Founding of Tehran

Tehran was a modest town on the slopes of the Alborz mountains for much of its history, overshadowed by the nearby ancient city of Rey. Its rise began in the late eighteenth century, when the Qajar ruler Agha Mohammad Khan chose it as his capital, favouring its location in northern Iran close to his power base and far from rival dynasties in the south. Later Qajar rulers expanded and modernised it, building new walls, palaces and avenues in the nineteenth century. Under the Pahlavi dynasty in the twentieth century, it grew very quickly, and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 it continued to expand into a metropolis. Today it is the largest city in Iran and one of the biggest in Western Asia.

Open on the timeline