IRAN-STATE: Khūzestān Province

Domes like this are quite common in Khuzestan province. The shape is an architectural trademark of craftsmen of this province. Daniel's shrine, located in Khuzestan, has such a shape. The shrine pictured here, belongs to Imamzadeh Hamzeh, located between Mahshahr and Hendijan.
Khūzestān (Persian: خوزستان) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. It is in the southwest of the country, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Its capital is Ahvaz and covers an area of 63,238 km². Other major cities include Behbahan, Abadan, Andimeshk, Khorramshahr, Bandar Imam, Dezful, Shushtar, Omidiyeh, Izeh, Baq-e-Malek, Mah Shahr, Dasht-i Mishan/Dasht-e-Azadegan, Ramhormoz, Shadegan, Susa, Masjed Soleiman, Minoo Island and Hoveizeh.
Historically Khuzestan is what historians refer to as ancient Elam, whose capital was in Susa. The Achaemenid Old Persian term for Elam was Hujiyā, which is present in the modern name.
Khuzestan is the most ancient Iranian province[citation needed] and is often referred to as the "birthplace of the nation," since this is where the Persians, one of the branches of Aryan tribes, first settled, assimilating the native Elamite population, and thus laying the foundation for the future dynastic empires of Achaemenid, Parthia and Sassanid. The pre-Islamic Partho-Sassanid Inscriptions gives the name of the province as Khwuzestan. Khuzestan is also where the medical college and the town of Gundeshapur was located.
The provincial capital, Ahvaz, is the anagram of "Avaz" and "Avaja" which appear in Darius the Great' epigraph. This word appears in Naqsh-e Rostam inscription as "Khaja" or "Khooja".[citation needed]
Ahvaz was the seat of Khuzestan province in the old days. The modern city build over the foundation of Hoorpahir or Hormoz-Ardeshir, which was founded by Ardashir-Babakan the founder of the Sassanid Dynasty in 4th century AD.
Currently, Khuzestan has 18 representatives in Iran's parliament, the Majlis, and 6 representatives in the Assembly of Experts.

History

The province of Khuzestan is one of the centres of ancient civilization, based around Susa. French archeologists such as Jaques De Morgan date the civilization here as far back as 8000 BC when excavating areas such as Tal-i Ali-Kosh. The first large scale empire based here was that of the powerful 4th millennium BC Elamites.
Archeological ruins verify the entire province of Khuzestan to be home to the Elamite civilization, a non-Semitic, and non-Indo-European-speaking kingdom, and "the earliest civilization of Persia".
As was stated in the preceding section, the name Khuzestan is derived from the Elamites (Ūvja) .
In fact, in the words of Elton L. Daniel, the Elamites were "the founders of the first Iranian empire in the geographic sense." Hence the central geopolitical significance of Khuzestan, the seat of Iran's first empire.
In 640 BC, the Elamites were defeated by Ashurbanipal coming under the rule of the Assyrians who brought destruction upon Susa and Chogha Zanbil. But in 538 BC Cyrus the Great was able to re-conquer the Elamite lands. The city of Susa was then proclaimed as one of the Achaemenid capitals. Darius the Great then erected a grand palace known as Apadana there in 521 BC. But this astonishing period of glory and splendour of the Achaemenian dynasty came to an end by the conquests of Alexander of Macedon. And after Alexander, the Seleucid dynasty ruled the area.
As the Seleucid dynasty weakened, Mehrdad I the Parthian (171-137 BC), gained ascendency over the region. During the Sassanid dynasty this area thrived tremendously and flourished, and this dynasty was responsible for the many constructions that were erected in Ahvaz, Shushtar, and the north of Andimeshk.
Over the centuries, Nestorian missionaries brought Christianity to the region, using the Aramaic language. From at least the 500s AD, the region was called "Beth Huzaye". As of AD 639, the Nestorian seat was at Mahoze, the complex encompassing Ctesiphon and Seleucia on the Tigris; and the Nestorian Catholicos was Ishoyahb II of Gadala.
During the early years of the reign of Shapur II (A.D. 309 or 310-379), Arabs crossed the Persian Gulf from Bahrain to "Ardashir-Khora" of Fars and raided the interior. In retaliation, Shapur II led an expedition through Bahrain, defeated the combined forces of the Arab tribes of "Taghleb", "Bakr bin Wael", and "Abd Al-Qays" and advanced temporarily into Yamama in central Najd. The Sassanids resettled these tribes in Kerman and Ahvaz. Arabs named Shapur II, as "Shabur Dhul-aktāf" after this battle.
The existence of prominent scientific and cultural centers such as Academy of Gundishapur which gathered distinguished medical scientists from Egypt, Greece, India, and Rome, shows the importance and prosperity of this region during this era. The Jondi-Shapur Medical School was founded by the order of Shapur I. It was repaired and restored by Shapur II (a.k.a. Zol-Aktaf: "The Possessor of Shoulder Blades") and was completed and expanded during the reign of Anushirvan.

The Arab invasion of Khuzestan took place in 639 AD under the command of Abu Musa Al-Ash'ari from Basra, who drove the Persian Hormozan out of Ahvaz. Susa later fell, so Hormozan fled to Shushtar. There his forces were besieged by Abu Musa for 18 months. Shushtar finally fell in 642 AD; the Khuzistan Chronicle records that a Qatari living in the city befriended a man in the army, and dug tunnels through the wall in return for a third of the spoil. The Basrans purged the Nestorians - the Exegete of the city and the Bishop of Hormizd, and all their students - but kept Hormozan alive.
There followed the conquests of Jondishapoor and of many other districts along the Tigris. The battle of Nehavand finally secured Khuzestan for the Muslim armies.
It is interesting to notice that there was much cooperation between Sassanids and non-Muslim Arabs during the Muslim conquest period, which shows that those wars were not Arab vs. Persian, rather Muslim vs. non-Muslims. For instance in 633-634, Khaled ibn Walid leader of the Muslim Army, defeated a force of the Sassanids' Christian Arab auxiliaries from the tribes of "Bakr", "'Ejl", "Taghleb" and "Namer" at "'Ayn Al-Tamr".
The Arab settlements by military garrisons in southern Iran was soon followed by other types of colonization. Some Arab families, for example, took the opportunity to gain control of private estates. Like the rest of Iran, the Arab invasion thus brought Khuzestan under occupation of the Arabs of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, until Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar, from southeastern Iran, raised the flag of independence once more, and ultimately regained control over Khuzestan, among other parts of Iran, founding the short-lived Saffarid dynasty. From that point on, Iranian dynasties would continue to rule the region in succession as an important part of Iran.
In the Umayyad period, large groups of nomads from the Hanifa, Bani Tamim, and Abd al-Qays tribes crossed the Persian Gulf and occupied some of the richest Basran territories around Ahvaz and in Fars during the second Islamic civil war in 661-665/680-684 A.D.
During the Abbassid period, in the second half of the 10th century, the Assad tribe, taking advantage of quarrels under the Buwayhids, penetrated into Khuzestan, where a group of Tamim had been living since pre-Islamic times.[citation needed] However, following the fall of the Abbassid dynasty, the flow of Arab immigrants into Persia gradually diminished, but it nonetheless continued.
In the latter part of the 16th century, the Bani Kaab, from Kuwait, settled in Khuzestan.
And during the succeeding centuries, many more Arab tribes moved from southern Iraq to Khuzestan, and as a result, Khuzestan became "extensively Arabized". According to C.E. Bosworth in Encyclopedia Iranica, under the Qajar dynasty "the province was known, as in Safavid times, as Arabistan, and during the Qajar period was administratively a governor-generalate."
In the mid 1800s Britain initiated a war with Iran in a failed attempt to dominate Khuzestan. Tribal forces led by Sheikh Jabir al-Kaabi, the Sheikh of Mohammerah, had been vital in successfully defending the province. In the past eighty years, except during the Iran-Iraq war, the province of Khuzestan thrived and prospered and today accounts for one of the regions in Iran that holds an economic and defensive strategic position.

The Iran-Iraq war

Being on the border with Iraq, Khuzestan suffered the heaviest damage of all Iranian provinces during the Iran-Iraq war (1980 - 1988).
What used to be Iran's largest refinery at Abadan was destroyed, never to fully recover. Many of the famous nakhlestans (palm groves) were annihilated, cities were destroyed, historical sites were demolished, and nearly half the province went under the boots of Saddam's invading army . This created a mass exodus into other provinces that did not have the logistical capability of taking in such a large number of refugees.
However, by 1982, Iranian forces managed to push Saddam's forces back into Iraq. The battle of "the Liberation of Khorramshahr" (one of Khuzestan's largest cities and the most important Iranian port prior to the war) was a turning point in the war, and is officially celebrated every year in Iran.

Domination of Khuzestan was Saddam Hussein's primary strategic objective that launched the Iran-Iraq war, which forced thousands of Iranians to flee the province.
The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran does not conduct any official ethnic census in Iran, thus it is difficult to determine the exact demographics. Beginning in the early nineties, many ethnic Persian Khuzestanis began returning to the province, a trend which continues to this day as the major urban centres are being rebuilt and restored. Restoration has been slow due to neglect by the regime of the Islamic Republic. The city of Khorramshahr was almost completely destroyed as a result of Saddam's scorched earth policy. Fortunately, Iranian forces were able to prevent the Iraqis from attempting to spread the execution of this policy to other major urban centres.
The Iranian Embassy Siege of 1980 was a siege of the Iranian Embassy in London initiated by an Arab separatist group. Initially it emerged the terrorists wanted autonomy for Khuzestan; later they demanded the release of 91 of their comrades held in Iranian jails. The group which claimed responsibility for the siege- the Arab Popular Movement in Arabistan- gave a number of press conferences in the following months, referring to what it described as "the racist rule of Khomeini". It threatened further international action as part of its campaign to gain self- rule for Khuzestan. But its links with Baghdad served to undermine its argument that it was a purely Iranian opposition group; there were allegations that it was backed by Iran's regional rival, Iraq. Their leader ("Salim" - Awn Ali Mohammed) along with four other members of the group were killed and the fifth member, Fowzi Badavi Nejad, was sentenced to life imprisonment.