the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s the border provinces of Kermanshah and Ilam were bombarded and fought over.

Isfahanis are proverbial in Iran for business sense and thrift, and the city's crafts are the country's best known: hand-painted enamel (minakari), inlaid khatam boxes, block-printed qalamkar cloth and hammered copper, all sold in the bazaar around the square. The Armenian community of New Julfa keeps its cathedral, schools and Christmas and Easter services, and Kashan is known for carpets and for the Golab-giri rosewater festival in the villages around Qamsar each spring.

Qom has a different atmosphere entirely: seminary students in robes and turbans from across the Shia world, pilgrims at the shrine, bookshops of religious texts and a strict public code. Westward the mountain peoples dominate. The Bakhtiari, Lur tribes speaking Luri, still move flocks between winter lowlands and summer pastures in the Zagros in a twice-yearly migration. Kermanshah is largely Kurdish and mostly Shia, and is home to many followers of Yarsan, a distinct faith known also as Ahl-e Haqq, whose tanbur lute music is a prized tradition. Laks and Lurs fill Lorestan, and Ilam is Kurdish.

Hamadan claims two famous tombs — Avicenna's and the shrine revered as the tomb of Esther and Mordecai — and its village of Lalejin is a centre of glazed pottery.

Isfahan has around two million people and Qom well over a million; Kermanshah has close to a million, and Arak, Hamadan, Khorramabad, Kashan, Borujerd and Shahrekord each have a few hundred thousand. Ilam, Lorestan and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari are among Iran's smaller provinces.

Isfahan's economy runs on steel, oil refining, textiles, tourism and crafts, and Arak is a centre of heavy industry. Qom lives off its seminaries, pilgrimage and religious publishing. In the Zagros, farming, herding and remittances from sons working in the big cities are the mainstays.

The greatest local issue is water. The Zayandeh Rud, which gave Isfahan its gardens and bridges, has run dry through the city for much of the time in recent years because of upstream diversion and drought, a loss Isfahanis feel keenly, and land subsidence affects the plain. Evenings still centre on the bridges and the square, where families picnic on the grass until late in summer.

Isfahan's own dish is beryani, minced mutton cooked with spices, pressed into patties and served on flatbread with basil and raw onion. Khoresh mast, a sweet saffron dessert of yoghurt thickened with minced lamb, is another Isfahani speciality. The city's great sweet is gaz, a nougat of pistachio or almond flavoured with rosewater, sold by the box to every visitor.

Qom is synonymous with sohan, a crisp saffron toffee made with wheat sprout, butter and pistachios. Kashan distils rosewater (golab) and herbal waters and bakes sweets with them. Kermanshah is known for its fragrant ghee (roghan-e kermanshahi), used for cooking rice, and for nan berenji, crumbly rice-flour cookies scented with cardamom and topped with poppy seeds. Hamadan's pastures and the Zagros produce yoghurt, doogh and grilled lamb, and wild herbs, mushrooms and nuts come down from the mountains in spring and autumn.

Across the region dizi, the lamb and chickpea stew mashed at the table, is the standard lunch, and tea is served in the qahveh-khaneh with sugar cubes and dates.

Isfahan holds the richest monuments in Iran. Naqsh-e Jahan Square is framed by the Shah Mosque, the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, the Ali Qapu palace and the entrance to the bazaar, and the Friday Mosque, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right, spans more than a thousand years of building. Chehel Sotoun's pavilion, the bridges of Si-o-se Pol and Khaju, and the Vank Cathedral in New Julfa complete the city.

North of Isfahan, the red mud-brick village of Abyaneh sits in the Karkas mountains, and Kashan has the Fin garden, part of the UNESCO-listed Persian Garden, the Tabatabaei and Borujerdi merchant houses, the Agha Bozorg Mosque and the prehistoric mounds of Tepe Sialk. Qom's shrine of Fatima Masumeh, with its golden dome and mirrored halls, draws millions of pilgrims.

In the west, Hamadan has Avicenna's mausoleum, the tomb of Esther and Mordecai, the Ganjnameh inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, and the Ali Sadr cave, explored by boat. Near Kermanshah, Bisotun's inscription and Taq-e Bostan's Sasanian reliefs sit at the foot of the mountains, and Khorramabad is overlooked by the Falak-ol-Aflak fortress. The Bakhtiari mountains of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, around Zard Kuh, offer high pastures, nomad camps in summer and the headwaters of the Karun and Zayandeh Rud.