Mountain · Iran
Mount Damavand
Damavand is a snow-capped volcano of 5 609 metres in the Alborz range, the highest point in Iran and the highest volcano in all of Asia. Its crater still smells of sulphur.
Picture credit: Alireza Javaheri (CC BY 3.0) · Hansueli Krapf (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Mount Damavand?
Mount Damavand is part of the Alborz mountains.
You will find it in: Iran.
Summit: 35.954° N, 52.110° E
The story behind it
The cone sits about seventy kilometres northeast of Tehran and can be seen from the city on a clear day. Its crater is roughly 300 metres across and edged with yellow sulphur crusts, and on the last slope climbers smell the gas that gives the section its nickname, Smoke Mountain. Warm mineral springs bubble out around the base, proof that heat is still stored under the rock, even though the last eruption was around 5300 BCE. In the Persian epic Shahnameh, the tyrant Zahhak is finally chained inside a cave on Damavand after the blacksmith Kaveh raises his leather apron on a spear and the young Fereydun leads the revolt. Older Zoroastrian texts tell a similar story about the dragon Azhi Dahaka bound in the mountain. The earliest ascent anyone wrote down was made in the year 905 by Abu Dolaf Kazraji, which makes Damavand one of the first big mountains in the world with a recorded climb.
Find it on the globe
Mount Damavand is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is Damavand?
About 5 609 metres, though some sources say 5610 or even 5671. It is the highest point in Iran and in western Asia, and the highest volcano on the whole continent.
Where is Damavand?
In northern Iran, in the Alborz range between Tehran and the Caspian Sea, roughly seventy kilometres northeast of the capital and visible from it on clear days.
Is Damavand still an active volcano?
It has not erupted since around 5300 BCE, but hot mineral springs at its foot and sulphur gas near the crater show that heat is still trapped under the mountain.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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