Farahabad was a palace

Palace

A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word itself is derived from the Latin name Palātium, for Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills in Rome. In many parts of Europe, the...

 and city built by Shah Abbas I in Mazandaran, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

. It was built on a site formerly known as Tahan and linked to the town of Sari

Sari, Iran

Sari is the provincial capital of Mazandaran and former capital of Iran , located in the north of Iran, between the northern slopes of the Alborz Mountains and southern coast of the Caspian Sea...

, 17 miles away, by a stone causeway. The shah intended the city as his winter capital.

Shah Abbas was fond of the province of Mazandaran, the birthplace of his mother Khayr al-Nisa Begum

Khayr al-Nisa Begum

Khayr al-Nisa Begum was the wife of the Safavid Shah of Iran Mohammed Khodabanda and mother of Shah Abbas I...

. Work began on the palace in 1611-12. Situated on top of a hill with a view of the sea and the Elburz Mountains, it was decorated with murals by Reza Abbasi

Reza Abbasi

Riza Abbasi, Riza yi-Abbasi or Reza-e Abbasi, رضا عباسی in Persian, usually "Riza" or Reza Abbasi also Aqa Riza or Āqā Riżā Kāshānī was the leading Persian miniaturist of the Isfahan School during the later Safavid period, spending most of his career working for Shah Abbas I...

 and goldwork by a German craftsman, and surrounded by gardens in the Persian style.

The city grew around the palace. In 1618, the Italian traveller Pietro della Valle

Pietro Della Valle

Pietro della Valle was an Italian who traveled throughout Asia during the Renaissance period. His travels took him to the Holy Land, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and as Far as India.-Biography:...

 visited Farahabad and compared the length of the walls to that of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 or Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

. The population was made up of peoples resettled from other regions of Abbas' empire. According to della Valle (who had spoken to the shah himself) they included 40,000 Armenian families, 12,000 Georgian

Georgian people

The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....

 families, 7,000 Jewish families and 25,000 Muslim

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 families from the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

. Abbas hoped they would help promote Iranian commerce, especially the silk

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...

 and wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

 trades.

Abbas' successors neglected Farahabad. The climate in the summer was unhealthy and large numbers of the inhabitants died of epidemics, particularly malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

. Many Armenians and Georgians abandoned the city and returned to their native lands. In 1668 Russian

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 rebels led by the Cossack

Cossack

Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...

 Stenka Razin

Stenka Razin

Stepan Timofeyevich Razin Тимофеевич Разин, ; 1630 – ) was a Cossack leader who led a major uprising against the nobility and Tsar's bureaucracy in South Russia.-Early life:...

 sacked Farahabad. Today little remains of the town.

Farahabad was also the name of a palace and gardens built by Shah Sultan Husayn near Isfahan.

Sources

• H. Nahavandi, Y. Bomati, Shah Abbas, empereur de Perse (1587-1629) (Perrin, Paris, 1998) pp.222-226
• Roger Savory Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge University Press, 2007 reissue) pp.96-100