Rayy was a major hub of medieval Iran, located at the nodal point for communications in all directions – towards Isfahan, Baghdad, Tabriz, Khurāsān, and Māzandarān across the Elburz. Destroyed in the Mongol invasions, it was eventually succeeded by Tehran. The two successive cities are really one continuous agglomeration. The recognition of its importance is quite evident in the medieval texts. Yāqūt (Muʿjam al-Buldān, s.v. Rayy), for example, devotes seven pages to a major metropolis of Islam – an exceptional article for him. Nevertheless, Rayy has not been treated well by modern studies. Why might that be? One point might be that there is no continuous development between Rayy and Tehran. The site was abandoned and left deserted for several centuries.

Second, the archaeological site of Rayy was always situated in the neighbourhood of modern Tehran, and the city has now largely spread over the site. In the past the site was a rich location for pillage of antiquities, which are nearly always the classic Iranian ceramics of the end of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. And on the other hand, the overall plan of the city even today depends on plans made between 1820 and 1840, and not since. There have indeed been archaeological expeditions to Rayy, for example the large-scale excavations of Erich Schmidt for Chicago in 1934–36. Unfortunately, the final publication was never made. It is a well-known problem among archaeologists – preparing a final publication takes time, time more interestingly spent on new fieldwork. The same happened with the later excavations under the direction of Chahriyar Adle in 1974–76: only a conference paper was ever published. Today, only limited areas remain open to excavate.

There is also a lack of historical studies. The most significant dedicated work, H. Karimian, Rayy-i bāstān, 2 vols, Tehran 1345–49/1966–70, is not translated into English. Nevertheless, Schwarz, Iran im Mittelalter, does devote 69 pages to Rayy, a thoroughgoing treatment of the texts.

In this situation, Rante's contribution is best characterized as the publication of new fieldwork, rather than as a new synthesis. We have here the publication of a doctoral thesis defended at Aix-en-Provence in 2009. Holder of a scholarship at IFRI (Institut Français de Recherches en Iran), he was able to undertake sondages at Rayy in 2006–07. Evidently the complex relations of France with the Islamic Republic limited the operation at the time. Since then French expeditions have been unable to work in Iran, with renewal in prospect at the time of writing, however. In addition Rante was able to include a description of the excavations of the Iranian archaeologist Ghadir Afround in the Citadel.

In the first chapter, Rante presents a round-up of the textual history. It adds little new – for example, out of Yāqūt's partly first-person witness account of seven pages, the only point he takes is the well-known one of Yaqut having found the city nearly abandoned at the time of his visit in 617/1220. One may ask whether the author used the original Arabic and Persian sources, used what was available in translation, or the summaries such as Le Strange's Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, or Schwarz as mentioned above. These days it is common to provide a translation of the major texts, possibly in an appendix. For example it would have been useful to see the text of Ibn Karbūya's verses, evaluated as “leaving a meticulous description of the town in this period” (p. 133), rather than simply learn of its existence in a couple of sentences.

After a chapter on earlier archaeological work, there is one on the topography of Rayy. This is not what one would have expected – the overall physical topography of the medieval city and a description of the known architectural monuments – but rather only the area of the citadel and the inner city visible today. The following chapter, on the excavations themselves, shows that the author was mainly interested in the sequence of the unfired earth fortifications, and a stratigraphical sondage, intended to discover the depth of the occupation in the inner city.

The subsequent chapter gives the pottery sequence divided into six phases, with six plates of pottery drawings, and a plate of colour photos of the glazed sherds. The author has not yet learnt the importance of signalling clearly the dates of the phases, which rather have to be sought out hidden in the text. Equally there is no written catalogue of the sherds in the pottery plates. It is difficult to discover what any individual piece was like. The vast body of material seems to be from the Parthian, Sasanian, and Early Islamic periods, with little of the fine glazed medieval pottery which was excavated by commercial diggers. The main twelfth–thirteenth-century occupation may have been elsewhere.

The volume finishes with a synthesis of the urban development. The first real occupation belongs to the Parthian period, and the plan continues similarly into the Sasanian period – an approximate rectangle extending west from the citadel hill. With the Islamic period, there is a vast walled extension to the south, including an additional walled suburb to the southeast, which are not discussed. The result much resembles Sultan Kale at Merv, where the occupation moved out of the Sasanian city (Giyaur Kale) into a new fortified surburban site.

Although it is not the place of a book review to enter into new interpretations, it is evident to this reviewer that something has gone seriously wrong with the historical topography of Rayy in the scholarship prior to Rante. Yāqūt's Muʿjam has a clear account of the foundation of a city by al-Mahdī, finished in 158/772, called al-Muḥammadiyya, on the lines of the Round City of Baghdad, or al-Rāfiqa at Raqqa in Syria – started by al-Mahdī in the year Muḥammadiyya was finished. Both of these are large flat open sites. One would have thought that Islamic Rayy, which came to be located on the site of Muḥammadiyya, was situated more in the plain than the site excavated here. This site is largely part of the Partho-Sasanian city which continued to be occupied.