an airplane flying over a city under a cloudy sky

Cityscape from Mashhad, Iran Downtown at sunset Mashhad is located in a valley between two mountain ranges, the valley of the Kashaf River. As with many cities located in intermontane valleys, access to underground aquifers is through a series of canals (qanāt) drilled downward into the slopes of the mountains. The metropolitan area is subject to earthquakes, and seismic activity in outlying areas, such as Qāyen in 1997 and Bam in 2008, has also been recorded in Mashhad.