Rey, Iran

The former northern Persian ruins and current industrial city Sahr -e Ray (also Rayy, Rey, Rei, Rai or Rayy; Persian شهر ری ) is located about 15 kilometers south of the Iranian capital, Tehran, was once itself a suburb of Ray. Ray is therefore to be counted for the Tehran metropolitan area and is well connected to the subway Teheran, but forms a separate district of the province of Tehran.

History

Ancient capital of Iran

Ray was the oldest capital and " holy " center of the Medes, the oldest Iranian empire, but was captured and subjected to the 8th century BC by the Assyrians. The ancient Greeks and Romans, the city was as Rhagai or Rhagae ( Rhagae ) or Rhages ( Rages ) known and has been mentioned in the Jewish Book of Tobit. New capital of the Medes after the victory over the Assyrians in the 7th century was Ecbatana ( Hamadan ). Along the Silk Road was Ray at the intersection of Route from Ecbatana to Herat and Tabriz to Isfahan.

In the 6th century BC, destroyed by the Persians under Cyrus II and Darius I, after losing to Alexander the Great ruled the last Persian king Darius III. a few weeks of Ray over the remaining range. From Alexander's successor Seleucus I. Ray was rebuilt and renamed in the meantime Europos, but fell in the 3rd century before Christ to the Parthians ( the summer residence of the Arsacid in arsakia renamed) and in the 3rd century AD, the Sassanids.

With the fall of the Sassanid Empire and Ray was attacked by the Arabs, the remains of a Sassanid fortress, however, are in Ray still preserved as well as the tomb of Shahr - Banus, a daughter of the last Sassanid shah Yazdegerd III. , As the wife of the Husain ibn ʿ Alī said to have become the mother of many Sayyids.

Power center of the Persian Iraq

After an earthquake, the city was rebuilt on the orders of the Caliph and repopulated, but the Muslim population gradually iranisiert. The Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid said to have been born 765 in Ray. During the Civil War to the caliphate struck in 812 Harun al - Ma'mun Persian son just outside the city of Baghdad, the Arab troops of his half-brother al-Amin.

Already 874 attacked a zaiditischer counter Caliph of Daylam Ray. In the year 932 then conquered the Buyide al -Hasan Rukn al-Dawla on behalf of a Daylamite mercenary leader of the city and started his own business, his successors encouraged the Shia, including Avicenna looked at whose court. But a hundred years after Hasan's rise ended in 1023 the conquest by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni Rays this Persian dynasty. The defeat of the Ghaznavids against the Seljuk Turks ( 1040 ) tried a son of the last Buyids in Ray to use for the restoration of his dynasty, but first, the city fell 1041/42 to the Seldschukenführer Ibrahim Inal and the following year at the powerful half-brother Toghril - Beg ( I. ), which made ​​her his new residence and also died here.

So Ray was to the 12th century once again thriving residential town under buyidischen or part Seljuk rulers, emirs and sultans. Up to the time of the Abbasid caliph Al- Muqtafi († 1160 ) dominated this indirectly also the capital Baghdad.

In Ray came 864 the physician and philosopher Rhazes to the world and there seemed Shia scholar Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Baboye († 991 in Ray ) and the mu'tazilitische Abdaldschabbar Qadi, a teacher al - Murtadas († 1044 ). Ray was a stronghold of the Shia in northwestern Iran.

Since 874 Ray had become a center of the mission of the Ismailis, and there the Ismaili scribes Hasan -i Sabbah († 1124 ) was the founder of the Assassins. The Seljuk governor Abbas was around 1145 a massacre of the Ismailis and commit to let you have built towers out of the skulls of the slain. 1186 parts of the city were destroyed in renewed fighting between Sunnis and Shiites.

The last Sultan of the line of Großseldschuken, Toghril III. , Resided in Ray, and died here in 1194 finally the Khorezm Shah Tekisch.

Tehran as the successor

In 1220 arose the Ismailis again, the Khorezm Shah drowned the uprising in another massacre. From a third destruction by the Mongols, which Ray had bitterly resisted in 1221, the city never recovered. In 1400, then, the Mongols came again, this time under Timur Lenk. Shah Rukh counter († 1447 in Ray ), the successor of the Mongol Timur in Herat, rose the Kurd Nurbasch Mahdi before he died in Ray in 1464.

The ruins of the city fell, its bricks were used by the survivors in nearby Tehran, the de facto successor to the Rays as a regional metropolis of the non-Arab Iraq ( Iran) took.

But Tehran until 1796 was under the Qajar also the capital of the united kingdom overall, and even Shah Fath Ali settled in the ruined city of Ray glory through carved rock reliefs. The Imamzadeh Shrine of Shah Sayyid Abd al- Azim was in 1906 finally the scene of the Constitutional Revolution.

Old Testament

Ray is as Rages in the Book of Tobit in the Old Testament mentioned several times (eg Tob 5.5 EU). The archangel Raphael is the angel in it, who hears the prayer of Tobias (son of Tobit ) ( Tob 3.16 EU), accompanied him on his journey to Rages of Nineveh, Ecbatana in him as a wife Sara mediated ( Tob 6,10 - 13 EU ) and Tobias ' father Tobit heals.

Panorama

Sons and daughters of the town

• Hamid Soryan ( born 1985 ), wrestler, Olympic Champion 2012
• Javad Nekounam ( b. 1980 ), football player
• Harun al-Rashid ( 763-809 ), Caliph
• Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al - Razi ( 864-924 ), physician, scientist, philosopher and writer