What it means / Where it is
یزد (yazd) is the capital of Yazd province in central Iran, set on the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir and the Dasht-e Lut deserts. The old city, with its mud-brick walls and dense maze of alleys, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2017 as the first complete Iranian city to receive that status.
Cultural-historical context
Yazd is the historical center of Iranian Zoroastrianism. The آتشکده یزد (âtashkade-ye yazd), the Yazd Fire Temple, houses a flame that Zoroastrians say has burned without interruption for around 1,500 years. Outside the city, the brick towers known as دخمه (dakhme), the Towers of Silence, were used until the mid-twentieth century for the traditional Zoroastrian sky burial. Iran still has one of the world’s largest Zoroastrian communities, and Yazd is its cultural capital.
The desert climate shaped a distinctive architecture. Yazd is famous for the بادگیر (bâdgir), the wind-tower, a tall vented chimney that pulls cool air down into the rooms below. Combined with deep cellars and the قنات (qanât) underground water channels, Yazdi homes stayed livable through summers that regularly cross 40°C. The skyline of wind-towers above flat roofs is the city’s signature image.
How to use it
- یزد خیلی گرمه (yazd kheyli garme) “Yazd is very hot”
- اهل یزدم (ahl-e yazd-am) “I am from Yazd”
- به یزد رفتیم (be yazd raftim) “We went to Yazd”
Yazdi cuisine has its own personality. The city is famous for قطاب (qotâb), a half-moon pastry filled with almonds and powdered sugar, and for باقلوای یزدی, a denser, drier baklava than the Tehran or Qazvin versions. Travelers leaving Yazd almost always bring a box of qotâb home with them.
Yazdis carry a quiet reputation across Iran for being calm, religious, and good with money. The city has produced an outsized number of Iran’s bazaar merchants and industrial families. Walking the old town at dusk, when the sandstone alleys glow and the call to prayer mixes with bicycle bells, is one of the more durable memories Iran offers a visitor.
The 1906 Constitutional Revolution had Yazdi figures, and so did the modernist literary movement of the twentieth century: Mohammad Reza Shafi’i Kadkani, the major poet and scholar, has roots in the region. The city is also closely associated with Mohammad Khatami, the reformist president of the late 1990s, who comes from Ardakan in Yazd province. None of this gets advertised; it just sits in the background of how Iranians read the place.
References
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