Khurasan
(2002 est. pop. 6.1 million). Khurasan (translated as "sun rising") is the largest province of Iran, occupying one-fifth of the nation's territory. Located in northeast Iran, it covers an area of 324,000 square kilometers. To its north and east, Khurasan borders Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. To the west, it shares borders with Iran's internal provinces. Its capital is the city of Mashhad. Though most of its population speaks Persian, Turkmen, Kurdish, and some local dialects are also spoken. Besides Islam, the major religion of the province, a small number of its inhabitants profess the Baha'i, Christian, and Zoroastrian faiths.
After the conquest of Iran by the invading Muslim army, many Arabs settled in Khurasan. Khurasan was the first region of today's Iran to come under attack by invading Turkic nomads. Despite the successive hegemony of central Asian Turkic dynasties, however, Khurasan preserved its language and in fact emerged as a bastion of Persian literature. Not only did the inhabitants of Khurasan not succumb to the language of the nomadic invaders, but they imposed their own tongue on them. The region could even assimilate the Turkic Ghaznavids and Seljuks (eleventh and twelfth centuries), the Timurids (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries), and the Qajars (nineteenth–twentieth centuries).
The landscape of the region is mainly mountainous and arid. There have been periodic earthquakes in Khurasan; in 1997, an earthquake killed thousands of people and destroyed many villages. Agriculture is the major contributor to the economy, producing grains, beets, saffron, cotton, fruits, and refined sugar. The province is the site of light and heavy industries as well, including textiles, carpets, turquoise, and wool. Khurasan is rich in mineral resources, such as natural gas; the largest natural gas reserves in the world are said to be located there.
At the beginning of the eighth century, Abu Muslim (728–755) from Khurasan began his campaign against the Arab Umayyad dynasty (661–750). The province contributed to the power of the caliphs of the early Abbasid dynasty (749/50–1258). In the 1150s Khurasan was devastated by the Oghuz Turks and from 1220 to 1222 by the Mughals. In 1383 Tamerlane (1336–1404), emperor of the Mughal empire, invaded the province.
Khurasan was home to Al-Ghazali (1058–1111), the renowned Islamic theologian, philosopher, and mystic. Al-Ghazali was appointed professor at Baghdad in 1091, but after a spiritual crisis in 1095 he abandoned his career to become a Sufi mystic. He is credited with attempting to reconcile mysticism with Islam. His chief work, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, outlines a complete and orthodox system of the mystical attainment of unity with God.
Further Reading
Daftary, Farhad. (n.d.) "Sectarian and National Movements in Iran, Khorasan, and Trasoxania during Umayyad and Early Abbasid Times." In History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol 4, pt. 1, edited by M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth. UNESCO Publishing, Institute of Ismaili Studies. Retrieved 2 February 2002 from: http://www.iis.ac.uk/research/academic_ papers/sectarian_national_move ments/Daftary_Sectarian_National_Moveme nts.pdf.
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