Up until a few years ago, if you wanted give someone directions or ask for directions, you would have definitely come across the word “Falakeh (Square)”.
As it happens, Isfahanis also called the “Shir Falakeh (Valve)”: “Falakeh”! However, based on the saying that “not every round thing is a walnut”, the listener should be wise enough to figure out what the person was saying. When giving directions, “Falakeh” referred to intersections that other cities called them “Meydan”. The story of emergence of this name is also very interesting.
In the old times, forestallers and profiteers or those who committed any crime were brought to the most populated places in the cities and the Charchi announced their crimes. Then, a legal authority would make the guilty person lay on his back, then a few Farrashs (servants) would wrap his feet and accordant with the crime he had committed they would hit the sole of his feet with a stick 20 to 200 times; meaning that they would foot whip (Falak) him.
They place where this foot whipping (Falak) would take place was called “Falakeh” and this became part of the people’s vocabulary. Nowadays, you can still hear people that when they are giving directions, they use the word “Falakeh”, but nowadays, what they mean by it is not the foot whipping (Falak) of someone, yet they mean going to a square in the city.
Name Falak
Usage Tool for Physical Punishment
Place of Foot Whipping Falak (Foot Whipping) Square
Usage Mostly in Jails, Places of Torture, Schools of Royal Families for their Maids and Butlers
Material Wood, Rope or Strap
Era Ghajarieh
Name Square
Innovator Ojan Honar French
Location of the First Square Paris
Archaism 20th Century
Concept A Traffic Element and an Arena for the Passage of Vehicles