Fenderesk District

Fenderesk (Persian: فندرسک‎‎) is a district (bakhsh) in Golestan Province in northern Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 34,326, in 8,206 families. The District has one city: Khan Bebin. The District has two rural districts (dehestan): Fenderesk-e Jonubi Rural District and Fenderesk-e Shomali Rural District.

The place (Jafar Abad Namtaloo) in which Mirza Abolghasem Mirfendereski, (outstanding scientist-philosopher) (ca~ 970-1070) was born.Khan Bebin (Persian: خان به‌بین) is the district's only city.

The Shirabad waterfall is situated 7 km to the south of Khanbehbin town and in the slopes of the Alborz mountains in a forested area. On its way, there are some beautiful springs and rivers. This waterfall is in the form of a stairway and includes twelve large and small waterfalls. Its largest waterfall is 30 meters high and its lake is 40–80 meters deep.

The origin of the name Fenderesk is rooted in the administrative structure of the mountain districts of northern Iran. On the Iranian landscape today, a mountain is generally referred to as a kuh (Persian), dagh (Turkic) and, to a much lesser extent, jabal (Arabic). Lost among these are words such as “gar or jar,” “ostan,” “fand/fend,” “band/vand” that in their own context also mean “mountain.”

Mountain worship. In Persian mythology, mountains occupied a place of prominence. As noted in the legends of Iran’s kings and heroes described in Ferdowsi’s Shahnamah (Book of Kings), Saam sent his albino son Zaal into the Alborz Mountains to be rid of the evil that had afflicted him; Alborz was King Manouchehr’s retreat and the scene of many a battle fought by Rostam, Persia’s national hero; the villain Zahak was imprisoned at Damavand, in the Alborz range; and the hero Arash Kamangheer (the Archer) flung his arrow from Damavand to mark the eastward frontier of Manouchehr’s kingdom. On Mount Asnavand, Keikhosro, the mythical Kyanian king, built the first of the three celebrated fire-temples. Another Kyanian king, Gashtasp, built the temple Azar Barzin Mehr at Navand, a mountain in the northwest of present-day Sabzevar in Kohrassan. According to Avestan traditions, the sacred libation hom grew in the mountains. The Greek historian Herodotus (d. 425 BCE) noted that the Persians’ “wont … is to ascend the summits of the loftiest mountains, and there to offer sacrifice to [Ahuramazda] which is the name they give to the whole circuit of firmament.” Histories, Rawlinson’s edition, Book I:131).

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