Shushtar () is a city in the Central District of Shushtar County, Khuzestan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district.
Shushtar is an ancient fortress city, approximately from Ahvaz, the centre of the province. Much of its past agricultural productivity derives from the irrigation system which centered on the Band-e Kaisar, the first dam bridge in Iran.
History
In the
times Shushtar was known as
Adamdun. In the
Achaemenian times its name was
Šurkutir. According to tradition, Shushtar was founded by the legendary king
Hushang after he built
Susa (aka Shush), and the name "Shushtar" was a comparative form meaning "more beautiful than Shush".
also interpreted the name Shushtar as being derived from Shush, but with a slightly different meaning, with the suffix "-tar" indicating a direction.
The Arabic name of the city,
Tustar, is an adaptation of the Persian form Shushtar.
Shushtar may be the "Sostra" mentioned by Pliny the Elder.
During the Sassanian era, it was an island city on the Karun river and selected to become the summer capital. The river was channeled to form a moat around the city, while bridges and main gates into Shushtar were built to the east, west, and south. Several rivers nearby are conducive to the extension of agriculture; the cultivation of sugar cane, the main crop, dates back to 226. A system of subterranean channels called , which connected the river to the private reservoirs of houses and buildings, supplied water for domestic use and irrigation, as well as to store and supply water during times of war when the main gates were closed. Traces of these ghanats can still be found in the crypts of some houses.
Under the caliphate, Shushtar was the capital of one of the seven kurah (sub-provinces) that made up Khuzestan.
Historically, Shushtar was always one of the most important textile-producing cities in Khuzestan.
According to al-Maqdisi's account, there was a cemetery right in the middle of Shushtar.
Al-Maqdisi described Shushtar as being surrounded by orchards including , grapes, and .
Ibn Battuta visited, noting "On both banks of the river, there are orchards and water-wheels, the river itself is deep and over it, leading to the travelers' gate, there is a bridge upon boats."
The ancient fortress walls were destroyed at the end of the Safavid era.
1831 cholera epidemic
In 1831, a
cholera epidemic ravaged Shushtar, killing about half of the city's inhabitants. The
Mandaeans community was hit particularly hard during the Plague of Shushtar, as all of their priests had died in the plague.
Yahya Bihram, the surviving son of a deceased priest, went on to revive the Mandaean priesthood in Shushtar.
Late 1800s to present
Shushtar benefited from the Karun steamship service established in 1887.
It was the farthest point upstream that the boats went, and goods had to be unloaded here and sent overland by caravan.
It developed into the main commercial center in southwestern Iran, and by 1938 it had 28,000 residents.
During the early 20th century, the city suffered from unrest between its Haydari and Ne'mati factions.
The typical Haydari-Ne'mati rivalry also took on a political dimension in Shushtar, since the Haydaris were pro-Arab and pro-monarchy while the Ne'matis were pro-Bakhtiyari and pro-constitutionalist.
With the completion of the Trans-Persian Railway, Shushtar began to decline.
Band-e Kaisar
The
Band-e Kaisar ("Caesar's dam") is believed by some to be a Roman built arch bridge since, and the first in the country to combine it with a
dam.
When the Sassanian Shah Shapur I defeated the
Roman Empire emperor Valerian, he is said to have ordered the captive Roman soldiers to build a large bridge and dam stretching over 500 metres.
[; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ] Lying deep in
territory, the structure which exhibits typical Roman building techniques became the most eastern
Roman bridge and
Roman dam.
Its dual-purpose design exerted a profound influence on Iranian civil engineering and was instrumental in developing Sassanid water management techniques.
[Impact on civil engineering: ; on water management: ] While the traditional account is disputable, it's not implausible that Roman prisoners of war were involved in its construction.
The approximately 500 m long weir over the Karun, Iran's most effluent river, was the core structure of the Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System, a large irrigation complex from which Shushtar derived its agricultural productivity,[Length: ; ; extensive irrigation system: ] and which has been designated World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2009.[; ]
Registration of ancient works in UNESCO World Heritage
Ancient works of Shushtar, which were registered at the annual meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee on 26 June 2009, under the title of Shushtar Historical Water System, as the tenth work of Iran in the UNESCO World Heritage List with number 1315.
Demographics
Ethnicity
Historically, the Subbi Kush neighborhood of Shushtar was home to a
Mandaeans community for centuries, although Mandaeans no longer lived there by the 21st century due to emigration.
One of Shushtar's best-known
was
Ram Zihrun.
""The overwhelming majority of people of Shushtar are of a native hybrid race that there is no name to address them.
Layard and
Selby write about the people of Shushtar that most of the people of Shushtar are Sadati who wear large green turbans. Elsewhere, Lord Curzon says this about the people of Shushtar: They (the Shushtris) are a mixture of Persian and Arab descent and are considered a link between these two descents, and while the Arab gene seems to be stronger in them, it seems that they have acquired most of the lighter moral characteristics of both races.
According to
Henry Fielding, Shushtri are usually thought to be Assyrian, but their origin is mixed and they are called Shushtri.
And in another place, she writes that the cities of Shushtar and Dezful have a population whose origin is unknown and they may be of the ancient Assyrian race who have mixed with Iranians.
Language
The majority of the cities' population are
Persians who speak Shushtari, a dialect of the
Persian language language.
The list of linguists has classified Shushtri-Dezfuli dialect independently from Persian.
Population
At the time of the 2006 National Census, the city's population was 94,124 in 21,511 households.
The following census in 2011 counted 106,815 people in 26,639 households.
The 2016 census measured the population of the city as 101,878 people in 28,373 households.
Culture
The devoutness of Shushtar's people has led to it being nicknamed "Dar al-Mu'minin".
Local tradition attributes certain customs to ancient Roman colonists, as well as the construction of the Band-e Kaisar and the introduction of brocade manufacturing technique.
Climate
Shushtar has a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification
BSh) with extremely hot summers and mild winters. Frost does occasionally occur at night during winter, but winters in Shushtar have no snow. Rainfall is higher than most of southern Iran, but is almost exclusively confined to the period from November to April.
Notable people
-
Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody, anesthesiologist accused of taking his American wife Betty Mahmoody and their daughter Mahtob Mahmoody to Iran and allegedly keeping them hostage
-
Mohammad Ali Mousavi Jazayeri, Twelver Shia Clergy
-
Mohammad-Ali Emam-Shooshtari, historian and religious scholar
-
Sahl al-Tustari, early classical Sufi mystic
-
Qazi Nurullah Shustari, eminent Shia faqih (jurist) and scholar
-
Nematollah Jazayeri, prominent Shia scholar
-
Mohammad-Taqi Shoushtari, Iranian Twelver Shia scholar
-
Sheikh Jafar Shooshtari, prominent Shia scholar
See also
-
Sahl al-Tustari, a medieval Islamic scholar and early Sufi mystic born in Shushtar
-
Sheikh Jafar Shooshtari, a prominent Shia scholar
-
Sohrab Gilani, the representative of Shushtar in Majles
Notes
Sources
External links
