1960 Sahab Folding Road Map of Iran

This is a 1960 folding road map of Iran, prepared by Abbas Sahab, Iran's most prominent contemporary map publisher. It reflects the heavy investments in infrastructure undertaken by the Shah's government in the preceding years.

A Closer Look

Iran is presented with red overprint indicating provinces and light blue overprint used to display waterways. True to the title, the main focus is on infrastructure, with roads of several grades, railways, and air routes denoted, along with projected routes of each. Distances by road between cities are written along roads. Cities and towns, oil pipelines, administrative boundaries, and archaeological ruins are also recorded. An inset relief map of Iran appears at left, reflecting the country's famous mountainous terrain, while a large table of distances between cities appears at bottom-left.

One curious feature of this map is the inclusion of Bahrain as part of Iran; this was the position of the Shah and the Iranian government at the time, based on the (generally quite indirect) rule of Bahrain by the Safavid and Zand Dynasties in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by Abbas Sahab's Geographical and Drafting Institute in Iran. It is the second ('new') edition of the map, originally published in 1958. Later editions would continue to be published in the early 1980s. The present edition is listed among the holdings of ten institutions in the OCLC.