1.
Caliphate
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A caliphate is an area containing an Islamic steward known as a caliph —a person considered a religious successor to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, and a leader of the entire Muslim community. During the history of Islam after the Rashidun period, many Muslim states, the Sunni branch of Islam stipulates that, as a head of state, a caliph should be elected by Muslims or their representatives. Followers of Shia Islam, however, believe a caliph should be an Imam chosen by God from the Ahl al-Bayt, before the advent of Islam, Arabian monarchs traditionally used the title malik, or another from the same root. The term caliph, derives from the Arabic word khalīfah, which means successor, steward, however, studies of pre-Islamic texts suggest that the original meaning of the phrase was successor selected by God. There was no specified procedure for this shura or consultation, candidates were usually, but not necessarily, from the same lineage as the deceased leader. Capable men who would lead well were preferred over an ineffectual heir, Sunni Muslims believe that Abu Bakr was chosen by the community and that this was the proper procedure. Sunnis further argue that a caliph should ideally be chosen by election or community consensus, the Shia believe that Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of Muhammad, was chosen by Muhammad as his spiritual and temporal successor as the Mawla of all Muslims in the event of Ghadir Khumm. The caliph was often known as Amir al-Muminin, Muhammad established his capital in Medina, after he died, it remained the capital during the Rashidun Caliphate, before Kufa was reportedly made the capital by Caliph Ali. At times there have been rival claimant caliphs in different parts of the Islamic world, according to Sunni Muslims, the first caliph to be called Amir al-Muminin was Abu Bakr, followed by Umar, the second of the Rashidun. Uthman and Ali also were called by the title, while the Shia consider Ali to have been the only truly legitimate caliph. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk officially abolished the system of Caliphate in Islam as part of his secular reforms, the Kings of Morocco still label themselves with the title Amir al-Muminin for the Moroccans, but lay no claim to the Caliphate. Some Muslim countries, including Somalia, Indonesia and Malaysia, were never subject to the authority of a Caliphate, with the exception of Aceh, consequently, these countries had their own, local, sultans or rulers who did not fully accept the authority of the Caliph. Abu Bakr, the first successor of Muhammad, nominated Umar as his successor on his deathbed, Umar, the second caliph, was killed by a Persian named Piruz Nahavandi. His successor, Uthman, was elected by a council of electors, Uthman was killed by members of a disaffected group. Ali then took control but was not universally accepted as caliph by the governors of Egypt and he faced two major rebellions and was assassinated by Abd-al-Rahman ibn Muljam, a Khawarij. Alis tumultuous rule lasted only five years and this period is known as the Fitna, or the first Islamic civil war. The followers of Ali later became the Shia minority sect of Islam, the followers of all four Rashidun Caliphs became the majority Sunni sect. Under the Rashidun each region of the Caliphate had its own governor, Muawiyah, a relative of Uthman and governor of Syria, succeeded Ali as Caliph
2.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
3.
Greater Iran
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It roughly corresponds to the territory on the Iranian plateau and its bordering plains. It is also referred to as Greater Persia, while the Encyclopædia Iranica uses the term Iranian Cultural Continent. The term Iran is not limited to the state of Iran. The concept of Greater Iran has its source in the history of the Achaemenid Empire in Persis, the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813 resulted in Iran ceding Dagestan, Georgia, and most of Azerbaijan to Russia. After the Russo-Persian War, the Turkmanchey Treaty of 1828 ended centuries of Iranian control of its Caucasian provinces, in 1935, the endonym Iran was adopted as the official international name of Persia by its ruler Reza Shah. The name “Irān“, meaning “land of the Aryans”, is the New Persian continuation of the old genitive plural aryānām, the Avestan evidence is confirmed by Greek sources, Arianē is spoken of as being between Persia and the Indian subcontinent. However, this is a Greek pronunciation of the name Haroyum/Haraiva, a land listed separately from the homeland of the Aryans. While up until the end of the Parthian period in the 3rd century CE, the idea of “Irān“ had an ethnic, linguistic, the idea of an “Iranian“ empire or kingdom in a political sense is a purely Sasanian one. It was the result of a convergence of interests between the new dynasty and the Zoroastrian clergy, as we can deduce from the available evidence and this convergence gave rise to the idea of an Ērān-šahr “Kingdom of the Iranians, ” which was “ēr“. Richard Nelson Frye defines Greater Iran as including much of the Caucasus, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, with influences extending to China. According to Frye, Iran means all lands and peoples where Iranian languages were and are spoken, and this view, even though common among serious scholars, is almost certainly overstated. To the Ancient Greeks, Greater Iran ended at the Indus, according to J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams most of Western greater Iran spoke Southwestern Iranian languages in the Achaemenid era while the Eastern territory spoke Eastern Iranian languages related to Avestan. In the words of Richard Nelson Frye, Only in modern times did western colonial intervention, as Patrick Clawson states, ethnic nationalism is largely a nineteenth century phenomenon, even if it is fashionable to retroactively extend it. Greater Iran however has more of a cultural super-state, rather than a political one to begin with. A detailed list of these follows in this article. Greater Iran is called Iranzamin which means The Land of Iran, Iranzamin was in the mythical times opposed to the Turanzamin the Land of Turan, which was located in the upper part of Central Asia. In the pre-Islamic period, Iranians distinguished two main regions in the territory they ruled, one Iran and the other Aniran, by Iran they meant all the regions inhabited by ancient Iranian peoples, this region was more extensive in the past
4.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
5.
Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
6.
Sasanian Empire
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The Sasanian Empire was founded by Ardashir I, after the fall of the Parthian Empire and the defeat of the last Arsacid king, Artabanus V. According to a legend, the vexilloid of the Sasanian Empire was the Derafsh Kaviani, in many ways, the Sasanian period witnessed the peak of ancient Iranian civilization. Persia influenced Roman culture considerably during the Sasanian period, the Sasanians cultural influence extended far beyond the empires territorial borders, reaching as far as Western Europe, Africa, China and India. It played a prominent role in the formation of both European and Asian medieval art, much of what later became known as Islamic culture in art, architecture, music and other subject matter was transferred from the Sasanians throughout the Muslim world. Conflicting accounts shroud the details of the fall of the Parthian Empire, the Sassanid Empire was established in Estakhr by Ardashir I. Papak was originally the ruler of a region called Khir, however, by the year 200, he managed to overthrow Gochihr, and appoint himself as the new ruler of the Bazrangids. His mother, Rodhagh, was the daughter of the governor of Pars. Papak and his eldest son Shapur managed to expand their power all of Pars. The subsequent events are unclear, due to the nature of the sources. It is certain, however, that following the death of Papak, Ardashir, sources reveal that Shapur, leaving for a meeting with his brother, was killed when the roof of a building collapsed on him. By the year 208, over the protests of his brothers who were put to death. Once Ardashir was appointed shahanshah, he moved his capital further to the south of Pars, the city, well supported by high mountains and easily defendable through narrow passes, became the center of Ardashirs efforts to gain more power. The city was surrounded by a high, circular wall, probably copied from that of Darabgird, in a second attempt to destroy Ardashir, Artabanus V himself met Ardashir in battle at Hormozgan, where Artabanus V met his death. Following the death of the Parthian ruler, Ardashir I went on to invade the provinces of the now defunct Parthian Empire. Ardashir was aided by the geography of the province of Fars, in the next few years, local rebellions would form around the empire. Nonetheless, Ardashir I further expanded his new empire to the east and northwest, conquering the provinces of Sistan, Gorgan, Khorasan, Margiana, Balkh and he also added Bahrain and Mosul to Sassanids possessions. In the west, assaults against Hatra, Armenia and Adiabene met with less success, in 230, he raided deep into Roman territory, and a Roman counter-offensive two years later ended inconclusively, although the Roman emperor, Alexander Severus, celebrated a triumph in Rome. Ardashir Is son Shapur I continued the expansion of the empire, conquering Bactria, invading Roman Mesopotamia, Shapur I captured Carrhae and Nisibis, but in 243 the Roman general Timesitheus defeated the Persians at Rhesaina and regained the lost territories
7.
Muslim conquest of Persia
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The Muslim conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab conquest of Iran, led to the end of the Sasanian Empire in 651 and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion in Iran. The rise of Muslims coincided with a significant political, social, economic, once a major world power, the Sasanian Empire had exhausted its human and material resources after decades of warfare against the Byzantine Empire. The internal political situation quickly deteriorated after the execution of King Khosrau II on February 28,628, subsequently, ten new claimants were enthroned within the next four years, highlighting the political instability of the Sassanians prior to the Muslim invasion. Arab Muslims first attacked the Sassanid territory in 633, when general Khalid ibn Walid invaded Mesopotamia, following the transfer of Khalid to the Byzantine front in the Levant, the Muslims eventually lost their holdings to Sassanian counterattacks. The second invasion began in 636 under Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, the Zagros mountains then became a natural barrier and border between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Sassanid Empire. Due to continuous raids by Persians into the area, Caliph Umar ordered an invasion of the Sasanian empire in 642. By 651, most of the centers in Iranian lands, with the notable exception of the Caspian provinces. Many localities fought against the invaders, ultimately, none were successful, in fact, although Arabs had established hegemony over most of the country, many cities rose in rebellion by killing the Arab governor or attacking their garrisons. Eventually, military reinforcements quashed the insurgency and imposed Islamic control, however, the Persians began to reassert themselves by maintaining Persian language and culture. Regardless, Islam was adopted by many for a multitude of reasons including by threat and extortion, for political and economic reasons, Islam would become the dominant religion late in the medieval ages. The most significant work was probably that of Arthur Christensen, and his L’Iran sous les Sassanides, published in Copenhagen, however recent scholarship, both Iranian and Western, has begun to question the traditional narrative. Another important theme of Pourshariatis study is a re-evaluation of the traditional timeline, since the 1st century BC, the border between the Roman and Parthian empires had been the Euphrates River. Most battles, and thus most fortifications, were concentrated in the regions of the north. The only dangers expected from the south were occasional raids by nomadic Arab tribesmen, both empires therefore allied themselves with small, semi-independent Arab principalities, which served as buffer states and protected Byzantium and Persia from Bedouin attacks. The Byzantine clients were the Ghassanids, the Persian clients were the Lakhmids, the Ghassanids and Lakhmids feuded constantly, which kept them occupied, but that did not greatly affect the Byzantines or the Persians. In the 6th and 7th centuries, various factors destroyed the balance of power that had held for so many centuries, the Byzantine clients, the Arab Ghassanids, converted to the Monophysite form of Christianity, which was regarded as heretical by the established Byzantine Orthodox Church. The Byzantines attempted to suppress the heresy, alienating the Ghassanids, the Lakhmids also revolted against the Persian king Khusrau II. Numan III, the first Christian Lakhmid king, was deposed and killed by Khusrau II in 602, after Khusraus assassination, the Persian Empire fractured and the Lakhmids were effectively semi-independent
8.
Jibal
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Jibāl was the name given by the Arabs to a region and province located in western Iran, under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates. Its name means The Mountains, and is the plural of jabal, mountain, hill, between the 12th and 14th centuries, the name Jibal was progressively abandoned, and it came to be mistakenly referred to as ʿIrāq ʿAjamī to distinguish it from Arab Iraq in Mesopotamia. Under the Abbasid Caliphate, Jibal formed a province, with its capital usually at Rayy. For most of the 9th century, however, the area was ruled by a local dynasty. In the late 10th and early 11th century, the portion of Jibal became one of the Buyid emirates. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia, New York, Barnes & Noble, Inc. The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume II, C–G
9.
Indus River
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The Indus River, also called Sindhū or Abāsīn, is a major south-flowing river in South Asia. The total length of the river is 3,180 km which makes it one of the longest rivers in Asia and it is the longest river and national river of Pakistan. The river has a drainage area exceeding 1,165,000 km2. Its estimated annual flow stands at around 207 km3, making it the twenty-first largest river in the world in terms of annual flow, the Zanskar is its left bank tributary in Ladakh. In the plains, its left tributary is the Chenab which itself has four major tributaries, namely, the Jhelum, the Ravi, the Beas. Its principal right tributaries are the Shyok, the Gilgit, the Kabul, the Gomal. Beginning in a spring and fed with glaciers and rivers in the Himalayas. The Indus forms the delta of present-day Pakistan mentioned in the Vedic Rigveda as Sapta Sindhu, the river has been a source of wonder since the Classical Period, with King Darius of Persia sending his Greek subject Scylax of Caryanda to explore the river as early as 510 BC. In Pali, Síndhu means river, stream and refers to the Indus River in particular, the word Indus is the romanised form of the ancient Greek word Indós, borrowed from the old Persian word Hinduš which is in turn borrowed from the Sanskrit word Sindhu. Megastheness book Indica derives its name from the rivers Greek name, Indós, the ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indói, literally meaning the people of the Indus. The country of India and the Pakistani province of Sindh owe their names to the river, Rigveda also describes several mythical rivers, including one named Sindhu. The Rigvedic Sindhu is thought to be the present-day Indus river and is attested 176 times in its text –95 times in the plural, more often used in the generic meaning. In the Rigveda, notably in the hymns, the meaning of the word is narrowed to refer to the Indus river in particular. The Rigvedic hymns apply a feminine gender to all the rivers mentioned therein, Sindhu is seen as a strong warrior amongst other rivers which are seen as goddesses and compared to cows and mares yielding milk and butter. The Indus River provides key resources for Pakistans economy – especially the breadbasket of Punjab province, which accounts for most of the nations agricultural production. The word Punjab means land of five rivers and the five rivers are Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, the Indus also supports many heavy industries and provides the main supply of potable water in Pakistan. The ultimate source of the Indus is in Tibet, the river begins at the confluence of the Sengge Zangbo and Gar Tsangpo rivers that drain the Nganglong Kangri, the Indus then flows northwest through Ladakh and Baltistan into Gilgit, just south of the Karakoram range. The Shyok, Shigar and Gilgit rivers carry glacial waters into the main river and it gradually bends to the south, coming out of the hills between Peshawar and Rawalpindi
10.
History of Sindh
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Sindh is one of the provinces of Pakistan. Sindh had one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the Indus Valley civilization, Sindh has been known by various names in the past, the name Sindh comes from the Indo-Aryans whose legends claimed that the Indus River flowed from the mouth of a lion or Sinh-ka-bab. In Sanskrit, the province was dubbed Sindhu meaning an ocean, the Assyrians knew the region as Sinda, the Persians Abisind, the Greeks Sinthus, the Romans Sindus, the Chinese Sintow, while the Arabs dubbed it Sind. The first known settlements date as far back as 7000 BCE. Permanent settlements at Mehrgarh to the west expanded into Sindh, the original inhabitants of ancient Sindh, and other regions of the Indian Subcontinent, were the aborigine tribes speaking languages related to Munda languages. The Dravidians migrated from the Iranian plateau and settled in the Indus valley around 4000 BCE, the Dravidian culture blossomed over the centuries and gave rise to the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000 BCE. Speculation remains as to how and why the civilization declined and may have been a combination of natural disasters such as flooding, the Indus Valley Civilization spanned much of what is today Pakistan and Northwestern India, but suddenly went into decline just prior to the rise of Indo-Iranians. A branch of these called the Indo-Aryans are believed to have founded the Vedic Civilization that have existed between Sarasvati River and Ganges river around 1500 BCE. This civilization helped shape subsequent cultures in the Indian subcontinent, Sindh was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BCE, and became part of the Persian satrapy of Hindush centred in the Punjab to the north. Persian speech had a tendency to replace S with an H resulting in Sindu being pronounced and they introduced the Kharoshti script and links to the west in the region. Later, during the reign of the Buddhist king Ashoka the region would become a Buddhist domain. The Buddhist city of Siraj-ji-Takri is located along the western limestone terraces of the Rohri Hills in the Khairpur district of Upper Sindh and this city is not mentioned from any text dealing with the history of the Buddhist period of Sindh. The Scythians shattered the Greco-Bactrians fledgling empire and then the Tocharian Kushan Empire annexed Sindh by the 1st century CE, the Kushans under Kanishka adopted Buddhism and sponsored many building projects for local beliefs. The Kushan Empire was defeated in the mid 3rd century AD by the Sassanid Empire of Persia and these rulers were defeated by the Kidarites in the late 4th century. It then came under the Gupta Empire after dealing with the Kidarites, by the late 5th century, attacks by Hephthalite tribes known as the Indo-Hephthalites or Hunas broke through the Gupta Empires northwestern borders and overran much of northwestern India. Concurrently, Ror dynasty ruled parts of the region for several centuries, afterwards, Sindh came under the rule of Emperor Harshavardhan, then the Rai Dynasty around 478. The Rais were overthrown by Chachar of Alor around 632, the Brahman dynasty ruled a vast territory that stretched from Multan in the north to the Rann of Kutch, Alor was their capital. Conquered by Syrian Arabs led by Muhammad bin Qasim, Sindh became the easternmost province of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Arab province of Sindh is modern Pakistan
11.
Gorgan
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Gorgan pronunciation (Persian, گرگان, formerly Astrabad or Astarabad, is the capital of Golestan Province, Iran. It lies approximately 400 kilometres to the north east of Tehran, in the 2006 census, its population was 269,226, in 73,702 families. The region is mentioned in Avesta as Vəhrkāna. The name is derived from the Proto-Iranian word *vrka-, meaning wolf, in post-Islamic Persia the city was known as Jurjān, the Arabized form of the Persian word. The Caspian form of the name is Wergen, there are several archaeological sites near Gorgan, including Tureng Tepe and Shah Tepe, in which there are remains dating to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic eras. According to the Greek historian Arrian, Zadracarta was the largest city of Hyrcania, the term means the yellow city, and it was given to it from the great number of oranges, lemons, and other fruit trees which grew in the outskirts of that city. Hyrcania became part of the Achaemenid Empire during the reign of Cyrus the Great, its founder, the Great Wall of Gorgan, the second biggest defensive wall in the world, was built in the Parthian and Sassanian periods. At the time of the Sassanids, Gurgan appeared as the name of a city, province capital, Gurgan maintained its independence as a Zoroastrian state even after Persia was conquered by the invading Arab Muslims in 8th century. In 1210, the city was invaded and sacked by the army of Kingdom of Georgia under command of the brothers Mkhargrdzeli. The Old Gorgan was destroyed during the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, and the center of the region was moved to what was called Astarabad, Gurgan with its surrounding regions was sometimes considered as part of the Parthia or the Tabaristan regions. Astarabad was an important political and religious city during the Qajar dynasty, the wide Dasht-e Gorgan are located north of the city and geographically bounded by 37°00 - 37°30 north latitude and 54°00 - 54°30 east longitude, covering an area of about 1,700 square kilometres. Some 150 km east of Gorgan is the Golestan National Park, according to Köppen climate classification, Gorgan has a Cfa humid subtropical climate. In general, Golestan has a moderate and humid climate known as the moderate Caspian climate, as a result of the above factors, three different climates exist in the region, plain moderate, mountainous, and semi-arid. Gorgan valley has a semi-arid climate, the average annual temperature is 17.7 °C and the annual rainfall is 601 millimetres. The population of the city has been 329,536 as of 2011, majority of people of Gorgan speak Persian. A big portion of the city are migrants from nearby regions, including Mazanderanis, Azeris, people from Semnan and Khorasan provinces, as well as some Turkmens, and a small population of Kazakhs. Gorgani, a dialect of Mazanderani language, was spoken in the city, but it is extinct now. House of Karen, a feudal family first attested in the Arsacid era
12.
Ghaznavids
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In 1151, Sultan Bahram Shah lost Ghazni to the Ghurid king Ala al-Din Husayn. Two military families arose from the Turkic slave-guards of the Samanid Empire, the Simjurids and Ghaznavids, the Simjurids received an appanage in the Kohistan region of eastern Khorasan. His death created a crisis between his brothers. A court party instigated by men of the scribal class — civilian ministers rather than Turkic generals — rejected the candidacy of Alp Tigin for the Samanid throne. Mansur I was installed instead, and Alp Tigin prudently retired to south of the Hindu Kush, the struggles of the Turkic slave generals for mastery of the throne with the help of shifting allegiance from the courts ministerial leaders both demonstrated and accelerated the Samanid decline. Samanid weakness attracted into Transoxiana the Karluks, a Turkic people who had converted to Islam. They occupied Bukhara in 992, establishing in Transoxania the Kara-Khanid Khanate, after Alp Tigins death in 993, Abu Ishaq Ibrahim, followed by his slave Sabuktigin, took the throne. Sabuktigins son Mahmud of Ghazni made an agreement with the Kara-Khanid Khanate whereby the Amu Darya was recognised as their mutual boundary, however, modern historians believe this was an attempt to connect himself with the history of old Persia. After the death of Sabuktigin, his son Ismail claimed the throne for a temporary period, in 997, Mahmud, another son of Sebuktigin, succeeded the throne, and Ghazni and the Ghaznavid dynasty have become perpetually associated with him. He completed the conquest of the Samanid and Shahi territories, including the Ismaili Kingdom of Multan, Sindh, by all accounts, the rule of Mahmud was the golden age and height of the Ghaznavid Empire. Mahmud carried out seventeen expeditions through northern India to establish his control and set up tributary states and he established his authority from the borders of Ray to Samarkand, from the Caspian Sea to the Yamuna. During Mahmuds reign, the Ghaznavids settled 4,000 Turkmen families near Farana in Khorasan, by 1027, due to the Turkmen raiding neighbouring settlements, the governor of Tus, Abu lAlarith Arslan Jadhib, led military strikes against them. The Turkmen were defeated and scattered to neighbouring lands, although, as late as 1033, Ghaznavid governor Tash Farrash executed fifty Turkmen chiefs for raids into Khorasan. Mahmud left the empire to his son Mohammed, who was mild, affectionate and his brother, Masud, asked for three provinces that he had won by his sword, but his brother did not consent. Masud had to fight his brother, and he became king, blinding and imprisoning Mohammed as punishment. The two brothers now exchanged positions, Mohammed was elevated from prison to the throne, while Masud was consigned to a dungeon after a reign of ten years and was assassinated in 1040. Masuds son, Madood, was governor of Balkh, and in 1040, after hearing of his fathers death and he fought with the sons of the blind Mohammed and was victorious. However, the empire disintegrated and most kings did not submit to Madood
13.
Seljuq dynasty
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The Seljuqs established both the Seljuk Empire and Sultanate of Rum, which at their heights stretched from Anatolia through Iran and were targets of the First Crusade. During the 10th century, due to events, the Oghuz had come into close contact with Muslim cities. Around 985, Seljuq converted to Islam, in the 11th century the Seljuqs migrated from their ancestral homelands into mainland Persia, in the province of Khurasan, where they encountered the Ghaznavid empire. In 1025,40,000 families of Oghuz Turks migrated to the area of Caucasian Albania, the Seljuqs defeated the Ghaznavids at the battle of Nasa plains in 1035. Tughril, Chaghri, and Yabghu received the insignias of governor, grants of land, at the battle of Dandanaqan they defeated a Ghaznavid army, and after a successful siege of Isfahan by Tughril in 1050/51, they established an empire later called the Great Seljuk Empire. The Seljuqs mixed with the population and adopted the Persian culture. The Great Seljuqs were heads of the family, in theory their authority extended over all the other Seljuq lines, turkish custom called for the senior member of the family to be the Great Seljuq, although usually the position was associated with the ruler of western Persia. Muhammads son Mahmud II succeeded him in western Persia, but Ahmad Sanjar, the rulers of western Persia, who maintained a very loose grip on the Abbasids of Baghdad. Several Turkic emirs gained a level of influence in the region. Kerman was a province in southern Persia, between 1053 and 1154, the territory also included Umman. Kerman was eventually annexed by the Khwarezmid Empire in 1196, the Empire of the Steppes, a History of Central Asia. Early Seljuq History, A New Interpretation, New York, NY, Routledge,2010 Previté-Orton, C. W
14.
Balkh
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Balkh was an ancient city and centre of Buddhism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism in what is now northern Afghanistan. Today it is a town in the province of Balkh, about 20 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif. It was one of the cities of Khorasan, since the latters earliest history. Marco Polo described Balkh as a noble and great city, the ancient city of Balkh was known to the Ancient Greeks as Bactra, giving its name to Bactria. It was mostly known as the centre and capital of Bactria or Tokharistan, Balkh is now for the most part a mass of ruins, situated some 12 km from the right bank of the seasonally flowing Balkh River, at an elevation of about 365 m. Outside the town was a large Buddhist monastery later known as Naubahar, french Buddhist Alexandra David-Néel associated Shambhala with Balkh, also offering the Persian Sham-i-Bala, elevated candle as an etymology of its name. In a similar vein, the Gurdjieffian J. G. Bennett published speculation that Shambalha was Shams-i-Balkh, the name of the province or country appears in Old Persian inscriptions as Bāxtri, i. e. Bakhtri. It is written in the Avesta as Bāxδi, from this came the intermediate form Bāxli, Sanskrit Bahlīka for Bactrian, and by transposition the modern Persian Balx, i. e. Balkh, and Armenian Bahl. Balkh is considered to be the first city to which the Indo-Iranian tribes moved from the North of Amu Darya, the Arabs called it Umm Al-Belaad or Mother of Cities due to its antiquity. The city was traditionally a center of Zoroastrianism, the name Zariaspa, which is either an alternate name for Balkh or a term for part of the city, may derive from the important Zoroastrian fire temple Azar-i-Asp. Balkh was regarded as the place where Zoroaster first preached his religion, the changing climate has led to desertification since antiquity, when the region was very fertile. For a long time the city and country was the seat of the dualistic Zoroastrian religion. Armenian sources state that the Arsacid Dynasty of the Parthian Empire established its capital in Balkh, there is a long-standing tradition that an ancient shrine of Anahita was to be found here, a temple so rich it invited plunder. Alexander the Great married Roxana of Bactria after killing the king of Balkh, the city was the capital of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and was besieged for three years by the Seleucid Empire. Balkh town is well-known to Buddhist countries because of two great Buddhist monks of Afghanistan – Trapusa and Bahalika, there are two stupas over their relics. According to a legend, Buddhism was introduced in Balkh by Bhallika, disciple of Buddha. He was a merchant of the region and had come from Bodhgaya, in literature, Balkh has been described as Balhika, Valhika or Bahlika. First Vihara at Balkh was built for Bhallika when he returned home after becoming a Buddhist monk, Xuanzang visited Balkh in 630 when it was a flourishing centre of Hinayana Buddhism
15.
Herat
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Herat is the third-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 436,300, and serves as the capital of Herat Province and it is linked with Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif via highway 1 or the ring road. It is further linked to the city of Mashhad in neighboring Iran through the town of Islam Qala. Herat dates back to the Avestan times and was known for its wine. The city has a number of sites, including the Herat Citadel. During the Middle Ages Herat became one of the important cities of Khorasan and it has been governed by various Afghan rulers since the early 18th century. In 1717, the city was invaded by the Hotaki forces until they were expelled by the Afsharids in 1736, after Nader Shahs death and Ahmad Shah Durranis rise to power in 1747, Herat became part of Afghanistan. It witnessed some political disturbances and military invasions during the half of the 19th century. Herat suffered from destruction during the Soviet war in the 1980s. Herat lies on the ancient trade routes of the Middle East, Central, the roads from Herat to Iran, Turkmenistan, and other parts of Afghanistan are still strategically important. As the gateway to Iran, it collects high amount of revenue for Afghanistan. The city has an international airport, Herat is a regional hub in western Afghanistan in close proximity to Iran and Turkmenistan. The city has high residential density clustered around the core of the city, however, vacant plots account for a higher percentage of the city than residential land use and agricultural is the largest percentage of total land use. Herat dates back to ancient times, but its exact age remains unknown, during the period of the Achaemenid Empire, the surrounding district was known as Hariva, and in classical sources the region was correspondingly known as Aria. In the Zoroastrian Avesta, the district is mentioned as Haroiva, the name of the district and its main town is derived from that of the chief river of the region, the Herey River, which traverses the district and passes some 5 km south of modern Herāt. Herey is mentioned in Sanskrit as yellow or golden color equivalent to Persian Zard meaning Gold, the naming of a region and its principal town after the main river is a common feature in this part of the world—compare the adjoining districts/rivers/towns of Arachosia and Bactria. The district Aria of the Achaemenid Empire is mentioned in the lists that are included in various royal inscriptions, for instance. Representatives from the district are depicted in reliefs, e. g. at the royal Achaemenid tombs of Naqsh-e Rustam and they are wearing Scythian-style dress and a twisted Bashlyk that covers their head, chin and neck
16.
Mashhad
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Mashhad is the second most populous city in Iran and capital of Razavi Khorasan Province. It is located in the northeast of the country, close to the borders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan and its population was 2,749,374 at the 2011 census and its built-up area was home to 2,782,976 inhabitants including Mashhad Taman and Torqabeh cities. It was a major oasis along the ancient Silk Road connecting with Merv in the East, the city is most famous and revered for housing the tomb of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam. Every year, millions of pilgrims visit the Imam Reza shrine, the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid is also buried within the shrine. Mashhad has experienced the rise and fall of many governments over the course of history, many Arab, Turkish, and especially Mongolian and Afghan tribes have brought great changes in the language, ethnicity and culture of the people each in their own time. Surprisingly, Mashhad enjoyed relative prosperity in its economy in the Mongol period, Mashhad is mistakenly known as the city of Ferdowsi, the Iranian poet of Shahnameh, which is considered to be the national epic of Iran. Ferdowsi and Akhavan Sales are both buried in Tus, an ancient city that is considered to be the origin of the current city of Mashhad. On 30 October 2009, Irans then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Mashhad as Irans spiritual capital, the name Mashhad comes from Arabic, meaning the place of martyrdom the place where Ali ar-Ridha, the eighth Imam of Shia Muslims, suddenly died and so his shrine was placed there. At the beginning of the 9th century, Mashhad was a village called Sanabad. There was a palace of Humayd ibn Qahtaba, the governor of Khurasan. In 808, when Harun al-Rashid, Abbasid caliph, was passing through there to quell the insurrection of Rafi ibn al-Layth in Transoxania, he became ill and he was buried under the palace of Humayd ibn Qahtaba. Due to this event, the Dar al-Imarah was known as the Mausoleum of Haruniyyeh. Several years later in 818 Ali al-Ridha was martyred by al-Mamun and was buried beside the grave of Harun. Although some believe that after this event, the city was called Mashhad al-Ridha, it seems that Mashhad, as a place-name, first appears in al-Maqdisi, about the middle of the 14th century, the traveller Ibn Battuta uses the expression town of Mashhad al-Rida. Shias started visiting there for pilgrimage of his grave, by the end of the 9th century, a dome was built on the grave and many buildings and bazaars sprang up around it. During more than a millennium it has been devastated and reconstructed several times, in 1161 however, the Ghuzz Turks succeeded in taking the place, but they spared the sacred area in their pillaging. Thus the survivors of the migrated to Mashhad. The only well-known food in Mashhad, sholeh Mashhadi or Sholeh, dates back to the era of the Mongolian invasion when it is thought to be cooked with any food available and be a Mongolian word
17.
Nishapur
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It had an estimated population of 239,185 as of 2011 and its county 433,105. Nearby are the mines that have supplied the world with turquoise for at least two millennia. The city was founded in the 3rd century by Shapur I as a Sasanian satrapy capital, Nishapur later became the capital of Tahirid dynasty and was reformed by Abdullah Tahir in 830, and was later selected as the capital of Seljuq dynasty by Tughril in 1037. From the Abbasid era to the Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia and Eastern Iran, the city evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center within the Islamic world. Nishapur reached the height of its prosperity under the Samanids in the 10th century, but was destroyed by Mongols in 1221 and they worked at Nishapur between 1935 and 1940, returning for a final season in the winter of 1947–48. What remains of old Nishapur region is a 3500-hectare Kohandejh area, little archaeology has been done on this vast and complicated site. George Curzon remarked that Nishapur had been destroyed and rebuilt more times than any city in history. The Metropolitan Museum of Art undertook excavations from 1935 that were interrupted in 1940, searching largely for museum-worthy trophies that they shared with the government of the Shah, the Metropolitans publications were limited to its own Nishapur ceramics. The site of Nishapur has been ransacked for half a century since World War II, shadiyakh was one of the main palaces of old Nishapur up to the 9th century AD, which became more important and populated after that. Some notable people like Attar lived there, attars tomb is nowadays in that area. This palace was completely ruined in the 13th century. Nishapur occupies an important strategic position astride the old Silk Road that linked Anatolia, on the Silk Road, Nishapur has often defined the flexible frontier between the Iranian plateau and Central Asia. The town derived its name from its founder, the Sassanian king Shapur I. Nearby are the mines that supplied the world with turquoise for at least two millennia. In the year 1000 CE, it was among the ten largest cities on earth, after the husband of Genghis Khans daughter was killed at Nishapur in 1221, she or Genghis ordered the death of the entire population of the city, which was reputedly 1.7 million. Their skulls were reputedly piled in pyramids by the Mongols and this massacre, combined with subsequent earthquakes destroyed the pottery industry. US band Santana released a track entitled Incident at Neshabur on their 1970 LP release. Carlos Santana says this was a reference to a place in Haiti, yo-Yo Ma released an instrumental track entitled Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur as part of the Silk Road Project
18.
Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
19.
Merv
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Several cities have existed on this site, which is significant for the interchange of culture and politics at a site of major strategic value. It is claimed that Merv was briefly the largest city in the world in the 12th century, the site of ancient Merv has been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The geography of the Zend-Avesta mentions Merv along with Balkh, in Zoroastrianism, the god Ahura Mazda created Mouru as one of sixteen perfect lands. The first city of Merv was founded in the 6th century BC as part of the Achaemenid expansion into the region of Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Greats visit to Merv is merely legendary, but the city was named Alexandria for a time. After Alexanders death in 323 BC, Merv became the capital of the Province of Margiana of the Seleucid, Bactrian, Parthian, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Soter renamed Merv as Antiochia Margiana, he rebuilt and expanded the city at the site presently known as Gyaur Gala. After the fall of the Seleucid dynasty, Bactria, Parthia, Merv was a major city of Buddhist learning, with Buddhist monastery temples for many centuries until its Islamicization. At the site of Gyaur Kala and Bairam Ali Buddhism was followed and practised often at the Buddhist stupa, during this period Merv was home to practitioners of various religions beside the official Sassanid Zoroastrianism, including Buddhists, Manichaeans, and Christians of the Church of the East. Between the 6th and 11th centuries AD, Merv served as the seat of an East Syrian metropolitan province, the Hephthalite occupation from the end of the 5th century to 565 a. d briefly interrupted Sassanid rule. Sassanian rule came to an end when the last Sassanian ruler, Yazdegerd III was killed not far from the city, representatives of the caliph Umar occupied the city, which became the capital of the Umayyad province of Khorasan. In 671 Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan sent 50,000 Arab troops to Merv as a colony and this colony retained its native Kufan sympathies and became the nucleus of Khurasan. Using the city as their base, the Arabs, led by Qutayba ibn Muslim from 705 to 715, brought under subjection large parts of Central Asia, including Balkh, Bokhara, and Fergana. Merv, and Khorasan in general, became one of the first parts of the Persian-speaking world to become majority-Muslim, Arab immigration to the area was substantial. A Chinese captured at Talas, Du Huan, was brought to Baghdad and he observed that in Merv, Khurasan, Arabs and Persians lived in mixed concentrations. After the Abbasids became established in Baghdad, Abu Muslim continued to rule Merv as a semi-independent prince until his eventual assassination, the influential Barmakid family, based in Merv, played an important part in transferring Greek knowledge into the Arab world. Throughout the Abbasid era, Merv remained the capital and most important city of Khurasan, during this time, the Arab historian Al-Muqaddasi called Merv delightful, fine, elegant, brilliant, extensive, and pleasant. Mervs architecture perhaps provided the inspiration for the Abbasid re-planning of Baghdad, the city was notable as a home for immigrants from the Arab lands as well as for those from Sogdia and elsewhere in Central Asia. In the period from 813 to 818, the residency of the caliph al-Mamun effectively made Merv the capital of the Muslim world. During this period Merv, like Samarkand and Bukhara, functioned as one of the cities of Muslim scholarship
20.
Nisa, Turkmenistan
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Nisa was an ancient city, located near modern-day Bagir village,18 km southwest of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Nisa is described by some as the first seat of government of the Parthians. Excavations at Nisa have revealed substantial buildings, mausoleums and shrines, many inscribed documents, many Hellenistic art works have been uncovered, as well as a large number of ivory rhytons, the outer rims decorated with Iranian subjects or classical mythological scenes. Nisa was later renamed Mithradatkirt by Mithridates I of Parthia, Nisa was totally destroyed by an earthquake, which occurred during the first decade BC. The fortress at Nisa was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007, history of Turkmenistan Annotated Parthia Bibliography. Archaeological Missions in Nisa Nissa Fortress, Ayan Tourism & Travel Company Historical site Nisa, State Committee of Turkmenistan for Tourism and Sport
21.
Turkmenistan
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Turkmenistan has been at the crossroads of civilizations for centuries. In medieval times, Merv was one of the cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, Turkmenistan later figured prominently in the movement in Central Asia. In 1924, Turkmenistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Turkmenistan possesses the worlds fourth largest reserves of natural gas resources. Most of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert, since 1993, citizens have received government-provided electricity, water and natural gas free of charge. Turkmenistan was ruled by President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov until his death in 2006, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was elected president in 2007. According to Human Rights Watch, Turkmenistan remains one of the world’s most repressive countries, after suspending the death penalty, the use of capital punishment was formally abolished in the 2008 constitution. Historically inhabited by the Indo-Iranians, the history of Turkmenistan begins with its annexation by the Achaemenid Empire of Ancient Iran. In the 8th century AD, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved from Mongolia into present-day Central Asia, part of a powerful confederation of tribes, these Oghuz formed the ethnic basis of the modern Turkmen population. In the 10th century, the name Turkmen was first applied to Oghuz groups that accepted Islam, There they were under the dominion of the Seljuk Empire, which was composed of Oghuz groups living in present-day Iran and Turkmenistan. Turkmen soldiers in the service of the played a important role in the spreading of Turkic culture when they migrated westward into present-day Azerbaijan. In the 12th century, Turkmen and other tribes overthrew the Seljuk Empire, in the next century, the Mongols took over the more northern lands where the Turkmens had settled, scattering the Turkmens southward and contributing to the formation of new tribal groups. The sixteenth and eighteenth centuries saw a series of splits and confederations among the nomadic Turkmen tribes, by the 16th century, most of those tribes were under the nominal control of two sedentary Uzbek khanates, Khiva and Bukhoro. Turkmen soldiers were an important element of the Uzbek militaries of this period, in the 19th century, raids and rebellions by the Yomud Turkmen group resulted in that groups dispersal by the Uzbek rulers. According to Paul R. Spickard, Prior to the Russian conquest, Russian forces began occupying Turkmen territory late in the 19th century. From their Caspian Sea base at Krasnovodsk, the Russians eventually overcame the Uzbek khanates, in 1916 the Russian Empires participation in World War I resonated in Turkmenistan, as an anticonscription revolt swept most of Russian Central Asia. In 1924 the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from the tsarist province of Transcaspia, by the late 1930s, Soviet reorganization of agriculture had destroyed what remained of the nomadic lifestyle in Turkmenistan, and Moscow controlled political life. The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people, during the next half-century, Turkmenistan played its designated economic role within the Soviet Union and remained outside the course of major world events
22.
Bukhara
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Bukhara, is one of the cities of Uzbekistan. Bukhara is a city-museum, with about 140 architectural monuments, the nations fifth-largest city, it had a population as of 31 August 2016 of approximately 247,644. Humans have inhabited the region around Bukhara for at least five millennia, the mother tongue of the majority of people of Bukhara is yet Persian Language. Located on the Silk Road, the city has served as a center of trade, scholarship, culture. UNESCO has listed the center of Bukhara as a World Heritage Site. Bukhara was known as Bokhara in 19th- and early 20th-century English publications, according to the Encyclopædia Iranica the name Bukhara is possibly derived from the Soghdian βuxārak Muhammad ibn Jafar Narshakhi in his History of Bukhara mentions, Bukhara has many names. One of its name was Numijkat and it has also been called Bumiskat. It has 2 names in Arabic, one is Madinat al Sufriya meaning - the copper city and another is Madinat Al Tujjar meaning - The city of Merchants. But, the name Bukhara is more known than all the other names, in Khorasan, there is no other city with so many names Since the Middle Ages, the city has been known as Buḫārā / بخارا in Arabic and Persian sources. The modern Uzbek spelling is Buxoro, the history of Bukhara stretches back millennia. It is now the capital of Bukhara Region of Uzbekistan, located on the Silk Road, the city has long been a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion. During the golden age of the Samanids, Bukhara became an intellectual center of the Islamic world. The historic center of Bukhara, which contains numerous mosques and madrassas, has been listed by UNESCO as one of the World Heritage Sites, Bukhara has been one of the main centres of world civilisation from its early days in 6th century BCE. From the 6th century CE, Turkic speakers gradually moved in and its architecture and archaeological sites form one of the pillars of Central Asian history and art. The region of Bukhara was a part of the Persian Empire for a long time, the origin of many of its current inhabitants goes back to the period of Aryan immigration into the region. The Samanid Empire seized Bukhara, the capital of Greater Khorasan, Genghis Khan besieged Bukhara for fifteen days in 1220 CE. Bukhara was the last capital of the Emirate of Bukhara and was besieged by the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. During the Bukhara operation of 1920, an army of well-disciplined, on 31 August 1920, the Emir Alim Khan fled to Dushanbe in Eastern Bukhara
23.
Samarkand
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Samarkand, alternatively Samarqand or Samarcand, is a city in modern-day Uzbekistan and is one of the oldest inhabited cities in Central Asia. Prospering from its location on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, at times Samarkand was one of the greatest cities of Central Asia, by the time of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, it was the capital of the Sogdian satrapy. The city was taken by Alexander the Great in 329 BC, the city was ruled by a succession of Iranian, Persian, and Turkic peoples until the Mongols under Genghis Khan conquered Samarkand in 1220. Today, Samarkand is the capital of Samarqand Region, and Uzbekistans second largest city, the city is noted for being an Islamic centre for scholarly study. In the 14th century it became the capital of the empire of Timur and is the site of his mausoleum, the Bibi-Khanym Mosque remains one of the citys most notable landmarks. The Registan was the ancient center of the city, the city has carefully preserved the traditions of ancient crafts, embroidery, gold embroidery, silk weaving, engraving on copper, ceramics, carving, and painting on wood. In 2001, UNESCO added the city to its World Heritage List as Samarkand – Crossroads of Cultures, the name probably originates in the Sogdian words asmara, stone, rock and kand, fort, town. Along with Bukhara, Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in Central Asia, archeological excavations held within the city limits as well as suburban areas unearthed evidence of human activity as early as 40,000 years old, in the late Paleolithic era. A group of Mesolithic era archeological sites were discovered at Sazagon-1, Zamichatosh, the Syob and Dargom canals, supplying the city and its suburbs with water, appeared around the 7th to 5th centuries BC. There is no evidence when Samarkand was founded. Researchers of the Institute of Archeology of Samarkand argue for the existence of the city between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Samarkand has been one of the main centres of Sogdian civilization from its early days. By the time of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia it had become the capital of the Sogdian satrapy, Alexander the Great conquered Samarkand in 329 BC. The city was known as Maracanda by the Greeks, written sources offer small clues as to the subsequent system of government. They tell of an Orepius who became ruler not from ancestors, while Samarkand suffered significant damage during Alexanders initial conquest, the city recovered rapidly and under the new Hellenic influence flourished. There were also major new construction techniques, oblong bricks were replaced with square ones and superior methods of masonry, Alexanders conquests introduced into Central Asia classical Greek culture, at least for a time the Greek models were followed closely by the local artisans. After the Kushan era the city declined, it did not really revive until the 5th century, Samarkand was conquered by the Sassanians around 260 AD. Under Sassanian rule, the became an essential site for Manichaeism. After the Hephtalites conquered Samarkand, they controlled it until the Göktürks, in an alliance with the Sassanid Persians, the Turks ruled over Samarkand until they were defeated by the Sassanids during the Göktürk–Persian Wars
24.
Uzbekistan
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Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Located in Central Asia, it is a unitary, constitutional, presidential republic, comprising twelve provinces, one autonomous republic and a capital city. Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries, Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Once part of the Turkic Khaganate and later Timurid Empires, the region that includes the Republic of Uzbekistan was conquered in the early 16th century by Eastern Turkic-speaking nomads. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991, Uzbekistan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. The countrys official language is Uzbek, a Turkic language written in the Latin alphabet and spoken natively by approximately 85% of the population, however, Uzbeks constitute 81% of the population, followed by Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and others. A majority of Uzbeks are non-denominational Muslims, Uzbekistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, UN, and the SCO. While officially a republic, non-governmental human rights organizations define Uzbekistan as an authoritarian state with limited civil rights. Uzbekistans economy relies mainly on commodity production, including cotton, gold, uranium, despite the declared objective of transition to a market economy, its government continues to maintain economic controls which imports in favour of domestic import substitution. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometres and it is the 56th largest country in the world by area and the 42nd by population. Among the CIS countries, it is the 4th largest by area, Uzbekistan lies between latitudes 37° and 46° N, and longitudes 56° and 74° E. It stretches 1,425 kilometres from west to east and 930 kilometres from north to south, Uzbekistan also shares a short border with Afghanistan to the south. Uzbekistan is a dry, landlocked country and it is one of two doubly landlocked countries in the world, the other being Liechtenstein. In addition, due to its location within a series of endorheic basins, less than 10% of its territory is intensively cultivated irrigated land in river valleys and oases. The rest is vast desert and mountains, the climate in the Republic of Uzbekistan is continental, with little precipitation expected annually. The average summer high temperature tends to be 40 °C, while the winter low temperature is around −23 °C. Uzbekistan has a rich and diverse natural environment, the Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth, acting as an influencing factor in the air moisture and arid land use. Since the 1960s, the decade when the misuse of the Aral Sea water began, it has shrunk to less than 50% of its former area, reliable, or even approximate data, have not been collected, stored or provided by any organization or official agency
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Transoxiana
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Geographically, it is the region between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. The area had been known to the Romans as Transoxania, to the Arabs as Mawarannahr, and to the Iranians as Turan, the region was one of the satrapies of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia under the name Sogdiana. Early Arab geographers named it Bilād al-Turk or Turkestan, both of which mean the lands of the Turks, during the Sassanid Empire, it was often called Sogdiana, a provincial name taken from the Achaemenid Empire, and used to distinguish it from nearby Bactria. The Chinese explorer Zhang Qian, who visited the countries of Bactria and Parthia along with Transoxiana in 126 BC. Zhang Qian clearly identifies Parthia as an advanced civilisation that farmed grain and grapes, made silver coins. It was ruled successively by Seleucids, Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Parthian Empire, in Sassanid times, the region became a major cultural and scientific centre due to the wealth derived from the Northern Silk Road. Sassanid rule was interrupted by the Hephthalite invasion at the end of the 5th century, many Persian nobles and landlords escaped to this region after the Muslim invasion. Before the Muslim invasion it was ruled by Göktürks. After that it was ruled by Tang China until the Arab conquest between 705 and 715, the became known as Mā warāʼ al-Nahr, sometimes rendered as Mavarannahr. Transoxianas major cities and cultural centres are Samarkand and Bukhara, both are in the southern portion of Transoxiana, and the majority of the region was dry but fertile plains. Part of this region was conquered by Qutayba ibn Muslim between 706 and 715 and loosely held by the Umayyads from 715 to 738. The conquest was consolidated by Nasr ibn Sayyar between 738 and 740, and continued under the control of the Umayyads until 750, when it was replaced by the Abbasids. The Tang dynasty also controlled the part of the region until about the same time. Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, invaded Transoxiana in 1219 during his conquest of Khwarezm, before his death in 1227, he assigned the lands of Western Central Asia to his second son Chagatai, and this region became known as the Chagatai Khanate. In 1369, Timur, of the Barlas tribe, became the effective ruler, Transoxiana was known to be flourishing in the mid-14th century
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Sogdia
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Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. In the Avesta, Sogdiana is listed as the second best land that the supreme deity Ahura Mazda had created and it comes second, after Airyanem Vaejah, homeland of the Aryans, in the Zoroastrian book of Vendidad, indicating the importance of this region from ancient times. Sogdiana was conquered by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC and later formed part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centred on the main city of Samarkand. Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, and southeast of Kangju between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, embracing the valley of the Zeravshan. Sogdian territory corresponds to the provinces of Samarkand and Bokhara in modern Uzbekistan as well as the Sughd province of modern Tajikistan. During the High Middle Ages, Sogdian cities included sites stretching towards Issyk Kul such as that at the site of Suyab. Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian language, is no longer a spoken language and it was widely spoken in Central Asia as a lingua franca and even served as one of the Turkic Khaganates court languages for writing documents. Sogdians also lived in Imperial China and rose to prominence in the military. Sogdian merchants and diplomats traveled as far west as the Byzantine Empire and they played an important part as middlemen in the trade route of the Silk Road. The Sogdian conversion to Islam was virtually complete by the end of the Samanid Empire in 999, coinciding with the decline of the Sogdian language, as it was largely supplanted by Persian. The restored Scythian name is *Skuda, which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, according to Szemerényi, Sogdiana was named from the Skuda form. This large-scale migration included Eastern Iranian speaking peoples such as the Sogdians, Achaemenid ruler Cyrus the Great conquered Sogdiana while campaigning in Central Asia in 546–539 BC, a fact mentioned by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories. Darius I introduced the Aramaic writing system and coin currency to Central Asia, in addition to incorporating Sogdians into his army as regular soldiers. A contingent of Sogdian soldiers fought in the army of Xerxes I during his ultimately failed invasion of Greece in 480 BC. A Persian inscription from Susa claims that the palace there was adorned with lapis lazuli, given the absence of any named satraps for Sogdiana in historical records, modern scholarship has concluded that Sogdiana was governed from the satrapy of nearby Bactria. The satraps were often relatives of the ruling Persian kings, especially sons who were not designated as the heir apparent, Sogdiana likely remained under Persian control until roughly 400 BC, during the reign of Artaxerxes II. Rebellious states of the Persian Empire took advantage of the weak Artaxerxes II, persias massive loss of Central Asian territory is widely attributed to the rulers lack of control. However, unlike Egypt, which was recaptured by the Persian Empire
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Sistan
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Sīstān, known in ancient times as Sakastan, is a historical and geographical region in present-day eastern Iran, southern Afghanistan, and the Nok Kundi region of Balochistan. Sistan derives its name from Sakastan, the Sakas were a Scythian tribe which from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century migrated to the Iranian Plateau and India, where they carved a kingdom known as the Indo-Scythian Kingdom. In the Bundahishn, a Zoroastrian scripture written in Pahlavi, the province is called Seyansih, after the Arab conquest of Iran, the province became known as Sijistan/Sistan. The more ancient Old Persian name of the region - prior to Saka dominance - was zaranka and this older form is also the root of the name Zaranj, capital of the Afghan Nimruz Province. Encyclopædia Iranica says The name of the country and its inhabitants is first attested as Old Persian z-r-k in the great Bīsotūn inscription of Darius I, in the Shahnameh, Sistan is also referred to as Zabulistan, after the region in the eastern part of Iran. In Ferdowsis epic, Zabulistan is in turn described to be the homeland of the mythological hero Rostam, in prehistoric times, the Jiroft Civilization covered parts of Sistan and Kerman Province. Later the area was occupied by Aryan tribes related to the Indo-Aryans, eventually a kingdom known as Arachosia was formed, parts of which were ruled by the Medean Empire by 600 BC. The Medes were overthrown by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 550 BC, in the 4rd century BC, Macedonian king Alexander the Great annexed the region during his conquest of the Persian Empire and founded the colony of Alexandria in Arachosia. Alexanders Empire fragmented after his death, and Arachosia came under control of the Seleucid Empire, after the fall of the Mauryans, the region fell to their Greco-Bactrian allies in 180 BC, before breaking away and becoming part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom. Indo-Parthian king Gondophares was leader of Sistan around c, 20–10 BCE as it was part of the Indo-Parthian Kingdom which was also called Gedrosia, its Hellenistic name. After the mid 2nd century BC, much of the Indo-Greek Kingdom was overrun by tribes known as the Indo-Scythians or Saka, from which Sistan eventually derived its name. The Kushans were defeated by the Sassanid Persian Empire in the mid 3rd century, first becoming part of a vassal Kushansha state, Sassanid armies reconquered Sistan in by 565 AD, but lost the area to the Arab Rashidun Caliphate after the mid 640s. The province was formed in ca, shapurs son Narseh was the first to appointed as the governor of province, which he would govern until 271, when the Sasanian prince Hormizd was appointed as the new governor. 281, Hormizd revolted against his cousin Bahram II, during the revolt, the people of Sakastan was one of his supporters. Nevertheless, Bahram II managed to suppress the revolt in 283, during his early reign, Shapur II appointed his brother Shapur Sakanshah as the governor of Sakastan. Peroz I, during his reign, put an end to dynastic rule in province by appointing a Karenid as its governor. The reason behind the appointment was to further family conflict in the province. During the Muslim conquest of Persia, the last Sasanian king Yazdegerd III fled to Sakastan in the mid-640s, however, Yazdegerd III quickly ended this support when he demanded tax money that he had failed to pay
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Indian subcontinent
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Geologically, the Indian subcontinent is related to the land mass that rifted from Gondwana and merged with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago. Geographically, it is the region in south-central Asia delineated by the Himalayas in the north, the Hindu Kush in the west. Politically, the Indian subcontinent usually includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, sometimes, the term South Asia is used interchangeably with Indian subcontinent. There is no consensus about which countries should be included in each and it is first attested in 1845 to refer to the North and South Americas, before they were regarded as separate continents. Its use to refer to the Indian subcontinent is seen from the twentieth century. It was especially convenient for referring to the region comprising both the British India and the states under British Paramountcy. The term Indian subcontinent also has a geological significance and it was, like the various continents, a part of the supercontinent of Gondwana. A series of tectonic splits caused formation of basins, each drifting in various directions. The geological region called the Greater India once included the Madagascar, Seychelles, Antartica, as a geological term, Indian subcontinent has meant that region formed from the collision of the Indian basin with Eurasia nearly 55 million years ago, towards the end of Paleocene. The Indian subcontinent has been a particularly common in the British Empire. The region, state Mittal and Thursby, has also labelled as India, Greater India. The BBC and some sources refer to the region as the Asian Subcontinent. Some academics refer to it as South Asian Subcontinent, the terms Indian subcontinent and South Asia are sometimes used interchangeably. There is no accepted definition on which countries are a part of South Asia or Indian subcontinent. In dictionary entries, the term subcontinent signifies a large, distinguishable subdivision of a continent, the region experienced high volcanic activity and plate subdivisions, creating Madagascar, Seychelles, Antartica, Austrolasia and the Indian subcontinent basin. The Indian subcontinent drifted northeastwards, colliding with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago and this geological region largely includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The zone where the Eurasian and Indian subcontinent plates meet remains one of the active areas. The English term mainly continues to refer to the Indian subcontinent, physiographically, it is a peninsular region in south-central Asia delineated by the Himalayas in the north, the Hindu Kush in the west, and the Arakanese in the east
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Balochistan
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Balochistan is an arid desert and mountainous region in south-western Asia. It comprises the Pakistani province of Balochistan, Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, Balochistan borders the Pashtun region to the north, Sindh to the east, Punjab to the northeast, and Persian regions to the west and northwest. South of its coastline, including the Makran Coast, are the Arabian Sea. The name Balochistan is generally believed to derive from that of the Baloch people, the term Baloch does not appear in pre-Islamic sources. It is likely that the Balochs were known by other name at their place of origin. The Suffix -stān is a Persian word meaning place, johan Hansman relates the term Baloch to Meluḫḫa, the name by which the Indus Valley Civilisation is believed to have been known to the Sumerians and Akkadians in Mesopatamia. Meluḫḫa disappears from the Mesopotamian records at the beginning of the second millennium B. C, however, Hansman states that a trace of it in a modified form, as Baluḫḫu, was retained in the names of products imported by the Assyrians. Al-Muqaddasī, who visited the capital of Makran Bannajbur, states that it was populated by people called Balūṣī, leading Hansman to postulate Baluch as a modification of Meluḫḫa and Baluḫḫu. Asko Parpola relates the name Meluḫḫa to Indo-Aryan words mleccha and milakkha/milakkhu etc. which do not have an Indo-European etymology even though they were used to refer to non-Aryan people. Taking them to be proto-Dravidian in origin, he interprets the term as meaning either a proper name milu-akam or melu-akam, meaning high country, historian Romila Thapar also interprets Meluḫḫa as a proto-Dravidian term, possibly mēlukku, and suggests the meaning western extremity. A literal translation into Sanskrit, aparānta, was used to describe the region by the Indo-Aryans. During the time of Alexander the Great, the Greeks called the land Gedrosia and its people Gedrosoi, the earliest evidence of human occupation in what is now Balochistan is dated to the Paleolithic era, represented by hunting camps and lithic scatters, chipped and flaked stone tools. The earliest settled villages in the date to the ceramic Neolithic. These villages expanded in size during the subsequent Chalcolithic, when interaction was amplified and this involved the movement of finished goods and raw materials, including chank shell, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and ceramics. By 2500 BCE, the now known as Pakistani Balochistan had become part of the Harappan cultural orbit. From the 1st century to the 3rd century CE, the region was ruled by the Pāratarājas, the dynasty of the Pāratas is thought to be identical with the Pāradas of the Mahabharata, the Puranas and other vedic and Iranian sources. These coins are found in Loralai in todays western Pakistan. Herodotus in 450 BCE described the Paraitakenoi as a tribe ruled by Deiokes, arrian describes how Alexander the Great encountered the Pareitakai in Bactria and Sogdiana, and had them conquered by Craterus
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Kabulistan
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Kabulistan is a historical regional name referring to the territory that is centered on present-day Kabul Province of Afghanistan. It included the land as far as Peshawar in what is now Pakistan, south of Kabulistan was the region of Afghanistan and to the northwest was Khorasan. European writers during the 18th to the 20th centuries sometimes referred to Durrani Empire as the Kingdom of Caboul, the earliest rulers of Kabulistan were the Kabul Shahis, who ruled the region between 565 and 879 AD. Kabul Shahis had built a wall around the city of Kabul to protect it against invaders. The remains of walls are still visible over the mountains which are located inside Kabul city
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Frontier
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A frontier is the political and geographical area near or beyond a boundary. The term came from French in the 15th century, with the meaning borderland—the region of a country that fronts on another country, a frontier can also be referred to as a front. A difference has also established in academic scholarship between Frontier and Border, the latter denoting a fixed, rigid and clear-cut form of state boundary. In the European Union, the frontier is the region beyond the borders of the European Union itself. EU has designated the countries surrounding it as part of the European Neighbourhood and this is a region of primarily less-developed countries, many of which aspire to become part of the union. Current applicants include Turkey and many countries in the Balkans. Romania and Bulgaria joined EU in 2007, if all or most East European states become members, the frontier may be the boundaries with Russia and Turkey. The expansion of Russia to the north, south and east exploited ever-changing frontier regions over several centuries, the outside was another term frequently used in colonial Australia, this term seemingly covered not only the frontier but the districts beyond. Settlers at the frontier thus frequently referred to themselves as the outsiders or outside residents, the word frontier has often meant a region at the edge of a settled area, especially in North American development. It was a zone where explorers, pioneers and settlers were arriving. Frederick Jackson Turner said that the significance of the frontier was that as pioneers moved into the frontier zone, for example, Turner argues that in the United States in 1893, unlimited free land in this zone was available, and thus offered the psychological sense of unlimited opportunity. This, in turn, had many such as optimism, future orientation, shedding the restraints of land scarcity. Lawrence, Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna River and James, English, French, Spanish and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement were quite different. Only a few thousand French migrated to Canada, although French fur traders ranged widely through the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds, as far as the Rocky Mountains, they did not usually settle down. French settlement in these areas was limited to a few small villages on the lower Mississippi. The Dutch set up fur trading posts in the Hudson River valley, followed by grants of land to patroons. The typical English settlements were quite compact and small—under 3 square kilometres, conflict with the Native Americans arose out of political issues, i. e. who would rule. Early frontier areas east of the Appalachian Mountains included the Connecticut River valley, the French and Indian Wars of the 1760s resulted in a complete victory for the British, who took over the French colonial territory west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi River
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Khorasan Province
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Khorasan was a province in north eastern Iran, but historically referred to a much larger area east and north-east of the Persian Empire. The name Khorasan is Persian and means where the sun arrives from, the name was given to the eastern province of Persia during the Sassanid Empire. Some of the historical cities of Persia are located in the older Khorasan, Nishapur and Tus, Merv and Sanjan, Samarkand and Bukhara, Herat and Balkh, Khujand. In its long history, Khorasan knew many conquerors and empires, Greeks, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Safavids, Pashtuns, the major ethnic groups in this region are minority Fars or Persians with few Kurdish tribesmen, Turks and Turkmen as the majorities. Most of the people in the region speak closely related modern day dialects of Persian, the largest cluster of settlements and cultivation stretches around the city of Meshed northwestward, containing the important towns of Quchan, Shirvan, and Bojnurd. In August 1968 and September 1978, the region was the scene of two major earthquakes that left 12,000 and 25,000 people dead, respectively, delhi Multan Road to Mashhad capital of Khorasan province of Iran, providing access to capital city Ashgabat of Turkmenistan
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Emanuel Bowen
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Emanuel Bowen was an English map engraver, who worked for George II of England and Louis XV of France as a geographer. An 18th-century map and print seller, who worked in London from about 1714, producing some of the best and attractive maps of the century. A recurring feature of Bowens work, evident even on the road maps, was his habit of filling every corner and space of the map with jottings and footnotes. One of his earliest engraved works, Britannia Depicta, published in 1720, contained two hundred road maps together with a miniature county map of each of the counties of England. It was a feature of the atlas that the maps were engraved on both sides of each page, and this resulted in a handier-sized book. He also issued with John Owen a book of maps based, as was usual at the time, on John Ogilby but again incorporating his own style of historical. In spite of his appointments and apparent prosperity he died in poverty and his son. Thomas Bowen was his son, Thomas Kitchin and Thomas Jefferys were his apprentices, Bowens map, A Complete Map of the Southern Continent surveyd by Capt. The map of the set into the floor of the great hall of the Amsterdam Town Hall was drawn from Blaeus world map of 1648. Once Blaeus map of the world appeared other mapmakers, such as Thévenot, hollandia Nova in the Kurfürsten Atlas is shown as it appears in Blaeus world map of 1648. It lies precisely in the richest climates of the World, C.1714 Maps of the Continents 1720 Britannia Depicta or Ogilby Improved. 1744–47 A Complete System of Geography, 1744–48 maps for Complete Collection of Voyages. 1752 Complete Atlas Distinct View of the Known World,1762 The Royal English Atlas 1778/80 re-issued. C.1763 The Natural History of England,1766 Universal History of the World. C.1777 The World showing the Discoveries of Captain Cook, C.1784 Maps in Rapkinss History of England. A Complete map of the Southern Continent surveyd by Capt, abel Tasman & depicted by order of the East India Company in Holland in the Stadt House at Amsterdam, E. Bowen, Sculpt. Attribution This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Bowen
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Safavid dynasty
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The Safavid dynasty was one of the most significant ruling dynasties of Iran, often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavid shahs ruled over one of the so-called gunpowder empires, the Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safaviyya Sufi order, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Azerbaijan region. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by spreading Shia Islam in Iran, as well as parts of the Caucasus, Anatolia. The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be Seyyeds, family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, finally settling in the 11th century CE at Ardabil. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to the Kurdish dignitary, a massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries not only Turkified Azerbaijan but also Anatolia. The Azeri Turks are Shiʿites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty, by the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were native Turkish-speaking and Turkicized, and some of the Shahs composed poems in their native Turkish language. Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both Pontic Greek as well as Georgian lines, Safavid history begins with the establishment of the Safaviyya by its eponymous founder Safi-ad-din Ardabili. In 700/1301, Safi al-Din assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, due to the great spiritual charisma of Safi al-Din, the order was later known as the Safaviyya. The Safavid order soon gained great influence in the city of Ardabil, after Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the Safaviyya passed to Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā. The leadership of the order passed from Sadr ud-Dīn Mūsā to his son Khwādja Ali, when Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically changed. Savory, Sheikh Junayd was not content with spiritual authority and he sought material power, Junayd sought refuge with the rival of Kara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq Qoyunlu Khan Uzun Hassan, and cemented his relationship by marrying Uzun Hassans sister, Khadija Begum. Junayd was killed during an incursion into the territories of the Shirvanshah and was succeeded by his son Haydar Safavi, Haydar married Martha Alamshah Begom, Uzun Hassans daughter, who gave birth to Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. Marthas mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun—was a Pontic Greek princess and she had been married to Uzun Hassan in exchange for protection of the Grand Komnenos from the Ottomans. After Uzun Hassans death, his son Yaqub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence, Yaqub allied himself with the Shirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. By this time, the bulk of the Safaviyya were nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking clans from Asia Minor, the Qizilbash were warriors, spiritual followers of Haydar, and a source of the Safavid military and political power. After the death of Haydar, the Safaviyya gathered around his son Ali Mirza Safavi, according to official Safavid history, before passing away, Ali had designated his young brother Ismail as the spiritual leader of the Safaviyya. After the decline of the Timurid Empire, Persia was politically splintered, the demise of Tamerlanes political authority created a space in which several religious communities, particularly Shi’i ones, could come to the fore and gain prominence. Among these were a number of Sufi brotherhoods, the Hurufis, Nuqtawis, of these various movements, the Safavid Qizilbash was the most politically resilient, and due to its success Shah Isma’il I gained political prominence in 1501
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Mughal Empire
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The dynasty, though ethnically Turco-Mongol, was Persianate in terms of culture. The Mughal empire extended over parts of the Indian subcontinent. The beginning of the empire is conventionally dated to the victory by its founder Babur over Ibrahim Lodi, the Mughal emperors were Central Asian Turco-Mongols belonging to the Timurid dynasty, who claimed direct descent from both Genghis Khan and Timur. During the reign of Humayun, the successor of Babur, the empire was briefly interrupted by the Sur Empire, the classic period of the Mughal Empire started in 1556 with the ascension of Akbar the Great to the throne. Under the rule of Akbar and his son Jahangir, the region enjoyed economic progress as well as harmony. Akbar was a warrior who also forged alliances with several Hindu Rajput kingdoms. Some Rajput kingdoms continued to pose a significant threat to the Mughal dominance of northwestern India, the reign of Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor, between 1628 and 1658 was the golden age of Mughal architecture. He erected several monuments, the best known of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra, as well as the Moti Masjid, Agra, the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, Delhi. By the mid-18th century, the Marathas had routed Mughal armies, during the following century Mughal power had become severely limited, and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah II, had authority over only the city of Shahjahanabad. He issued a firman supporting the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and following the defeat was therefore tried by the British East India Company for treason, imprisoned and exiled to Rangoon. Contemporaries referred to the empire founded by Babur as the Timurid empire, which reflected the heritage of his dynasty, another name was Hindustan, which was documented in the Ain-i-Akbari, and which has been described as the closest to an official name for the empire. In the west, the term Mughal was used for the emperor, and by extension, the use of Mughal derived from the Arabic and Persian corruption of Mongol, and it emphasised the Mongol origins of the Timurid dynasty. The term gained currency during the 19th century, but remains disputed by Indologists, similar terms had been used to refer to the empire, including Mogul and Moghul. Nevertheless, Baburs ancestors were sharply distinguished from the classical Mongols insofar as they were oriented towards Persian rather than Turco-Mongol culture, ousted from his ancestral domains in Central Asia, Babur turned to India to satisfy his ambitions. He established himself in Kabul and then pushed steadily southward into India from Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass, Baburs forces occupied much of northern India after his victory at Panipat in 1526. The preoccupation with wars and military campaigns, however, did not allow the new emperor to consolidate the gains he had made in India, the instability of the empire became evident under his son, Humayun, who was driven out of India and into Persia by rebels. Humayuns exile in Persia established diplomatic ties between the Safavid and Mughal Courts, and led to increasing Persian cultural influence in the Mughal Empire, the restoration of Mughal rule began after Humayuns triumphant return from Persia in 1555, but he died from a fatal accident shortly afterwards. Humayuns son, Akbar, succeeded to the throne under a regent, Bairam Khan, through warfare and diplomacy, Akbar was able to extend the empire in all directions and controlled almost the entire Indian subcontinent north of the Godavari River
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Badghis Province
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Bādghīs is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northwest of the country next to Turkmenistan. The name is a corruption of the Persian compound, bâd-khiz, meaning wind source, referring to the winds that blow into the province from the north. Badghis is irrigated by the Murghab, the extension of the area into Turkmenistan still sports the old version, and serves as the Bâdkhiz Nature Preserve. Its northern border extends to the edge of the desert of Sarakhs, Badghis includes the Chul formations through which the Turkmen-Afghan boundary runs. The province was carved out of portions of Herat Province and Meymaneh Province in 1964 and has an area of 20,591 km2. It is counted as one of the most underdeveloped of the countrys 34 provinces, qala i Naw, a small town halfway between Maimana and Herat, serves as the provincial center. The province was one of the last captured by the Taliban in their military offensive before the American invasion in 2001, the province was quickly retaken by Northern Alliance forces as the United States initiated hostilities. The province was flooded by governors which was in favor of Hamed Karzai and these governors did not make a positive change. Especially governor Nasiri, who was moved to Zabul facilitated the raising of Taliban, the current Governor of the province is Jamaluddin Ishaq. At the province was a Provincial Reconstruction Team, which was led by Spain, agriculture is the main source of peoples income and the existence of Murghab, river makes the available land suitable for cultivation. The province faced severe drought during the late 1990s and early 2000s, Badghis is the leading province in Afghanistan in pistachio production. It is also one of the capitals of the country. Badghis Province suffers from a lack of adequate transportation, a single airport exists at the provincial seat--Qala i Naw Airport, which is capable of handling light aircraft. Work on a 233 km section of the Afghan ring road has started in 2012 and this will connect Herat to Mazar-i Sharif and open up Badghis to the rest of Afghanistan. This section goes from Laman in Herat Province to Qaisar in Faryab Province, through Qala-e-Now, Muqur, Bala Murghab, Badghis is part of National Ring road, but because of Pashtuns supremacy and their power in the government, they made it immposible to built it. There are three main reason why do not want the connection of ring road, the southern provinces with Pashtun majority will get less benefit from Herat-Kabul highway. The ring road will connect North to West of the country which are non-Pashtun majority and it will pave the way for breaking the old school pashtun theory to keep Afghanistan border safe by pashtuns. Pashtuns will lose the lands in Bala Murghab by flood of farmers from Faryab
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Tus, Iran
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Tus, also spelled as Tous, Toos or Tūs, is an ancient city in Razavi Khorasan Province in Iran near Mashhad. To the ancient Greeks, it was known as Susia and it was captured by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. It was also known as Tusa, Tus was taken by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik and remained under Umayyad control until 747, when a subordinate of Abu Muslim Khorasani defeated the Umayyad governor during the Abbasid Revolution. In 809, the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid fell ill and died in Tus and his grave is located in the region. Tus was almost entirely destroyed by the Mongol conquests between 1220 and 1259, the most famous person who has emerged from that area was the theologian, jurist, philosopher and mystic al-Ghazali. Another is the poet Ferdowsi, author of the Persian epic Shahnameh, whose mausoleum, built in 1934 in time for the millennium of his birth, dominates the town. Al-Tusi – a descriptor used for individuals associated with Tus Tus citadel Media related to Tus, Iran at Wikimedia Commons Livius. org, Susia
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Sarakhs
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Sarakhs is a city in and capital of Sarakhs County, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran. Sarakhs was once a point along the Silk Road, and in its 11th century heyday had many libraries. Much of the city site is now just across the border at Serakhs in Turkmenistan. According to the most recent national census, in 2006, the population was 33,571 in 8,066 families. Several battles were fought in this area, according to Ferdowsis Shahnameh the town has existed since the Afrasiab period and was named for its builder, Sarakhs, son of Godarz, by Keykavus. Turkmen historians consider the city to have founded over 2500 years ago. The Mongols plundered and destroyed Sarakhs in 1220, but it was rebuilt in the century by the order of Nasser-al-Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty. For its first 50 years or so, this city was thus known as known Nassers Sarakhs and was a principally feudal town. Sarakhs weather is cold in winter, warm and dry in summer thanks to the influence of the Gharaghoroom Desert, the main historical site of Sarakhs is the partly restored Loghman Baba mausoleum in a field just north of the town. A bogie exchange is needed to overcome a break of gauge and this will be supplemented with a quicker SUW2000 variable gauge axles track gauge changing facility
listen (help·info)), sometimes called Greater Khorasan, is a historical region lying in northeast of Greater Persia, including part of Central Asia and Afghanistan. The name simply means "East, Orient" (literally "sunrise")[1] and it loosely includes the territory of the Sasanian Empire east of Persia proper. Early Islamic usage often regarded everywhere east of so-called Jibal or what was subsequently termed 'Iraq Adjami' (Persian Iraq), as being included in a vast and loosely-defined region of Khorasan, which might even extend to the Indus Valley and Sindh.[2] During the Islamic period, Khorasan along with Persian Iraq were two important territories, the boundary between these two was the region surrounding the cities of Gurgan and Qumis (modern Damghan). In particular, the Ghaznavids, Seljuqs and Timurids divided their empires into Iraqi and Khorasani regions.
