Out on the high plain of Zanjan province, a long way from anywhere you might have heard of, there is a flat landscape of wheat fields and sheep pasture where the ground is strewn with brick fragments and bits of pottery. A city that put up one of the largest brick domes in the world needed fired brick in huge quantities, and kilns on the plain would have worked day and night.
Soltaniyeh was founded by Oljeitu's father Arghun and finished by Oljeitu, a Mongol khan who had converted to Islam and wanted a capital to rival Tabriz, which was already a centre of the Ilkhanate. Its name means the imperial city. At its height it was an enormous settlement with gardens, bazaars and tents for the royal household, and for a few decades it was a stop on the Silk Road for merchants and ambassadors. After the Ilkhanate collapsed in the 1330s it declined, and most of the buildings fell into ruin or were quarried, leaving the great mausoleum standing like a lighthouse over the plain.
The plateau is high, around eighteen hundred metres, and the climate shows it: hot, dry summers, with cold winters and a lot of wind. Spring brings green wheat and wildflowers, and autumn a clear light that sharpens the dome from many kilometres away. The roads across the plain are straight and good, with the main highway from Zanjan to Abhar and Qazvin carrying heavy trucks, and quieter side roads linking the villages.
The nearest sizeable towns are Abhar, a little over thirty kilometres to the south-east, and Zanjan, some forty kilometres to the north-west, which has about three hundred and fifty thousand people. Fuel and basic food are available along the highway, and in Zanjan you can find hotels and restaurants. Zanjan is famous for its knives and for a type of handmade footwear, and its bazaar is a good place to wander. Carry water, and wear a scarf against wind and dust, because the plain gives no shelter.