Maku, Iran

Maku (Persian: ماكو‎‎, Azerbaijani: ماكي - Makı; also Romanized as Mākū) is a city in the West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 41,865, in 10,428 families.

It is situated 22 kilometres (14 mi) from the Turkish border in a mountain gorge at an altitude of 1634 metres. The Zangmar River cuts through the city.Maku Free Trade and Industrial Zone is Iran’s largest and the world’s second largest free trade zone and will encompass an area of 5000 square km when it was scheduled to open in 2011.

History

Maku was a region of the old Armenia c. 300-800. A branch of the family Amatuni ruled it, as vassals of the family Ardzruni.

Maku was the capital of a Kangarli Khanate one of numerous small, semi-independent Maku Khanates that resulted from the breakup of the Safavid empire in the 17th century.

The city is well known in Bahá'í history for its fort where the Báb had been exiled to and imprisoned for nine months. At this fortress Mullá Husayn, the first Disciple of the Báb, arrived on Náw-Rúz of the year 1848 to see the Báb.

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.