ABSTRACT
The initial attraction of Persia found less in its present capital, Teheran, of comparatively modern development, than in its more ancient cities and in the astonishingly divergent physical geography of the country ranging from the semi-tropical regions about the Caspian, the barren high mountainous plateau of the central region, to the tropical vegetation of the south. Teheran, however, the paucity of its attractions as a town, offered a convenient base from which to journey east to Meshed, south to Ispahan and Shiraz, north to the Caspian, southeast to Yezd and Kerman, and southwest to Mohammerah and the Gulf. To Mohammerah and the Gulf the journey took the traveler through a part of Persia, Luristan, which was one of the most scenically beautiful and the most inaccessible regions of the country. But in spite of expeditions against them by the Mongols and by the Timurids, Luristan retained a nominal independence under its own atabegs from the eleventh to the sixteenth century.
