Rey, before the sunrise of the brilliant religion of Islam was a vast land in the central desert of the central iran and the bare mountains of the north Iran and was in fact the linking route of the east iran to the west.
abdolazim
Avesta,called rey the 12th sacred land created Ahurmazda and some believe due to the place of birth of Zoroaster the prophet,it was called Racazartosht.As the fourth main classes of religious men,worriors,farmers and merchants lived in this flourishing land .
After the attack of Alexander the great in the year 330 B.C., it lost the previous grandeur and majesty and the affluent villages of this place turned into bare and dry lands and subject to demolition until soluccus, one of the successors of Alexander(317-280 B.C.) tried to renew its majesty and rebuilt the demolished parts of the rey and called it orupus( the name of his birthplace in Macedonia).
Solucuus, built new towns around Rey called Lavedkia and Apamia so the Macedonians who had come to Iran would reside in these towns and after a while, he called the complex of these towns as Ursakia. During the reign of the Sassanid kings, it reached the apix of its grandeur and from 500 o 553 christian year, some Iranians who had converted to Zoroastrian religion became Christian and rey became the capital of bishops and propaganda center of christianity .
In 641, Yazdgerd the third, the last sassanid king whose attempts remained futile in safeguarding the borders of Iran, left and gave up rey in the fire kindled by rebellion and unrest of the Arabs and fled towards his own fate.
After the attack of the arabs, Naeem ibn Maghran, the arab leader, in punishing Iranians for their brave defense of Iran, demolished Rey in the year 22 Hegira and after him, saad ibn Abivagghhas, in the year 25 , in order to extinguish the fire of unrest and rebellion, demolished it once more till Rey after half a century assumed a modern figure and reclaimed the previous majesty in the year 141 Hegira at the time of Mahdi Abbasi, son and crown prince of Mansour Davaneghi who was the ruler of that place and flourished so quickly that Harun alrashid aspired to live in in rey.
Rey continued to be in flourishing state till 250 Hegira(865 christian year), bt the war and struggle between Zeidyeh and Taheriyeh from one side and the Zeidieh and caliphs of Baghdad on the other side caused the town to get ruined. At the time of Samanian and Deylamian due to adversities and atrocities of rulers and enmities among themselves, one day was affluent and the other day went towards demolition state.
In 427(1043) that the way of Rey was opened to Ghaznavids many people of this land were killed in the wars and the town got more ruined than ever. In 434 the saljuk dynasty, and again in 590, Kharazmshahian era, Rey continuted to burn in the fire of unrest and unsafeness and it got ruined in the attack of Mongols to the degree that it never saw flourishing any more.
Thereafter, Varamin which was part of the suburbs of Rey, became the center of administrative place of government of the Mongols and the town Estakhri has spoken of it as a great town after Baghdad,became so weak that Teymor conquered it without any resistance and emptied it of people and villages.
This ups and downs continued in the town as old as the history till it came to the present time that we witness the progress and welfare of this town. Existence of oil refinery in the south of the town has among other things led the town to become an industrial town.
source : sibtayn
