´¡²ÑÄ€²Ñ´¡ (also Ê¿AmÄma), a village in the LavÄsÄn district at a distance of 39 km north of Tehran, located in a mountainous area 2,230 m above sea level. Heavy snowfalls in winter nearly isolate the village for more than three months of the year. The village population fluctuates, receding to a minimum of about 1,200 souls in winter when the majority of its youths migrate to nearby cities in search of work, and reaching a peak of 3,000 in summer when they return and its cool mountain air attracts city dwellers. Most of the villagers are engaged in gardening and their only source of livelihood is the sale of apples, cherries, and pears, and small-scale animal husbandry. AmÄma is divided into two parts, Upper AmÄma (AmÄma BÄlÄ), which is better developed and more densely populated, and Lower AmÄma (AmÄma PÄʾin). The main road reaching the village was built in 1955, and was improved and widened at the end of the 1980s.
AmÄma, because of its hardly accessible mountainous location, has always been considered a secure place of refuge. YÄqut (Beirut, I, p. 369), calling it AnbÄma, refers to it as a fortress in the vicinity of Ray. It served many times as the center of Qaá¹£rÄn-e DÄḵeli, which included villages situated behind the mountains north of Tehran, extending as far as LÄrijÄn, Nur, and Ä€mol. In 1880 when Moḥammad-Ḥasan Khan EÊ¿temÄd-al- Salá¹ana visited AmÄma, the village had three mosques and two bathhouses, and its population consisted of three distinct groups of Georgians, Nuris, and MÄzandarÄnis, who lived in more than one hundred houses. (Ruz-nÄma-ye ḵÄá¹erÄt, p. 115).
Anis-al-Dawla, the favorite wife of NÄá¹£er-al-Din Shah, was a peasant girl from this village. NÄá¹£er-al-Din Shah repeatedly traveled to AmÄma and hundreds of pictures were taken of him in this village. KamÄl-al-Molk Moḥammad ḠaffÄri produced an oil painting of AmÄma in 1883, which is kept in the GolestÄn Palace Museum.
Monuments. On the slopes of the mountains north of AmÄma, at a height of 3,921 m, in an area called Pirzan Kalum, traces of some ancient drawings can be seen on the rocks, which are believed to date from the second half of the first millennium B.C.E (Tafażżoli, pp. 55-60). Another noteworthy historic site is a ruined fortress built north of the village on a towering, hardly accessible spot. EÊ¿temÄd-al-Salá¹ana (Ruz-nÄma-ye ḵÄá¹erÄt, pp. 114-15) considered the fortress to be about 700 to 800 years old and similar to those of the IsmaÊ¿ilis and the rulers of RuyÄn and MÄzandarÄn. According to Ḥosayn KarimÄn (p. 283), this fortress must have been built in the yreas 838-45, when the Ziyarid MÄziÄr was ruling in ṬabarestÄn. According to ·¡Ê¿³Ù±ð³¾Äå»å-²¹±ô-³§²¹±ôá¹a²Ô²¹, the local people attributed its building to a demon (div) called AmÄma (Ruz-nÄma-ye ḵÄá¹erÄt, p. 115). There are two shrines in AmÄma, EmÄmzÄda Nur and ŠÄhzÄda Ḥosayn.
Bibliography:
·¡Ê¿³Ù±ð³¾Äå»å-²¹±ô-³§²¹±ôá¹a²Ô²¹, Ruz-nÄma-ye ḵÄá¹erÄt, ed. I. AfšÄr, 3rd ed., Tehran, 1977.
Abu’l-QÄsem Tafażżoli, RustÄ-ye AmÄma va Anis-al-Dawla, Tehran, 1363 Š./1984.
(Abu’l-QÄsem TafażżolÄ«)
Originally Published: July 20, 2002
Last Updated: August 2, 2011
Cite this entry:Abu’l-QÄsem TafażżolÄ«, “´¡²ÑÄ€²Ñ´¡,” Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2012, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/amama (accessed on 16 October 2012).
