Arrajan

Arrajan: a city in Fars bordering on Tawwaj, according to al-Baladhuri. Uthman ibn Abi al-As (may God be pleased with him) used to raid it from Tawwaj, and then he conquered it by treaty, together with Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, on the terms of poll-tax and kharaj. ¹

According to the Arabic authors Arradjan was founded by the Sasanid king Kawad I (488, 496-531), who settled there prisoners of war from Amid (Diyarbakir) and Mayyafarikin and gave the new town the official name Weh Amid-i Kawad, "Good Amid of Kawad", later run together and arabicised as Amid-Kubad. Some Arab writers wrongly gave it the name Abar(z)kubad, borne by a district and town on the western frontier of Ahwaz. The common name Arradjan, however, came from an older town that existed before Kawad's foundation. ²

In the Arab period Arradjan was often named as a frontier town of Fars against Ahwaz, and it was the capital of the most westerly of the five provinces of Fars until the end of the seventh/thirteenth century; part of the province had earlier belonged to Khuzistan. Arab geographers describe a large place with excellent bazaars, soap-making, abundant corn and olive groves, and one of the healthiest sites of the hot country (Garmsir). The rise of the Assassins brought its decline: they seized strongholds on the neighbouring hills, raided the town often, and in the seventh/thirteenth century took it; Arradjan never recovered, its people mostly left, and another town succeeded it as capital of the province. ²

The town lay on the road from Shiraz to Iraq, 37 miles from Shiraz and from al-Ahwaz and a day's journey from the Persian Gulf, on the Tab, which marked the boundary between Fars and al-Ahwaz. C. de Bode discovered its ruins on the Tab (now Ab-i Kurdistan or Marun), and Mustawfi, at the start of the eighth/fourteenth century, still shows the popular form Arghan or Arkhan. Herzfeld places the site about two hours' ride east of Bihbahan, a plain of ruins near the Kuh-i Bihbahan; cultivation has effaced its structures, but a medieval bridge and a barrage about two miles upstream survive. ²