Evin House of Detention ( Zendān Evin) is a prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

 in Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, located in Evin

Evin

Evin is a neighbourhood in the north of Tehran.The district consists of an old section, filled with orchards and gardens of old houses, and a new section, with towering high rises and gleaming skyscrapers....

, northwestern Tehran

Tehran

Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

. It is noted for its political prisoner

Political prisoner

According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....

s' wing, where prisoners have been held both before and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Iranian Revolution

The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...

. Due to the number of intellectuals that the prison housed, it was nicknamed "Evin University."
Constructed in 1972 under the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Evin Prison is located at the foot of the Alborz mountains

Alborz

Alborz , also written as Alburz, Elburz or Elborz, is a mountain range in northern Iran stretching from the borders of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the northwest to the southern end of the Caspian Sea, and ending in the east at the borders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan...

 on the former home of Ziaeddin Tabatabaee, who briefly served as prime minister in the 1920s.