Fast Facts
- Official Name: Islamic Republic of Iran
- Capital: Tehran
- Population: 82,913,906 (2019)
- Official Language: Persian
- Currency: Iranian rial (IRR)
- Form of Government: Theocratic republic
- Climate: Mostly arid or semiarid, subtropical along Caspian coast
- Total Area: 636,369 square miles (1,648,195 square kilometers)
- Highest Point: Kuh- e Damavand at 18,454 feet (5,625 meters)
- Lowest Point: Caspian Sea at 92 feet (-28 meters)
The Land
- 636,000 square miles
- The seventeenth largest country in the world
- Mostly deserts : over 700 miles from the northwest to southeast
- But also mountain chains: Alborz : To the north of the country: 300 miles in length. Zāgros : consists of a broad band of parallel ranges
Climate
- Shows great variation: ranges from semi-arid to subtropical
- In the northwest: winters are cold with heavy snowfall and subfreezing temperatures. Spring and fall are relatively mild, summers are dry and hot
- In the South: winters are mild and the summers are very hot. Along the Persian gulf, the extreme summer heat is accompanied by high humidity
- On the plateau: aridity combined with high elevation produces a very rigorous continental-type climate, with great variation in temperature between seasons and even between day and night.
Demography
- Population: ~ 83 million (2019)
- Nineteenth largest country in terms of population
- Most of the population are moslems
- Not homogeneous in terms of language
- Few people are monolingual
History
- The first people inhabited the land as early as 13,000 b.c.
-
Elamites
: First kingdom in approximately
2700
b.c.
(Along the
Kārun
River)
- A major power during the period 1500–1100 b.c.
- Founded the first known civilization in Iran, but they were not ethnically “Iranian” a nd their language was different
- Then came Aryans (from a word probably meaning “noble”)
- Speaking languages belonging to the Iranian group
- These tribes reached the Zagros by the beginning of the first millennium b.c.
- Most powerful tribe: Medes
- Formed a kingdom with a capital at Ecbatana (modern Hamadān in the central Zagros)
- Persians : Another Iranian tribe settled in the southern areas of the Zagros
- A marriage between the Medes and the Persians (600–559 b.c. )
- Daughter of the Median King ( Mandane ) to the Persian king (Cambyses I)
- Child: Cyrus the Great
- 549 b.c. : Cyrus created a unified Persian-Median empire with himself as “great king, king of kings, king of the lands.”