Iran

Tehran and the Alborz Mountains
Tehran and the Alborz Mountains seen on a day of relatively clean air

Iran (Persian: ایران;), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a country in Central Eurasia and Western Asia.[8][9] 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.[7][10] Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.[11][12]

The 18th largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 78 million.[13] It is a country of particular geostrategic significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power,[14][15] and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations.[16][17][18] The first Iranian dynasty formed during the Elamite kingdom in 2800 BC. The Iranian Medes unified Iran into an empire in 625 BC.[1] They were succeeded by the Iranian Achaemenid Empire, the Hellenic Seleucid Empire and two subsequent Iranian empires, the Parthians and the Sassanids, before the Muslim conquest in 651 AD. Iranian post-Islamic dynasties and empires expanded the Persian language and culture throughout the Iranian plateau. Early Iranian dynasties which re-asserted Iranian independence included the Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids and Buyids.

The blossoming of Persian literature, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics and art became major elements of Muslim civilization and started with the Saffarids and Samanids. Iranian identity continued despite foreign rule in the ensuing centuries[19] and Persian culture was adopted also by the Ghaznavids,[20] Seljuq,[21][22] Ilkhanid[23] and Timurid[24] rulers. A turning point in Iran's history was the emergence in 1501 of the Safavid dynasty[2]—who promoted Twelver Shi'a Islam[25] as the official religion of their empire, marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam.[26] "Persia's Constitutional Revolution" established the nation's first parliament in 1906, within a constitutional monarchy. Iran officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979, following the Iranian Revolution.[27][28]

Iran is a founding member of the UN, NAM, OIC and OPEC. The political system of Iran, based on the 1979 constitution, comprises several intricately connected governing bodies. The highest state authority is the Supreme Leader. Shia Islam is the official religion and Persian is the official language.[29]

References

  1. ^ a b "Iran". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2000.
  2. ^ ""CESWW" - Definition of Central Eurasia". Cesww.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2010-08-01.
  3. ^ National Geographic.
  4. ^ D. N. Mackenzie (1998-12-15). "Ērān, Ērānšahr". Encyclopedia Iranica. iranica.com. Retrieved 2010-08-25.
  5. ^ Iransaga, "Persia or Iran, a brief history".
  6. ^ Iranian.ws, Iranian & Persian Art.
  7. ^ CIA Factbook - 2010
  8. ^ parliament.uk, "Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, Eighth Report, Iran. Retrieved 1 October 2007.
  9. ^ Iran @ 2000 and Beyond lecture series, opening address, W. Herbert Hunt, 18 May 2000. Retrieved 1 October 2007.
  10. ^ Iranian History, Retrieved on 2 February 2009.
  11. ^ Iranian Architecture & Monuments, Retrieved on 2 February 2009.
  12. ^ Pottery Making in Iran, Retrieved on 2 February 2009.
  13. ^ Ahmad Ashraf, "Iranian Identity" in Encyclopaedia Iranica. iranica.com. Retrieved December 2010.
  14. ^ B. Spuler, "The Disintegration of the Caliphate in the East", in the Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. IA: The Central islamic Lands from Pre-Islamic Times to the First World War, ed. by P.M. Holt, Ann K.S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). pg 147: One of the effects of the renaissance of the Persian spirit evoked by this work was that the Ghaznavids were also Persianized and thereby became a Persian dynasty.
  15. ^ Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes, (Rutgers University Press, 1991), 161,164; "..renewed the Seljuk attempt to found a great Turko-Persian empire in eastern Iran..", "It is to be noted that the Seljuks, those Turkomans who became sultans of Persia, did not Turkify Persia-no doubt because they did not wish to do so. On the contrary, it was they who voluntarily became Persians and who, in the manner of the great old Sassanid kings, strove to protect the Iranian populations from the plundering of Ghuzz bands and save Iranian culture from the Turkoman menace."
  16. ^ Bosworth, C.E.; Hillenbrand, R.; Rogers, J.M.; Blois, F.C. de; Bosworth, C.E.; Darley-Doran, R.E., Saldjukids, Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C.E. Bosworth , E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2009. Brill Online: “Culturally, the constituting of the Seljuq Empire marked a further step in the dethronement of Arabic from being the sole lingua franca of educated and polite society in the Middle East. Coming as they did through a Transoxania which was still substantially Iranian and into Persia proper, the Seljuqs with no high-level Turkish cultural or literary heritage of their own – took over that of Persia, so that the Persian language became the administration and culture in their land of Persia and Anatolia. The Persian culture of the Rum Seljuqs was particularly splendid, and it was only gradually that Turkish emerged there as a parallel language in the field of government and adab; the Persian imprint in Ottoman civilization was to remain strong until the 19th century. "
  17. ^ Ross E. Dunn, "The adventures of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim traveler of the fourteenth century", University of California Press, 1986. pg 144: "Indeed, under Ilkhanid sovereignty the high culutre of eastern and central Anatolia became more Persianized than ever before"
  18. ^ Maria Subtelny, "Timurids in Transition", BRILL; illustrated edition (2007-09-30). pg 40: "Nevertheless, in the complex process of transition, members of the Timurid dynasty and their Turko-Mongolian supporters became acculturate by the surrounding Persinate millieu adopting Persian cultural models and tastes and acting as patrons of Persian culture, painting, architecture and music." pg 41: "The last members of the dynasty, notably Sultan-Abu Sa'id and Sultan-Husain, in fact came to be regarded as ideal Perso-Islamic rulers who develoted as much attention to agricultural development as they did to fostering Persianate court culture."
  19. ^ R.M. Savory, Safavids, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edition
  20. ^ a b "The Islamic World to 1600", The Applied History Research Group, The University of Calgary, 1998. Retrieved 1 October 2007.
  21. ^ a b Iran Islamic Republic, Encyclopaedia Britannica retrieved 23 January 2008
  22. ^ a b Encyclopædia Britannica 23 January 2008
  23. ^ "قانون اساسی جمهوری اسلامی ایران" (in Persian). Retrieved 23 January 2008.

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