History of Tehran

City origins

The first time Tehran is mentioned in historical accounts is in an 11th-century chronicle in which it is described as a small village north of Ray (Rayy). Archaeological remains from the city of Ray, once known as Raghā and a major city throughout history, show signs of settlement on the site as long ago as 6000 bce. Ray, often considered to be Tehran’s predecessor, became the capital city of the Seljuq empire in the 11th century but later declined with factional strife between different neighborhoods and the Mongol invasion of 1220. Although in later years Ray continued to serve as an important center of strategic advantage during various military campaigns across the Iranian plateau, its significance as a city was lost. Now a suburb of Tehran, Ray is well known for its religious shrines.

Early development

In the 13th century Tehran was a prosperous market town, known for its pomegranates, its 12 rival neighborhoods with their underground dwellings surrounded by a band of trees, and its defiance of the government. Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo, a Spanish diplomat and early 15th-century visitor to Tehran, described it in 1404 as very large, with no town walls—a delightful, well-supplied locale. Its strategic location and gardens attracted the Safavid shah Ṭahmāsp I, who built a bazaar and a square town wall with four gates in 1554. Later Safavid kings added more buildings, including a citadel, and Tehran’s significance grew as it evolved from a garrison town into a center of trade and a regional capital.

The growth of a capital

In 1786 Tehran became the seat of Agha Mohammad Khan, the founder of the Qajar dynasty, who favored the city for its proximity to his traditional tribal territories and for its distance from former capitals still populated by elites loyal to previous rulers. The city’s population was expanded by courtiers and soldiers, who then drew more people and subsequently spurred the development of trade and industry. After 1796 its population more than tripled, reaching 50,000 in little more than a decade. By the mid-19th century, residential neighborhoods surrounded the walled citadel, the roofed bazaar, and the city’s two focal points, Citadel Square and Herbs Market Square. Tehran exerted a limited control as the administrative center of an empire formed of a collection of loosely knit provinces with largely self-sufficient, closed agrarian economies and multiethnic communities.

Beginning in the 19th century, some Persian territory was lost to the advancing Russian and British empires, which secured preferential treatment for their products and merchants, dominating the internal market. Export crops replaced subsistence crops, and Iran entered the new world system of capitalist economies as a peripheral partner, exporting raw materials and importing manufactured goods. In the late 19th century a major program of modernization transformed the capital, enlarging the urban area by several times its size, building new walls and gates, as well as new institutions, buildings, streets and neighborhoods. The new urban structure resulted in a north-south divide, separating the rich from the poor and the modern from the traditional, establishing a new character for the city. As the 19th century progressed, Iran suffered from depopulation, poverty, and economic decline, while cities grew and society stratified. At the end of the century, Tehran was poised on the cusp of a turbulent period of social conflict and revolutionary turmoil.

The Constitutional Revolution (1906)

The economic and political challenges of the European powers had caused popular protests, reforms, and modernization programs as early as the 1830s; reform was hampered in part, however, by the monarch’s arbitrary power. Religious leaders, laborers, liberal-minded reformers, students, secret-society members, merchants, and traders came together in the Constitutional Revolution in 1906 to fight against foreign pressures and a weak government in a bid to supplant arbitrary rule with the rule of law. Tehran and other large cities were the main sites of this revolution, which resulted in the establishment of a constitution and a parliament. Economic decline and World War I, however, limited the effectiveness of the revolution and its new institutions.

Tehran during the reign of Reza Shah (1921–41)

Following a coup d’état in 1921, Reza Shah founded the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–79). Reza Shah quickly consolidated his power and sought to centralize the government by establishing a new armed forces and new system of court patronage and by reorganizing the bureaucracy. While the court was transformed into a site for the wealthy, the landed, and those with connections to the military elite, the growth of the urban middle classes was in turn sourced by the armed forces and the government bureaucracy. The state manipulated elections and suppressed opposition parties and religious leaders. It increasingly intervened in the economy by promoting industrialization, establishing monopolies on many goods, and increasing royalties from the oil industry run by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now British Petroleum). To integrate the fragmented provinces into a unified national space, transport networks were developed across the country. The country’s history of bureaucratic shortcomings, tribal strife, and influential religious leaders and the heterogeneous nature of society were to be replaced with an emphasis on ethnic and cultural homogeneity and political conformity. In the 1930s Tehran underwent a radical transformation program to symbolize this change. New royal palaces were built, and the old royal compound was fragmented and supplanted by a new government quarter. The city walls and gates were pulled down and a network of wide streets cut through the urban fabric, creating an open and uniform urban matrix and easing the movement of vehicles and transport of goods. This created a new basis for the growth of the city in all directions and for defining its new character.

Tehran during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah (1941–79)

During World War II, Reza Shah’s sympathy for Germany led to the Allied occupation of the country in 1941 and his abdication in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Shah. In 1943 Iran’s independence was guaranteed at the Tehran Conference, a meeting between the leaders of the Allies representing the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. As a result of the removal of Reza Shah and the impact of World War II and its aftermath, political suppression was eased, allowing for a revival of the free press, trade unions, and contesting political parties, which together transformed the city through mass demonstrations and political activities. In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddegh secured the support of the Majles (Parliament) in nationalizing the oil industry. The prime minster’s increasing power threatened to undermine the shah, and, in a failed attempt to curtail Mosaddegh’s power, the shah himself was driven from the country by the prime minister’s supporters. Following an international economic blockade, Mosaddegh’s government was collapsed by a U.S.-supported coup d’état in 1953 in favor of the shah, who was restored to power.

During the Cold War, the shah laid the foundation for a royal dictatorship that would last for 25 years by suppressing the opposition, enlarging the army, and establishing a secret police. An industrialization drive started to encourage private investment for import-substituting industries, which largely grew around centers such as Tehran, Isfahan, and Tabriz. Under economic and international pressure, Tehran in the early 1960s suffered from economic crisis but also witnessed a measure of political openness, as well as the roots of significant land reform policy.

Land reform was the issue at the heart of the White Revolution (1963). The shah’s series of wide-ranging reforms—termed “white” for their implementation without bloodshed—redistributed agricultural land from large feudal landowners to sharecropping farmers and nationalized forests and pastures; the White Revolution also gave women new rights, including the right to vote. These programs encountered large-scale revolts headed by religious leaders and bazaar merchants, which would prove to be a rehearsal for the Islamic revolution that would take place 15 years later. Oil revenues rose substantially, especially after 1973, accounting for the majority of the country’s foreign exchange earnings by 1977. The oil boom, industrialization, modernization, and the construction industry helped increase the city’s population to more than four million by the late 1970s. Tehran found a new face, with new highways, high-rise buildings, and large satellite towns. This was perhaps the most prosperous period in the city’s history but also one in which social divide and political suppression intensified.

The seat of a second revolution (1977–88)

Economic downturn, international pressure, and internal disapproval of the shah’s model of development and government sowed the seeds of social unrest. After two years of mass demonstrations that united most shades of political opinion, the Iranian Revolution (1978–79) culminated in the toppling of the monarchy, and on April 1, 1979, Iran was declared an Islamic republic, headed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a religious leader who had been exiled by the shah. The revolutionaries generated a political system made up of the integration of two parallel but differing systems: the rule of religious leaders and parliamentary republicanism, a feature that caused continuous tensions for many years after. During the revolution, significant efforts were focused on armed internal opposition and eight years of warfare with Iraq, which had begun in 1980 (see Iran-Iraq War). In the mid-1980s Tehran was under Iraqi air assault and terrorist attacks. The city suffered from underinvestment and physical deterioration, as well as impoverishment and economic decline.

Postwar development and Tehran in the 21st century

The end of outright warfare in 1988 signified the start of a normalization process in Tehran. Growth and modernization accelerated during the 1990s following the end of the war, largely owing to economic and political reform under Pres. Hashemi Rafsanjani and Pres. Mohammad Khatami. The 1990s saw radical improvements to the city itself under Gholamhussein Karbaschi, a strong but rather controversial mayor. As Karbaschi assumed his post in 1989, Tehran’s fragmentation and overcrowding had reached such a level of crisis proportions that the Iranian government considered selecting a new national capital. Under Karbaschi’s leadership, however, attempts were made to improve the lower-income southern section and link the two city halves more effectively. Important infrastructure developments were undertaken, including the expansion of drainage, garbage, and transportation facilities. The number of parks in Tehran more than tripled, and green spaces and cultural centers proliferated; largely unavailable before the 1990s, these features became increasingly accessible to Tehranis of all income levels. At the end of the 20th century, relaxation of urban planning regulations and the introduction of incentive zoning led to increased population densities and a controversial boom in high-rise development, which became a source of financial independence for the municipality.

In a high-profile trial in 1998, Karbaschi was sentenced to a jail term of five years on charges of corruption and embezzlement. Though the sentence was later reduced and Karbaschi eventually pardoned, many still perceived the conviction of Karbaschi, an ally of Iran’s then-president Mohammad Khatami, as motivated by clashes between conservatives and Khatami’s reformist government. The post of mayor of Tehran was assumed by a number of short-term leaders before the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was appointed to the position in 2003. During Ahmadinejad’s term as mayor of Tehran, a number of the reforms instituted by his moderate predecessors were scaled back.

In 2005 Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran, and he was replaced as mayor of the city by the pragmatic Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Ghalibaf renewed the reform of Tehran’s urban infrastructure and oversaw a number of projects in his 12-year tenure, though he faced accusations of corruption and mishandling city funds.