Lying to the east of Lut desert, Zahedan used to be called ‘Dozdab’. In Persian, ‘Dozd’ means robber or bandit and ‘Ab’ means water. The city saw many bandits who wanted to ‘steal water’, iranchamber.com reported.
Zahedan is the main economic center of the region and home to many small- and medium-scale industries. Its main products are cotton, textiles, hand-woven rugs, ceramics, processed food, livestock feed, processed hides, milled rice, bricks, straw mats and baskets.
Highways link Zahedan to Tehran and Mashhad to the north, the port of Bandar Chabahar to the south, and the Pakistani city of Quetta to the east. A railway also runs from Zahedan to Quetta while another line connects Zahedan to Kerman in central Iran. Zahedan also has an international airport.
Like most Iranian cities, Zahedan has a big mosque, Jame mosque’, where many members of the community gather to worship on Fridays. It also has a Sunni Mosque, ‘Makki Mosque’, which is the largest Sunni mosque in Iran with stuccos and decorations in Indian architecture style, a Sikh temple and ruins of an ancient fortress.
A colorful bazaar, ‘Rasouli Bazaar’, patronized by the local Baluchi tribes can also be found in the city. There is a dormant volcano about 100 kilometers south of Zahedan called ‘Taftan’, which rises abruptly to 4,042 meters from the surrounding plain. Although the surrounding area has some ancient sites, Zahedan has been developed only in the 20th century. Zahedan was a small village before it was chosen as the provincial administrative center in the 1930s.
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Tehran, Oct 25, IRNA - The southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan is located close to the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan Province situated at an altitude of 1,352 meters above sea level and is 1,605 kilometers from Tehran.
