The province of West Azarbaijan covers an area of 39,487 km², or 43,660 km² including Lake Urmia. In 2006 the province had a population of 3,015,361 .The capital city of the province is Urmia.
History
The name of Azerbaijan derives from Atropates و a Iranian satrap of Media under the Achaemenid empire, who later was reinstated as the satrap of Media under Alexander of Macedonia.The original etymology of this name is thought to have its roots in the ancient Zoroastrianism, namely, in Avestan Frawardin Yasht ("Hymn to the Guardian Angels"), there is a mentioning of: âterepâtahe ashaonô fravashîm ýazamaide, which literally translates from Old Persian as "we worship the Fravashi of the holy Atare-pata" . Atropates ruled over the region of present-day Iranian Azerbaijan.
According to various sources cited in Encyclopedia Iranica, the current province of West Azarbaijan was part of the Sassanid Azarbadegan satrap as far back as the 3rd century. The current ruins of Takht-i Suleiman in today’s West Azarbaijan was the capital of the Azarbaijan Satrapy.
Permanent settlements were established in the province as early as the 6th millennium BCE as excavation at sites such as Teppe Hasanlu establish. In Hasanlu, a famous Golden Vase was found in 1958. The province is also the location of Tepe Hajji Firuz, site of some of the world’s earliest evidence of wine production. Gooy Teppe is another significant site, where a metal plaque dating from 800 BCE was found that depicts a scene from the epic of Gilgamesh.
Ruins such as these and the UNESCO world heritage site at the Sassanid compound of Takht-i-Suleiman illustrate the strategic importance and tumultuous history of the province through the millennia. Overall, the province enjoys a wealth of historical attractions, with 169 sites registered by the Cultural Heritage Organization of Iran.
While some Islamic researchershave proclaimed that the birth of the prophet Zoroaster was in this area, in the vicinity of Lake Orumieh (Chichesht), Konzak City, recent scholarship indicates that Ardabil or sites in Central Asia are more likely.
The province continued to experience many wars over the centuries. Numerous Azeris arrived in the region, including to the west of Lake Urmia beginning around the 13th century.
The first monarch of Iran's Qajar dynasty, Agha Muhammad Khan, was crowned in Urmia in 1795.
Significant events in 19th and 20th century that took place are:
Shaikh Ubeidullah Revolts, west and south of Lake Urmia in 1880;
Simko Insurrections, west of Lake Urmia from 1918 to 1922;
the Soviet occupation in 1946;
the foundation and destruction of the Republic of Mahabad in 1946; and
periodic severe fighting from 1979 until 1990s (and even to the present, but on a smaller scale ) between Kurdish (nationalist and communist) forces and the Iranian government. At times, large parts of the province were without government control.
These separatist movements may have many motivations and origins; however, the colonialist policies of the Soviet Union and Imperial Russia encouraged such movements. In a cable sent on July 6th 1945 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the local Soviet commander in Russian held Azerbaijan (northern Azerbaijan) was instructed:
"Begin preparatory work to form a national autonomous Azerbaijan district with broad powers within the Iranian state and simultaneously develop separatist movements in the provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, Gorgan, and Khorasan".
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