National Getaways for the Weary Trauma Surgeon; Part 5: Shiraz, the City of Gardens and Hospitality

Copyright © 2015, Trauma Monthly. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited. Shiraz is one of the oldest cities of ancient Persia. It is the sixth most populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars Province. It is built on a green plateau at the foot of the Zagros Mountains 1,500 meters (4,900 feet) above sea level. Shiraz is 919 kilometers (571 mi) south of Tehran (1). Shiraz is more than 4,000 years old. It was the capital of Iran about 300 years ago (2). Shiraz is known as the city of poets, gardens, nightingales and flowers (3). There are many old gardens in Shiraz such as the Eram Garden and the Afif abad Garden. Shiraz is a center for Iranian culture and has produced a number of famous poets. Saadi and Hafez are two grand poets that lived in the 13th and 14th-century (Figures 1 3). There are many interesting sites in Shiraz, such as Shah Cheragh Holy Shrine, Atigh Jame’ Mosque, Vakil Mosque, Nasir al-Mulk Mosque, Vakil Bazaar and the Qur’an Gate. Within a relatively short driving distance from Shiraz are the ancient ruins of Persepolis, Bishapur, Pasargad , and Firouzabad. At Naqsh-e Rustam, the tombs of the Achaemenid kings can be found (Figures 4 6).