Iran has one of the oldest histories in the world, extending more than 5000 years, and throughout history, Iran has been of geostrategic importance because of its central location in Eurasia and Western Asia. Iran is a founding member of the UN, NAM, OIC, OPEC, and ECO. Iran as a major regional power occupies an important position in the world economy due to its substantial reserves of petroleum and natural gas, and has considerable regional influence in Western Asia. The name Iran is a cognate of Aryan and literally means "Land of the Aryans." (Full article...)
Bahram I (also spelled Wahram I or Warahran I; Middle Persian: 𐭥𐭫𐭧𐭫𐭠𐭭) was the fourth SasanianKing of Kings of Iran from 271 to 274. He was the eldest son of Shapur I (r. 240–270) and succeeded his brother Hormizd I (r. 270–271), who had reigned for a year.
Bahram I's reign marked the end of the Sasanian tolerance towards Manichaeism, and in 274, with the support of the influential Zoroastrian priest Kartir, he had Mani imprisoned and executed. Bahram I's reign was largely uneventful. He was succeeded by his son Bahram II. (Full article...)
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The Imamzadeh Chaharmenar in Tabriz, where the Rawadid rulers are buried
Abu Mansur Wahsudan (also spelled Vahsudan; Persian: ابو منصور وهسودان) was the penultimate Rawadidamir (ruler) of Azarbaijan from 1025 to 1058/59. He is considered the most prominent ruler of his dynasty. With the assistance of his Kurdish neighbours, he initially contained the attacks of migrating Turkmen tribes, but was eventually forced to acknowledge the authority of the Seljuk ruler Tughril (r. 1037–1063) in 1054. He was succeeded by his son Abu Nasr Mamlan II (r. 1058/59–1070). (Full article...)
Khalid ibn Barmak (709–781/82; Arabic: خالد بن برمك) was the first prominent member of the Barmakids, an important Buddhist family from Balkh, which converted to Islam and became prominent members of the Abbasid court in the second half of the 8th century. Khalid himself converted to Islam at the Umayyad court in the 720s, but joined the nascent Abbasid revolutionary movement in Khurasan, and played a significant role in the Abbasid Revolution that toppled the Umayyads. He enjoyed close relations with the first Abbasid caliph, al-Saffah, functioning as his chief minister and introducing innovations in record-keeping. Under al-Saffah's successor, al-Mansur, Khalid's influence decreased, but he still occupied significant provincial governorships in Fars, Tabaristan, and Mosul. As an administrator, he distinguished himself for his fairness, especially in matters of taxation, and was a popular governor. He appears to have briefly fallen into disgrace around 775, but he managed to recover, helped by the rapid rise of his son, Yahya. Khalid's ties to the Abbasid dynasty were soon strengthened when his grandson, al-Fadl ibn Yahya, became the foster-brother of the future caliph Harun al-Rashid, while Yahya became the prince's tutor. Khalid died in 781/2, shortly after returning from an expedition against the Byzantine Empire. (Full article...)
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The 1930 Salmas earthquake occurred on May 7 at 01:34:26 IRST in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. The earthquake, which was among Iran's largest, measured 7.1 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). A damaging foreshock occurred fifteen hours prior to the main event and served as a warning to the people that felt it strongly. Reports from seismologists and seismological organizations indicate that up to 3,000 fatalities may have occurred in northwest Iran and southeast Turkey.
Sixty villages (including the large settlement of Dilman, which was relocated and rebuilt as Salmas) were destroyed in the Salmas Plain and in the surrounding mountainous regions. A destructive aftershock sequence affected many villages, and in some cases, damage was inflicted on some that had escaped devastation during the mainshock. An inspection of the region was undertaken, but not until decades later, at which time substantial surface faulting and other ground effects were documented. (Full article...)
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Plate of Peroz I
Peroz I (Middle Persian: 𐭯𐭩𐭫𐭥𐭰, romanized: Pērōz) was the SasanianKing of Kings (shahanshah) of Iran from 459 to 484. A son of Yazdegerd II (r. 438–457), he disputed the rule of his elder brother and incumbent king Hormizd III (r. 457–459), eventually seizing the throne after a two-year struggle. His reign was marked by war and famine. Early in his reign, he successfully quelled a rebellion in Caucasian Albania in the west, and put an end to the Kidarites in the east, briefly expanding Sasanian rule into Tokharistan, where he issued gold coins with his likeness at Balkh. Simultaneously, Iran was suffering from a seven-year famine. He soon clashed with the former subjects of the Kidarites, the Hephthalites, who possibly had previously helped him to gain his throne. He was defeated and captured twice by the Hephthalites and lost his recently acquired possessions.
In 482, revolts broke out in the western provinces of Armenia and Iberia, led by Vahan Mamikonian and Vakhtang I respectively. Before Peroz could quell the unrest there, he was defeated and killed in his third war with the Hephthalites in 484, who seized the main Sasanian cities of the eastern region of Khorasan−Nishapur, Herat and Marw. Taking advantage of the weakened Sasanian authority in the east, the Nezak Huns subsequently seized the region of Zabulistan. Peroz was the last shahanshah to mint unique gold coins in the Indian region of Sindh, which indicates that the region was lost around the same period. Albeit a devout Zoroastrian, Peroz supported the newly established Christian sect of Nestorianism, and just before his death, it was declared the official doctrine of the Iranian church. (Full article...)
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Part of Mount Mycale, viewed from the ruins of Priene
The previous year, the Persian invasion force, led by Xerxes himself, had scored victories at the battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium, and conquered Thessaly, Boeotia and Attica; however, at the ensuing Battle of Salamis, the allied Greek navies had won an unlikely victory, and therefore prevented the conquest of the Peloponnese. Xerxes then retreated, leaving his general Mardonius with a substantial army to finish off the Greeks the following year. (Full article...)
The Iran–Contra affair (Persian: ماجرای ایران-کنترا; Spanish: Caso Irán-Contra), often referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan administration. Between 1981 and 1986, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the illegal sale of arms to Iran, which was subject to an arms embargo at the time. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration figured out a loophole by secretively using non-appropriated funds instead.
The official justification for the arms shipments was that they were part of an operation to free seven US hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, an Islamist paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The idea to exchange arms for hostages was proposed by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an expatriate Iranian arms dealer. Some within the Reagan administration hoped the sales would influence Iran to get Hezbollah to release the hostages. (Full article...)
The Asiatic cheetah survives in protected areas in the eastern-central arid region of Iran, where the human population density is very low. Between December 2011 and November 2013, 84 individuals were sighted in 14 different protected areas, and 82 individuals were identified from camera trap photographs. In December 2017, fewer than 50 individuals were thought to be remaining in three subpopulations that are scattered over 140,000 km2 (54,000 sq mi) in Iran's central plateau. In January 2022, the Iranian Department of Environment estimated that there were only 12 Asiatic cheetahs comprising nine males and three females left in the country. In 2023, a member of the Iranian Cheetah Society referred to 30 to 40 individuals living in Iran. (Full article...)
Statue of al-Kunduri in his native city of Kondor, Iran
Amid al-Mulk Abu Nasr al-Kunduri (Persian: عمیدالملک ابونصر الکندری; 1024 – 29 November 1064), commonly known as al-Kunduri (کندری; also spelled Kunduri), was a Persian bureaucrat, who served as the vizier of the first SeljukSultanTughril (r. 1037–1063) and his nephew Alp Arslan (r. 1063–1072).
Kunduri was born in Kundur. He was recruited into the Seljuk bureaucracy as a secretary, at the suggestion of his teacher, Imam al-Muwaffaq al-Nishapuri. A natural schemer, Kunduri sought to exploit the power and influence over the Seljuk sultan. (Full article...)
Milad Tower (also known as Borj-e Milad , Persian: برج میلاد) is the tallest tower in Iran. Built in 2007 in between the Shahrak-e Gharb and Gisha districts of Tehran, it stands 435 m (1,427 ft) high from base to tip of the antenna.
...that Wikipedia has lots articles about Persian Kings?
...that Russia won the 1804–1813 Russo-Persian War, because of its superior technology, despite Persia upscaling its efforts at the end of the war, and declaring it a holy war?
Khosrow I (also spelled Khosrau, Khusro or Chosroes; Middle Persian: 𐭧𐭥𐭮𐭫𐭥𐭣𐭩; New Persian: خسرو [xosˈroʊ̯]), traditionally known by his epithet of Anushirvan (انوشيروان [ænuːʃi:rˈvɔːn] "the Immortal Soul"), was the SasanianKing of Kings of Iran from 531 to 579. He was the son and successor of Kavad I (r. 488–496, 498/9–531).
Inheriting a reinvigorated empire at war with the Byzantines, Khosrow I made a peace treaty with them in 532, known as the Perpetual Peace, in which the Byzantine emperor Justinian I paid 11,000 pounds of gold to the Sasanians. Khosrow then focused on consolidating his power, executing conspirators, including his uncle Bawi. Dissatisfied with the actions of the Byzantine clients and vassals, the Ghassanids, and encouraged by the Ostrogoth envoys from Italy, Khosrow violated the peace treaty and declared war against the Byzantines in 540. He sacked the major city of Antioch and deported its population to Persia. In 541, he invaded Lazica and made it an Iranian protectorate, thus initiating the Lazic War. In 545, the two empires agreed to halt the wars in Mesopotamia and Syria, while it waged on in Lazica. A truce was made in 557, and by 562 a Fifty-Year Peace Treaty was made. (Full article...)
The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed during 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organized, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon. The primary copy of the text is inscribed on a basaltstele 2.25 m (7 ft 4+1⁄2 in) tall.
The stele was rediscovered in 1901 at the site of Susa in present-day Iran, where it had been taken as plunder six hundred years after its creation. The text itself was copied and studied by Mesopotamian scribes for over a millennium. The stele now resides in the Louvre Museum. (Full article...)
The memoir was recorded through thousands of hours of conversation between Zahra Hosseini and Azam Hosseini, while parts of the book are autobiography by the narrator. The title, Da, means "mother" in Kurdish and Luri, and was meant to memorialize the role of Iranian mothers during the Iran–Iraq War. (Full article...)
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Israel's role in the Iran–Iraq War consisted of support provided by Israel to Iran during the Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. During the war, Israel was one of the main suppliers of military equipment to Iran. Israel also provided military instructors during the war, and in turn received Iranian intelligence that helped it carry out Operation Opera against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. The nuclear reactor was a central component of Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
Israel supported Iran during the war so that Iran could provide a counterweight to Iraq; to re-establish influence in Iran which Israel lost with the overthrow of the shah in 1979, and to create business for the Israeli weapons industry. The Israeli arms sales to Iran also facilitated the unhindered immigration of the Persian Jewish community from Iran to Israel and the United States. Israel's support for Iran during the war was done clandestinely, and Iran publicly denied any cooperation between the two countries. (Full article...)
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The Imperial Bank of Persia (Persian: بانک شاهنشاهی ایران, romanized: Bank-e Šâhanšâhi-ye Irân) was a British bank that operated as the central bank and bank of issue in Iran (formerly known as Persia until 1935) between 1889 and 1929. It was established in 1885 with a concession from the Persian government to Baron Julius De Reuter (born Israel Beer Josaphat) a German–Jewish banker and businessman who later became a Christian and a British subject.
The bank was the first modern bank in Iran and introduced European banking ideas to a country in which they were previously unknown. The legal centre of the bank was in London and whilst it was subject to British law, its activities were based in Tehran. It also had operations in other Middle Eastern countries. It was later named British Bank of the Middle East (BBME) and is now called HSBC Bank Middle East Limited. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, all the Iranian activities of this bank were transferred to Bank Tejarat. (Full article...)
An earthquake struck the Kerman province of southeastern Iran at 01:56 UTC (5:26 am Iran Standard Time) on December 26, 2003. The shock had a moment magnitude of 6.6 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The earthquake was particularly destructive in Bam, with the death toll amounting to at least 34,000 people and injuring up to 200,000. The effects of the earthquake were exacerbated by the use of mud brick as the standard construction medium; many of the area's structures did not comply with earthquake regulations set in 1989.
Following the earthquake the U.S. offered direct humanitarian assistance to Iran and in return the state promised to comply with an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency which supports greater monitoring of its nuclear interests. In total a reported 44 countries sent in personnel to assist in relief operations and 60 countries offered assistance. (Full article...)
Where are your valiant warriors and your priests? Where are your hunting parties and your feasts? Where is that warlike mien, and where are those? Great armies that destroyed our country's foes? . . . Count Iran as a ruin, as the lair of lions and leopards! Look now and despair!
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