Persia: Shiraz as wine capital

The consumption of wine survived through the Sassanian Period, from the 3rd to the 7th centuries ad, influenced in part by Zoroastrian rite, and continued after the subsequent islamic conquest of the country.

Shiraz, a city rebuilt 50 km/30 miles from the site of Persepolis by the Arabs in the 8th century and the home town of Hāfiz, Persia’s most famous mystic Bacchic poet (see arab poets), had acquired a reputation by the 9th century for producing the finest wines in the Near East.

Thanks principally to the work of Edward Fitzgerald in the 19th century, the medieval polymath and poet omar khayyám has become famous in the west for poetry in which wine plays an important part.