Shiraz

Overview

Shiraz is the capital of Fars Province in southern Iran and a major center of Persian history and culture. The city is closely associated with the poets Hafez and Saadi, whose lives and works remain central to Persian literary heritage. It is also home to Shah Cheragh, Shiraz’s foremost Shiite pilgrimage site, and to a longstanding community of Iranian Jews. These traditions give Shiraz a place in Iran’s cultural and religious history that extends beyond its role as a provincial capital.

Shiraz has also been a setting for major events in the Islamic Republic’s modern history. A case against thirteen Jews arrested in 1999 proceeded through a Shiraz courtroom in 2000 and drew attention to detention without charge, limits on access to counsel and televised confessions challenged by defendants’ relatives. In 2022, a Revolutionary Court sentenced 26 Baháʼís from Shiraz in a mass trial. Later that year, an Islamic State gunman attacked worshipers at Shah Cheragh. At the victims’ funeral, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Hossein Salami threatened protesters and blamed Iran’s problems on supposed schemes by Israel, the United States and European countries.

Geography

Shiraz lies in Fars Province, in southern Iran, within the wider setting of the Zagros mountains. Its position made it an enduring provincial center and connects it to the historical landscape of Persia. Fars is associated with the name by which Persian civilization became widely known outside Iran. Shiraz is therefore both a present-day administrative capital and a city identified with the longer history of the region around it.

The city serves nearby towns and routes as well as its own residents. The Shiraz–Bandar Abbas highway, for example, connects the provincial capital with a major southern port. That route figured in reform-era unrest when demonstrators from Sarvestan halted traffic on it. Police reinforcements came from Shiraz after a gathering of about 10,000 people in Sarvestan turned violent. The episode illustrates Shiraz’s practical role as a regional center for transport and security.

Air connections have likewise reflected Shiraz’s place in regional travel. Austrian Airlines began offering four weekly flights to the city in July 2017, then announced in 2018 that it would end service to Shiraz and Isfahan. Those changes concerned international access to two historically important Iranian cities; they do not define Shiraz’s older cultural or religious significance.

Ancient and biblical history

Shiraz belongs to the historical region of Fars, part of the Persian world whose ancient kingdoms shaped the history of the Middle East. The history of Persia also forms an important background to Jewish history. After Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, Jewish exiles were permitted to return to the Land of Israel. Jewish communities nevertheless remained across Persian lands. The biblical books of Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel place Persian rulers and cities within accounts of Jewish life in the ancient empire.

That broad Persian history should be distinguished from the history of Shiraz itself. Biblical accounts of the Persian court do not place their events in Shiraz, and the later prominence of the city does not make it the setting of every episode associated with ancient Persia. Its relevance here lies in its development within Fars and in the enduring Jewish presence that became part of the province’s history. Shiraz subsequently grew into a center of Persian language, learning and religious life.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Saadi and Hafez made Shiraz especially prominent in Persian literature. Saadi’s prose and poetry and Hafez’s lyric verse remained influential long after their lifetimes. Their association with Shiraz is a principal reason the city occupies such a recognizable place in Persian cultural memory. Literary heritage sits alongside, rather than replaces, the city’s varied religious history.

Jewish history

Shiraz has long been a center of Iranian Jewish life. A 1948 Jewish Agency estimate placed its Jewish population at 17,000, compared with an estimated 10,000 in Isfahan. Such figures show the size of the community at a particular moment, before the upheavals and emigration of later decades. Shiraz remained an important center after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Around 2000, Iran’s Jewish population was estimated at about 25,000, concentrated in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan.

During the 1940s, Jews in Shiraz took part in a renewal of social and Zionist activity that followed a period of greater political freedom in Iran. Jewish organizations emerged in the city and in other major Iranian centers. Zionism, the Jewish people’s national movement for self-determination in their historical homeland, formed part of that communal activity. Educational, social and youth organizations also expanded opportunities for Jewish participation in public life. The developments made Shiraz one of the cities in which Iranian Jews organized openly around their communal needs and ties to the wider Jewish world.

The community later resisted a government demand that Jewish-owned businesses open on Shabbat and close on Friday instead. The demand would have required observant owners to trade on the Jewish day of rest while adopting a different weekly closing day. The refusal demonstrated the community’s determination to maintain its religious practice. Accounts of the dispute provide context for tensions between Jewish communal life and state authority, though the dispute alone does not establish the motive for subsequent arrests.

Beginning in January 1999, Iranian authorities detained thirteen Jews and eight Muslims in Shiraz and Isfahan. The thirteen Jews were held without charge until June 7. Two days after espionage charges were brought, the Fars Province intelligence branch publicly accused them of spying for Israel. Their case proceeded through a Shiraz courtroom amid international concern about the charges and the treatment of the defendants. The location of the trial made Shiraz central to an episode watched far beyond Iran’s Jewish community.

The trial of the thirteen Jews began in Shiraz on April 13, 2000. Judge Satiq Nurani adjourned proceedings until May 1 so defense counsel could interview their clients and prepare a defense. Eight defendants made televised espionage confessions after the trial began, but relatives said the confessions were coerced. The broadcasts did not resolve concerns about their reliability: the defendants had previously been held without charge and had lacked legal representation. The case exposed the Iranian regime’s persecution of Jews through detention without charge, restricted access to counsel and the use of televised confessions whose validity was challenged by their families.

The episode is part of Shiraz’s Jewish history, but it does not encompass that history. The city’s Jewish community had existed through many changes of government and remained a center of Iranian Jewish life despite emigration after 1979. Its institutions, religious observance and experience of state pressure all belong in an account of Shiraz as a place inhabited by Iranian Jews.

Modern history

Shiraz also has a connection to the origins of the Baháʼí Faith. Ali Muhammad Shirazi, known as the Báb, lived from 1819 to 1850 and preceded Bahá’u’lláh. He first claimed to be a gateway to the Hidden Imam and later declared himself that Imam. His claims challenged Persia’s Shia clerical establishment and its interpretation of sacred texts. Qajar rulers treated them as a challenge to state legitimacy. The religious movement that followed became a distinct part of Iran’s modern history, while its adherents later faced persecution under the Islamic Republic.

Shiraz took part in Iran’s reform-era political struggles. University students in the city joined peaceful protests against newspaper bans, alongside students at campuses elsewhere in Iran. Protest over restrictions on the press was distinct from the violence that occurred in some other demonstrations. In the same period of unrest, demonstrators from Sarvestan blocked traffic on the Shiraz–Bandar Abbas highway on April 18. Police reinforcements from Shiraz responded after a large gathering in Sarvestan turned violent. Together, these events show both student participation in peaceful political action and the provincial capital’s role in responses to disorder nearby.

Public demonstrations in Shiraz have also concerned daily needs. In August 2012, thalassemia patients protested a shortage of medication. Their demonstration placed a medical supply problem in the city’s public space. It belongs to a wider account of civic life in Shiraz, alongside protests over political restrictions and cases involving religious minorities.

The Iranian regime’s treatment of the Afkari brothers brought further attention to Shiraz and its prisons. Authorities arrested Vahid, Habib and Navid Afkari in 2018 on charges that included “enmity against God.” The regime executed Navid in 2020. His brothers Vahid and Habib remained imprisoned and were held in solitary confinement from September 2020. In August 2022, Vahid received death threats from officials in Shiraz’s central prison. Their case connected the city’s detention facilities with the regime’s response to political dissent.

Adel Abad Prison in Shiraz was the site of Navid Afkari’s execution. Accounts of the brothers’ case describe beatings and threats before confessions to fabricated charges. The treatment of Vahid and Habib after Navid’s execution kept the case active in public attention. Shiraz was therefore both the setting of the original arrests and a continuing site of imprisonment.

In 2022, the regime pursued a mass case against Baháʼís from Shiraz. A Revolutionary Court sentenced 26 Baháʼís in June to prison terms of two to five years. Some also received two years of internal exile and bans on foreign travel. A Fars Province appeals court denied their appeals on August 30. Separately, security forces arrested five Baháʼís on July 19 and sent them to the Shiraz Intelligence Detention Center. The sentences, additional restrictions and arrests made Shiraz a significant setting in the regime’s persecution of Baháʼís that year.

Security

Shah Cheragh, meaning “King of the Light,” is the mausoleum of Ahmad bin Musa. He was the brother of Ali bin Musa Rida, the ninth imam of Twelver Shia Islam. The shrine is Shiraz’s foremost Shiite pilgrimage site and ranks as the third most important Shiite shrine in Iran. Its standing makes it a place of worship and pilgrimage for people beyond the city. An attack there struck both worshipers present at the site and a religious landmark closely identified with Shiraz.

On October 26, 2022, an Islamic State gunman armed with a rifle opened fire on worshipers at Shah Cheragh. Reports at the time put the toll at at least 15 people killed and about 40 wounded. Authorities arrested the attacker after he was wounded. The Islamic State terrorist organization claimed responsibility. Its attack was directed at a Shiite shrine, and its subsequent messaging threatened further attacks against Shiites in Iran.

The Islamic State promoted the Shiraz shooting in its weekly Al-Naba publication, placing it on the cover and presenting it in an infographic. Its propaganda celebrated the attack, called the country “Zoroastrian Iran” and invoked the 2018 Ahvaz parade attack. These messages formed part of the organization’s effort to exploit the killings for publicity and to threaten more violence. They did not change the immediate facts of the event: a gunman attacked worshipers at Shah Cheragh and caused mass casualties.

On October 27, IRGC commander Hossein Salami vowed retaliation against the Islamic State. At the victims’ funeral on October 29, he also warned protesters to stay off the streets. He blamed Iran’s problems on supposed schemes by Israel, the United States and European countries. His remarks used a ceremony for people killed in an Islamic State attack to address domestic protest and accuse foreign states. The regime’s public response thus included both a pledge against the attackers and a threat directed at Iranians protesting its rule.

On November 7, the Iranian regime announced that it had arrested 26 people in connection with the Shah Cheragh attack. That announcement followed the arrest of the wounded attacker and the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility. The investigation and the regime’s statements formed the immediate aftermath of one of the most consequential attacks on a religious site in Shiraz’s recent history.

Present day

Shiraz remains Fars Province’s capital and a center of Persian cultural and religious life. Hafez and Saadi give the city an enduring literary identity, while Shah Cheragh draws Shiite pilgrims. Its Jewish community and its connection to the beginnings of the Baháʼí Faith show a religious history wider than any single institution. These communities and traditions are part of the city’s history even when their experiences under the Iranian regime differ sharply.

Recent events have also made Shiraz a setting for questions of religious freedom, criminal justice and political power. The prosecution of thirteen Jews in 1999–2000, the 2022 mass sentencing of Baháʼís, and the imprisonment of the Afkari brothers each involved state institutions operating in or around the city. The October 2022 attack at Shah Cheragh brought a different threat: violence by the Islamic State against worshipers. Salami’s remarks at the victims’ funeral then placed the attack within the regime’s confrontation with protesters and its accusations against Israel and Western countries.

Understanding Shiraz requires holding these strands together. It is a provincial capital with transport links and public institutions; a landmark of Persian poetry; a major Shiite pilgrimage destination; and a city shaped by the lives of Iranian Jews, Baháʼís and other residents. Its modern record includes peaceful protest, demands for medical care, prosecutions of religious minorities, imprisonment of dissidents and an attack on a shrine. Each belongs to the history of the same city.