
Select Citation Style
Share to social media
Thank you for your feedback


External Websites
Britannica Websites
Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Shīrāz, also spelled Shiraz, city, capital of Fārs ostān (province), southwestern Iran. It is located in central Fārs in the southern part of the Zagros Mountains, on an agricultural lowland at an elevation of 4,875 feet (1,486 metres). Famous for its wine, it is both a historic site and an attractive modern city, with gardens, shrines, and mosques. Shīrāz is the birthplace of the Persian poets Saʿdī and Ḥāfeẓ, whose garden tombs, both resplendently renovated, lie on the northern outskirts. Despite calamitous floods (1630, 1668), pestilences, famines, and earthquakes (chiefly 1824, 1853), much of the city has survived.

Shīrāz was important during the Seleucid (312–175 bcE), Parthian (247 bcE–224 CE), and Sasanian (c. 224–651 CE) periods. In the early 13th century the Mongols built the New Mosque and the fortress Bāgh-e Takht. In 1387 and again in 1393, Timur (Tamerlane), the Turkic conqueror, occupied Shīrāz, which—with its Congregational Mosque (894), Shāh Cherāgh shrine (1344–49), and Great Library (later the Madrasseh, or theological school; 1615)—had become a Muslim centre rivaling Baghdad. In 1724 the city was sacked by Afghan invaders. Shīrāz became capital of the Zand dynasty (1750–94), whose founder, the vakīl (regent) Karīm Khān Zand, adorned the old city with many fine buildings, including his mausoleum (an octagonal tiled kiosk, now a museum); the Ark, or citadel (now a prison); and the Vakīl Bazaar and Mosque. Buildings in the new city include the Persian Church of St. Simon the Zealot and the university (1945).


Get our climate action bonus!
Learn More!