Forty miles north-east of Shiraz, in the Mervdasht plain near the confluence of the Bandamir and Pulvar rivers, stand the palaces of Persepolis on a spur of the little mountain Kuh-i-Rahmet. Across the valley to the west at Husein Kuh are the tombs of the kings. Farther up the Pulvar, at Istakhr, are the barren ruins of the town of Persepolis; and at a spot twenty miles to the north-east (but forty by the windings of the Pulvar) Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, built his residential capital, Pasargadae.