MAZANDERAN, a province of Persia, in let. 35° 45' to 57° N., and long. 50° 15' to 54° E., lying between the S. coast of the Caspian and the Elburz mountains. The inhabitants are partly Lek and partly Turk, in a number of separate tribes and clans. The khalif Harun-u-Rashid was interred here. It was for some years the resi dence of the court of Nadir Shah. It is very mountainous and rich, the mountains are, with the exception of 'those in Georgia, the only ones in Persia covered with forests, princi pally composed of the AU6-daraklit, admirably adapted for ship-building. This fact made Peter the Great and Catherine ii. so anxious to obtain possession of Mazanderan and the neighbouring province of Ghilan ; and indeed they were ceded to Peter by treaty at one moment, although he was afterwards obliged to relinquish them. Down to the middle of the 19th century, the Russians never ceased their efforts to gain even a small footing in this neighbourhood ; and in 1881 Mnzanderan was ceded to them, and they suc ceeded in obtaining and fortifying the small island of Ashounada, close to the shore, in the neighbourhood of Asterabad. Mazanderan is
said to have been conquered in pre-historio times by Rustum, who is said to have killed there a number of elephants, an animal now unknown in Persia. Mazanderan and Ghilan may be divided into two distinct climates, the mountainous region, and the flat country along the shore of the Caspian Sea. The small province of Aster abad is sometimes included in Mazanderan, which it resembles in appearance, climate, and produc tions. This is the ancient Hyrcania, and the paternal estate of the king of Persia, as chief of the Kajar tribe, who have entire possession of the province. It extends to the east as far as long. E., and is divided from Dahestan by the river Ashor. Asterabad is situated near the mouth of the river Easter, on a bay of the Caspian Sea. From Asterabad it is eighteen days' journey to Herat, and from thence, passing through the hilly country of the Hazara people, you arrive at Kabul on the eleventh.—Malcolm's Persia, ii. p. 126 ; Mohun Let's Travels, p. 320; Kin neir's Memoir, p. 166; Ferrier's Journey, p. 70; MacGregor, iv. pp. 318, 327.