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Greater Khorasan

This article is about the historical region comprising northeastern Iran, parts of Afghanistan and Central Asia. For the Iranian province of Khorasan, see Khorasan Province. For other uses, see Khorasan.
Greater Khorasan
خراسان بزرگ
Historical Khorasan or Ancient Khorasan
Region
Map of Khorasan and its surroundings in the 7th/8th centuries
Map of Khorasan and its surroundings in the 7th/8th centuries
Countries in KhorasanAfghanistan, Iran and Turkmenistan.[1] Different regions of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are also included in different sources.
DemonymKhorasani (Persian: خراسانی)
Ethnicities:
Persians, Tajiks, Farsiwans, Turkmens, Uzbeks, Pashtuns, Hazaras

Greater Khorāsān[2] or Khorāsān or Khurāsān (Middle Persian: Xwarāsān; Persian: خراسان [xoɾɒːˈsɒːn] ) is a historical eastern region in the Iranian Plateau between West and Central Asia that encompasses western and northern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, the eastern halves of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, and portions of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

The extent of the region referred to as Khorasan varied over time. In its stricter historical sense, it comprised the present territories of northeastern Iran, parts of Afghanistan and southern parts of Central Asia, extending as far as the Amu Darya (Oxus) river. However, the name has often been used in a loose sense to include a wider region that included most of Transoxiana (encompassing Bukhara and Samarqand in present-day Uzbekistan),[3] extended westward to the Caspian coast[4] and to the Dasht-e Kavir[5] southward to Sistan,[6][5] and eastward to the Pamir Mountains.[5][4] Greater Khorasan is today sometimes used to distinguish the larger historical region from the former Khorasan Province of Iran (1906–2004), which roughly encompassed the western portion of the historical Greater Khorasan.[2]

The name Khorāsān is Persian (from Middle Persian Xwarāsān, sp. xwlʾsʾn', meaning "where the sun arrives from" or "the Eastern Province").[7][8] The name was first given to the eastern province of Persia (Ancient Iran) during the Sasanian Empire[9] and was used from the late Middle Ages in distinction to neighbouring Transoxiana.[10][11][12] The Sassanian name Xwarāsān has in turn been argued to be a calque of the Bactrian name of the region, Miirosan (Bactrian spelling: μιιροσανο,[13] μιροσανο, earlier μιυροασανο), which had the same meaning 'sunrise, east' (corresponding to a hypothetical Proto-Iranian form *miθrāsāna;[14] see Mithra, Bactrian μιυρο [mihr],[15] for the relevant solar deity). The province was often subdivided into four quarters, such that Nishapur (present-day Iran), Marv (present-day Turkmenistan), Herat and Balkh (present-day Afghanistan) were the centers, respectively, of the westernmost, northernmost, central, and easternmost quarters.[3]

Khorasan was first established as an administrative division in the 6th century (approximately after 520) by the Sasanians, during the reign of Kavad I (r. 488–496, 498/9–531) or Khosrow I (r. 531–579),[16] which comprised the eastern and northeastern part of the empire. The use of Bactrian Miirosan 'the east' as an administrative designation under Alkhan rulers in the same region is possibly the forerunner of the Sasanian administrative division of Khurasan,[17][18][19] occurring after their takeover of Hephthalite territories south of the Oxus. The transformation of the term and its identification with a larger region is thus a development of the late Sasanian and early Islamic periods. Early Islamic usage often regarded everywhere east of Jibal or what was subsequently termed Iraq Ajami (Persian Iraq), as being included in a vast and loosely-defined region of Khorasan, which might even extend to the Indus Valley and the Pamir Mountains. The boundary between these two was the region surrounding the cities of Gurgan and Qumis. In particular, the Ghaznavids, Seljuqs and Timurids divided their empires into Iraqi and Khorasani regions. Khorasan is believed to have been bounded in the southwest by desert and the town of Tabas, known as "the Gate of Khorasan",[20]: 562  from which it extended eastward to the mountains of central Afghanistan.[4][5] Sources from the 10th century onwards refer to areas in the south of the Hindu Kush as the Khorasan Marches, forming a frontier region between Khorasan and Hindustan.[21][22]

  1. ^ Sistan and Khorasan Travelogue Page 48
  2. ^ a b Dabeersiaghi, Commentary on Safarnâma-e Nâsir Khusraw, 6th Ed. Tehran, Zavvâr: 1375 (Solar Hijri Calendar) 235–236
  3. ^ a b Minorsky, V. (1938). "Geographical Factors in Persian Art". Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, 9(3), 621-652.
  4. ^ a b c "Khorasan". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 2010-10-21. historical region and realm comprising a vast territory now lying in northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan. The historical region extended, along the north, from the Amu Darya westward to the Caspian Sea and, along the south, from the fringes of the central Iranian deserts eastward to the mountains of central Afghanistan. Arab geographers even spoke of its extending to the boundaries of India.
  5. ^ a b c d Lambton, Ann K.S. (1988). Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia: Aspects of Administrative, Economic and Social History, 11th-14th Century. Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies. New York, NY: Bibliotheca Persica. p. 404. In the early centuries of Islam, Khurasan generally included all the Muslim provinces east of the Great Desert. In this larger sense, it included Transoxiana, Sijistan and Quhistan. Its Central Asian boundary was the Chinese desert and the Pamirs, while its Indian boundary lay along the Hindu Kush toward India.
  6. ^ Bosworth, C.E. (1986). Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 5, Khe – Mahi (New ed.). Leiden [u.a.]: Brill [u.a.] pp. 55–59. ISBN 90-04-07819-3.
  7. ^ Sykes, M. (1914). "Khorasan: The Eastern Province of Persia". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 62(3196), 279-286.
  8. ^ A compound of khwar (meaning "sun") and āsān (from āyān, literally meaning "to come" or "coming" or "about to come"). Thus the name Khorasan (or Khorāyān خورآيان) means "sunrise", viz. "Orient, East". Humbach, Helmut, and Djelani Davari, "Nāmé Xorāsān" Archived 2011-01-02 at the Wayback Machine, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Persian translation by Djelani Davari, published in Iranian Languages Studies Website. MacKenzie, D. (1971). A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary (p. 95). London: Oxford University Press. The Persian word Khāvar-zamīn (Persian: خاور زمین), meaning "the eastern land", has also been used as an equivalent term. DehKhoda, "Lughat Nameh DehKhoda" Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ "Khorāsān". britannica.com. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 8 December 2018.
  10. ^ Svat Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.4
  11. ^ C. Edmund Bosworth, (2002), 'Central Asia iv. In the Islamic Period up to the Mongols' Encyclopaedia Iranica (online)
  12. ^ C. Edmund Bosworth, (2011), 'Mā Warāʾ Al-Nahr' Encyclopaedia Iranica (online)
  13. ^ Rezakhani, Khodadad (2019-01-01). "Miirosan to Khurasan: Huns, Alkhans, and the Creation of East Iran". Vicino Oriente. 23: 121–138. doi:10.53131/VO2724-587X2019_9.
  14. ^ Gholami, Saloumeh (2010), Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar (PhD thesis), University of Göttingen, p.25, 59
  15. ^ Sims-Williams, N. "Bactrian Language". Encyclopaedia Iranica.
  16. ^ Schindel, Nikolaus (2013a). "Kawād I i. Reign". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. XVI, Fasc. 2. pp. 136–141.
  17. ^ Rezakhani, Khodadad (2019-01-01). "Miirosan to Khurasan: Huns, Alkhans, and the Creation of East Iran". Vicino Oriente. 23: 121–138. doi:10.53131/VO2724-587X2019_9.
  18. ^ Rezakhani, Khodadad (2017-03-15). ReOrienting the Sasanians: East Iran in Late Antiquity. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-0030-5.
  19. ^ Vondrovec, Klaus (2014). Coinage of the Iranian Huns and their Successors from Bactria to Ganhara (4th to 8th century CE). ISBN 978-3-7001-7695-4.
  20. ^ Sykes, P. (1906). A Fifth Journey in Persia (Continued). The Geographical Journal, 28(6), 560-587.
  21. ^ Minorsky, V. (1937). Hudud al-'Alam, The Regions of the World: A Persian Geography, 372 A.H. - 982 A.D. London: Oxford UP.
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference Baburnama was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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