Maragheh

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Maraga, also Maragha or Maragheh (Persian مراغه ) is a city in the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan 130 km south of Tabriz.

Maragha is in the running in a north-south direction of the river valley Safi Chai on the southern slopes of the Sahand Mountains. The city has about 155,000 inhabitants. The old town is surrounded by a wall only partially preserved. Two well-preserved stone bridges should come from the time Hülegüs. The Sahand mountains shields the city from the north winds, so the climate is milder than for example in Tabriz north of Sahand. It is surrounded by extensive orchards which extend up to 30 km west of Lake Urmia situated. One of their export product is dried fruit. In the city there is an extension of the University of Tabriz and the Islamic Azad University of Maragheh.

History

From the Sassanid period a Mithraeum stems (also called multi - temple ) which was built partly 5 m below the ground. After the city became Muslim in the 7th century, it fell in 1029 to the Oghuz. These were replaced by a local Kurdish dynasty. In 1221 the city was destroyed by the Mongols. The Ilkhan Hulagu made ​​them then, however, his residence city (later the capital was moved to Tabriz ). Hulagu Khan's mother and two of his wives were members of the Apostolic Church of the East. Hülegüs wife Qutai Khatun led the Epiphany processions again.

On February 8, 1265 Hulagu died in Maragha and was buried on an island in Lake Urmia. The son Tekuder ( Il- Khan 1282-4 ) allowed to build Gregorius Bar - Hebraeus a church and a monastery below the observatory. Rabban Bar Sauma, a Nestorian Christian from Beijing, settled in Maragha down after he had been sent in 1287 by Ilkhan Arghun to Europe to form an alliance with the Christian West against the Mamluks in Egypt to the Holy Land from Islam to free. Bar Saumas students Mar Yaballah III. , Catholicos of the Apostolic Church of the East from 1281 to 1317, moved his residence from Baghdad to Maragha.

1828, the city was occupied for some time by Russia.

Attractions

Best known are four grave towers ( Gunbad or gonbad ), with 3 of the Seljuk and the period of the Ilkhanate belong: the Gonbad -e Sorkh ( Red Tower, 1147 ), the Borj -e- Modavvar ( Cylindrical Tower, 1167 ), the Gonbad -e- Kabud (Blue Tower, 1197 ) and the gonbad Qufariye ( 1328 ). The Gonbad -e- Kabud is also the mausoleum of Hulagu Khan's mother called, even though the Islamic art traditions could possibly appropriate equipment to consider that it is in fact the tomb of a Syrian Christian. This tower is decorated with mosaics, which have a resemblance to Penrose tilings. Then in 1992 had pointed Emil Makovicky of the University of Copenhagen. Beginning of 2007 found Peter Lu and Paul Steinhardt further evidence that Islamic craftsmen related since the Middle Ages highly complex tilings that are outside the Islamic world, ' modern ' in the ' Western ' science, are only now justified mathematically / rediscovered.

Opened in 1990, the museum specializes in the time of the Ilkhanate. In the garden there is a (modern ) Mausoleum of the poet Owhadi Maragheh'ei.

Near the town is the Alavian Reservoir, the the Safi Chai dams for irrigation of orchards.

At the foot of the Sahand Mountains lies the village of Kandovan (37 ° 49 'N, 46 ° 17' O37.82133055555646.291605555556 ) whose houses are built similar in Cappadocia in the rocks.

Throughout Iran, the local module, a travertine, as Maragha or even Tabriz marble is known. The quarries are located 50 km north -west in Dehkhvaregan (Alternative Name: Azar - Shahr (37 ° 46 'N, 45 ° 59' O37.76026666666745.977038888889 ) ) in the vicinity of Lake Urmia. The travertine is exported and traded under the names Azarshar Red, Yellow, Onyx.

Observatory Rasad -e Khan

Near Talebkhan (37 ° 23 '46 "N, 46 ° 12' 33 " O37.39607777777846.209158333333 ) located on a hill 3.8 km west of the city, the ruins of the observatory Rasad -e Khan, the Hülegü 1259 to 1262 for the astronomer Nasir al-Din al - Tusi had built. On a zitadellartigen terrain from 340 to 135 m2 was a four-story building. The instruments were described by Mu'ayyad al - Din al- Urdi in his work The quality of observation. At the observatory and the Academy worked alongside Iranian and Islamic researchers also Christian Armenian and Georgian as well as Chinese mathematician and astronomer. The library contained 40,000 books.

The Astronomers determined, for example, the annual precession of the equinoxes to 51 arc-seconds ( current value 50.3 " ) or 1 ° per 70.6 years. Since ancient times, it was assumed 66 2/3 years. The results were summarized in the Zij -i Ilkhani ( tables of Ilchane ), which describes the position of the stars and planets according to the results of their research. The work was one of the sources of the later works of Nicolaus Copernicus. For his model of planetary motion at- Tusi had introduced the Tusi - couple, a method of expressing an oscillating linear motion by the superposition of two circular motions. Nicholas Copernicus used for example for the treatment of trepidation, an erroneous oscillation of the equinoxes, which is to Thabit ibn Qurra go back to. At the observatory, for example Mu'ayyad had al -Din al - Urdi († 1266 ) ( Urdi lemma ) and Qutb al -Din al - Shirazi ( 1236-1311 ), who with Theodoric of Freiberg explained the same time as the rainbow. The work was later in Damascus, Samarkand, Istanbul continued ( Maragha school) and could have influenced Copernicus ( Tusi - couple Urdi lemma ), even if not clear how he became aware of it ( see, eg, John Engel).

According to local tradition, was located on the premises of the Observatory, an observation wells, out of which at- Tusi star is said to have observed the day.

Also Hülegüs brother Kublai Khan had built 27 solar observatories in China, said Gaocheng Observatory in Henan Province can still be seen. The close family relations of the rulers led to an exchange between Islamic and Chinese astronomers. Cha- Ma -Lu -Ting (including Cha- Ma -Li -Ting; transcription of Jamal al -Din ) built instruments for the Maragha Observatory and led Arab instruments in China. It is possible that the Ulugh Beg Timuridenfürst saw the plant as a child and took her in Samarkand as a model of his observatory Gurkhani Zij. A celestial globe of 1279 from the observatory is located in the Mathematics and Physics Salon in Dresden.

The tradition continues since 2003 by Research Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics of Maragha. Most recently, the ruins are protected by a dome from the weather.