Oudlajan

The name Oudlajan in the historic Tati language means the 'place for dividing the water'. Some believe that Oudlajan means 'Abdullah Jan' (Dear Abdullah) in a Jewish dialect.

Before the spread of the Persian language, most people of Oudlajan spoke the Tati language.

A mosque in Oudlajan

Remains of an old wealthy house

Oudlajan is amongst the oldest neighborhoods of Tehran, for it already existed when Tehran was still a village. Its inhabitants originally spoke a dialect that was very much akin to that of Shemiran.[2] The neighborhood used to be situated in the north-eastern part of what is old Tehran. Noticeable landmarks were the Tehran city fort situated to the north and east of Oudladan, the royal citadel to the west, the Chaleh Maidan neighborhood to the south, and the Bazaar neighborhood to the southwest.[3]

The Jews of Tehran did not settle en masse into one neighborhood because they were forced to, but, rather, due to the significance of traditional Jewish considerations, they gathered around their synagogues. The importance of baths, Kosher meat and security likewise stimulated the Jews of Tehran to live together.[3] Oudlajan's religious make-up used to be divided into two main groups: Jews and Muslims, the latter being relatively prosperous ones. Oudlajan hosts a number of quite significant Muslim religious sites, rather than Jewish sites. In fact, this notion is of one of Oudlajan's characteristics.[3] Amongst such sites are the Tomb of Haft Dokhtaran in Oudlajan's northeast, the Dangi Mosque in its northwest, the Houz Mosque in the southwest, the Abolfazl Mosque and Pir Ata Tomb in its east, and finally the Montazer al-Mahdi Mosque in the west.[3]

Prior to the Persian Constitutional Revolution, Oudlajan was concomitantly the host to many synagogues while also being the one neighborhood of Tehran where most of its Jewish inhabitants lived.[4] Nowadays, however, only two synagogues survive in Oudlajan, namely the Hakim Asher and Ezra Yaghoub.[3] The synagogues of this time period are marked by their small architectural size, simplicity and minimal visual overlap with the urban texture of the surrounding area. Prior to the Constitutional Revolution there was no large synagogue in Tehran, although there were a relatively large amount of small synagogues close to each other in the Jewish neighborhood.[3] They increased in number only if the Jewish population kept increasing. Some of these old synagogues in Oudlajan which were built at the time, were either sold or their purpose changed as years passed by. It is therefore difficult to estimate the precise number of synagogues of the Qajar era.[3]

Oudlajan counted ten synagogues during Naser al-Din Shah Qajar's reign.[3] One of Naser al-Din Shah's physicians, a Jewish person named Hakim Asher, founded the Kohan Sedgh (Soltan Solayman) synagogue in 1892, which was later renamed the Hakim Asher Synagogue. One of two surviving synagogues of Oudlajan, the Hakim Asher Synagogue is the oldest extant synagogue of Tehran.[3][5]

Most of the people living in Oudlajan were Jewish. In addition there were Zoroastrians living in Oudlajan. Many famous Iranian politicians such as Qavam family, Mostofi Family, Nasiroldoleh, Seyyed Hassan Modarres lived in Oudlajan. The houses with many rooms around a yard (with a small pool in the middle) were called Ghamar khanoom houses.

Oudlajan was the wealthiest neighborhood in the Qajar era and kept its status until the Pahlavi era. However, with the big changes in Iranian society in 1340 AH it gradually lost its status. The biggest obstacle to Oudlajan today is the expansion of the Bazar neighborhood. This trend has changed Oudlajan from a wealthy neighborhood into a storage area for Bazar and many old houses were turned into places for addicts.[1]

In the 1940s-1950s, during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as a result of the neighborhood's decline and the growth of Tehran and its enlargement to the north, the Jewish inhabitants of Oudlajan gradually moved to Tehran's northern parts, in particular Bagh-Saba (East), Hasan Abad (West) and its neighborhoods.[6]