Place:Ardabil, Ardabil, Iran

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Ardabil (romanized as Ardabīl and Ardebīl) is an ancient city in northwestern Iran, and the capital of Ardabil Province. As of the 2022 census, Ardabil's population was 588,000. The dominant majority in the city are ethnic Iranian Azerbaijanis and the primary language of the people is Azerbaijani.

Ardabil is known for its trade in silk and carpets. Ardabil rugs are renowned and the ancient Ardabil carpets are considered among the best of classical Persian carpets. Ardabil is also home to a World Heritage Site, the Ardabil Shrine, the sanctuary and tomb of Shaikh Safî ad-Dîn, eponymous founder of the Safavid dynasty.

The population of Ardabil is about 650,000 with the majority of them being Shia Muslims.

History

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The pre-Islamic history of Ardabil is vague. Muslim historians attribute the foundation of Ardabil to the Sasanian King of Kings Peroz I, who named it Shad Peroz or Shahram Peroz. The city may have corresponded to the Sasanian mint city known in Middle Persian as ATRA, albeit this remains uncertain. During the Arab conquest of Iran, Ardabil was the seat of a marzban (margrave), who agreed to surrender to the Arabs in return for permitting the people of Ardabil to continue their religious observances at the fire temple of Shiz (present-day Takht-e Solayman).

Due to being near the Caucasus, Ardabil was always susceptible to attacks by the Caucasian hill peoples as well as by the steppe inhabitants of South Russia past the Caucasus Mountains. In 730–731, the Khazars passed through the Alan Gates, and defeated and killed the Arab governor of Armenia, al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah. The clash took place on the plain outside the town of Ardabil, which was subsequently captured by the Khazars, who made incursions as far as Diyar Bakr and al-Jazira before they were repelled by the Ummayad prince Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik (d. 738). According to the Arab geographer al-Maqdisi (d. 991), "seventy languages" were spoken around Ardabil, which most likely refers to various variations of the Adhari language.

Incursions of Mongols and subsequently the Georgians, who, under Tamar the Great, captured and sacked the city with some 12,000 citizens reputedly killed, devastated the city. The city however recovered and was in a more blossoming state than before, though by this time the principal city in the Azerbaijan region had become Tabriz, and under the later Ilkhanate, it had become Soltaniyeh.

Safavid king Ismail I, born in Ardabil, started his campaign to nationalize Iran's government and land from there, but consequently announced Tabriz as his capital in 1501. Yet Ardabil remained an important city both politically and economically until modern times. During the frequent Ottoman-Persian Wars, being close to the borders, it was often sacked by the Ottomans between 1514 and 1722 as well as in 1915 during World War I when the former invaded neighboring Iran.

In the early Qajar period, crown prince Abbas Mirza, son of then incumbent king (shah) Fath Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834) was the governor of Ardabil. With Ardabil already once being sacked by the Russians during the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813, and this being the era of the Russians steadily advancing into the Iranian possessions in the Caucasus, Abbas Mirza ordered the Napoleonic general Gardane, who served the Qajars at the time, to strengthen and fortify the town with ramparts. During the next and final war, the Russo-Persian War of 1826–28, the ramparts were stormed by the Russian troops, who then temporarily occupied the town. The town's extensive and noted library, known as the library of Safi-ad-din Ardabili, was taken to St. Petersburg by General Ivan Paskevich with the promise that its holdings would be brought to the Russian capital for safekeeping until they could be returned, a promise never fulfilled.

After the Russo-Persian Wars, Iran ceded its territories in the Caucasus to Russia under the terms of the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828). As a result, Ardabil was situated only 40 kilometers from the newly drawn border, becoming even more important economically as a stop on a major caravan route along which European goods entered Iran from Russia. After he visited Ardabil in 1872, German diplomat Max von Thielmann noted, in his book published in 1875, the extensive activity in the town's bazaar, as well as the presence of many foreigners,^[1] and estimated its population at 20,000.^[1] During the early Iranian Constitutional Revolution, Russia occupied Ardabil together with the rest of Iranian Azerbaijan until the eventual collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917.

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