About IranIran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1980, is a country in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), it is the second-largest nation in the Middle East and the 18th-largest in the world; with over 75 million inhabitants, Iran is the world’s 17th-most-populous nation. Its neighbors are Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia on the north, with Kazakhstan and Russia across the Caspian Sea, Afghanistan and Pakistan on the east, Turkey and Iraq on the west, and on the south it is bordered by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Tehran is the capital, the country’s largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. |
History Recent archaeological studies indicate that as early as 10,000 BC, people lived on the southern shores of the Caspian, one of the few regions of the world which according to scientists escaped the Ice Age. They were probably the first men in the history of mankind to engage in agriculture and animal husbandry. |
Language and literature Official language (of Iran) is Persian. Persian serves as a lingua franca in Iran and most publications and broadcastings are in this language. |
![]() | Official language (of Iran) is Persian. Persian serves as a lingua franca in Iran and most publications and broadcastings are in this language. Next to Persian, there are many publications and broadcastings in other relatively popular languages of Iran such as Azeri, Kurdish and even in less popular ones such as Arabic and Armenian. Many languages originated in Iran, but Persian is the most used language. Persian belongs to Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The oldest records in Old Persian date to the Achaemenid Empire, and examples of Old Persian has been found in present-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt. Persian is spoken today primarily in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, but was historically a more widely understood language in an area ranging from the Middle East to India, significant populations of speakers in other Persian Gulf countries, as well as large communities around the World.Persian, until recent centuries, was culturally and historically one of the most prominent languages of the Middle East and regions beyond. Persian scholars were prominent in both Turkish and Indian courts during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries in composing dictionaries and grammatical works. The name of the modern Persian language is sometimes mentioned as Farsi in English texts. |
Religion The official state religion is Islam. |
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Constitution The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran advances the cultural, social, political, and economic institutions of Iranian society based on Islamic principles and norms. |
Iranian calender Iranian official calendar, regulate according to Solar year & Iranian months.21 March, equal 1th Farvardin, is beginning of Iranian New Year (NOWRUZ) |
![]() | Culture Iranian culture has long been a predominant culture of the Middle East and Central Asia, with Persian considered the language of intellectuals during much of the 2nd millennium, and the language of religion and the populace before that. The Sassanid influence carried forward to the Islamic world. Much of what later became known as Islamic learning, such as philology, literature, jurisprudence, philosophy, medicine, architecture and the sciences were based on some of the practices taken from the Sassanid Persians to the broader Muslim world. |
International registered monuments Persepolis, Founded by Darius I in 518 B.C., Persepolis was the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. |
Dr. Shima Naghavi, Director of IRIMC International Affairs