Yazd
Yazd, a city of central Persia, and capital of the province of the same name. It is situated on the Persian plateau at lat. 31؛ 54' N. and long. 54؛ 24' E., at an elevation of 1,230 m/4,240 feet, in an elongated interior basin stretching from near Kashan to Bafq and bordered by the Dasht-i Kawir. It was known in early times as Katha, after a fortress and prison alleged to have been founded by Alexander. According to legend, later foundations grew up on this site. Yazd became known as dar-al-iibada, when Toghrïl Beg assigned it to the Kakuyid Abu Mansur Faramurz Al al-Dawla, in 443/1051. The modern city has a population, according to the 2005 census, of 433,836.
I. Geography and social structure
Ibn Hawqal describes Yazd in the 4th/10th century as a well-built fortified city with two iron gates. Hamd Allah Mustawfi Qazwini states that it was built of sun-dried bricks which lasted as long as burnt bricks elsewhere because there was hardly ever any rain, though water was plentiful, being brought in by channels from the hills and each house had its own storage tank (ibid.). Wind towers were (and are) a distinguishing feature of the architecture of the city, so constructed as to convey any breeze available in the upper air into the sardabs (semi-underground chambers) of the houses or other buildings (see Iraj Afshar, Yazd-nama, Tehran AHS 1371/1992–3, i, 337–57). Ahmad b. Husayn al-Katib mentions badgirs constructed in the Muzaffarid and Timurid periods.
The domed roofs of the ab-anbars or misnan’as (water storage cisterns) are another distinguishing feature of the city, and also its fine mosques (see Afshar for a comprehensive account of monuments, religious and secular, of Yazd, the inscriptions to be found in them and also on tombstones, Yazd-nama, and Yadigarha-yi Yazd, 3 vols., Tehran AHS 1348–54/1970–5).
According to Ahmad b. Husayn al-Katib, Abu Mansur Faramurz ordered the city wall (hisar) to be built with towers and four iron gates. Part of the wall was destroyed by floods in 673/1275. It was restored by the Atabeg Yusuf Shah b. Tughan (685–714/1286–7 to 1314–15). Mubariz al-Din Muhammad Muzaffar (713–59/1313–14 to 1358) built an outer wall with seven gates enclosing various districts within the city. Shah Yahya, who took possession of the city in 779/1367–8, made further additions, including a ditch, towers and gate (Jafar b. Muhammad b. Hasan Jafari, Tarikh-i Yazd, ed. Afshar, Tehran AHS 1338/1960, 36). According to Muhammad Mufid, Pir Muhammad b. Umar Shaykh, after putting down a rebellion against the Timurids, built a fort for the residence of governors on the orders of Timur and in 808/1405–6 a wall and a deep ditch in the south of the city. The fort was partly destroyed by Shah Abbas. In 1821 Muhammad Wali Mirza, when governor of Yazd, repaired the city wall and the ditch.
In the 19th century, the city of Yazd was still enclosed by a ditch and a double wall with numerous detached towers in it, all in tolerable repair. Its circumference was about 2/5 miles. The inner city was surrounded by gardens and habitations. It had 24 mahallas, 8 of which were within the walls, 31 mosques and 11 madrasas. The bazaar contained some 100 shops, and 34 caravanserais (A. Amanat, Cities and trade. Consul Abbott on the economy and society of Iran 1847–1866, London 1983, 131–2). Major Oliver St. John states that Yazd had 50 mosques, 65 baths and 8 madrasas in 1872 (Narrative of a journey through Baluchistan and southern Persia, 1872, in F.J. Goldsmid, Eastern Persia, an account of the journeys of the Persian Boundary Commission, 1870–1–2, London 1876, 175).
Curzon, who visited Persia in 1889–90, states that the fort, which was partly ruined and partly built into or over, still retained a double wall with a broad deep ditch before the outer rampart, while the citadel inside the fort, where the governor resided, was separately walled to a height of 30 or 40 feet (Persia and the Persian question, London 1892, ii, 240).
In the early centuries of the Abbasid caliphate, Yazd was included in the district of Istakhr of the province of Fars under the name of Katha. After the Mongol invasions it became part of the Jibal and, later, part of Kirman province. In the Safavid period it was one of the districts under the direct administration of the central government. In the 19th century, when the Zill al-Sultan was at the height of his power, it formed part of the Isfahan province. On the Zill al-Sultan’s disgrace in 1888 it became again an independent government but was returned to the Zill al-Sultan in 1890. For a time during the 19th century, Kuhbanan and Shahr-i Babak, belonging to Kirman, were attached to Yazd as also were some of the villages of Fars. At the present day the province covers an area of over 76,156 km2 and consists of seven shahristans, Yazd, Ardakan, Tabas, Bafq, Taft, Abarquh, Mihriz and Maybud.
The province is bordered on the north and west by the province of Isfahan, on the north-east by Khurasan, on the south-west by Fars and in the south-east by the province of Kirman. The Shir Kuh massif, rising to 4,075 m/13,366 feet, lies in the south and west of the province. In the centre of the province to the north of the city of Yazd is the Kharaniq massif, the highest point of which is 3,158 m/10,358 ft. In the east there are lesser mountains in the districts of Khur, Biyabanak, Jandaq and Ribat-I Pusht-i Badam. There are small deposits of iron ore, lead, zinc and copper in the province, Ibn Hawqal mentions that a lead mine near Yazd was productively worked and old workings of lead ore survive near Bafq. Marble is found in the Turan-pusht mine in the Pish-Kuh district to the south and south-west of the city of Yazd.
Large areas of the province are occupied by sterile, or almost sterile, hammadas due either to their low rainfall or to an excess of salt in the soil or both. Violent dust storms are frequent and moving sands encroach upon the city of Yazd, upon Ashkidhar, Bafq and elsewhere. The climate of the province is described as temperate (mu’tadil). The summers in the city of Yazd are, in fact, extremely hot. The province lies in the rain shadow of the Elburz in the north and of the Zagros in the west. The average annual rainfall, which occurs in winter and spring, varies from 20 mm in Shir Kuh to 60 mm in the lower parts of the province; in the city of Yazd it is only 55.4 mm. Ground water is provided by qanats (see A.K.S. Lambton, The qanats of Yazd, in JRAS, 3rd series, vol. 2, pt. 1 [April 1992], 21–35). From the 1960s onwards a large number of deep and semi-deep wells have been sunk, which has led to a lowering of the water-table. Of the 3,331 qanats alleged to exist in the province, only 2,615 were said to be in operation in 1997. Some are over 50 km/31 miles long and 100 m deep. Ground cover in most of the province is sparse owing to lack of rainfall, fluctuations in temperature and the destruction of plants over the centuries for charcoal burning and other purposes. Failure of rain has frequently resulted in shortages and sometimes famine. In 850/1446–7 a period of drought was accompanied by famine and plague (waba). In 858/ 1454 the rains failed again and famine and plague ensued with heavy loss of life. Sudden or unusually heavy rains have also occasioned damage. In 673/1275 five days of consecutive rain in April-May resulted in floods and much damage to the city of Yazd. In 860/1456 there was again severe flooding in the city of Yazd as a result of heavy rain in March- April. Muhammad Mufid records that there were heavy snowfalls in 1057/1647–8 and that snow lay in the streets of Yazd for nearly three months.
Despite unfavorable climatic conditions, the city of Yazd and the towns and villages of the province are surrounded by cultivated fields (kishtkhwan), orchards and gardens. The mountain districts are carefully terraced. Water rights and land in many parts of the province are separately owned and highly sub-divided. Absentee landownership does not appear to have been common. Local landowners predominated, some of whom enjoyed considerable wealth. Peasant proprietorship also existed. Awqaf, especially in the form of shares in qanats, were widespread. Lands assigned as iqta’s or tiyuls and crown lands (khalisajat) appear to have been rare, though Toghril Beg assigned Yazd, as stated above, and Abarquh to Abu Mansur Faramurz in 443/1051 and Abu Sa’id, the Il-Khanid, gave Maybud as an iqta to Muhammad b. Muzaffar, allotted wages (marsum) to him and appointed 200 men to be in his service, and there were cases of land being assigned as tiyul under the Safavids. There are frequent references to crown lands in the Safavid period but few details. A farman of Nadir Shah, dated 1155/1742–3, appointing Mirza Husayn (formerly dabit of Natanz) governor of Yazd, ordered him, inter alia, to exert himself in increasing khalisa property. In the Qajar period there was also some khalisa property in Yazd. Several qanats were wholly, or in part, khalisa.
Grain was grown in the province but not in sufficient quantity for its needs. In the 19th century it sufficed for only two to three months, the deficit being met from Isfahan and elsewhere. Fruit was grown abundantly, including mulberries, pomegranates (those of Maybud being especially good, apples, pears, cherries, apricots, plums and grapes; and a variety of vegetables; cotton was grown, and silk manufactured and used in Yazd’s flourishing textile industry. Rashid al-Din Fazl Allah Hamedani includes much information on the crops and agricultural methods of Yazd in his book Athar wa ahya (see Lambton, The Athar wa ahya of Rashid al-Din Fazl Allah Hamedani and Rashid al-Din’s contribution as an agronomist, arboriculturist and horticulturalist, in R. Amitai-Preiss and D.O. Morgan (eds.), The Mongol Empire and its legacy, Leiden 1999). He draws attention to the skill and thrift shown by Yazdis in agricultural development and states that the return they got from the land was seldom equaled in other places. He also mentions that the production of silk was higher than elsewhere.
In the 19th century, much silk was still produced but of inferior quality. It was not enough to supply local workshops, and raw silk was imported from Gilan and Khurasan. In the second half of the century the production of silk declined and was largely displaced by opium and cotton (G.G. Gilbar, Persian agriculture in the late Qajar period 1860–1906: some economic and social aspects, in Asian and African Studies, xii/3 [1978], 350). Among other crops grown in the 19th century Abbott mentions Indian corn, millet, lentils, pulse, beans, madder, asafetida, fruits, nuts and vegetables.
From early times Yazd had a thriving trade. Its manufactures of silk and cotton were famous and exported to other parts of the Islamic world and India. Al-Istakhri and Ibn Hawqal mention cotton garments made in Yazd. Ibn al-Balkhi, writing at the beginning of the 6th/12th century, states that “in the districts round [Yazd], silk is produced, for the mulberry tree is here abundant. Further, they (sc. The Yazdis) manufacture excellent cloths in brocade also, of the kind named mushti, farakh, and the like, for in Yazd they rear goats only, no sheep, and the hair from these is very strong” (20, quoted by R.B. Serjeant, Islamic textiles, Beirut 1972, 55–6). Qazwini found in Yazd makers of silk (harir) of sundus (a kind of green brocade), extremely beautiful and close-woven which is taken from there to all countries. Al-Maqrizi mentions the import of Yazd_ textiles into Egypt in the 8th/14th century. Marco Polo noted that Yazd “is a good and noble city, and it has a great amount of trade. They weave there quantities of a certain silk tissue known as Yesdi, which merchants carry into many quarters to dispose of ” (H. Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, London 1871, i, 89). Pedro Teixeira mentions that the richest and _ nest carpets came from Yazd “from which place I saw some, each of which, on account of its workmanship and perfection, was valued at more than a thousand ducats”, while the fabric known as al-qalifa was “the best, the _ nest and the most perfect”. Friar Odoricus (in 1325) and Josafa Barbaro (in 1474) state that Yazd was a great silk mart and Raphael de Mans describes how gold thread was made there (Estat de la Perse en 1660, ed. C. Schefer, Paris 1890, 195).
At the beginning of the 19th century Yazd was a large and populous city, celebrated among merchants for its security. Commerce in silk, carpets, felts, shawls and coarse cotton cloth flourished. Capt. Christie, who passed through Yazd in 1810, states that it was “a great mart between Hindoostan, Khorasan, Baghdad and Persia” and was said to be a place of greater trade than any other place in the latter empire (Abstract from Captain Christie’s Journal after his separation from Lieut. Pottinger, at Nooshky June (1810), in H. Pottinger, Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde, London 1816, 421). He mentions that there were over 50,000 camels in the city, which is an indication of the extent of the trade. J.B. Fraser, who was in Yazd in the early years of the 19th century, states that Yazd was one of the most prosperous towns of Persia and one of the great entrepots between East and West. Caravans from Kabul, Kashmir, Bukhara, Herat, Mashhad and Kirman were met in Yazd by merchants from Isfahan, Shiraz, Kashan and Tehran and a great interchange of commodities took place.
Its manufactures of silk and other stuffs, felts, sugar candy and sweetmeats commanded a ready market everywhere in Persia (An historical and descriptive account of Persia, 2 Edinburgh 1834, 64). E. Scott Waring also mentions that Yazd was an emporium for all the trade of Persia. Coarse perpets were sent there and sold to the Uzbegs and the people of Khurasan, the merchant taking on his return journey silks, carpets, felts and Kashmiri shawls (A tour of Sheeraz, London 1807, 76). By the middle of the century there had been a decline in the manufacture of textiles. Despite an attempt by Muhammad Khan, who was governor of Yazd 1863–70, to encourage the silk trade, the decline continued and by the end of the 19th century, or the beginning of the 20th, there were only some 800 workshops and 2,000 cotton looms, whereas in 1870 Major Euan Smith had reported that there were 18,000 silk workshops in Yazd, employing probably 9,000 hands and that the silk was considered by some to be the best in Persia (The Perso-Baluchistan Frontier Mission 1870, 1871, in Goldsmid, Eastern Persia, i, 175). Nevertheless E. Stack, who visited Yazd in 1881, wrote that prosperity was “a notable feature of Yazd. Hardly a beggar was to be seen and the busy bazaars and well-kept houses, as well as the dress of the people, and the number of merchants, were signs of a city supported by brisk trade” (Six months in Persia, London 1882, i, 267).
Meanwhile, although the silk trade had declined, the opium trade had increased in importance. Other exports from Yazd included coarse loaf sugar, made from raw sugar imported from India, Java and Siam, which was sent to all parts of Persia, cotton, carpets, felts, madder roots, and nuts. The principal imports were cotton fabrics, copper, tin, lead, iron, drugs and spices and tea from India, and oil, candles, sugar, furs, crockery and piece goods from Russia (see Lambton, Persian trade under the early Qajars, in D.S. Richards (ed.), Islam and the trade of Asia, Oxford 1970, 118–19). Henna was also brought to Yazd for processing and in 1907–8 there were some 60 enterprises engaged in this. In spite of the changes in production and manufacture, Yazd nevertheless remained a major distribution centre in the early years of the 20th century.
The local histories are rich in details of the lives of officials, landowners, ulama, merchants and others, but these are beyond the scope of this article. Many of them held land and shares in qanats; some were very rich. The extent to which they expended their wealth on buildings, religious and secular, in the city and throughout the province, and on qanats and agricultural development, is notable. Some of the Muslim merchants, as well as the Zoroastrian ones, had links with India, at least from the Safavid period if not before.
The sayyids were a numerous and influential group. Jafar b. Muhammad states that there were nearly 1,000 descendants of the Imam Jafar al-sadiq in Yazd when he was writing, i.e. in the 9th/15th century. Prominent among the Husayni sayyids, descended from Jafar al-sadiq, were Rukn al-Din Muhammad b. Qawam al-Din b. Niizam (d. 732/1331–2) and his son Shams Din Abu Abd Allah Muhammad (d. 733/1332–3), both of whom disposed of a great deal of property in shares in qanats, land and real estate, much if not all of which they constituted into waqf. Among Sayyid Rukn al-Din’s many benefactions was the complex consisting of a madrasa (school), mosque, observatory (rasad) and pharmacy (bayt al-adwiya) in the Waqt wa sa’at quarter of the city, which took its name from the observatory.
In the 7th–9th/13th–15th centuries there appears to have been an increase in the number of Su_ s in the province. One of the most famous was Shaykh Taqi al-Din Muhammad Dada (d. 700/1300–1), who migrated from Isfahan to Yazd and built khanaqahs at Bundarabad, Ashkidhar, Maybud, and in various other locations.
Physicians were another influential group in the city. Rashid al-Din’s early connection with Yazd appears to have been through two physicians, Sharaf al-Din _Al_ and Shams Din Radi.
The local histories also mention poets, painters and calligraphers who lived in Yazd. A marked feature of the population was the existence of skilled craftsmen, builders, weavers, potters, muqanns (also known as chahkhuyan, who were highly rated for their skill and often employed outside Yazd), and a thrifty peasantry, many of whom worked not only on the land but also as craftsmen and weavers. Among the peasants there was probably a higher proportion of peasant proprietors than in most other districts of Persia. Kashani states that Rashid al-Din took some 300 draft oxen with their gawbands (those who worked them) from Yazd to Tabriz. The purpose of this, he alleges, was that the oxen should be used to transport night soil from the city to Fath Abad and other properties that Rashid al-Din was developing. This seems unlikely to be the only reason, or even the real reason. More likely Rashid al-Din brought the gawbands with their oxen to Tabriz in order to make use of their agricultural skill.
Ibn al-Balkhi states that the Yazdis were Sunnis, very pious and of right religion. Ahmad b. Husayn al-Katib remarks that the people of the Ya’qubi quarter of Yazd had a sense of solidarity were fanatical and somewhat parochial in their attitude; they were continually occupied in earning their living and worship, and most of them were well-to-do. There is no information in the local histories of when or how the Yazdis were converted to Shi’ism. It would seem that their piety and devotion were carried over from Sunnism to Shi’ism.
A further feature of the population was the existence of a Zoroastrian community, between which and India there was constant intercourse. According to Abbott, there were some 200 Zoroastrian families in the town and 640 in eight villages round about. As dhimmis they were forced to wear special clothing and subject to other restrictions. Euan Smith states that the number of Zoroastrians under the government of Yazd was estimated at 3,800. Towards the end of the century their numbers rose. E.G. Browne, who was in Persia in 1887–8, states that there were 7,000–10,000 Zoroastrians in Yazd and its dependencies (A year amongst the Persians, 404).
Clifford Edmund, Bosworth-Historic Cities of the Islamic World-Brill, Academic Publishers (2008), PP 558-566.