Kerman

Kerman is the capital of the province of Kerman, in Iran. In 2011, it had a population of 734,441 inhabitants. It is located in the middle of a vast plain, 1,076 km south of Tehran, on the edge of the Dasht-e Lut (a large salt desert). Kerman was founded as a defensive outpost, under the name of Behdesir, by Ardeshir I, founder of the Sassanid Empire, in the 3rd century AD. C. After the battle of Nihāvand of 642, the city was conquered by the Arab-Muslims. Initially the city's agreement is favorable to the Kharigites and the Zoroastrians to live fairly quietly but the Kharigites were expelled in 698, and in 725 almost all of its population was now Muslim.

Already in the eighth century it was Kerman famous for its cashmere and other fabrics. The caliphate authority on the region was quite weak and in the tenth century the Buwayhids dominated the area, which kept control even when the region and the city fell into the hands of Mahmud of Ghazna at the end of the tenth century. The name of Kerman was adopted in that century. Kerman was submitted to Seljuk power in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but remained in fact independent. When Marco Polo visited the city in 1271, it was transformed into an important commercial center, linked thanks to the Persian Gulf with the Khorasan and Central Asia. Later, however, the city was repeatedly subjected to looting by various invaders. In 1793 Lotf Ali Khan defeated the Qajar and in 1794 conquered Kerman. Soon after, he is besieged except for a Kerman for six months by Agha Mohammad Khan. When the city surrendered to Agha Mohammad Khan, the latter, irritated by the popular support that Lotf Ali Khan had received, had all the males slain or blinded them, and a pile of 20,000 eyes, enucleated by their orbits, was piled up in front of the winner. Women and children were enslaved and the city burned to the ground within 90 days of belligerent fury.