TEHRAN – The tourism directorate of Rey has arranged a summer festival, which includes various crafts workshops and special sightseeing tours of the ancient Iranian city, which is situated in southern Tehran.

The package tours will be offered on foot for a group of 15 people per day from June 26 to September 22, Rey tourism chief Noruz Taqipour said on Monday.

For the workshop programs, sightseers would visit four handicraft workshops in the fields of traditional glassmaking, pottery, glass cutting, and stone carving, the official explained.

Rey was one of the capital cities of the Parthian empire (3rd century BC–3rd century CE). According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the city was briefly a capital under the rule of the Seljuqs, but in the 12th century.

In 1220 the city was almost destroyed by the Mongols, and its inhabitants were massacred. Most of the survivors of the massacre moved to nearby Tehran, and the deserted remnants of Rey soon fell into complete ruin.

Seljuk, also spelled, Seljuq, was a ruling military family of the Oguz (Ghuzz) Turkic tribes that invaded southwestern Asia in the 11th century and eventually founded an empire that included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and most of Iran. Their advance marked the beginning of Turkish power in the Middle East.

AFM