'GAZETTEER OF PERSIA. VOLUME II' [‎301v] (607/706)

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TABA—TABR
T
TABAR—
A cistern and caravansarai between Bafq and Yazd, some 30 miles from
the former.—(‘Pioneer’s ’ Correspondent.)
TABRIZ—Lat. 38° 4' 37"; Long. 46° 18' 27". Elev. 4,423'.
(Latitude and Longitude are those given by Schindler for the British
Consulate.)
A large city the capital of Azarbaijan, situated on the left bank of the Aji
Chai, it is 320 miles north-west of Tehran, 310. miles south-east of Erzerum,
490 miles south-east of Trebizond, and 320 miles south-south-east of
Tiflis.
Tabriz occupies much the same position in north-western as Meshed
does in north-eastern Persia, and as the largest commercial emporium in
Persia deserves detailed notice. It is situated at the extremity of an
elevated plain, which is bounded on the south-west by Lake Urumieh and
framed in a landscape of barren ranges of sandstone, whilst on the south
rises the snow-covered cone of Mount Sahand.
History. —Tabriz, the ancient Tauris, was probably an old city when it
became the capital of Tiridates III, King of Armenia, in A.D. 297. Its
ancient name was “ Ganzaka,” under which it was mentioned as long ago
as the fourth century, and in the sixth it was captured by Heraclius. Little,
however, is known about it till A.D. 791, when Zubaidah, wife of
Harun-ul-Rashid, the fifth Caliph of the hous 3 of ’Abbas, beautified it so
much as to obtain the credit of having been its founder. She is said to have
called it Tabriz, “ fever-scattering,” from the salubrity of the climate.
This origin of the name must, however, be dismissed without hesitation ;
the real meaning of the word is warm-flowing from tab warm, tepid and
rez, riz, resh, a verbal root meaning to flow, and originated from the hot
springs in the neighbourhood.
In A.D. 858, in the reign of Mutavakkil, the tenth Abbaside Caliph,
the city was almost destroyed by an earthquake. In A.D. 1041 Tabriz was
again levelled by an earthquake, and only those of the inhabitants escaped,
who had listened to the warning voice of Abu Tahir, the astronomer of
Shiraz, who, being at Tabriz, foretold the danger. In 1392 Timur took
and sacked Tabriz, its then prince, Sultan Ahmad IlkhanI The paramount chief of certain tribes in south west Iran. , flying at the
approach of the great conqueror. After the decline of the house of Timur
in the beginning of the fifteenth country, Tabriz fell und^r the sway of
the Turkoman princes of the Qara Guyunti family, and Qara Yusuf, the
second sovereign of that family, died at Ujan 35 miles south-east of Tabriz
in 1420.
In 1500 Isma’Il, the first of the Safavi kings, took Tabriz from the Turko
mans ; but it remained under Persia only till 1522, when Sulaiman, the Sultan
of Constantinople, made himself master of it, expelling Shah Tahmasp,
who then made Kazvln his capital. Again it was abandoned by the Turks,
, and again recovered in 1584 by Murad-bin-Sallm, or Amurath III, but won
back to Persia by ’Abbas the Great in 1618, after his sanguinary victory at
Shibli in which the Pashas of Van and Erzerum, and the flower of the Turkish