362 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



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important metropolis for 

 a much shorter time than 

 that. Rhages, or Rei, its 

 predecessor in this dis- 

 trict, was a populous city 

 of ancient Media, thrived 

 in the middle ages, is said 

 to have had a population 

 of one and a half mil- 

 lion, and to have been the 

 largest city east of Baby- 

 lon, but found itself too 

 centrally located for its 

 own permanence and 

 continued prosper- 

 ity, when the Mongols 

 swept through western 

 Asia. 



W hen the inhuman 

 Agha Mohammed Khan, 

 after a bitter civil war, 

 in 1793 founded the 

 Turkish dynasty which 

 now rules over Persia, 

 he did not dare to estab- 

 lish the seat of govern- 

 ment at a spot so far re- 

 moved from the pasture 

 lands of the Kajars as 

 Shiraz, the former capi- 

 tal. So Teheran, which 

 not only commanded the 

 highways of the plateau, 

 but also the entrance to 

 the Elburz passes lead- 

 ing to this tribe's origi- 

 nal possessions on the 

 southeastern shores of 

 the Caspian, became the 

 capital of the K a j a r 

 kings. 



At that time the new 

 capital, which had been 

 wiped out by the Af- 

 ghans in 1723, consisted 

 of not more than three 

 thousand houses of sun- 

 dried brick. A Euro- 

 pean traveler who visited 

 Teheran in 1796 wrote 

 that, "In spite of Agha 

 Mohammed's efforts to 

 induce people to settle 

 and merchants and man- 

 ufacturers to establish 

 themselves there, the 



