Yazd, city in central Iran, in the Zagros Mountains, the capital of Yazd province. To the north and east lie the deserts Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut. Yazd is an important manufacturing center with cotton, silk, and wool textile mills; a steel plant, a factory making water purification and filtration equipment; carpet-weaving workshops; and food-processing enterprises. Mines near the city produce iron, lead, uranium, and zinc ore, as well as various minerals. Despite the extreme aridity of the area, nearby villages rely on a unique system of underground irrigation channels to produce wheat, barley, cotton, oilseeds, indigo, mulberry trees (for silk worms), fruits, almonds, and vegetables. Yazd sits on the main highway and rail line from Tehran to Bandar-e 'Abbas. It is also served by an airport. Yazd's many historical sites include a Friday mosque, where Muslims gather to worship on Fridays. The mosque was built between the 12th and 15th centuries on the site of a pre-Islamic Zoroastrian fire temple. The city is also home to the 14th-century Vaqt-o-Saat shrine and library, the 15th-century Mir Chakhmaq mosque, the 15th-century covered bazaar, and the Zoroastrian Towers of Silence. Several thousand old houses in the center of the city are topped with high wind towers, a traditional architectural feature of Yazd. The towers, some as high as 6 m (20 ft), trap breezes and conduct them downward to rooms at ground level, providing a form of early air conditioning. The University of Yazd (founded in 1988) is also here.
There is no historical evidence regarding the founding of Yazd, but it became esteemed for its silk textiles during the Sassanid Empire (AD 224-651). It continued to be an important trade and silk center through the 13th century. Because of its relatively remote location, the Mongols, who destroyed many Iranian cities in the 13th century, did not attack Yazd or the area around it. Yazd's prosperity thus was not interrupted, and the city flourished until the 18th century, when it was attacked and looted by the Afghans, who massacred most of Yazd's residents during the course of the 19th century. Yazd gradually recovered from that disaster. As an early focus of industrialization efforts in the 1930s, the city experienced an economic renaissance in the 20th century. In 1956 Yazd's population had grown to 63,500; by 1976 it had doubled to 135,000. Population (1996) 326,776.
