Iran

Iran (/aɪˈræn/ or ⁱ/ɪˈrɑːn/;Persian: Irān – ایران‎‎ [ʔiːˈɾɒːn]), also known as Persia (/ˈpɜːrʒə/ or /ˈpɜːrʃə/), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (جمهوری اسلامی ایران – Jomhuri ye Eslāmi ye Irān [d͡ʒomhuːˌɾije eslɒːˌmije ʔiːˈɾɒːn]), is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered to the northwest by Armenia, the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan; with Kazakhstan and Russia across the Caspian Sea; to the northeast by Turkmenistan; to the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan; to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; and to the west by Turkey and Iraq. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km² (636,372 sq mi), it is the second-largest country in the Middle East and the 18th-largest in the world. With 78.4 million inhabitants, Iran is the world's 17th-most-populous country. It is the only country that has both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. Iran has long been of geostrategic importance because of its central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz.

Şiran

Şiran, also Karaca, is a town and district of Gümüşhane Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey. It is one of the points of passage between Eastern Anatolia and Black Sea regions of Turkey, in the sense that the western road departing from Erzincan towards the Zigana Pass (the key pass between the two geographies) has its last urban stop in Şiran. According to the 2010 census, population of the district is 17,600 of which 8,207 live in the town of Şiran. The district covers an area of 928 km² (358 sq mi), and the town lies at an elevation of 1,457 m (4,780 ft).

Name

The name comes from Persian and means "the lions", although it is most likely to be an adaptation of the former Greek name of Cheriana (Χερίανα) adopted after the Turkish settlement in the region after and possibly even slightly before the Battle of Manzikert.

History

Many of the northern villages of the district was home to minority populations of Pontic Greeks until the 1922 Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, constituting the southern fringes of that community's extension. Some among the present population can also trace their roots to Greeks who had converted to Islam until as late as the end of the 19th century, as indicated by the Ottoman census and changed village names (for example, the present village of "Evren" was formerly called "Sefker").

Persian wine

Persian wine, also called Mey (Persian: می‎‎) and Badeh (باده), is a cultural symbol and tradition in Persia, and has a significant presence in Persian mythology, Persian poetry and Persian miniatures.

History

Recent archaeological research has pushed back the date of the known origin of wine making in Persia far beyond that which writers earlier in the 20th century had envisaged. Excavations at the Godin Tepe site in the Zagros mountains (Badler, 1995; McGovern and Michel, 1995; McGovern, 2003), have revealed pottery vessels dating from c. 3100–2900 BC containing tartaric acid, almost certainly indicating the former presence of wine. Even earlier evidence was found at the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe, also in the Zagros mountains. Here, McGovern et al. (1996) used chemical analyses of the residue of a Neolithic jar dating from as early as 5400–5000 BC to indicate high levels of tartaric acid, again suggesting that the fluid contained therein had been made from grapes.

As book of Immortal Land Persian: سرزمین جاوید‎‎ or Sar Zamin e Javid] (by Zabihollah Mansoori) says Ramian wines were world-famous in the Parthian Empire. Ramian Wine is now a California wine brand but Shiraz wines are famous across the globe.

Dominion of Pakistan

The Dominion of Pakistan (Bengali: পাকিস্তান অধিরাজ্য pakistan ôdhirajyô; Urdu: مملکتِ پاکستان‎ mumlikāt-ē pākistān), commonly called Pakistan, was an independent federal dominion in South Asia that was established in 1947 on the Partition of India into two sovereign countries (the other being the Dominion of India). The dominion, which included much of modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh, was conceived under the two-nation theory as a home for the Muslims of the former British India. To begin with it did not include the princely states of Pakistan, which acceded slowly between 1947 and 1948. In 1956 it became the Islamic Republic of Pakistan; and in 1971 East Pakistan seceded from the union to become Bangladesh.

Partition of British India

Section 1 of the Indian Independence Act 1947 provided that from "the fifteenth day of August, nineteen hundred and forty-seven, two independent dominions shall be set up in India, to be known respectively as India and Pakistan." India was treated by the United Nations as the successor-state to the former British India. As it was already a member of the United Nations, India continued to hold its seat there and did not apply for a new membership. However, Pakistan was a newly created nation and needed to apply to join. It was admitted as a UN member on 30 September 1947, a few weeks after its independence The British monarch became head of state of the new dominion, with Pakistan sharing a king with the other Commonwealth realms, but the monarch's constitutional roles were delegated to the Governor-General of Pakistan, and most real power resided with the new government headed by Jinnah.

Pakistan (disambiguation)

Pakistan usually refers to the sovereign country in South-central Asia formally named the "Islamic Republic of Pakistan".

Pakistan may also refer to:

See also

Geography of Pakistan

The geography of Pakistan (Urdu: جغرافیۂ پاکِستان‎) is a profound blend of landscapes varying from plains to deserts, forests, hills, and plateaus ranging from the coastal areas of the Arabian Sea in the south to the mountains of the Karakoram range in the north. Pakistan geologically overlaps both with the Indian and the Eurasian tectonic plates where its Sindh and Punjab provinces lie on the north-western corner of the Indian plate while Balochistan and most of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa lie within the Eurasian plate which mainly comprises the Iranian plateau, some parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir lie mainly in Central Asia along the edge of the Indian plate and hence are prone to violent earthquakes where the two tectonic plates collide.

Pakistan is bordered by Afghanistan to the north-west and Iran to the west while the People's Republic of China borders the country in the north and India to the east. The nation is geopolitically placed within some of the most controversial regional boundaries which share disputes and have many-a-times escalated military tensions between the nations, e.g., that of Kashmir with India and the Durand Line with Afghanistan. Its western borders include the Khyber Pass and Bolan Pass that have served as traditional migration routes between Central Eurasia and South Asia.