Mahan () is a city in, and the capital of, Mahan District of

Kerman County Kerman County () is in Kerman province Kerman province () is the largest of the 31 provinces of Iran. Its capital is the city of Kerman. The province is in the southeast of Iran. In 2014 it was placed in Region 5. Mentioned in anc ...

Kerman Kerman (; ) is a city in the Central District (Kerman County), Central District of Kerman County, Kerman province, Kerman province, Iran, serving as capital of the province, the county, and the district. History Kerman was founded as a def ...

province,

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

History

Mahan is well known for the tomb of the great

Sufi Sufism ( or ) is a mysticism, mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic Tazkiyah, purification, spirituality, ritualism, and Asceticism#Islam, asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are r ...

leader Shah Ne'emat Ollah-e-Vali, as well as Shazdeh Garden (Prince Garden). The tomb of Shah Nur-eddin Nematollah Vali, poet, sage, Sufi and founder of an order of darvishes, has twin minarets covered with turquoise tiles from the bottom up to the cupola. The mausoleum was built by Ahmad Shah Kani; the rest of the building was constructed during the reigns of

Shah Abbas I Abbas I (; 27 January 1571 – 19 January 1629), commonly known as Abbas the Great (), was the fifth Safavid shah of Iran from 1588 to 1629. The third son of Shah Mohammad Khodabanda, he is generally considered one of the most important rulers ...

, Mohammad Shah Qajar and Nasser-al-Din Shah. Shah Nematallah Wali spent many years wandering through central Asia perfecting his spiritual gifts before finally settling at Mahan, twenty miles south-east of

, where he passed the last twenty five years of his life. He died in 1431, having founded a Darvish order which continues to be an active spiritual force today. The central domed burial vault at Mahan, completed in 1437 was erected by Ahmad Shah Bahmani, king of the

Bahmani Sultanate The Bahmani Kingdom or the Bahmani Sultanate was a late medieval Persianate kingdom that ruled the Deccan plateau in India. The first independent Muslim sultanate of the Deccan, the Bahmani Kingdom came to power in 1347 during the rebellio ...

, and one of Shah Nematallah's most devoted disciples.

Demographics

Population

At the time of the 2006 National Census, the city's population was 16,787 in 4,138 households. The following census in 2011 counted 17,178 people in 4,707 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the city as 19,423 people in 5,713 households. Jardín del Príncipe, Mahan, Irán, 2016-09-22, DD 28.jpg, Shazdeh Garden, Mahan. (by day). Santuario Shah Nematollah Vali, Mahan, Irán, 2016-09-22, DD 12.jpg, Shah Nematollah Vali Sanctuary.

Notes

References

External links