The city of Urmia, with a far-reaching history and culture, had a central core where the old market was located and was full of merchants, buyers and sellers, and caravans that never stopped loading and unloading goods. Urmia, with its beautiful urban development, towers, ramparts, and historical structures surrounding it. The city market was one of its attractions.
The traditional Urmia Bazaar (market), now with the city’s expansion, can be seen in its southeast. This market has an area of five hectares and a thousand shops to buy all kinds of goods. Its simple but artistic architecture is also beautiful and eye-catching.
The history of Urmia Bazaar and its different sections
The different sections of Urmia bazaar are remnants of the Safavid, Zand and Qajar periods, and their architecture. Eugene Aubin visited the Urmia market in the historical past. He wrote about the abundance of its shops in his travelogue. Aubin was a French diplomat who traveled to Iran during the constitutional period and saw the city of Urmia and especially praised the city’s market for its beauty and abundance of goods. His book “Iran Today” has been translated and published in Farsi.
Urmia bazaar has two main streets; one called “taran” and the other called bazazan. these two streets are parralel to each other and contain several branching lanes, like the potter’s lane, cheesemongers, cotton weavers, and carpetmongers. These branching lanes were built when the market was at the peak of its prosperity and economic turnover was high. Each lane was meant for a profession. But the economic value of the branching lanes was lower than the main streets.
In addition to the lanes, there are several clusters of shops called “sera”, such as Halajan sera, Nakhjavani, Shoja-al-dowleh and Haj Ebrahimi. Timche’s are another part of the market, as well as public baths, known as Tajali bath, Akhound, Qaracheh, Qaem and Etehadieyeh. Regarding Gharacheh bath, it is worth mentioning that, based on historical documents, Nader Shah Afshar bathed in this bath, during his trip to Urmia. It was there that he ordered to blind one of his children’s eyes because he was suspected to have been plotting against the king! The market’s Gharacheh bath is one of the that has been renovated. One ancient mosque is also part of the bazaar. One the north side of this mosque a carvansarai has been built.
Going back to the bazaar’s “sera”; they have still kept their historical structure and are connected to each other by crossroads, which give a traditional look to this bazaar and are known as the sightseeing and tourism parts of the bazaar.
Urmia Bazaar architecture
The bazaar has a simple form of architecture. A dome is on the top and the arches that are decorated. Though simple, but it looks magnificent and spectacular. The part of the bazaar built in the Zand and Qajar periods seems more straightforward than the Safavid part. The materials used in the structure are primarily bricks. The architect did not make effort to decorate the structure with more arrays. For example, unlike many historical markets in Iran, this market does not have decorative tiles on the walls, nor wooden/stone doors. It is hard to contemplate why decorative art was avoided in this bazaar. However, it is believed that the economic success of the bazaar was more important to the owners than artistic features.
One of the noteworthy features of the Urmia market is that now there are merchants in this market who have been engaged in their work and art for 80 years and are considered to be the inheritors of their father’s profession. There are a lot of old ones in Urmia Bazaar. Another point worth mentioning is the construction of a particular Jewish synagogue in the market area.
Current situation of Urmia Bazaar
Urmia is a cold province, and its snowfall is sometimes heavy. In such weather conditions, old structures needed to be restored. The city’s market was also like that and suffered minor damage from the rains of recent and distant years, which was prevented from being destroyed by renovations. More renovations were done in the sections and rows of nut sellers, cheese sellers, Attaran, and Agha Razi row and helped improve the market conditions. Unfortunately, a fire engulfed the Urmia market in May of this year and burned a row of wool sellers. The fire was extinguished quickly, and the flames did not spread to other market parts (Arya Heritage News, Ordibehesht 6, 1402).
Urmia market, as mentioned, is a place for trade of all kinds of goods and was like this even in the past. One of the commodities sold, in the past centuries, was oil (petrol), which was brought from the Caucasus to the Khoy market, and from there, it was taken to the markets of Urmia, Tabriz, Ardabil, and other cities of Azerbaijan. Now, the first thing you see when you enter the market of Urmia is the delicious dairy products of this city, as well as the cheese called Paneer Kuzei in Urmia, which is famous all over Iran.
