Greater Khorasan

Khorasan (Persian خراسان, even Khorasan, Khorasan Khorasan or written ), historically also sometimes grouped with northern regions as Khorasan and Mā Wara an- Nahr (Arabic خراسان وما وراء النهر, DMG Ḫurāsān wa - Mā ʾ Wara an- Nahr ), is a historical region in Central Asia in the area of ​​the present states of Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Etymology

The word Khorasan is Old Persian and means "Land of the Rising Sun ". Later, the word in the Parthian and Middle Persian was generally means " the East."

After many critical standard lexicons of the Persian language or the Dari, eg Dehchodas lexicon, is خراسان composed of خر choir "sun" and آسان Asan; this means, for example, " method ", " fashion ", and as an adjective means Asan " easy ".

Thus Khorasan literally means " sun method " or " sun light" and refers to the Orient ( Chāwar خاور ) or the East in contrast from the west ( Bachtar باختر ), the Occident means (see also Bactria Bactria ).

More likely, however, is the proposal Ghilains ( 1939: 49), repeated at Nyberg ( 1974: 220), Khorasan "come" on medium Persian xwar "sun" and the Parthian verb ås due. The ending- ān refers to the present participle. This would mean Khorasan ( Middle Persian xwarāsān ) " the coming sun."

Geography

The region is bordered to the west by the Caspian Sea and in the east to the Hindu Kush. The northern part is in Turkistan, the southern parts belong to the desert region of Sistan.

Major cities of Khorasan are: Samarkand, Bukhara ( now Uzbekistan ), Herat, Balkh, Ghazni, Kabul (now lie all 4 cities in Afghanistan), Mashhad, Nishapur and Tus (now Iran).

History

As a historical landscape, the northwest to the east stretched in antiquity to the Caspian Sea and to this central Afghanistan, was among the region since the 6th century BC under Cyrus the Great, the Persian Empire and was in the satrapies of Bactria, Sogdiana, Khorezm and Parthia divided. With the victory of Alexander the Great on the Achaemenids Khorasan was a Macedonian colony and was administered as part of the Seleucid empire of the Macedonians. After the conquest by Arsaces I ( 247 BC) was the origin of Khorasan and the core area of the Parthian, which fell in 227 CE under Ardashir I to the Persian dynasty of the Sassanids, and as one of the four parts of the New Persian Empire, the name " land of the Rising sun" ( = Khorasan ) received.

Since 651 under Arab rule, Khorasan was Islamized by the Caliphate of the Umayyads and Abbasids and developed under the rule of the subsequent dynasties ( Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids ) to one of the centers of Persian and Islamic culture. This tradition was continued by the subsequent Turko -Persian dynasties ( Ghaznavids, Seljuks ), which replaced gradually the local dynasties. 1220 Khorasan was overrun and conquered by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, but experienced among his descendants ( Ilkhanid, Timurid, Mughal ) a new heyday.

1598 was the biggest part of Khorasan finally under Iranian sovereignty, when the Safavids conquered most of eastern Iran. At times smaller parts were in the northwest and southwest under Uzbek or Indian rule. 1748 Pashtun Durrani dynasty was founded in Khorasan, the emirs as "the ruler of Khorasan " were the forerunners of the modern state of Afghanistan. 1863 was definitively Herat, Afghanistan to Merv in 1884 to Russia. Today, Afghanistan is and the Persian ( Tajik ) people of Afghanistan as the rightful successor to the medieval Khorasan.

Khorasan was very long the actual center of the Islamic heyday. Here, many people, their knowledge and their cultures mixed with the native Iranian civilization. The most important and famous scholars and Sufis ( Islamic mystics ) of the Persian- Islamic world lived and worked here, including the physician Avicenna, the inventor of algebra al - Khwarizmi, the theologian al -Ghazali, the poet Rumi, Attar and Ferdowsi, the mathematician Ulugh Beg and Omar Khayyam, the Persian national hero Abu Muslim Chorassani and polymath al -Biruni. Through this long and important history, this region has a special value not only to the Iranian people, but also for Kurds, Turks, Arabs and Indians. This can be seen today in the composition of the population of Khorasan.

Population

Khorasan is a multi-ethnic region due to its varied history. The population of Khorasan comprises mainly composed of Persians, Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Baluchis and Mongols as well as smaller groups of Jews and lures. There are also some scattered living in Iran, formerly nomadic ethnic groups, which in Khorasan, among others, originating from India Jat and Asheq (see Aşık ) musicians mentioned are counted.

The largest population group in Khorasan are the spokesman of Iranian languages ​​, mainly Persian and Pashto, Persian which is both numerically and historically and culturally the dominant language. A significant minority of Central Asian Turkic languages ​​constitute the speaker, of which Uzbek and Turkmen are certainly the most important. In addition, there are also smaller communities of Arabs and Kurds.

99 percent of the population is Muslim of Khorasan, of which the majority in the Iranian Shiite majority Sunni part in the other countries, with a very significant Shiite minority. Especially the west Khorasan is a center of Shiite denomination. Among other things, there is the holy Shia city of Mashhad.

Documents

• Geography (Iran)
• Geography (Afghanistan)
• History of Tajikistan
• Historical territory (Asia)