Asadabad () is a city in the Central District of Asadabad County, Hamadan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district.
Asadabad is 54 kilometers southwest of Hamadan, the provincial capital, on the historic route from Baghdad to Hamadan and then on to Ray and Tehran. The Kuh-e Alvand, the innermost part of the Zagros mountains, separates Asadabad and Hamadan.
History
Little is known about Asadabad's pre-Islamic history, although its strategic location suggests great antiquity. Wilhelm Tomaschek suggested a possible identification with the place named "Adrapana" by Isidore of Charax. Asadabad was an important royal site during the Sasanian period, with the 10th-century traveler Abu Dolaf Khazraji reporting that Mardanshah, son of the Sasanian ruler Khosrow II and his wife Shirin, lived here for some time. Another writer, Ibn al-Faqih, reported that the Sasanian emperors kept a palace at a nearby place called Āzarmīḏdoḵt. The most visible Sasanian ruins in medieval times was the site variously called the Maṭābeḵ Kesrā ("Kitchens of Chosroes") or the Ayvān al-Ṣanj ("Portico of the Cymbal") by medieval Muslim writers.
Demographics
Language
In 1951, Asadabad was home to some 7,000 people, most of whom spoke Persian, with a minority of Kurdish and Turkish speakers also present.
In 2020, the language distribution was as following:
Population
At the time of the 2006 National Census, the city's population was 51,304 in 12,583 households. The following census in 2011 counted 55,024 people in 15,164 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the city as 55,703 people in 16,765 households.