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Wellsprings

Tehranטהראן

Iran — Qajar/Pahlavi capital

Tehran is the capital of Iran; its metropolitan area has absorbed the ancient city of Rey. A modest town in the Middle Ages, it was made the capital by Agha Mohammad Khan of the Qajar dynasty in 1786 and grew into the country's political and intellectual centre. It gained the Dar al-Funun college in 1851, was at the heart of the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, and gained the University of Tehran in 1934. The Qajar court drew Muslim reformers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the 1880s. Tehran also became home to most of Iran's Jews, and the Kashan-born Yedidya Shofet (1908-2005) served there as chief rabbi of Iran.

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Tehran through the eras

Modern Era

Tehran's Jewish community emerged as the central Persian Jewish community only after 1786, when the Qajar dynasty made Tehran the Persian capital. The community grew rapidly under the Qajar and then Pahlavi regimes (1925-1979); R. Yedidya Shofet served as Chief Rabbi of Iran from 1944 to 1979. Under the Pahlavis the community of about 80,000 had multiple synagogues, the Otzar HaTorah school network, and unprecedented economic and educational opportunity. The 1979 Islamic Revolution and the execution of Jewish community leaders precipitated mass emigration; today perhaps 8,000-10,000 Jews remain in Tehran, served by some 25 active synagogues — still the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel.

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