Road station
Rages
‛Aqdā
Rages is easily mistaken for Rhagai near Tehran, the city later called Europos, but this is a different place: Aqda, an oasis in the plain of Yazd. With its neighbours it was one of the larger stations on an important trade road that ran past the deserts of Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut towards Gedrosia, where qanats, underground water channels, made farming possible in a hot, dry land. Ptolemy, its only ancient witness, sets his Rhagaia well apart from Europos, so the map rightly shows it on the road from Ecbatana into south-eastern Iran.