The Capitals of Iran through History

Iran has had more than a dozen capitals in its history, from Susa in Elam to Tehran, which has been the seat of government since 1786. Early empires often had several royal cities at once, moving with the seasons, and many dynasties moved their capital to follow their power base or to escape a dangerous frontier. The table below lists the main seats of power and links to the detailed pages for each.

The capitals at a glance

Royal cities of the ancient empires

The oldest capital on Iranian soil is Susa, in the lowlands of Khuzestan, seat of the kings of Elam alongside Anshan in the highlands of Fars, until the Assyrians sacked it in about 646 BCE. The Medes ruled from Ecbatana, modern Hamadan, which Herodotus describes, probably with exaggeration, as ringed by seven walls of different colours.

The Achaemenid kings moved between several capitals. Cyrus built Pasargadae in his homeland. Darius I made Susa the administrative centre (see the palace of Darius at Susa), began Persepolis as a ceremonial and treasury city in Fars, and used Ecbatana as a summer residence and Babylon in winter. Greek writers such as Xenophon describe the court travelling between them with the seasons.

The Parthians began at Nisa, near modern Ashgabat, and later governed from Ctesiphon on the Tigris, opposite the Greek city of Seleucia. The Sasanians, who came from Fars, first built Ardashir-Khurrah at Firuzabad but soon took over Ctesiphon, where the vault of the Taq Kasra still stands in Iraq. Ctesiphon fell to the Arabs in 637 (see the fall of Ctesiphon). So for about 700 years the capital of the Iranian empires lay outside today’s Iran, in the rich farmland of Mesopotamia.

Many capitals, many states

After the Arab conquest Iran was ruled first from Damascus and Baghdad, then by regional dynasties with their own capitals. For a few years the caliph al-Mamun governed the whole caliphate from Merv in Khorasan (see al-Mamun in Merv). The Samanids made Bukhara a centre of the new Persian literature; the Buyids shared power among brothers in Shiraz, Rey and Isfahan. Malik Shah made Isfahan the Seljuk capital, which is why its Friday Mosque is so grand.

The Mongol Ilkhans began as nomads, with summer and winter camps, and set up Maragheh and then Tabriz as their capitals; Oljeitu built a new city at Soltaniyeh, now marked by its great dome. Timur ruled from Samarkand, his son Shahrukh from Herat, both today outside Iran.

From Tabriz to Isfahan

The Safavid capital moved east and south, away from the Ottoman frontier. Ismail I was crowned in Tabriz in 1501, but repeated Ottoman occupations led Tahmasp I to move to Qazvin around the middle of the century. Abbas I moved again, to Isfahan in 1598, and rebuilt it around the vast Naqsh-e Jahan square; the city earned the saying “Isfahan is half the world” (اصفهان نصف جهان). Today’s Isfahan is still largely the Safavid city.

After the Afghan conquest of 1722, Nader Shah preferred Mashhad, close to his Khorasan homeland, and Karim Khan made Shiraz his capital, building the citadel and bazaar that still stand there.

Tehran

Tehran was a small town near the ruins of ancient Rey when Agha Mohammad Khan made it his capital in 1786. It was close to the Qajar tribal lands near Astarabad, well placed to watch the Caucasus and Khorasan, and away from the Zand loyalists of Shiraz. It grew slowly under the Qajars, who built the Golestan Palace, and then very fast in the 20th century: from a few hundred thousand people around 1900 to a city of about 9 million, with some 16 to 17 million in the wider metropolitan area, in recent estimates.

Tehran’s growth has brought earthquake risk, air pollution and water shortages, and Iranian governments have discussed moving the capital several times without approving a plan. During the war of 2026 (see the war of 2026), Tehran was struck repeatedly from the air, as it had been in the “war of the cities” of the 1980s.

The Persian word pâytakht means literally “foot of the throne”. For the changing territory these cities ruled, see how Iran’s borders changed.