Isfahan is a city of west-central Persia. It lies in lat. 32؛ 41' N., long. 51؛ 41' E. at an altitude of 1,554 m/5,100 feet, in a plain which runs in a northwest to southeast direction between the central Zagros range to its southeast and the Kuh-i Kargas to its northeast.
The town of Isfahan is mentioned by the classical geographers as Aspadana, but the town does not seem to have had any importance at that time. In Sasanid times, there was here the town of Jay, in Greek Gabai, whose founding was attributed to Alexander the Great, and this name Jay appears on coins minted at Isfahan even after the Arab conquest. The town had acquired some importance at that time; the Sasanid town having, allegedly, walls with four gates, including a “Gate of the Jews”; the Jewish colony there subsequently gave to the main part of the city the name of Yahudiyya.
After the Arab conquest, Isfahan formed part of the province of Jibal, which corresponded to the earlier Media, and which became known in the 6th/12th century as _Iraq-i Ajam. According to Hamza, Isfahan extended from Hamadan and Mah Nihawand to Kirman, and from Rayy and Qumis to Fars and Khuzistan, and consisted, in pre-Islamic times, of three ustans, 30 rustaqs, 120 tasujs, 5,000 the province then comprising two kuras, 27 rustaqs, and 3,313 villages.
Under the Mongols, the province of Isfahan contained three main cities, Isfahan, Firuzan in the buluk of Linjan, and Farifa’an in Rudasht, and consisted of 8 buluks, and 400 villages, together with many cultivated lands belonging to these villages. The buluks were Jay (which included the town of Isfahan and its environs), with 75 villages, Kararij with 23 villages, Quhab with 40, both to the south of the town, Baraa’n with 80 villages and Rudasht with 60 to the east, Burkhwar with 32 to the north, and Marbin with 58 and Linjan with 20 to the west (Hamd Allah Mustawfi, Nuzhat al-qulub, ed. G. Le Strange, London 1919, 48, 50–1).
In the town of Isfahan, the annual rainfall is 5 inches and falls mainly from November to April. The prevailing winds are north-west in winter and south-east in summer. Temperature varies with altitude. Extremes of heat and cold occur in August and January. In the mountain districts the cold is intense in winter, but the heat is not very great in summer. In the neighborhood of the town of Isfahan the seasons are extremely regular. The mean monthly maximum temperature in the town in August is 36.1؛ C. and the mean monthly minimum temperature in January is –2.2؛ C. Humidity is low.
Except in Firaydan and Chahar Mahall, where dry farming is practised, all cultivation is irrigated by river water, qanats, or wells. Water in the Isfahan plain is found at a depth of 12–15 ft. In recent years, a large number of machine-operated wells have been sunk, which has been a contributory factor in the lowering of the water-table which has taken place. The Zayanda-rud River which rises on the eastern slopes of the Zarda Kuh, receives various tributaries from Firaydan and Chahar Mahall and then flows south-east through the town of Isfahan and finally disappears in the Gavkhuni marsh to the east of the town. Between Linjan, where the Zayanda-rud enters the Isfahan plain and this marsh, it waters the buluks of Linjan, Marbin Jay, Kararij, Bara’an, and Rudasht, by means of 105 canals, known locally as madis.
In 1954 a tunnel connecting the Zayanda-rud with the Karun was opened at Kuhrang, which materially increased the flow of water in the Zayanda-Rud. This plan was first conceived by Shah Tahmasp.
Shah Ismaeil, the founder of the Safavid Empire, took Isfahan in 908/1502–3. Both he and Shah Tahmasp made token gestures of favour to the Isfahanis. The former in 911/1505–6, according to an inscription in the congregational mosque, forbade the writing of d rafts on the districts of Isfahan and their inhabitants, and the latter, also according to inscriptions in the congregational mosque, remitted various taxes on the guilds and certain dues and tolls in 971/1563–4, and rahdari on foodstuffs, except imported sugar, and also forbade the quartering of troops in the city.
In 955/1548 during the rebellion of Alqas Mirza, Isfahan was for a brief period taken by the Ottomans, and for some years prior to the accession of Shah Abbas Great disorder appears to have prevailed in the city (Iskandar Beg, Alam-ara-yi Abbasi, lith., Tehran 1896–7, 265). By the beginning of the 11th/17th century the Safavid Empire extended from Georgia to Afghanistan and from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. Isfahan was its natural political, administrative, and commercial centre, as it had been of the Saljuq Empire, and in 1005/1596–7 Shah Abbas made it his capital. He replanned and largely rebuilt the city. Later additions were made by Shah Abbas II and Shah Sultan Husain. Here the Safavid Shahs were visited by embassies from European powers, factors of the great trading corporations, and representatives of the religious orders of Christendom. Many of these foreign visitors resided for long periods in the city, where “a life of gorgeous ceremonial mingled with holiday festivity rendered Isfahan the most famous and romantic city of the East” (Curzon, ii, 22 ff., 546 ff.; see also L. Lockhart. (The fall of the safavi dynasty, Cambridge 1958, appx. III, 473–85).
Eventually the Afghans rebelled and invaded central Persia. In 1134/1722, after the Safavid army had been decisively beaten at Gulnabad near Isfahan, the city was besieged (see Lockhart, op. cit., 144 ff. for a detailed account of the siege). It was reduced to appalling straits and fell after six months. Some 20,000 persons were killed by enemy action and it is estimated that four times as many died from starvation and pestilence. The city was declared to have been conquered by force and orders given for all land to be declared khalisa. Many of those who had escaped in the siege fled to India and the Ottoman Empire. Sunnism once more, for a brief period, became the official religion.
The Safavid restoration which began when Nadir entered Isfahan in 1141/1729 with Tahmasp, after defeating the Afghans near Murchakhwart, was short-lived. Isfahan was only a shadow of its former self. Many of the inhabitants who had survived the siege perished in the subsequent massacres. Heavy impositions were laid upon those who survived to pay the soldiery, by whom they were treated with great cruelty (Lockhart, Nadir Shah, London 1938, 39 ff.). When Nadir finally assumed the crown in 1148/1736, he moved the capital to Mashhad. Isfahan, like other parts of Nadir’s empire, suffered heavy exactions. More land was con_ scatted for the state, and orders were given for the resumption of awqaf. Adil Shah on his accession in 1160/1747–8 revoked Nadir’s land decrees, but confusion continued to exist because there had been many cases of falsification of title deeds, destruction of land registers and usurpation (Lambton, Landlord and peasant in Persia, London 1953, 131–2).
Clifford Edmund, Bosworth-Historic Cities of the Islamic World-Brill, Academic Publishers (2008), PP 167-180.