117 Fun Facts About Iran

What do Iranians usually call their own official language?

Farsi takes its name from the southern province of Fars, once called Pars; Arabic has no 'p' sound, so Pars became Fars and its language Farsi.

The name Iran is usually translated as what?

Land of the Aryans is the usual gloss, from arya, the ancient Iranians' word for themselves; in 1935 the government asked other countries to use Iran in place of the older Western name.

Who founded the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century BC?

Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire around 550 BC by rising against his overlord, then conquered Lydia and Babylon; his son Cambyses II added Egypt.

The Cyrus Cylinder, discovered in the ruins of Babylon in 1879, is held by which institution?

The British Museum's Cyrus Cylinder is a clay foundation text in which Cyrus, having taken Babylon in 539 BC, boasts of restoring temples and sending exiles and their gods home.

Which ancient city was the capital of Elam and later a capital of the Achaemenid kings?

Susa is where French archaeologists dug up the Code of Hammurabi in 1901; an Elamite king had carried the stele off from Babylonia as war plunder some 3,000 years earlier.

Which Greek historian wrote that neither snow, rain, heat nor night stopped the Persian king's couriers?

Herodotus was praising the relay riders who carried royal messages along the Royal Road; his line is carved on New York's main post office and is often taken for the US Postal Service motto.

Persepolis, the ceremonial Achaemenid capital, was captured and burned in 330 BC by whose army?

Alexander the Great burned Persepolis in 330 BC; ancient writers either call it revenge for Xerxes' burning of Athens or blame a drunken feast egged on by the courtesan Thaïs.

Which empire, founded by Ardashir I in AD 224, was the last to rule Iran before the Arab conquest?

The Sasanian Empire began when Ardashir I killed the last Parthian king in battle; its kings became Rome's great rivals and in AD 260 captured the emperor Valerian alive.

Which 16th-century dynasty re-unified Iran and made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion?

The Safavid founder Shah Ismail I was about 14 when he took Tabriz in 1501 and imposed Shia Islam on a population that was then mostly Sunni.

Who seized Iran's throne in 1925 and founded the Pahlavi dynasty?

Reza Shah, a soldier who rose through the Cossack Brigade, deposed Ahmad Shah in 1925; in 1941 invading British and Soviet forces made him abdicate in favour of his son.

Which Iranian prime minister's oil nationalisation led to the Anglo-American coup of 1953?

Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951; after the 1953 coup he was tried for treason, jailed for three years, then kept under house arrest until his death in 1967.

Who was Iran's first supreme leader after the 1979 revolution?

Ruhollah Khomeini flew home on 1 February 1979 after 14 years in exile, two weeks after the shah had left Iran; the constitution adopted that December made him supreme leader for life.

For how many days were 52 American hostages held after the November 1979 embassy seizure?

The 52 hostages were held for 444 days, from 4 November 1979 to 20 January 1981; Iran let them go only minutes after Ronald Reagan had been sworn in to replace Jimmy Carter.

Which Arab leader ordered the September 1980 invasion of Iran that began an eight-year war?

Saddam Hussein's government scrapped a 1975 border treaty over the Shatt al-Arab waterway five days before invading; the war ended in a 1988 ceasefire with the frontier unchanged.

Which sea lies along Iran's northern border?

The Caspian Sea is often counted as the world's largest lake, a salty basin with no outlet to the ocean; its sturgeon made Iran one of the great producers of caviar.

Which dormant volcano northeast of the capital is the highest mountain in Iran?

Mount Damavand, about 5,600 m high, is often called Asia's highest volcano; in Persian legend the tyrant Zahhak lies chained inside it until the end of the world.

Which mountain range rises directly north of Iran's capital and holds the country's highest peaks?

The Alborz form a wall between the humid northern coast and the dry plateau: their seaward slopes catch the rain and are thick with forest, while the side facing the capital is arid.

Which Iranian desert did NASA satellites find to have Earth's hottest land surface, 70.7 °C in 2005?

The Dasht-e Lut topped NASA's survey in five of seven years; its dark, dry, rocky ground soaks up sunlight and gets far hotter than any air temperature ever recorded.

Which strait at the mouth of the Persian Gulf separates Iran from Oman?

The Strait of Hormuz carried about a fifth of the world's oil in 2024; Iran had long threatened to close it, and did blockade it during the 2026 war.

Into how many provinces is Iran divided?

Iran has 31 provinces (ostan); the creation of Alborz province out of Tehran province in 2010 brought the total to 31, and the provinces are grouped into five administrative regions.

As of 2025, Iran ranked 17th in the world by both area and what other measure?

Population: Iran's roughly 90 million people live mostly in the north and west, because vast dry deserts leave much of the centre and east almost empty.

Which city is Iran's second most populous?

Mashhad grew up around the tomb of Reza, the eighth Shia imam, who died there in 818; his shrine now draws millions of pilgrims a year.

Which currency replaced the qiran as Iran's official unit in 1932?

The rial replaced the qiran at par in 1932; it was nominally divided into 100 dinars, and Iranians have long quoted prices colloquially in tomans of 10 rials.

Which Arabic phrase is written 22 times in white script along the stripes of Iran's flag?

Allahu Akbar runs 11 times along the green stripe and 11 along the red; the flag adopted in 1980 also swapped the royal emblem for a tulip-shaped rendering of the word Allah.

Nowruz, the Iranian new year, is timed to which astronomical event?

The spring equinox starts Nowruz at its exact astronomical moment, whatever the hour; families mark it around a haft-sin table laid with seven symbolic items that begin with the letter S.

Zoroastrians worship which supreme, uncreated deity?

Ahura Mazda is the god Darius the Great credits with making him king in the Behistun inscription, carved into a cliff about 100 metres above the ground.

The Shahnameh, the Persian national epic of some 50,000 couplets, was written by which poet?

Ferdowsi spent 33 years on the Shahnameh, finishing in 1010; he largely avoided Arabic loanwords, and a number of scholars credit the epic with helping the Persian language endure.

The 14th-century lyric poet Hafez, whose Divan sits in many Iranian homes, came from which city?

Hafez was born and is buried in Shiraz; Iranians still open his Divan at random to read their fortune in the poem they land on, especially at Nowruz and on Yalda night.

The Persian-language poet Rumi settled and is buried in which Anatolian city, home of the whirling dervishes?

Konya, then in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, is where Rumi died in 1273; his followers founded the Mevlevi order there, whose whirling sema ceremony is still performed.

Naqsh-e Jahan Square, laid out under Shah Abbas I between 1598 and 1629, is at the heart of which city?

Isfahan's great square doubled as a polo ground: the shah and his court watched matches from the upper galleries of the Ali Qapu palace overlooking it.

The ruins of Chogha Zanbil, founded around 1250 BC, hold the best-preserved example of what ancient structure?

The ziggurat at Chogha Zanbil stood at the centre of a holy city begun by an Elamite king; the city was never finished, and thousands of unused bricks still lie on the site.

The mirrored halls of Golestan Palace were the 19th-century royal seat of which Iranian dynasty?

Golestan Palace became the Qajar seat of government when the dynasty took power and made the city its capital; its halls blend Persian mirror-work and tiles with European styles.

Which marble-clad monument in Iran's capital was built in 1971 as the Shahyad Tower and renamed after the 1979 revolution?

Azadi Tower was unveiled by the shah in 1971 to mark 2,500 years of the Persian Empire; after he fell, his 'Shah's Memorial' was renamed with the Persian word for freedom.

Iran grows roughly 90% of the world's supply of which spice?

Saffron is the dried stigmas of a crocus flower, just three to a bloom and all picked by hand, which is why it is among the costliest spices by weight.

Which Persian Gulf island is Iran's largest?

Qeshm, the largest island in the Persian Gulf, is where the Arctic explorer William Baffin was shot dead in 1622 while English and Persian forces besieged its Portuguese fort.

Iran, the USA and which other country together grow most of the world's pistachios?

Turkey is the third big grower; California's huge pistachio industry itself began with seed that an American botanist collected in Iran in 1929.

Which sport is traditionally considered Iran's national sport?

Freestyle wrestling sits beside an older tradition: in the zurkhaneh, or 'house of strength', athletes wrestle and swing wooden clubs to a drummer's beat while a master chants epic verse.

Iran's footballers won which tournament three times running, in 1968, 1972 and 1976?

The Asian Cup went to Iran in 1968, 1972 and 1976, the only run of three straight titles; as of the 2023 edition the team had not reached another final.

Iran's first-ever World Cup match win, in 1998, came against which team?

Iran beat the United States 2–1 in Lyon, a result that knocked the Americans out of the 1998 World Cup with a game to spare; Iran went out too after losing to Germany.

Iran made its World Cup debut at the 1978 tournament hosted by which country?

Argentina staged Iran's debut, which brought a 1–1 draw with Scotland and the team's first World Cup goal; Iran then withdrew from 1982 qualifying and did not return to the finals for 20 years.

In 1974 Iran became the first Middle Eastern country to host which multi-sport event?

The Asian Games of 1974 admitted China for the first time after Taiwan was expelled, and several teams refused to face Israel, which never took part in the Games again.

Which Iranian director won the 1997 Palme d'Or at Cannes for Taste of Cherry?

Abbas Kiarostami shared the 1997 prize with Japan's Shohei Imamura; his film follows a man driving around the outskirts of the capital in search of someone willing to bury him.

Which Iranian director made A Separation and The Salesman, both winners of the foreign-language Oscar?

Asghar Farhadi stayed away from the 2017 ceremony in protest at the US travel ban on Iranians, so his second Oscar was accepted on his behalf.

Who in 2003 became the first Iranian to win a Nobel Prize, taking the Peace Prize?

Shirin Ebadi was one of Iran's first women judges until the 1979 revolution barred women from the bench and made her a clerk in the very court she had presided over.

Which Iranian mathematician became the first woman to win the Fields Medal, in 2014?

Maryam Mirzakhani died of cancer in 2017 aged 40; Iranian newspapers broke with the state dress code to print front-page photographs of her with her hair uncovered.

Iranian physicist Ali Javan co-invented which device in 1960?

The gas laser Ali Javan's team lit at Bell Labs in December 1960 was the first to shine continuously instead of in pulses; its helium–neon descendants went on to scan supermarket barcodes.

Iran placed its first domestically built satellite in orbit in 2009 using which launch vehicle?

The Safir ('Ambassador') rocket carried the Omid research satellite into orbit on 2 February 2009, around the 30th anniversary of the 1979 revolution, Iran's first orbital launch.

Which country completed Iran's first nuclear power plant, begun by German firms in 1975?

Russia signed up in 1995 to finish Bushehr, abandoned by its German builders after the 1979 revolution and bombed in the 1980s war; it finally fed the grid in 2011.

Which people, concentrated in Iran's northwest around Tabriz, form the country's largest ethnic minority?

Azerbaijanis were split between two states by 1828, when Iran finished ceding its Caucasus lands to the tsars; more of them now live in Iran than in the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Roughly what proportion of Iranians adhere to Twelver Shia Islam, the state religion?

About 90–95% of Iranians are Shia Muslims, almost all Twelvers; Sunnis make up roughly 5–10%, while Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians hold reserved seats in parliament.

The tomb of Cyrus the Great stands at which ancient Persian capital?

Pasargadae's tomb was revered for centuries as that of the Mother of Solomon; only in the early 1800s did European travellers identify it as the grave of Cyrus.

Which policy, later trialled in Finland and Kenya, did Iran in effect adopt nationwide in 2010?

A basic income in all but name: when Iran scrapped cheap fuel and bread subsidies at the end of 2010, it began paying most citizens about US$40 a month in cash instead.

Which two big cats disappeared from Iran entirely during the 20th century?

Asiatic lions and Caspian tigers were last recorded in Iran in the 1940s and 1950s; the Asiatic cheetah hangs on there, and the national football team wore its image at the 2014 World Cup.

Which river in southwest Iran flows past Shushtar and Ahvaz to the Shatt al-Arab?

The Karun is crossed at Shushtar by the ruins of a dam-bridge built by Roman soldiers, taken prisoner with their emperor Valerian in AD 260 and put to work by the Persian king.

In March 1979 Iranians voted in a referendum on replacing the monarchy with what?

An Islamic republic was the only option on the ballot; it was proclaimed that April, and by December a new constitution had placed a clerical supreme leader above the elected president.

Tahdig, served with many Persian meals, is the crisp golden crust from the bottom of a pot of what?

Rice is parboiled, then steamed until the layer against the pot turns crisp and golden; cooks often line the base with flatbread or potato slices to build the tahdig.

Which conqueror from Samarkand answered a revolt against his tax collectors in 1387 by building towers of severed heads?

Timur had at first spared the Iranian city when it surrendered; after its people killed his tax collectors, an eyewitness counted more than 28 towers of about 1,500 heads each.

Which Iranian ruler sacked Delhi in 1739 and carried off the Mughals' Peacock Throne?

Nader Shah's loot from Delhi included the Koh-i-Noor diamond as well as the Peacock Throne; the diamond later passed to Britain and is now among the Crown Jewels.

What codename did the CIA give the 1953 coup that toppled Iran's elected prime minister?

Operation Ajax, TPAJAX in CIA files, was run with Britain's MI6, which called it Operation Boot; the CIA did not formally admit its part until 2013.

Iran's constitution reserves seats in parliament for Christians, Zoroastrians and which other religious minority?

Jews are guaranteed one of five reserved seats in the 290-member parliament, yet the Baha'is, who far outnumber them, get none because the state does not recognise their faith.

Which twelve-member body vets Iran's election candidates and can veto parliament's laws?

The Guardian Council is six clerics chosen by the Supreme Leader and six jurists approved by parliament; in 2021 it cleared only seven presidential hopefuls and barred hundreds.

Which body has the power to elect and, in theory, dismiss Iran's Supreme Leader?

The Assembly of Experts chose Ali Khamenei in 1989 although he lacked the senior clerical rank the constitution then required; the rule was dropped by amendment weeks later.

Which reformist former health minister was elected president after Ebrahim Raisi's death in 2024?

Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon who served as health minister under Khatami, won the July 2024 runoff against Saeed Jalili after Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash that May.

Which airline's Flight 752 was shot down by the IRGC minutes after take-off in January 2020?

Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was hit hours after Iran fired missiles at US bases in Iraq; Iran denied blame for three days, then said its air defences mistook the jet for a cruise missile.

Iran was one of five founding members of which organisation, created in Baghdad in 1960?

OPEC was set up by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to shift control of oil production and pricing away from the Western companies known as the Seven Sisters.

Which Iranian-born entrepreneur became the first female space tourist, visiting the ISS in 2006?

Anousheh Ansari trained only as a backup, but got the seat a month before launch when Japan's Daisuke Enomoto was ruled medically unfit; she became the first Iranian in space.

Iran's fertility rate fell from 6.5 children per woman to roughly what figure two decades later?

Iran's fertility rate plunged from about 6.5 children per woman in the mid-1980s to roughly 1.7 by the mid-2000s, one of the fastest declines ever recorded, driven by a state family-planning drive from 1989.

What did ancient Persian engineers keep through the desert summer in domed mud-brick buildings called yakhchals?

Ice kept in a yakhchal chilled food and desserts such as faloodeh all year round. Persians were building these desert ice houses by about 400 BC.

Which team sport, known as chogan in Iran, originated there and was once the pastime of Persian nobles?

Polo began in ancient Iran as chogan, played on horseback to music and storytelling. UNESCO added the Iranian tradition to its heritage list in 2017.

Which English word for heaven comes from an Old Iranian term for a walled enclosure or garden?

Paradise goes back to an Old Iranian word for a walled enclosure. Greek writers borrowed it to describe the lavish parks of the Persian kings.

Which Best Picture winner dramatised the CIA's rescue of six US diplomats from Iran under cover of a fake film?

Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, retells the 'Canadian Caper', in which six embassy staff hid in the homes of two Canadian diplomats before slipping out of the country.

Which Persian king invaded Greece in 480 BC and overcame Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae?

Xerxes I, in Herodotus's telling, had the Hellespont whipped 300 times after a storm wrecked his first bridge into Europe. His army went on to capture Athens.

What do Iranians leap over on Chaharshanbe Suri, the festival held on the eve of the year's last Wednesday?

Bonfires are lit in yards, streets and on rooftops, and people jump the flames in a purification rite of Zoroastrian origin that serves as a prelude to Nowruz.

Which cat's Asiatic subspecies, once found from Arabia to India, survives only in Iran's arid central reserves?

Cheetah numbers in Asia collapsed during the 20th century, leaving a handful of protected Iranian deserts as the only known home of the Asian subspecies.

Which secretive medieval order was based at Alamut Castle in northern Iran?

The Assassins, a Nizari Ismaili order, held Alamut from 1090 until the Mongols dismantled it in 1256. English took the word assassin from the Arabic name for them.

Iran's prized caviar, including the rare golden Almas variety, is the salt-cured roe of which fish?

Sturgeon roe is what the word caviar traditionally means, and Almas comes from rare albino fish between 60 and 100 years old. A kilogram of it once sold for £20,000.

Whose death in the custody of Iran's morality police in 2022 set off months of nationwide protests?

Mahsa Amini, aged 22, had been arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly. The unrest ran on into 2023 without unseating the country's leadership.

Which Persian astronomer-poet from Nishapur became famous in English through Edward FitzGerald's 1859 Rubaiyat?

Omar Khayyam was known in his own day as a mathematician who worked on cubic equations and led the team of scientists revising the Persian calendar.

Which Persian physician wrote The Canon of Medicine, the standard textbook in European universities for centuries?

Avicenna completed the five-book Canon in 1025, and Gerard of Cremona's Latin translation carried it into Europe's medical schools.

Which author drew on her childhood during the Iranian Revolution for the graphic memoir Persepolis?

Marjane Satrapi wrote and drew the books in French, following her younger self from Iran to Austria and back. A film adaptation reached cinemas in 2007.

Which Iranian striker held the men's international goals record until Cristiano Ronaldo passed him in 2021?

Ali Daei's tally of 108 goals for Iran stood as the world record until 2021, and he said he was honoured to see it pass to Ronaldo.

Which Iranian human rights activist was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize while serving a prison sentence?

Narges Mohammadi had been arrested 13 times by the time of the award, which honoured her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.

Which mountain range runs for about 1,600 km along the whole length of western and southwestern Iran?

Zagros ridges are made primarily of limestone and culminate in Mount Dena at 4,409 metres. The range also reaches north-west into Iraq.

Iran shares the world's largest natural gas field, known on its side as South Pars, with which neighbour?

Qatar calls its portion the North Dome. The whole structure lies under the Gulf and holds an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Where did Iran's Zoroastrians traditionally expose their dead to vultures instead of burying them?

Towers of Silence kept corpses from contaminating the soil and other natural elements. Iranian Zoroastrians gave them up for burial or cremation in the early 20th century.

Which fruit's tart paste is simmered with ground walnuts to make fesenjan, a classic Iranian stew?

Pomegranate paste gives fesenjan its sweet-sour depth, and cooks rescue an overly sour pot with sugar and fried onions.

Which salt lake in northwestern Iran, once West Asia's largest, had shrunk to a tenth of its size by 2017?

Lake Urmia dwindled through drought, the damming of its feeder rivers and the pumping of groundwater. It was once the sixth-largest saltwater lake on Earth.

What name did Herodotus give the 10,000-strong elite infantry corps of the Achaemenid Persian army?

The Immortals earned the name, Herodotus wrote, because any man killed, wounded or sick was replaced at once, keeping the corps at constant strength.

How do Iranian families traditionally spend Sizdah Bedar, the thirteenth day of the new year?

Picnicking outdoors brings the Nowruz holidays to a close, and the occasion is also known as Nature Day.

Which structures, called badgirs in Persian, cool houses in Iran's desert cities without any power?

Windcatchers are tall shafts with openings near the top that funnel passing breezes down into the rooms below. Egypt, Iran and the UAE all claim to have invented them.

Which gently sloping tunnels, developed in ancient Iran, carry water underground from aquifers to dry towns?

Qanats date back about 3,000 years, and diggers reach the tunnel through a line of well-like vertical shafts that can be seen from the surface.

Which calendar, which places the 1979 revolution in the year 1357, is Iran's official civil calendar?

Solar Hijri years are counted from Muhammad's move from Mecca to Medina in 622, as in the Muslim lunar calendar, but they follow the sun, so the months keep to the seasons.

Which Persian king's trilingual cliff inscription at Behistun helped scholars to decipher cuneiform?

Darius the Great had it carved in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, opening with his own ancestry. It is the longest trilingual cuneiform inscription known.

Which Roman emperor was taken prisoner by the Persian ruler Shapur I after the Battle of Edessa in AD 260?

Valerian was the first Roman emperor ever captured in battle and stayed a prisoner for the rest of his life, a shock that destabilised the whole empire.

Which jewelled royal seat of the Mughal emperors did Nader Shah carry off from Delhi as a war trophy in 1739?

The Peacock Throne later became Western shorthand for the Persian monarchy itself. The original, made for Shah Jahan, cost twice as much as the Taj Mahal.

In which sport did Kimia Alizadeh become the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal, at Rio 2016?

Taekwondo bronze in the 57 kg class made history in Rio. Alizadeh left Iran for Europe in 2020 and went on to represent Bulgaria.

Which sky-blue gemstone has been mined near Nishapur in northeastern Iran for at least 2,000 years?

Turquoise from these mines became the reference by which the gem's colour is judged. Iranian builders used it on palace domes as a symbol of heaven on earth.

Which southwestern province, governed from Ahvaz, saw the Middle East's first commercial oil strike in 1908?

Khuzestan struck oil at Masjed Soleyman, a town whose name means Mosque of Solomon, and the province contains Iran's largest oil field.

Which southern province, homeland of the Achaemenid kings, contains the ruins of Persepolis?

Fars was also the homeland of the later Sasanian dynasty, which left the ruins of Bishapur and Firuzabad in the same province.

Which Gulf-coast province shares its name with Iran's first nuclear power plant, completed with Russian help?

Bushehr, the plant, was begun by German companies in 1975 and finished by Russia's Atomstroyexport under a 1995 contract. It was the first civilian nuclear power plant in the Middle East.

Which small province south of Iran's capital is centred on a Shia holy city and its Fatima Masumeh Shrine?

Qom was carved out of the capital's own province in 1996. In 1915, as Russian troops advanced, moving the seat of government to Qom was discussed.

Which province was Iran's largest until 2004, when it was divided into North, South and Razavi parts?

Khorasan once meant a much bigger region. The old province covered only its western half, and the rest lies in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Which northwestern provincial capital has a UNESCO-listed bazaar that was a major trading centre on the Silk Road?

Tabriz has one of the oldest bazaars in the Middle East, and a famous Venetian traveller of the 1270s claimed to have passed through it on his way east.

Which southeastern province, covering about 11% of Iran, contains the vast mud-brick citadel of Bam?

Kerman is home to the Arg-e Bam, the world's largest adobe structure, which an earthquake almost completely destroyed in December 2003.

Which central province's capital, a UNESCO-listed desert city, keeps a Zoroastrian sacred fire dated to AD 470?

Yazd holds the only one of the nine top-grade Zoroastrian fires that is in Iran. The other eight are all in India.

Which rainy northern province is governed from Rasht, a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy?

Gilan grew rich on silk from the 15th century, and its town of Lahijan was the first place in Iran to cultivate tea.

Each Iranian province is divided into shahrestans, a term usually translated into English as what?

Counties is the near equivalent. Shahrestan joins the words for city and land, and each one is run from a capital city, generally in its central district.

Which western province holds both the Behistun inscription and the Sasanian rock reliefs of Taq-e Bostan?

Kermanshah city lies just 5 km from Taq-e Bostan, whose carvings date from around the 4th century and show Sasanian kings being crowned and out hunting.

Which port on the Gulf of Oman is the only Iranian harbour with direct access to the Indian Ocean?

Chabahar lies only about 170 km west of the Pakistani port of Gwadar and consists of two separate ports with five berths each.

Which northwestern province shares its name with a celebrated carpet, woven around 1540, on show at London's V&A?

Ardabil is where the carpet is traditionally said to have lain in a shrine, though historians doubt it. A dealer bought it in 1890 and restored it using its twin.

Which official appoints the governor-general of each Iranian province, subject to the cabinet's approval?

The interior minister picks each governor-general, known in Persian as an ostandar, who heads the provincial authority from its capital.

Which western province's capital, set below Alvand Mountain, was known to classical writers as Ecbatana?

Hamadan is believed to be among the oldest cities in Iran, and Herodotus placed a royal capital there around 700 BC.

Which city just west of Iran's capital became the seat of a new province carved out in 2010?

Karaj governs the smallest Iranian province by area, created when it and two neighbouring areas were split off from the capital's province.

Which city is the capital of Sistan and Baluchestan, the southeastern province bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Zahedan governs a province unlike the rest of Iran: its mainly Baloch people are majority Sunni Muslim.

Which city is the capital of Mazandaran, the northern province that rises from the coast to Mount Damavand?

Sari once served as a royal seat: Agha Mohammad Shah proclaimed it his imperial capital on 21 March 1782.

Which city is the capital of Iran's Kurdistan province, which borders Iraq in the west of the country?

Sanandaj, also called Senneh, is regarded as a historic centre of Kurdish cultural life, noted for its music, poetry and carpet weaving.

Which western province, governed from Khorramabad, gave its name to a famous class of ancient animal-style bronzes?

Lorestan bronzes, usually dated to about 1000 to 650 BC, began reaching the outside world in the late 1920s. The province's name means land of the Lurs.