Amol

Amol, on the Haraz river near the Caspian coast in Mazandaran province, northern Iran, was a chief city of the Tabaristan region from Sasanian times into the early Islamic period. It was the birthplace of the historian and Qur'an commentator al-Tabari (839-923), author of the universal History and a major tafsir, and the physician Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, author of the medical encyclopedia Firdaws al-Hikma, is also said to have been born there. From 864 the Zaydi Alid rulers of Tabaristan made Amol their capital, and the future Zaydi imam of Yemen, al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya, stayed there with his family in the 880s before returning to Arabia.