Founded by Amir Kabir, then the grand vizier to Nasereddin Shah, the fourth Shah of Qajar Iran, Dār al-Funun originally was conceived as a polytechnic to train upper-class Iranian youth in medicine, engineering, military science, and geology.

It was similar in scope and purpose to American land grant colleges like Purdue and Texas A&M.

Facilities such as an assembly hall, a theater, library, cafeteria, and a publishing house were built for the institute.

In 1930, the building was destroyed by Mirzā Yahyā Khan Qarāgozlu (also known as Etemād od-Dowleh), then Minister of Education, and rebuilt based on a Russian engineering design.

Many parts of the institute were later on absorbed and merged into the newly establishing Tehran University.