In the bazaar of herbs and potions

don't wander aimlessly

find the shop with a potion that is sweet

~Rumi in Rumi: Hidden Music

Sometimes called “a city within another'', the bazaar is a maze of lanes, madrasas, caravanserais, and timchehs (domed halls or arcaded centers of a single trade, such as carpet vendors or coppersmiths). It can be entered at dozens of points, but the main entrance is via the Qeysarieh Portal at the northern end of Naqsh-e Jahan Square.

At its busiest in the mornings, the bazaar’s arched passageways are topped by a series of small perforated domes, each spilling shafts of light onto the commerce below. While the oldest parts of the bazaar (those around the mosque) are more than a thousand years old, most of what can be seen today were built during Shah Abbas’ ambitious expansions of the early 1600s.