Tehran the Capital

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I live in Tehran. Tehran is the capital city of the Islamic Repablic of Iran with a land area of 658 square kilometers. It is located in the northern part of the country at the bottom of the slope of the Alborz Mountains. It is surounded by other provinces such as Ghom, Ghazvin and Ostan-e markazi.

The location provides the city with a nice weather. All four seasons of a year can be seen in Tehran. It is cool in the spring, almost hot in the summer, rainy in the automn, and snowy in the winter.



The population (as of 2006) is 7,354,000. In the 20th century, Tehran faced a large number of migratories from all around Iran who are predominantly Persian today, More than 60 percent of Tehranis were born outside Tehran.Tehran population includs ethnic and religious minorities such as Azeris, Armenian, Assyrians, Kurds, Jews, Bahá'ís and Zoroastrians. About 99.9% of non-persian Tehranis are either bilingual in Persian or fluent speakers of it.

The predominant majority of Tehranis are the followers of Shia Islam and the minorities include the believers of different sects of sunni Islam, Zoroastrianisim, Bahai faith, Judaism, christianity. There are also small groups of Shiks, Hindus, Buddahists, Mandeans, Spiritualists, Atheists, Yazidis, Yarsan, Secular Muslims and the followers of Mystic Islam etc.



Tehran has a wealth of cultural attractions including palaces (Golestan Palace, Sadabad Palace, Niavaran Palace Complex, etc), museums (Reza Abbasi Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art,etc), castles and forts (Ghal'eh Dokhtar Tang Goseel near Karajfrom Seljuqi era, Iraj Fort in Varamin,etc), famous houses(Etehadiyeh House (Qajar era), Amir Bahador House (Qajar era), , archeological sites(, towers, libraries, bazzars,and shopping centers.

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Let's listen to a Persian song by Googoosh

Googoosh with the actual name of Faegheh Atashin, born 5 May 1950 in Tehran; is Iranian pop singer and actress. She is one of the most famous Iranian singers for different generations.
In the 1960s and 70s, Googoosh was considered the most celebrated recording artist in Iran and much of the Middle East. In addition to music, Googoosh was also an actress in many Persian films of the 1960s and 1970s. She is more widely known as a singer than as an actress. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, she is famously known for remaining in Iran until 2000 and not performing or performing again due to the ban on solo female singers. Still, her following grew. Younger people have rediscovered her music via bootleg recordings. Outside of Iran, she has a significant following in many Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries, and has even caught the attention of western media and press. Googoosh is rumored to reside in an estimated $16 million valued estate near Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, and continues her career, albeit in a limited manner.



.................................................
Should I cry or not
Singer : Googoosh
Poem by : Zoya Zakarian
Melody by : Babak Amini
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*********************
Should I cry or not ?
May I talk or not ?
May I ever forget your love or not ?
There is no answer to my questions
So I turn to the mirror
looking staring at my image
Then asking : Whom should I leave ?
You are a part of this story
And I'm the other part
We are ganged together
If you ever brake
I'll be broken apart too
Should I cry or not ?
May I talk or not ?
May I ever forget your love or not ?
Neither I can leave you
Nor being in love with you
It's damn hard to decide
being in love with you
or forget you
It seems to be a dead end
either in front
or in the back
How could we get along with ?
Ye , I ask you how ?
look honey look
It seems to be a dead end
either in front
or in the back
How could we get along with ?
Ye , I ask you how ?
Should I cry or not ?
May I talk or not ?
May I ever forget your love or not ?
There is no answer to my questions
You are like my tied-up wings
And I'm the fear of your flight
Just tell me
What can I do
for the freedom of love
from this damn cage ?
*********************
traslated by : Ali mahmoudi

Women in Iran

Persian women have played an important role throughout history. Scheherazade, though fictional, is an important figure of female wit and intelligence, while the beauty of Mumtaz Mahal inspired the building of the Taj Mahal itself. While in ancient times, aristocratic females possessed numerous rights sometimes on par with men, generally Persian women did not attain greater parity until the 20th century.



Persian women today serve an active role in society. Persian women can be seen working in a variety of areas such as politics, law enforcement, transportation industries, etc. Universities still tend to be dominated by women in Iran and one may find a large number of female legislators in the Iranian Majlis (parliament), even by western standards. Former Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, noted for her eloquence in dealing with western media, set a new standard for aspiring Iranian female politicians while serving under President Khatami.

Persian people

This article concerns all Persian-speaking people including those found in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and other neighboring countries in-depth information about Central Asian.

The Persian people are defined by the use of the Persian language as their mother tongue. However, the term Persian has also a supra-ethnic significance and has been historically referred to a part of Iranian peoples. The origin of the Persian people is traced to the ancient Indo-Europeans (Aryans), who arrived in parts of Greater Iran circa 2000-1500 BCE. Starting around 550 BCE, from the region of Persis in southern Iran, encompassing the present Fars province, the ancient Persians spread their language and culture to other parts of the Iranian plateau through conquest and assimilated local Iranic and non-Iranic groups over time. This process of assimilation continued in the face of Greek, Arab, Mongol and Turkic invasions and continued right up to Islamic times.

Numerous dialects and regional identities emerged over time, while a Persian orientation fully manifested itself in Iran and Afghanistan by the 20th century, mirroring developments in post-Ottoman Turkey, Europe, the Caucasus and the Arab world. With the disintegration of the final Persian Empires of the Afsharid and Qajar dynasties,territories in the Caucasus, and Central Asia either became independent from Iran or incorporated into the Russian Empire.

The Persian peoples emerged as an eclectic collection of groups with the Persian language being the main shared legacy. Diverse populations in Central Asia, such as the Hazaras show traces of Mongol ancestry. As Persian was the lingua franca of the Iranian plateau (the highlands between Iraq and the Indus) it has come to be used by numerous groups as a second language including Turkic and Arab groups. While most Persians in Iran adhere to Shia Islam, those to the east remain followers of Sunni Islam. Small groups of Persians continue to follow the pre-Islamic faiths of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Judaism and the post-Islamic Bahá’í Faith.



While a categorization of a ‘Persian’ ethnic group persists in the West, Persians have generally been a pan-national group often comprising regional peoples who rarely refer to themselves as ‘Persians’ and sometimes use the term ‘Iranian’ instead. The synonymous usage of Iranian and Persian persisted over the centuries despite the varied meanings of Iranian, which includes different but related languages and ethnic groups. As a pan-national group, defining Persians as an ethnic group, at least in terms used in the West, is problematic since Persians are a varied group.

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A Brief History Pre-Twentieth Century of Persia or Iran

“History is a mirror of the past
And a lesson for the present.”
(A Persian Proverb)

The country has always been known to its own people as Iran (land of the Aryans), although for centuries it was referred to as Persia (Pars or Fars, a province in southern Iran) by the Europeans, mainly due to the writings of Greek historians. In 1935 the Government specified that it should be called Iran; however, in 1949 they allowed both names to be used.

Most people today, know Persia or Iran through its carpets, its caviar, its costly war with its neighbour Iraq, or through its importance as one of the world’s major oil-producing nations. Yet, Persia has one of the richest and oldest cultures in the world.

For more than three thousand years Persia was a melting pot of civilizations and demographic movements between Asia and Europe. Under Cyrus the Great, it became the centre of the world’s first empire. Successive invasions by the Greeks, Arabs, Mongols and Turks developed the nation’s culture through rich and diverse philosophical, artistic, scientific and religious influences.





Persia’s first vigorous growth began in the Neolithic era, and by the third millennium B.C. it had developed into a civilization of great sophistication. The infiltration of the Aryan peoples into Iran during the second millennium B.C. paved that way for the Achaemenian dynasty, whose achievements were gloriously represented in the great palaces of Persepolis.

These monuments had been built to testify to the absolute power of the Achaemenian Empire, and yet they were razed to the ground in just one night by Alexander, who conquered Persia and begun the Hellenistic period. This was followed in less than two hundred years by the Parthian and then the Sassanian Empires…

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Geography of Iran

Iran
Continent Asia
Region Southwest Asia
Middle East
Coordinates 32°00′N, 53°00′E
Area Ranked 18th
1,648,000 km2 (636,296.4 sq mi)
99.27% land
0.73 % water
Borders Total land borders:
5,440 km (3,380 mi)
Afghanistan:
936 km (582 mi)
Armenia:
35 km (22 mi)
Azerbaijan (proper):
432 km (268 mi)
Azerbaijan (Nakhchivan exclave):
179 km (111 mi)
Iraq:
1,458 km (906 mi)
Pakistan:
909 km (565 mi)
Turkey:
499 km (310 mi)
Turkmenistan:
992 km (616 mi)
Highest point Kuh-e Damavand (Mount Damavand)
5,610 m (18,406 ft)
Lowest point Caspian Sea
-28 m (−91.9 ft)
Longest river Karun
Largest lake Lake Urmia

Iran is located in southwest Asia and borders the Gulf of Oman, Persian Gulf, and Caspian Sea. Its mountains have helped to shape both the political and the economic history of the country for several centuries. The mountains enclose several broad basins, or plateaus, on which major agricultural and urban settlements are located. Until the 20th century, when major highways and railroads were constructed through the mountains to connect the population centers, these basins tended to be relatively isolated from one another. Typically, one major town dominated each basin, and there were complex economic relationships between the town and the hundreds of villages that surrounded it. In the higher elevations of the mountains rimming the basins, tribally organized groups practiced transhumance, moving with their herds of sheep and goats between traditionally established summer and winter pastures. There are no major river systems in the country, and historically transportation was by means of caravans that followed routes traversing gaps and passes in the mountains. The mountains also impeded easy access to the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea.

With an area of 1,648,000 square kilometres (636,000 sq mi), Iran ranks sixteenth in size among the countries of the world. Iran is about one-fifth the size of the continental United States, or slightly larger than the combined area of the western United States (Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Idaho).



Iran shares its northern borders with three post-Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. These borders extend for more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi), including nearly 650 kilometres (400 mi) of water along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. Iran’s western borders are with Turkey in the north and Iraq in the south, terminating at the Shatt al-Arab, which Iranians call the Arvand Rud. The Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman littorals form the entire 1,770 kilometres (1,100 mi) southern border. To the east lie Afghanistan on the north and Pakistan on the south. Iran’s diagonal distance from Azerbaijan in the northwest to Sistan and Baluchestan Province in the southeast is approximately 2,333 kilometres (1,450 mi).

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