section_path: History/Early modern era
section_name: Early modern era
paragraph_text: Early modern era
  
  Italian traveler Pietro della Valle passed through Tehran overnight in 1618, and in his memoirs called the city Taheran. English traveler Thomas Herbert entered Tehran in 1627, and mentioned it as Tyroan. Herbert states that the city had about 3,000 houses.
  
  In the early 18th century, Karim Khan of the Zand dynasty ordered a palace and a government office built in Tehran, possibly to declare the city his capital; but he later moved his government to Shiraz. Eventually, Qajar king Agha Mohammad Khan chose Tehran as the capital of Iran in 1786. Khan's choice of his capital was based on a similar concern for the control of both northern and southern Iran. He was aware of the loyalties of the inhabitants of former capitals Isfahan and Shiraz to the Safavid and Zand dynasties respectively, and was wary of the power of the local notables in these cities. Thus, he probably viewed Tehran's lack of a substantial urban structure as a blessing, because it minimized the chances of resistance to his rule by the notables and by the general public. He had to remain within close reach of Azerbaijan and Iran's integral northern and southern Caucasian territories —at that time not yet irrevocably lost per the treaties of Golestan and Turkmenchay to the neighboring Russian Empire —which would follow in the course of the 19th century.
  
  After 50 years of Qajar rule, the city still barely had more than 80,000 inhabitants. Up until the 1870s, Tehran consisted of a walled citadel, a roofed bazaar, and the three main neighborhoods of Udlajan, Chale-Meydan, and Sangelaj, where the majority resided.
  
  During the long reign of Naser al-Din Shah (1848-1896), Tehran witnessed Iran's first institute of higher learning, bank, railway line and museum. The city expanded rapidly through multiple development plans. The first development plan in 1855 emphasized traditional spatial structure. The second, under the supervision of Dar ol Fonun in 1878, included new city walls, in the form of a perfect octagon with an area of 19 square kilometers, mimicking the Renaissance cities of Europe. Tehran was 19.79 square kilometers and had expanded more than fourfold.