Khuzestan province ([xuːzest̪ʰɒːn] ; Persian: استان خوزستان) is one of the 31 Provinces of Iran. Located in the southwest of the country, the province borders Iraq and the Persian Gulf, covering an area of 63,238 square kilometres (24,416 sq mi). Its capital is the city of Ahvaz. Since 2014, it has been part of Iran's Region 4.
Khuzestan comprises much of what historians refer to as ancient Elam, whose capital was at Susa. It was once one of the most important regions in the Ancient Near East.
The Iranian plateau or Persian plateau is a geological feature spanning parts of the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. It makes up part of the Eurasian plate, and is wedged between the Arabian plate and the Indian plate. The plateau is situated between the Zagros Mountains to the west, the Caspian Sea and the Köpet Dag to the north, the Armenian Highlands and the Caucasus Mountains to the northwest, the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf to the south, and the Indian subcontinent to the southeast.
As a historical region, it includes Parthia, Media, Persis, and some of the previous territories of Greater Iran. The Zagros form the plateau's western boundary, and its eastern slopes may also be included in the term. The Encyclopædia Britannica excludes "lowland Khuzestan" explicitly and characterizes Elam as spanning "the region from the Mesopotamian plain to the Iranian Plateau".
Ilam Province (Persian: استان ایلام) is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. Its capital is the city of Ilam.
The province is in the western part of the country in Region 4 and covers 20,164.11 km (7,785.41 sq mi). It shares 425 km (264 mi) of the border with Iraq, and also bordering on the provinces of Kermanshah, Lorestan, and Khuzestan.
Gundeshapur (Middle Persian: 𐭥𐭧𐭩𐭠𐭭𐭣𐭩𐭥𐭪𐭱𐭧𐭯𐭥𐭧𐭥𐭩, Weh-Andiōk-Ŝābuhr; New Persian: گندیشاپور, Gondēshāpūr) was the intellectual centre of the Sasanian Empire founded by the Sasanian emperor Shapur I. Gundeshapur was home to a teaching hospital and had a library and an ancient higher-learning institution, the Academy of Gondishapur. It has been identified with extensive ruins south of Jandi Shapur, a village 14 km southeast of Dezful, along the road to Shushtar in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran.
The city declined after the Muslim conquest of Persia; the city surrendered in 638. It continued to remain an essential centre in the Islamic period. Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar, the founder of the Saffarid dynasty, made Gundeshapur his residence three years before his sudden death in 879. His tomb became one of the most prominent sites in the city.
The Lurs, Lors or Luris (Persian: لر) are an Iranian people living in western and southern Iran. The four Luri branches are the Bakhtiari, Mamasani, Kohgiluyeh and Lur proper, who are principally linked by the Luri language.
Lorestan province is named after the Lurs, but not all Lurs live in Lorestan, nor are all the inhabitants of Lorestan ethnic Lurs. Many Lurs live in other provinces of Iran including Fars, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Khuzestan, Hamadan, Isfahan, Tehran southern Ilam province, and Genaveh county in Bushehr province.
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. Active hostilities began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for nearly eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides. Iraq's primary rationale for the attack against Iran cited the need to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini—who had spearheaded the Iranian revolution in 1979—from exporting the new Iranian ideology to Iraq. There were also fears among the Iraqi leadership of Saddam Hussein that Iran, a theocratic state with a population predominantly composed of Shia Muslims, would exploit sectarian tensions in Iraq by rallying Iraq's Shia majority against the Baʽathist government, which was officially secular but dominated by Sunni Muslims. Iraq also wished to replace Iran as the power player in the Persian Gulf, which was not seen as an achievable objective prior to the Islamic Revolution because of Pahlavi Iran's economic and military superiority as well as its close relationships with the United States and Israel.
The Iran–Iraq War followed a long-running history of territorial border disputes between the two states, as a result of which Iraq planned to retake the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab that it had ceded to Iran in the 1975 Algiers Agreement. Iraqi support for Arab separatists in Iran increased following the outbreak of hostilities; Saddam disputedly may have wished to annex Iran's Arab-majority Khuzestan province.
The Banū Tamīm (Arabic: بَنُو تَمِيم) are an Arab tribe that originated in Najd and Hejaz in the Arabian Peninsula. They are mainly present in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Jordan and Lebanon, and have a strong presence in Algeria, and Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Libya. They are also present in many other parts of the Middle East and North Africa region such as Egypt and Khuzestan in Iran. The word Tamim in Arabic means strong and solid. It can also mean those who strive for perfection.
Fars territory or Ancient Persia (Persian: سرزمین فارس یا پارس کهن, in Old Persian: 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 (Pārsa)) in the southern part of Iran leading to the Persian Gulf, which has historical, continental, cultural and especially dialectal commonalities and includes the provinces of Khuzestan, Fars, Esfahan, Bushehr, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Hormozgan and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari and the western part of Kerman province, which is known as the origin of Persian language and inherited from Middle Persian. Which is still culturally and linguistically distinct to this day.
In 558 BC, Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II) was born in Anshan (Persia), somewhere between the cities Izeh in the northeast of Khuzestan and the southwest of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari. The Cyrus the Great founded Satrap of Persia (in place of present-day Marvdasht, north of Fars province), then he moved Achaemenid Empire capital to Susa.