TEHRAN PROVINCE is bounded north by Mazanderan, west by Kazvin and Hamadan, south by Qum, and east by Semnan-Damghan provinces, and it em braces a large part of the southern slopes of the Elburz range, While again to the south is found the Daria-i-Namak, a salt lake, or morass, which extends for 15o m. E. and W. and has a breadth of 35 m. in some places.
History.—Though a modern capital Tehran is old historically, but was for long small and insignificant. It is thought that the name means "the plains" in contradiction to shamran, i.e., "mountains." Almost the earliest mention of the place is by Yaqut (12th century) who speaks of its houses, constructed underground. It is described by Hamdullah Mustawfi, in the 14th century, as a town of some size and importance.
Under the later Safavis (end of the i 7th and beginning of the 18th centuries) Tehran was sometimes the residence of the court. Sir Thomas Herbert who visited the city in 1627 states that it then contained 3,00o houses built of sun-dried bricks and supplied with water from a little river. The town was taken and pillaged by the
Afghans in 1723 ; and receives mention by Jonas Hanway, With the rise of the Qajar dynasty at the close of the 18th century, the first epoch of the city's ascendancy began, Agha Mohammed Khan selecting it, about 1788, to supersede Isfahan or Shiraz as his capital, because of its proximity to Mazanderan, the starting point from which he had conquered the country and to which he could retire if hard pressed. Agha Khan, however, did little for the city after making it the capital.
Under the rule of Fath Ali Shah the city so increased in size and population that when visited by Ouseley and Morier about 181o, it had 12,0 0 0 houses and 40,000-60,000 people. It remained at about this size for the first seventy years of the 19th century until it underwent an entire renovation at the hands of Nasr-ud Din Shah.