Current Time in Marāgheh, Iran

Maragheh lies in the province of East Azerbaijan in north-western Iran, on the Sufi Chay river where it leaves the slopes of Mount Sahand and runs down towards Lake Urmia. The town stands at about fifteen hundred metres above sea level in a valley celebrated for its orchards and vineyards, sheltered by volcanic hills. Winters are cold with reliable snow, summers warm and dry, and the surrounding gardens of apricot, apple, walnut and grape make the valley one of the greenest in the region.

The city has a population of around one hundred and seventy-five thousand and is one of the principal towns of Iranian Azerbaijan, where Azerbaijani Turkish is the everyday language. Its economy is founded on agriculture and food processing, particularly dried fruit, raisins and fruit juice, and on quarrying, since the beautiful banded stone known internationally as Maragheh marble is cut from nearby hills and exported for use in floors and facades around the world.

Maragheh's great moment came in the thirteenth century, when Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered Persia and made this town the first capital of the Ilkhanid empire. Under his patronage the astronomer and polymath Nasir al-Din al-Tusi founded an observatory on a hill above the city in 1259, equipping it with instruments of unprecedented size and gathering scholars from Persia, Anatolia, Syria and even China. The astronomical tables compiled there were used across Asia and Europe for centuries, and the models developed by the Maragheh school influenced later astronomy, including the work that led to the heliocentric theory. The observatory ruins are now protected beneath a modern dome, and the site includes a museum explaining its instruments and achievements.

The town also preserves a remarkable group of medieval brick tomb towers, among the finest in Iran. The Red Dome, the Blue Dome and the Ghaffariyeh tomb are decorated with intricate brickwork, turquoise glazed tiles and Kufic inscriptions, standing in the streets of the modern town as reminders of the Seljuk and Ilkhanid periods. Nearby lie the ruins of Rasadkhaneh hill, old bridges over the river, and caravanserais on the historic road towards Tabriz.

A very different kind of fame comes from the fossil beds outside the city, where nineteenth-century excavations uncovered a rich assemblage of prehistoric mammals from the late Miocene epoch, including three-toed horses, giraffes and sabre-toothed cats, making Maragheh one of the classic palaeontological sites of Asia.

Local life follows Azerbaijani custom, with tea houses, carpet weaving, folk music played on the saz, and a cuisine of kebabs, herb stews, yoghurt soups and the fruit for which the valley is known. Nowruz, the spring new year, is celebrated with picnics in the orchards.

Roads and a railway connect the city to Tabriz, about two hours away, and to the towns around Lake Urmia. The University of Maragheh, along with technical and medical colleges, continues the town's scholarly tradition.

Maragheh is important as a former imperial capital and as the site of one of the greatest observatories of the medieval world.