Yezd

Yazd

Yazd (yäzd), city (1991 pop. 275,298), capital of Yazd prov., central Iran, in a desert region. The city is known for its elaborate silk products and remains a center for silk weaving. Grain, fruit, vegetables, and nuts are grown, and underground water tunnels exist in the city. Yazd is at the junction of several roads and former caravan routes and is served by a railroad. An old city, Yazd was an important Zoroastrian center in Sassanid times. It was conquered by the Arabs in 642, and in the 13th cent., when Marco Polo visited Yazd, it was a large, flourishing city. Shah Ismail annexed it to Persia in the 16th cent. Yazd is a picturesque city, with narrow, winding streets and several medieval mosques, religious schools, and tombs. Its Zoroastrian community, the largest in Iran, erected a modern fire temple in 1942. The city is also known as Yezd.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Yezd

a city in Iran, administrative center of the chief guber-natorial region of Yezd. Population, 98, 000 (1971). Railroadstation and highway junction. Yezd has textile and food andcondiments industries and produces silk, carpets, and other handicraft items.

Yazd

, Yezd

a city in central Iran: a major centre of silk weaving. Pop.: 436 000 (2005 est.)

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

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In 1747 they commissioned two doctors to go to Yezd in Persia, where they had heard the Gebri lived.

Keeping faith with culture: Protestant mission among Zoroastrians of Bombay in the nineteenth century

Nayo, who is working for a German programme whose aim is to preserve peoples in danger of extinction, states that he recently discovered the word `yezidi' engraved in cuneiform characters on a third-millennium Sumerian tablet.(29) As for the Yezidis themselves, they say their religion was founded in the town of Yezd in Iran around 2020 B.C.