Southwest Asia and North Africa

Could a Druze State Be Emerging in Southern Syria? If So, What Would It Encompass?

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Since the fall of Syria’s Assad Regime in December 2024, I have been wondering what would become of the Druze people and the areas in which they are the majority population. Particularly important is the Jabal al-Druze, or “Mountain of the Druze,” which is clearly visible on satellite images of southern Syria (see the two maps posted below, with different international borders). Syria’s new president, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, now portrays himself as a moderate and has vowed to protect the Druze and other minority groups. But al-Sharaa, who recently went under the nom du guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, was once a member of al-Qaeda and was a founder of the Al-Nusra Front, another hard-core Islamist group deeply hostile to the non-Muslim Druze.

Jabal al-Druze in Its Geopolitical Environment, Satellite Imager Map 1

Jabal al-Druze in Its Geopolitical Environment, Satellite Imager Map 2

Not surprisingly, the situation in the Jabal al-Druze remains tense. On March 20, 2026, Israel bombed Syrian military sites in the vicinity, claiming that it did so to protect the Druze. Roughly 150,000 Druze live in Israel, where their men serve in the national defense forces (IDF]); according to Wikipedia, “Druze men have one of the highest enlistment rates in the country, at over 80%.” After the attack on Syrian military assets, Israel’s defense minister said that “We will not allow the Syrian regime to exploit our war against Iran and Hezbollah to harm the Druze. If necessary, we will attack with greater force.”

 Shortly after these events, Mario Nawfal, an influential but controversial Lebanese-Australian entrepreneur and political commentator based in the UAE, made some strong claims on X (“Twitter”) about an emerging Druze state being “midwifed” by Israel in Syria’s Suwayda Governorate, which includes the Jabal al-Druze (see the figure posted below). I find Nawfal’s comments intriguing yet exaggerated. But I view that map that he used to illustrate his post as highly misleading.

Mario Nawfal’s Map of an Emerging Druze State in Syria

Nawfal’s map does a decent job of showing two sizable areas with Druze majorities in southern Syria, which he depicts in green (compare his map with a map of Druze distribution posted on the blog Informed Comment,  which is reproduced below). The problem lies in his depiction of the area between these two Druze-majority zones. He has colored this area brown but has given it a green outline while placing within it the label “Autonomous Druze Territory” along with a depiction of the Druze flag. Such mapping implies that any emergent Druze state or autonomous territory would include this area. This prospect is not only highly unlikely, but any attempt to create it would almost certainly result in a deadly and protracted conflict. The brown area on Nawfal’s map includes Syria’s Daraa Governorate, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim (around 97 percent by most estimates) and hostile to both Druze and Israeli geopolitical designs. It also has more than twice the population of the Druze-dominated Suwayda Governorate (over one million as opposed to fewer than 500,000 inhabitants). (Note that M. Izady’s detailed map of language and religion in the area shows a sizable Christian area in eastern Daraa. But Christian numbers here were small to begin with and have dropped significantly in recent years.)

Druze Distribution Map from Informed Comment

M. Izady Map of Language and Religion in Southern Syria

In my opinion, the situation of the Druze in both Syria and Lebanon deserves far more attention than it has been receiving. As if often case, the more intense conflicts in the larger region tend to crowd out important but less heated geopolitical struggles.

Could a Druze State Be Emerging in Southern Syria? If So, What Would It Encompass? Read More »

The Two Great Medieval Geographers from Khwarazm in Greater Khorasan: al-Biruni and al-Khwārizmī

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The previous GeoCurrents post featured a map of the birthplaces of ten prominent medieval scholars from greater Khorasan. As was noted, two of these thinkers, al-Biruni and al-Khwārizmī, were from Khwarazm in what is now northern Uzbekistan – as is obvious in the latter case by his name. Khwarazm, however, has only rarely been considered part of Khorasan. A distinctive and historically important region that is generally ignored, Khwarazm deserves further discussion. Both al-Biruni and al-Khwārizmī also deserve more attention, as they were ground-breaking scholars. More important for this blog, they were also great geographers.

Maximal Khorasan & Khwarazm map

Al-Khwārizmī (circa 780-850) was a mathematician, astronomer, and geographer who worked for a time at the celebrated “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad, capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. He is generally considered the “father of algebra,” the name of which derives from one of his treatises (Al-Jabr, meaning ”completion” or “rejoining”). His work on the Indian positional numeral system was a key text in European universities from the time of its translation into Latin in 1145 to the sixteenth century. The word “algorithm” derives from his name – and hence from the region of his birth, Khwarazm. Al-Khwarizmi also reworked Ptolemy’s extraordinarily influential work, The Geography. As noted in his Wikipedia article, he corrected several of Ptolemy’s major errors:

Al-Khwārizmī corrected Ptolemy’s gross overestimate for the length of the Mediterranean Sea from the Canary Islands to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean; Ptolemy overestimated it at 63 degrees of longitude, while al-Khwārizmī almost correctly estimated it at nearly 50 degrees of longitude. He “depicted the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as open bodies of water, not land-locked seas as Ptolemy had done.”

Portion of al-Khwasizmi’s World Map

Al-Biruni (973-1050) was a scholar of even greater breadth and erudition. According to his Wikipedia article, he has been called “father of comparative religion, father of modern geodesy, founder of Indology, and the first anthropologist.” He conducted innovative research in physics, astronomy, and other sciences, and was equally distinguished is history and linguistics. To my mind, his most impressive achievement was being the world’s first scholarly “civilization crosser” and interpreter. By that I mean he was the first writer to move into a fully alien intellectual context, sit at the feet of its scholars, master their sacred and literary language, delve deeply in their key religious and secular texts, and then return home to turn this newly gained knowledge into a book. His Kitāb al-Hind (The Book on India) also had an ethical and political edge. Al Biruni argued that the savants of India deserved respect for their learning, ethics, and theological sophistication, and thought that Hindus more generally should not be disparaged as idolaters.

Al-Biruni’s work on physical geography was also of signal importance. Using trigonometry, he calculated the radius and circumference of the Earth with surprising accuracy. According to author S. Frederick Starr, “his calculation of the earth’s circumference is only .007 percent less than the modern figure, while his measurement of one degree of longitude at the equator is a mere .085 percent less than the modern figure” (The Genius of their Age, P. 91). Starr claims that this was “the single most momentous act of discovery in the fields of geography and geodesy up to that time.”

Al-Biruni’s Measurement of the Earth 1

Al-Biruni’s Measurement of the Earth 2

Curiously, al-Biruni also hypothesized the existence of a vast “western” continent. According to his Wikipedia article:

Al-Biruni theorized the existence of a landmass along the vast ocean between Asia and Europe, or what is today known as the Americas. He argued for its existence on the basis of his accurate estimations of the Earth’s circumference and Afro-Eurasia’s size, which he found spanned only two-fifths of the Earth’s circumference, reasoning that the geological processes that gave rise to Eurasia must surely have given rise to lands in the vast ocean between Asia and Europe. He also theorized that at least some of the unknown landmass would lie within the known latitudes which humans could inhabit, and therefore would be inhabited.

The mother-tongue of both al-Biruni and al-Khwārizmī was Khwārezmian, as would be expected given their places of birth. Both undoubtedly learned Persian at an early age, and both wrote mainly or entirely in Arabic, the language of science in their time and place.* Al-Biruni was also fluent in Sanskrit and had a solid working knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac (Aramaic). A good part of what we know about the Khwārezmian language comes from him, as he “recorded such calendrical and astronomical terms as some of the traditional names of days months feasts and signs of the Zodiac.”

Al-Biruni’s achievements are more remarkable considering his difficult life. He was essentially kidnapped by the Turkic conqueror Mahmud of Ghazni, perhaps even carted off in chains, and forced to serve as his court astrologer in what is now southeastern Afghanistan. But al-Biruni would eventually be honored by Mahmud’s son and heir, Mas‘ud I, to whom he dedicated one of his key books, Al-Qanun al-Mas’udi (The Mas’udic Canon), an encyclopedia of astronomy, mathematics, and geography. Al-Biruni was subsequently offered a camel-load of silver – which he declined. Instead, he requested to be left to work as he saw fit and be allowed to visit his homeland, Khwarazm, which was permitted.

Maps of the Empire Created by Mahmud of Ghazni

Al-Biruni also wrote a history of Khwarazm, which has unfortunately not survived except in a few excerpts. S. Frederick Starr outlines some of his historical claims about the region:

Biruni argued that the Persianate Afrighid dynasty, which ruled Khwarazm for seven centuries down to the Arab conquest, had developed a truly remarkable literary and scientific culture. He speaks of whole libraries of their poetry and other literary works, of scientific studies, and philosophical disquisitions.

All of this went up in flames during the Arab conquest in the year 712. Biruni’s chilling report states that the Muslim general Qutaiba bin Muslim “swiftly killed whoever wrote in the Khwarazmian language and knew of the Khwarazmian heritage, history, and culture. He then killed all their Zoroastrian priests and burned and destroyed their books, until only the illiterate [part of the population] remained, and hence the region’s history was mostly forgotten.”  In spite of this gruesome assault, Zoroastrianism managed to survive for another century until the Khwarazmian rulers finally converted to Islam and the region’s Zoroastrians either followed suit or fled. The Khwarazmian language fared no better than its traditional religion. So thorough was Qutaiba bin Muslim’s destruction that only a few hundred words of the old Khwarazmian language are known to us today.

To be fair, Khwarazm did substantially recover, both intellectually and economically, from this assault. The conquests of Genghis Khan and Timur were more destructive in the long run.

For anyone interested in Khwarazm and the rest of greater Khorasan in its “golden age,” I highly recommend two books by S. Frederick Starr: Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age (Princeton University Press 2015) and The Genius of their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni, and the Lost Enlightenment (Oxford University Press, 2023). The latter work charts the parallel careers of two of the greatest scholars the world has ever seen – Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and al-Biruni – and in the process traces out much of the geography of Persia and Central Asia. Starr’s description of the intellectual pluralism that characterized this “lost Enlightenment,” and especially al-Biruni, is worth quoting:

Unlike Herodotus, who adhered to a purely Greek perspective…, Biruni began with the assumption that all cultures were equal. This assertion is less astounding when viewed in context. It is unlikely that any part of the Eurasian land mass at the time spawned more people who accepted pluralism as a fact than Central Asia in general and Khwarazm in particular. A relativist’s relativist, in the breadth of his perspective, Biruni surpassed all who preceded him and most who followed. …

Biruni is arguably the first thinker to treat all religions, including his own, as equal, and to present them all without polemics. Reporting on the unfamiliar and seemingly bizarre customs of other peoples and other religions, he did so clinically, without sensationalism. In each case he sought to identify the core beliefs of a given faith and then to show how they shaped its believers understanding of time. In this relative approach he was a practitioner of cultural anthropology many centuries before that field emerged as a scientific discipline” (The Genius of their Age, p. 55) (emphasis added).

Given such views, it is not surprising that the Taliban “tried to destroy Biruni’s tomb in Ghazni in May, 2018” (The Genius of their Age, p. 215). But as Starr goes on to note, “a crater on the far side of the moon bears his name, as does an asteroid, 9936 Al-Biruni.”

*Al Biruni once reportedly said that he would rather be criticized in Arabic than praised in Persian, showing the centrality of the Arabic language in the scholarly community in which he operated. It was a different story, however, when it came to poetry.

Recommended Readings

The Two Great Medieval Geographers from Khwarazm in Greater Khorasan: al-Biruni and al-Khwārizmī Read More »

Khorasan, Greater Khorasan, Greatest Khorasan… and the Geography of Medieval Scholarship

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The modern region of Khorasan covers three provinces in northeastern Iran: North Khorasan, Razavi Khorasan, and South Khorasan. Razavi Khorasan, the name of which refers to Ali al-Rida, the eighth Imam of Twelver Shia Islam, is by far the most populous and important of the three (see the map below). Before 2004, this entire region constituted a single Khorasan province. Historically speaking, however, the term “Khorasan” – “land of the rising sun” – covered a much larger area. In the strict sense of the term, it also extended across northern Afghanistan and most of Turkmenistan, and is usually mapped accordingly. In this scheme, Khorasan terminated at the Oxus River (Amu Darya), with the lands beyond it called “Transoxiana” in Western sources and sometimes Mā Warāʾ an-Nahr (“the lands beyond the river”) in Persian and Arabic sources. But Persian and Arabic geographers often further extended Khorasan across the Amu Darya to include much of what is now Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Iran’s Old and New Provinces of Khorasan map

Khorasan in this “greater” sense might be regarded as the eastern portion of the historically Persian-speaking zone. As noted in the Wikipedia article on “Khorasan Province:”

Some of the main historical cities of Persia are located in the older Khorasan: Nishapur and Tus (now in Iran); Merv and Sanjan (now in Turkmenistan); Samarkand and Bukhara (both now in Uzbekistan); Herat and Balkh (now in Afghanistan); and Khujand and Panjakent (now both in Tajikistan).

Historical Greater Khorasan and the Current Extent of the Persian Language map

As the map posted above shows, most of this “older Khorasan” is inhabited to this day by Persian speakers, although the language is commonly called “Dari” in northern Afghanistan and “Tajik” in Tajikistan. Storied “Uzbek” cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand are probably still majority Persian-speaking (as the mother tongue), although official statistics claim that most residents primarily speak Uzbek, a Turkic language. Turkmenistan, on the other hand, is no longer part of the Persian language zone. Its once-great Persian cities, such as Merv and Sanjan, were destroyed centuries ago.

As was noted in the previous GeoCurrents post, the historical region of Khorasan is commonly regarded as forming the intellectual core of the Persian-speaking world from roughly 800 to 1200 CE/AD, the time of its greatest scholarly achievements. The Wikipedia article on the region lists 10 prominent scientifically minded scholars from the region who lived during this period. As the maps posted below show, four of them were from what is now the Iranian region of Khorasan (all from the province of Razavi Khorasan), two were from what is now northern Afghanistan, a region once called Bactria, and two were from Transoxiana, or Mā Warāʾ an-Nahr, a region once called Sogdia or Sogdiana. All eight were thus natives of “Greater Khorasan” in the extended sense of the term.

Birthplaces of Medieval Scientists from Khorasan map

Birthplaces of Medieval Scientists from Khorasan, map 2

The remaining two scholars were from Khwarazm, an important region focused on the inland delta of the Amu Darya (Oxus) River just to the south of the (former) Aral Sea. This region has rarely been included in Khorasan. AI (Grok), however, tells me that that the noted tenth-century Persian geographer and traveler Istakhri did classify it in such a manner, reflecting “the flexible, sometimes expansive use of “Khorasan” in medieval texts, where it could loosely denote eastern Iranian/Central Asian lands east of the central Iranian deserts.”

The term “Khorasan” can thus be regarded as possibly denoting four separate but nesting regions: modern Khorasan (northeastern Iran); greater Khorasan in the strict sense (adding much of Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan); greater Khorasan in the extended sense (adding Transoxiana or Mā Warāʾ an-Nahr); and “greatest” Khorasan (adding Khwarazm).

Four Definitions of Khorasan, map

If Khorasan is to include Khwarazm, in cannot be defined as the eastern portion of the historically Persian-speaking region, as Khwarazm was not, at least during its intellectual heyday, Persian speaking. Its native tongue at the time was Khwarezmian, an Eastern Iranian language more closely related to Pashto (the language of the Pashtun people) than to Persian/Farsi. (It was even more closely related to Sogdian and Bactrian, which had been spoken in Transoxiana and northern Afghanistan respectively before being replaced by Persian.) But Khwarazm had been part of the greater Persian cultural sphere, and by the thirteenth century its own language was also being replaced by Persian. Turkic dialects later spread, and today the people of the region speak the Turkic language Karakalpak (closely related to Kazakh), and are ethnically deemed Karakalpaks (literally meaning “black hats.

The two scholars from Khwarazm noted on the map of medieval scientists from “Khorasan”, al-Buruni and Al-Khwarizmi, deserve further consideration and will therefore be examined in the next GeoCurrents post.

Khorasan, Greater Khorasan, Greatest Khorasan… and the Geography of Medieval Scholarship Read More »

Iran’s Khorasan Region: Economically Lagging But Culturally Central

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The most recent GeoCurrents posts expressed skepticism of the idea that the Persian, of Farsi-speaking, regions of Iran are more economically developed than the non-Persian regions. As I showed, several non-Persian regions have relatively high per capita income and production. It is also true that several Persian regions have relatively low economic rankings. South Khorasan in eastern Iran is the prime example. As can be seen in the map sets posted below, this sparsely populated and overwhelmingly Farsi-speaking (90-95 percent) province has comparatively low per capita GDP and per capita income.

Iran Farsi-Speaking Regions Per Capita Income Map

Iran Farsi-Speaking Regions and Per Capita GDP Map

Nearby provinces in northeastern Iran also have lower economic rankings than provinces in the country’s central region. Razavi Khorasan, also heavily Persian, ranks near the middle while North Khorasan and Golestan are clearly below average. North Khorasan and Golestan, however, do not have Farsi-speaking majorities. Instead, they are characterized by ethnolinguistic mixtures, which are particularly complex in Golestan (see the map posted below). North Khorasan, for its part, has a Kurdish plurality. (According to one AI assessment [Grok], it is approximately 40-50 Kurdish, 25-50 percent Persian and Tat, and 15-25 percent Khorasani Turkic.) In 2017, Iran Front Page magazine referred to North Khorasan as the “land of tribal treasures” owing to its linguistic diversity. Marriage across ethnic lines, however, seems to be diminishing such diversity. According to one study, in 2018 43 percent of the Kurds of North Khorasan were married to non-Kurds.

Iran Golestan Province Language Map

The strong Kurdish presence in northeastern Iran might seem surprising, as this region is far from the Kurdish homeland. Under the Safavid dynasty (1501 to 1736), Shi’ite Kurds were moved to this region to help guard against incursions by Uzbeks and others. According to Encyclopedia Iranica, this policy caused its own problems, bringing a period of economic decline to the region:

These transplantations brought in their wake radical changes in the demographic, political, economic, and social fabric of the province of Khorasan. They led to changes in the environment, with towns and villages destroyed or rebuilt and new ones created. Given the Kurdish nomadic presence and its increasing impact, rural and urban life retreated in the face of tribal migrations. In the course of over a century and a half, the irrigation system was to some extent abandoned, and more intricate forms of agriculture for silk or rice cultivation gave way to the production of pastoral products. The increasing power of the Kurdish tribal leaders (il-ḵāns) engendered resistance and rebellion against the central government.

Kurdish Distribution, Including North Khorasan, maps

Although the three provinces of Khorasan have a modest standing in the economic geography of Iran, Khorasan’s historical, cultural, and demographic significance is profound. Razavi Khorasan, with almost 7 million inhabitants, is the second most populous province in the country. Its capital, Mashhad, with some three and a half million inhabitants, is Iran’s second largest city. Mashhad is also a major religious center and tourism destination. Its mausoleum of Ali al-Rida, the eighth Imam of Twelver Shi’ism, is visited by an estimated 30 million pilgrims every year .

The Khorasan provinces of northeastern Iran constitute a small remnant of what was once a much larger region. Historical Khorasan also included western and northern Afghanistan and most of what is now Turkmenistan. It was here that the New Persian language, or modern Persian, emerged in the ninth century, some 200 years after the Arab/Muslim conquest. The literary development of New Persian and the early flourishing of an explicitly Persian Muslim civilization was closely associated with the Samanid Empire (819 to 999), which originated in Khorasan and was based both there and in neighboring Transoxiania (modern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). Ferdowsi (940–1025), author of Iran’s national epic, the Shahnameh (or Book of Kings), was a resident of Tus, a once-major city located near Mashhad in what is now Razavi Khorasan. Ferdowsi’s tomb, built in the early 1930s in the ancient Persian style, is also visited by millions of people every year.

Historical Khorasan Map

Samanid Empire in 900 Map

Long after the collapse of the Samanid Empire, Khorasan retained its cultural significance, serving as Persia’s center of literature and scholarship. According to the Wikipedia article on the region:

Until the devastating Mongol invasion of the 13th century, Khorasan remained the cultural capital of Persia. It has produced scientists such as Avicenna, Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni, Omar Khayyam, Al-Khwarizmi, Abu Ma’shar al-Balkhi (known as Albumasar or Albuxar in the west), Alfraganus, Abu Wafa, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, and many others who are widely well known for their significant contributions in various domains such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, geography, and geology.

(Note, however, that some of these intellectual luminaries can be described as being from Khorasan only in the geographically broadest sense of the term, as will see in a later post.)

Finally, it should also be mentioned  that Greater Khorasan plays an important role in Muslim beliefs about eschatology, or doctrines related to end of time. Several hadiths (saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed) describe the future emergence of an unstoppable Muslim army carrying black flags and originating in Khorasan. According to Twelver Shi’ism, this force will allow the triumph of the Mahdi, a messianic figure who will rid the world of evil and bring about the culmination of history. Several leading figures in Iran have reportedly framed the current war with Israel and the United States as presaging the coming of the Madhi, including Aliraza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran, and Ayatollah Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri. It is widely believed that before the Mahdi comes, chaos will reign.

Iran’s Khorasan Region: Economically Lagging But Culturally Central Read More »

The Key Role of Azerbaijanis in Iran

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The previous post argued that the “Persian” (or Farsi-speaking) provinces of Iran are not necessarily more prosperous and economically developed than the “non-Persian” provinces, focusing on the relatively affluent but non-Farsi-speaking Caspian region, particularly Mazandaran province. The Azeri-speaking (or Azerbaijani-speaking) northwestern region of Iran also economically ranks somewhat higher than average.  It is, however, less economically developed than the neighboring Azeri-speaking country of Azerbaijan.

Iranian Azerbaijan Income Map

 

Iranian Azerbaijan Per Capita GDP Maps

Rather than framing the issue of Iran’s uneven economic development around the distinction between Farsi- and non-Farsi speakers, it is better to organize it around the distinction between “core Iranian ethnic groups” and “non-core ethnic groups.” The Mazandaranis, for example, are not Farsi-speakers, but they are so integral to the Iranian nation that they have often been classified as “Persian.” The Wikipedia article on the Iranian province of Golestan, for example, claims that “The Mazandaranis who inhabit the foothills … were subsumed under the rubric ‘Persian’ by these official statistics.”

Although the Azeris, who speak a Turkic language, are never classified as Persians, they have been central players in the Iranian state and nation for centuries. According to many sources, Azeris are, if anything, over-represented in the country’s elite population. In the core provinces of Tehran and Alborz, Azeris constitute up to a quarter of the population. The actual percentage of Azeri-speakers in these provinces, however, is difficult if not impossible to determine due the prevalence of intermarriage and bilingualism. To be sure, cultural conflicts occasionally arise, such as the 2006 “cartoon cockroach controversy” analyzed in a previous GeoCurrents post. Overall, however, they are of little significance.

Azerbaijani language map

Although Azeri is in the Turkic language family, most of the inhabitants of “greater Azerbaijan” (northwestern Iran and independent Azerbaijan) seem to have spoken the Iranian language of Old Azeri (or Azari) up to the early-modern period. The region had been fully part of the Persian cultural sphere, and it largely remained so after the switch to a Turkic tongue.

For more information on this important region and its linguistic history, I recommend the blogpost “Turko-Iranica: The Shifting Faces of Iranian Azerbaijan and its Idiom,” by Afsheen Sharifzadeh. As this essay notes:

The “Old Azari” language–previously one of the major Iranian languages–comprised a sprachbund of dialects distributed in a broad range between lake Urmia in the west and the Caspian littoral in the east. Old Azari seems to have shared a genetic affinity with the ancestor of the modern Talysh language, and it further appears to form a broader group with the so-called “Northwestern” branch of Iranian including modern Gilaki, Māzanderāni, Semnāni, and Zaza-Gorani. Some linguists hold that the southern Tāti varieties of Iranian Azerbaijan … are peripheral remnants of Old Azari. As such, this language has been spoken in the region of Azerbaijan for at least three millennia.

…

It appears Old Azari only lost its status as the majority language between the 16th-17th centuries with the ascent of the Qizilbash-backed Safavids. The subsequent influx of numerous Turkic military elements into the region further spread Turkic at the detriment of Old Azari, which in turn receded and ceased to be used, at least in the major urban centers. Notwithstanding the city of Tabriz maintained a number of distinctly Old Azari-speaking neighborhoods well into the Safavid period with the poet Ruhi Anārjānī composing a compendium of the language as late as the 17th century. However by the turn of the 20th century the Turkification of Azerbaijan was near completion, with the old Iranic speakers found exclusively in remote recesses of the mountains or other isolated areas such as Harzand village in Marand. Lamentably, language shift is currently in progress and the remaining Tāti dialects face a state of attrition and imminent endangerment.

Afsheen Sharifzadeh also notes that the Azerbaijani dialects of northwestern Iran and independent Azerbaijan are currently diverging:

The Northern and Southern varieties of Azerbaijani are moderately mutually intelligible without training. Since, for several decades, there has been little, if any, cultural exchange between the two parts of Azerbaijan, the mutual intelligibility is decreasing. Today the two languages are remarkably distinct in phonology, morphology, syntax, and source of loanwords; purist efforts upon the Northern variety have uprooted numerous Persianisms in favor of Russianisms and revisionist Turkic models, while the Southern variety continues to rely upon Persian much as it has since its arrival to the region.

The Key Role of Azerbaijanis in Iran Read More »

Are “Non-Persian” Regions of Iran Poorer than Persian Regions? The Counter-Case of Mazandaran

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The previous GeoCurrents post showed that the location of oil and natural gas deposits provides a partial explanation of the differences in the distribution of wealth and economic productivity across the country. But other factors must also be considered. Could language and ethnicity play a role? It has often been argued that the Persian, or Farsi-speaking, central area of Iran is more developed than the non-Persian peripheries. In 2017, for example, the Kurdish Human Rights Association asserted that “Persian province are the richest and non-Persian provinces are the poorest,” arguing that discrimination against Kurds and other minority groups explains this pattern.

But is it actually true that “the Persian province” are the richest parts of Iran? Although this assertion does have some validity, it is also misleading, as we will see in the next few GeoCurrents posts.

A little background on the ethnic situation is first needed. Iran is a multi-lingual country with a well-established sense of common national identity across most of its ethnic groups. Farsi, or Persian, is the national language and is spoken by almost everyone in the country. But it is the mother tongue of only around 50 to 62 percent of Iran’s population. According to some estimates, as many as twenty-five percent speak Azeri, or Azerbaijani, as their first language (see the pie chart below), although most sources put the figure at around 15 percent. The modified Wikipedia map posted below shows the distribution of the most important languages of Iran. As can be seen, Farsi/Persian dominates the central region, with minority languages located in most peripheral areas.

 

Iran Languages Map

Iran Language Pie Chart

For the next set of maps, I have isolated the Farsi/Persian-speaking region from the language map posted above so that it can be compared with the economic maps of Iran analyzed in the preceding GeoCurrents posts. The second figure below compares the map of Farsi speakers with two maps of per capita GDP, and the first compares it with a map of per capita average income. As these comparisons show, there is a correlation between Persian ethnicity and higher-than-average economic productivity and income, but it not particularly strong. Several non-Persian areas, for example, have elevated economic figures.

 

Iran Farsi-Speaking Areas and Average Income Map

Iran Farsi-Speaking Area and Per Capita GDP map

The rest of today’s post examines the relatively prosperous but non-Farsi-speaking Caspian region of north-central Iran. As the per capita income map shows, the largest contiguous block of counties in the highest per-capita-income category is found in north-central Iran. This relatively prosperous region is anchored by Tehran and Alborz provinces, Iran’s political and economic core. But it also extends across the formidable Alborz (Elburz) mountains to encompass Mazandaran province on the south shore of the Caspian Sea. Some high-income counties are also found in Gilan Province, located to the northwest of Mazandaran. Mazandaran is also shown on most maps as having higher-than-average per capita GDP.

Iran Caspian Region Mazandaran Average Income Maps

Iran Caspian Region Per Capita GDP Maps

Physical Map of Iran with Tehran, Alborz, and Mazandaran Provinces Highlighted

The Caspian region of Iran is highly distinctive and linguistically diverse. Mazandaran has its own language, Mazandarani, which is related to Farsi but far from interintelligible with it. The Caspian coastal plain is densely populated, with the highest rural population density in Iran by a wide margin. Mazandaran province has no large cities, but it does have a well-developed network of medium-sized urban centers. The Caspian region also has a highly productive agricultural economy, focused on rice, citrus and other fruits, vegetables, tea, and aquiculture. Much of this production is only possible because this region, quite unlike the rest of Iran, has a humid subtropical climate. Most of its mountainous areas are covered by lush, broadleaved forests. Until the 1950s, Caspian tigers lived in this region, and leopards still do.

Iran Population Density Map

Iran Rural Population Density Map

Humid Subtropical Caspian Iran

Humid Subtropical Forests of Iran Map

Iran’s Caspian region also has a distinctive political history. It resisted conquest by the Umayyad Caliphate and did not come under Muslim rule until 760 CE/AD, more than a century after the rest of Iran. According to the Wikipedia article on “Tabaristan” (the historical name of Mazandaran):

For a certain period, the Caspian shore of Iran served as a center for ancient Iranian national consciousness. In 783, during a rebellion in Tabaristan, the locals gave up their Arab husbands to the rebels. Dynasties such as the Bavandids and Ziyarids continued to commemorate their pre-Islamic background, with traditional Iranian festivals such as Nowruz and [Zoroastrian] Mehregan continuing to exist in Tabaristan

Long after Islamization, moreover, the Caspian generally remained partly or entirely autonomous, as well as culturally distinctive and sophisticated. The Wikipedia article on Tabaristan also notes that:

The writing tradition of the [Mazandarani] language is approximately as old as that of New Persian. This was due to the long-lasting independent and semi-independent local kingdoms, ruled by the ispahbads

But despite its profound cultural, historical, and environmental differences from the rest of Iran, the Caspian region is still part of the larger core region of the country. Its people consider themselves, and considered by others, to be an integral part of the Iranian nation. Iran’s powerful sense of national identity, in other words, is by no means limited to the Farsi- or Persian-speaking population, as it transcends most language boundaries in the country. The Azeri region of northwestern Iran is also tightly integrated with the Iranian national project, as we will see in the next post.

Are “Non-Persian” Regions of Iran Poorer than Persian Regions? The Counter-Case of Mazandaran Read More »

The Ambiguous Role of Oil and Natural Gas in the Economic Geography of Iran

Article-Grid, Economic Geography, Energy, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

Not surprisingly, the distribution of oil and natural gas provides one of the main explanations of Iran’s spatial pattern of economic productivity. As noted in the previous post, the coastal provinces of southwestern Iran post some of the highest production figures relative to population in the country. According to official Iranian data from 2020, the per capita GDP of Bushehr was more than twice that of the country’s second-ranked province. As can be seen on the paired maps below, Bushehr has a sizable share of Iran’s oil, and an even larger portion of its natural gas. It also contains Kharg Island, which exports around 90 percent of Iran’s oil products.

Maps of Iran’s Oil and Natural Gas Fields

Iran GDP Per Capita by Province, 2020

But if the map posted below can be trusted and is still accurate, per capita income in Bushehr does match the province’s economic productivity. This is also not surprising, as the main benefits of natural-resource extraction often flow out of the resource-endowed regions. But as can also be seen on this map, the three southernmost counties of Bushehr – Jam, Kangan, and Asaluyeh – had some of the country’s highest average-income figures from 1998 to 2018. They almost certainly still do. Located here is massive Kangan Gas Field and, more important, the “Kangan Ethane Recovery & Cracker Plant – Kangan Petro Refinery.” As the Wikipedia article on Jam County notes, “The fast-growing city of Jam … is home to workers at the nearby … Kangan industrial complex [and] is growing exponentially and affluently.” More surprisingly, the same article goes on to claim that “most of the workers in the city, and on the farms and gardens around the city, are Afghan migrant workers.” I doubt that Afghan migrants are receiving a sizable share of whatever affluence the region enjoys.

Iran Average Income Per Capita by County 2018 Map

The geography of oil in Iran also explains the anomalously high per capita GDP of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province found in some datasets (see the previous GeoCurrents post). As the per capita income map indicates, this small and mountainous province was relatively poor up to 2018. It probably still is. Artificial Intelligence (Grok) tells me that “Multiple studies group KBA [Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad] with provinces facing disadvantages in employment participation, entrepreneurship, rural poverty, and overall opportunities.” But Grok also claims that “The province holds about 13% of Iran’s total oil reserves and it contains 8 oil fields. … Recent government investments (e.g., €260 million planned for boosting output by 40,000 barrels/day) underscores its strategic role.” Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad thus seems to be a resource-rich province that has recently experienced substantial extractive investments without experiencing proportional economic development. Globally speaking, this is not an uncommon situation.

Iran Average Per Capita Income by County 2018, KBA

The oil map of Iran posted above also shows significant fields in Lorestan, another relatively poor province. Lorestan oil production, however, remains modest. According to AI, large shale oil deposits have recently been discovered in the province, but they are not economically viable at this time.

The Ambiguous Role of Oil and Natural Gas in the Economic Geography of Iran Read More »

The Economic Geography of Iran: Attempting to Map Per Capita GDP

Article-Grid, Economic Geography, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

(Note: GeoCurrents has been on an extended hiatus due to personal issues and teaching obligations. I now hope to resume regular posting. My initial focus will be on Iran, for obvious reasons).

Iran is usually regarded as a middle-income country. According to the International Monetary Fund, its per capita GDP (in purchasing power parity) at the beginning of 2026 was 21,882 current international dollars. This figure places it in the 91st position out of 190 counties listed, between Ukraine and Kosovo. In nominal terms, however, Iran’s per capita GDP was only US$ 4,250 (IMF) in early 2026, putting it in the 129th position. Considering Iran’s high levels of education and massive natural resource endowment – with the third highest proven oil reserves and the second highest proven natural gas reserves – these are low figures. As the maps posted below show, nearby countries with similar advantages have far more productive economies. It would seem that the Iranian regime’s repressive nature and focus on military expenditure have undermined its economic development.

Southwest Asia GDP PPP Per Capita by Country 2026

Southeast Asia Nominal Per Capita GDP by Country 2026

As might be expected of a large (ranking in 17th position) and populous (also 17th) country, Iran exhibits substantial internal variation in economic productivity. Finding reasonably accurate information on Iran’s per capita GDP by province, however, is difficult. Wikipedia features such a map (below), but the data is from 2012. For the most part, however, the patterns seen on this map still seem to hold. Economic productivity is highest in the north-central and south-coastal parts of the country, and lowest in the far southeast and northwest.

 

Iran Per Capita GDP by Province 2012 Map

In trying to find recent province-level economic data for Iran, I turned to Artificial Intelligence – and was soon disappointed. ChatGPT told me that such information is not available from authoritative sources, but it did provide a list of five tiers of provinces by per capita GDP. Google AI (Gemini) provided a more limited set of three tiers, which included only “key economic” provinces. Grok gave actual per capita GDP figures, but only for 20 provinces.

Iran Per Capita GDP by Province ChatGPT map

Iran Per Capita GDP by Province Google AI

Iran Per Capita GDP by Province Grok

I have mapped all these AI-derived lists (above). As can be seen, there are some profound differences among them. Grok claims that the most economically productive region of is the small and mountainous province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad (its nominal per capita GDP is listed at US$ 21,124, whereas second-place Tehran is placed at only US$ 14,544). In contrast, ChatGPT puts Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad in the bottom tier of provinces, as does the 2012 Wikipedia map. ChatGPT ranks the large, centrally located province of Yazd in the second-highest tier of provinces, whereas Grok puts it in a much lower position. All three chatbots, however, agree that the coastal, oil-oriented provinces of Khuzestan and Bushehr are among Iran’s most economically productive regions. Tehran and some of the provinces near it rank high in all three assessments. Google, Grok, and ChatGPT also agree that Sistan and Baluchestan in the southeast falls at or near the bottom of the chart.

Although recent information from the Iranian government is evidently not available, IranOpenData does list per capita GDP by province from 2020, which I have also mapped (below). This dataset shows a gap of almost an order of magnitude between the most productive province (Bushehr) and the least productive (Sistan and Baluchestan). More surprising is the assertion that the per capita GDP of Bushehr is more than twice that of second-place Yazd, (1,072,595 thousand rials vs 400,518). The information found in IranOpenData fits relatively well with the Iranian economic patterns depicted on a MapPorn map of per capita GDP by province for all the countries of southwestern Asia. A YouTube map comparing Iran and Turkey (Türkiye) on this issue is also similar, although it ranks Yazd in a much lower position. Both comparative maps place Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad in a relatively high position, with the YouTube map matching Grok’s first-place assessment.

Iran Per Capita GDP by Province 2020

Southwest Asia Per Capita GDP by Province map

Turkey and Iran Per Capita GDP by Province map

Despite numerous contradictions among the sources consulted, there are some clear patterns in the geography of economic productivity in Iran. The possible reasons underlying these patterns will be explored in the next GeoCurrentspost.

The Economic Geography of Iran: Attempting to Map Per Capita GDP Read More »

Is Apple Maps Erasing Druze Identity by Calling the “Jabal al-Druze” the “Jabal al-Arab”?

Article-Grid, Insurgencies, Myth of the Nation-State, Nationalism, Regionalism, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

Armed conflict over the past few weeks in southern Syria between the Druze and Bedouin militias receiving help from the Syrian military have taken over a thousand lives. As reported in the Kurdish press, Tawfiq al-Hijri, Deputy Head of the Foreign Relations Office of the Spiritual Presidency of the Druze Community in Syria, argues that “jihadist elements within the state [are] planning a systematic purge of minority communities. What we’re facing is nothing short of genocide. … Their ideology cannot be changed. They seek to subjugate or eliminate all minorities—starting with Alawites and Druze, and targeting Kurds next.”

Tawfiq al-Hijri may be exaggerating the threat, and the situation in southern Syria is certainly complicated, as GeoCurrents will explore in subsequent posts. But it is difficult to deny the Druze of Syria find themselves in a precarious situation. As adherents of an esoteric sect that grew out Islam but is no longer within the folds of that faith, the Druze find themselves targeted by Sunni extremists, many of whom are now officials in the Syrian government. Although the county’s leaders have officially abandoned the jihadi path, it is understandable that Druze leaders remain unconvinced.

Wikipedia Map of the Military Situation in southern Syria July 2025

The geographical focus of the current conflict is the As-Suwayda Governorate, which covers 5,550 km2 (2,140 sq mi)and is home to some 375,000 people, 90 percent of whom are Druze (seven percent are Christian, and the remaining three percent are Sunni Muslims, as of 2010). The core of As-Suwayda is a basaltic plateau known as the Jabal al-Druze, or “Mountain of the Druze.” The Jabal al-Druze is clearly visible on satellite images of the region (see the figure posted below). Although having a semi-arid Mediterranean climate with only around 14 inches (364 mm) of annual precipitation (in the city of Suwayda), the region has fertile soils and supports a large agricultural population.

The Jabal al-Druze in Syria, Satellite-Image Map

Despite its cultural and geographical significance, the Jabal al-Druze appears on relatively few maps. It is nowhere to be found, for example, in Apple Maps, where a search for “Jabal al-Druze” first took me to a place in India called “Jabal” and then to “Jabal al-Nour” in Saudi Arabia (see the figure below). More disturbing, Apple Maps labels the plateau in question as “Jabal al-Arab,” or “Mountain of the Arabs” (see the second figure below). This maneuver effectively erases Druze identity from the region and could easily be interpreted as an intentional insult to the Druze community.

Apple Maps Labels Jabal al-Druze as “Jabal al-Arab”

Apple Maps’ “Depiction” of “Jabal al-Druze”

The Jabal al-Druze is admittedly sometimes called “Jabal al-Arab, as well as the “Jabal Hauran,” but these are secondary names, at least as framed by the Wikipedia article on the region. Although the chatbot Grok tells me that “some sources suggest [that the name Jabal al-Arab] predates the Druze-specific designation or was used in certain historical contexts to describe the same volcanic highland,” ChatGPT more pointedly states that the term is “pan-Arab or nationalist in tone, and has been used more frequently by the Ba’athist government of Syria, which promotes Arab identity.”

Left unsaid by ChatGPT was the fact that the Arab-Nationalist-Socialist Ba’ath Party of Syria long sought to undermine the sectarian identity of the Druze and other Arabic-speaking minorities and subsume them within the majority ethnic formation. Such policies were violently implemented under the rule of Adib Shishakli in the early 1950s. According to the Wikipedia article on the Druze:

Shishakli believed that among his many opponents in Syria, the Druze were the most potentially dangerous, and he was determined to crush them. He frequently proclaimed: “My enemies are like a serpent: The head is the Jebel al-Druze, the stomach Homs, and the tail Aleppo. If I crush the head, the serpent will die.” Shishakli dispatched 10,000 regular troops to occupy the Jebel al-Druze. Several towns were bombarded with heavy weapons, killing scores of civilians and destroying many houses. According to Druze accounts, Shishakli encouraged neighboring Bedouin tribes to plunder the defenseless population and allowed his own troops to run amok.

Although later Ba’ath government, including that of the recently deposed Assad regime, protected the Druze from Sunni extremists, memories of these earlier events remain powerful. Recent attacks on the Druze community by Sunni Bedouin tribes and elements of the Syrian state have a disconcerting resemblance to those of the early 1950s.

The term “Jabal al-Arab,” used by Apple Maps thus seem to me to be an ideologically laden substitute for “Jabal al-Druze.” At the very least, it tells us nothing specific about the region, quite unlike the more commonly accepted term. The extent to which the Arabic-speaking Druze even consider themselves to be “Arabs,” moreover, is unclear and contested. As I was unable to find much useful information on this issue, I turned to AI. ChatGPT’s response to my query seems reasonable (although the term “mainstream” in the second paragraph below is unnecessary and misleading):

ChatGPT: Some Druze do consider themselves Arabs, especially in the sense of speaking Arabic and being part of the broader Arab cultural and historical sphere. In this view, they may identify with Arab nationalism or see themselves as part of the Arab world.

Others distinguish themselves from Arabs, emphasizing their distinct religious and historical identity. The Druze faith is separate from mainstream Islam, and some Druze prefer to be seen as an independent ethnoreligious group with roots in ancient Middle Eastern cultures, possibly tracing their heritage to pre-Islamic or even non-Arab origins.

The chatbot Grok, in contrast, suggests that most Druze do accept an Arab identity, albeit subordinate to their religious identity. Yet even if that is the case, I imagine that most Druze people would find the label “Jabal al-Arab” offensive.

As I have criticized Apple Maps in this post, it is fitting to examine the labeling practice of its main competitor, Google Maps. Google’s mapping program has no designation for the region itself, using labels only for towns and cities; in my initial query, moreover it told me that “Google maps can’t find “Jabal al-Druze” (see the figure posted below).  When I re-queried the program after zooming in on the region, however, I was taken to the highest elevation in the region, also known as Jabal al-Druze. In this instance, Google Maps clearly outperforms Apple Maps.

Google Maps Locates Jabal al-Druze

Is Apple Maps Erasing Druze Identity by Calling the “Jabal al-Druze” the “Jabal al-Arab”? Read More »

Wolves in the Gaza Strip? The Geography of the Coyote-Like Arabian Wolf

Article-Grid, Environmental Geography, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

The gray wolf is usually seen as a wilderness species, an animal that needs vast expanses of habitat far from human concentrations, as well as sizable populations of large herbivores to prey upon. Yet many distribution maps, including one featured in the Wikipedia article on the species, shows gray wolves currently inhabiting some densely populated places. In the eastern Mediterranean region, for example, wolves are depicted as living in southern Lebanon, northern Israel, the West Bank, northwestern Jordan, and southwestern Syria (see the paired maps posted below).  Other distribution maps show the gray wolf’s range as currently extending across the entire Arabian Peninsula, including the hyper-arid Rub’ al Khali, a large region of shifting sand dunes with little water and scant wildlife (see the second set of maps below).

Wolf Distribution and Human Population in the Eastern Mediterranean Region map

ScreenshotExaggerated Maps of the Range of the Gray Wolf

Such maps do not fit the common perception of wolf habitat and may therefore seem fraudulent. But although these maps exaggerate the range of the gray wolf, they also convey an element of truth that confounds expectations. The solution to this seeming paradox is found in the different habitat requirements of different wolf subspecies. The Arabian gray wolf (Canis lupus arabs) that inhabits some parts of the Arabian Peninsula is the smallest subspecies, weighing on average only 45 pounds (20.4 kg). In contrast, wolves in the American northwest generally weigh between 99 and 159 pounds (36 to 72 kg). Arabian wolves are thus closer in size to coyotes, which typically between 15 and 45 pounds (7 to 20 kg) and have reached 75 pounds (34 kg). Arabian wolves are also similar to coyotes in diet and social structure, typically hunting in pairs rather than in packs. As noted in the Wikipedia article on the animal:

Arabian wolves are mainly carnivorous, but also omnivorous and in some areas largely dependent on human garbage and excess products. Their native prey includes ungulates … as well as smaller animals like hares, rodents, small birds, and reptiles. They also eat cats, sweet fruits, roadkill, and other carrion. Opportunistically, almost any small animal including fish, snails, and baby baboons can be part of their diet.

The reasonably accurate distribution map of the Arabian wolf found in the same article shows that its remaining populations are concentrated in the southern Arabian Peninsula, sandwiched between the more densely populated coastal areas and the more arid interior. Populations are also found in southern Israel, Jordan, and the southern Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Numbers are relatively small, however, with Saudi Arabia supporting roughly 250-700 wolves, Jordan some 200, and Israel around 100 to 150. The Arabian wolf population of Israel is reportedly stable, while that of Jordan is said to be decreasing due to hunting pressure.

Current Range of the Arabian Wolf Map

Remarkably, Arabian wolves also inhabit, or did until the current war, the densely populated Gaza Strip. A recent article on the wolves of Gaza outlines the situation as of 2023:

According to old Gazans, the Arabian Wolf was present in the Gaza Strip 7-8 decades ago, and after that its numbers decreased to zero. After the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the uprooting of its settlements in late 2005, dozens of Arabian Wolf and other carnivores crept intermittently through gaps in the border to the east of the Gaza Strip. The Arabian Wolf often arrives at night, looking for food, and it returns again in the morning hours to the Gaza Envelope. Many individuals have been captured or killed by Gazans at night using live traps “Maltash“, leghold traps “Fakh“, or even rifles and cartridges. Some healthy specimens have been sold and kept in cages at local zoos. Many plausible factors encouraged the infiltration of Arabian Wolves and other canids into the eastern Gaza Strip, such as the abundance of wildlife prey attracted by solid waste dumps, sewage treatment plants, and agricultural production activities of various crops, in addition to the abundance of animal pens and poultry farms.

The wolves of northern Israel, Lebanon, and Syria are of a different subspecies, the endangered Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes). Indian wolves are intermediate in size between the Arabian wolf and the wolves of northern Eurasia and North America. Up to 7,000 Indian wolves inhabit the mountainous areas of eastern Turkey, but populations are smaller and more precarious in the eastern Mediterranean. According to the Wikipedia article on the subspecies, 80-100 Indian wolves live in the Golan Heights, where they are “well protected by the military activities there.” The same article also reports that “Israel’s conservation policies and effective law enforcement maintain a moderately sized wolf population, which radiates into neighbouring countries.”

Range of the Indian Wolf Map

It might seem odd to see military activities described protecting wildlife. Armed conflict is indeed associated with “detrimental effects on wildlife habitat and populations.” But the situation in the Golan Heights is not unprecedented. Korea’s so-called Demilitarized Zone, surrounded by heavy fortifications and littered with landmines, has become nothing less than an “accidental wildlife paradise.”

 

Wolves in the Gaza Strip? The Geography of the Coyote-Like Arabian Wolf Read More »

Immigration and Religion in Turkey’s 2023 Presidential Election

Article-Grid, Elections, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

In the Turkish presidential election of May 2023, long-term leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decisively defeated his challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, taking 52.18 percent of the vote to Kılıçdaroğlu’s 47.82 percent. The results were a surprise to many, as in April most polls had put Kılıçdaroğlu ahead, some by a commanding lead. In this election, Erdoğan’s opposition had finally forged a united front. Pronounced inflation, mounting indebtedness, and a devastating earthquake contributed to a widespread feeling that Erdoğan was headed to defeat. Yet in the end, Erdoğan received a higher percentage of the vote than he had in 2014 and only slightly less than in 2018.

Erdoğan is generally regarded as a strongly nationalist, right-wing populist with somewhat authoritarian inclinations, and for good reasons. Kılıçdaroğlu, in contrast, is a figure of the left, having been vice president of the Socialist International from 2012 to 2014. Yet on the crucial issues of immigration and refugees, Kılıçdaroğlu situated himself to the right of Erdoğan, at least in terms of how the left-right spectrum is conceptualized in the United States and Europe. As the election approached, moreover, Kılıçdaroğlu intensified his anti-immigrant rhetoric, telling his supporters that, “We will not abandon our homeland to this mentality that allowed 10 million irregular migrants to come among us.” (The figure is probably closer to five or six million, which is still a huge number for a country of 85 million.) Kılıçdaroğlu went so far as to seek and gain the support of the far-right anti-immigration politician Ümit Özdağ. A few days before the election the two men signed a seven-point protocol, one line of which stipulated that “All asylum seekers and fugitives, especially Syrians, will be sent back to their countries within one year at the latest.” At roughly the same time, Özdağ released a short film showing “a dystopian Turkey, dangerous for Turks and governed by Syrians, where speaking in Turkish is forbidden.” It quickly went viral on social media.

Did Kılıçdaroğlu’s increasingly harsh immigration stance contribute to his defeat? Some observers think so. According to Sinan Ciddi, “Kilicdaroglu’s turn to the political right appeared desperate and inconsistent, and likely turned off some Kurdish voters.” It is also noteworthy that Kilicdaroglu did not do very well in most areas with concentrated refugee populations (see the paired maps below). But overall, anti-immigrant rhetoric probably cost Kılıçdaroğlu few votes. Turkey’s massive refugee population is widely viewed as placing an intolerable burden on social order and the economy. As noted in a 2019 article, “83 percent of Turks said they view Syrian refugees negatively, while only 17 percent said they viewed them positively.”

Many observers credit Kılıçdaroğlu’s defeat instead to his lackluster campaign, a lack of genuine unity in his camp, and his neglect of core economic issues – as well as to the underhanded methods employed by Erdoğan’s campaign. Ciddi, however, claims that “the uncomfortable truth is that Erdogan won because Kemal Kilicdaroglu was his opponent,” arguing that the 74-year-old candidate’s “nomination was imposed from the top, with little to no deliberation.” A more dynamic opposition candidate who had been selected democratically, he implies, probably would have won.

Kılıçdaroğlu’s religious faith also probably contributed to his defeat. He is a member of the minority Alevi sect, a Shia offshoot that is followed by roughly 15 percent of the population of Turkey, otherwise a strongly Sunni country. Alevism is noted for its liberal and cosmopolitan orientation and for its belief that the core tenets of Islam should be interpreted in a decidedly non-literal manner. According to many strict Sunnis, Alevis do not even belong to the Muslim community. By publicly embracing his faith in the campaign, Kılıçdaroğlu took a calculated risk.  As the French political scientist Elise Massicard argues:

He broke a taboo. Until then, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s Alevi identity had been seen more as an incriminating campaign argument, as Alevis have a bad and often sulfurous reputation among a predominantly Sunni population. In recent years, they have been largely excluded from the power channels of Turkish President Recep Tayyip [Erdogan]’s AKP [Justice and Development Party] and its associated resources. This “coming out” – when everyone in Turkey knows Kılıçdaroğlu is an Alevi – is a way of reclaiming that identity and turning the stigma around.

Did such a “coming out” insure Kılıçdaroğlu’s defeat? I was told as much by a prominent Turkish intellectual, whose anonymity I respect. What is most clear, however, is that Kılıçdaroğlu performed extremely well in Alevi dominated areas. At the provincial level, his best showing was in Tunceli, the only Turkish province with an Alevi majority. (Although no numbers are provided, this is clear on the Wikipedia map of the election posted below.) The same pattern is more strikingly evident on the Electoral Geography 2.0 district-level map. Yet as this map also shows, Kılıçdaroğlu’s margin of victory was even larger in a few districts located far from Tunceli. Some of these showings, however, are explicable on the same religious grounds. Kılıçdaroğlu scored an overwhelming victory, for example, in Damal in the far northwest, and Damal is a district “populated by Alevi Turkmens.” But at the same time, Kılıçdaroğlu did not do well in many areas in Anatolia with sizable Alevi minorities, which might indicate strong anti-Alevi sentiments among their majority populations.

We shall examine other geographical patterns in the 2023 Turkish election in the next GeoCurrents post.

Immigration and Religion in Turkey’s 2023 Presidential Election Read More »

Turkey’s Dependence on Russian Energy, and Its Recent Natural Gas Discoveries

Article-Grid, Economic Geography, Energy, Russia, Ukraine, and Caucasus, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

Turkey (officially, Türkiye) is an energy-poor country. Roughly 85% of its energy supply comes from fossil fuels, roughly equally divided among coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal is mined domestically and imported, but almost all of Turkey’s natural gas and oil comes from other countries. Russia supplies roughly half of its natural gas. Unlike most NATO countries, Turkey has not placed sanctions on Russia, and as a result its natural gas imports continue unabated.

Turkey also figures prominently in Russia’s global energy strategy. Two major pipelines transport Russian natural gas to Turkey, one of which (TurkStream) was recently completed (2020). Moscow and Ankara have hoped to turn Turkey into a major natural gas hub, allowing Russia to export gas to southern Europe without having to move it across Ukraine. The Ukraine War has complicated but not undermined such plans. As recently reported by Natural Gas Intelligence, “Russia is turning to Turkey as a potential natural gas hub partner with a new sense of urgency to find new export outlets for volumes left stranded by damages to the Nord Stream pipelines in September.” The Russian-Turkish energy partnership extends beyond natural gas. In 2021, Russia was Turkey’s second largest supplier of coal, following Colombia. Turkey’s first nuclear power plant (Akkuyu), has been jointly built by the Russian firm Atomstroexport and the Turkish construction company Özdoğu; it is expected to come online in 2023.  Financing has been almost entirely provided by Russian investors.

Political tensions between Russia and Turkey have periodically intruded on their energy collaboration. Most recently, Ankara irritated Moscow by asking for a 25 percent discount on natural gas payments and requesting that all payments be delayed until 2024 due to domestic economic problems. Building a Turkish hub for Russian gas exports also faces external economic and geopolitical obstacles, particularly from other NATO countries. As recently noted by Natural Gas Intelligence:

A Russia/Turkey gas hub would have to secure financing for the billions of dollars needed to construct new subsea pipelines under the Black Sea, which is currently in a war zone. Without access to Western technology and financing, a new pipeline project could take years to build.

Turkey’s energy prospects, however, have recently been transformed by substantial natural gas discoveries in its Black Sea Exclusive Economic Zone. In the final week of 2022, an estimated 170 billion-cubic-meter gas reserve was found at the Çaycuma-1 field. Combined with previous recent discoveries in the Sakarya field, Turkey’s natural gas reserves have been elevated to 710 billion cubic meters. Gas from these fields should become available sometime in 2023, alleviating Turkey’s energy crunch. Discoveries to date, however, are not adequate to meet long-term needs, as the country consumes 50 to 60 billion cubic meters of gas every year. To put recent Turkish discoveries in global context, Russia has proven natural gas reserves of some 50,000 cubic kilometers.

Coal remains one of Turkey’s major energy sources, thwarting its ability to decrease its carbon emissions. Turkey’s domestic coal industry is highly subsidized in order to reduce natural gas imports. Lignite, the least energy-dense and most polluting form of coal, predominates. Coal production surged from 2015 to 2019 but has declined since then. To meet the country’s growing demand, imports have surged in recent years. The war in Ukraine, however, has disrupted supplies and increased costs, generating economic hardship. Particularly hard hit is Turkey’s large and energy-intensive cement industry. CemNet reported in March 2022 that the Turkish cement industry was facing an “imminent crisis.”  In 2014, Turkey was the world’s fifth largest cement producer, following only China, India, the United States, and Iran.

Turkey has made relatively modest investments in renewable energy. Hydropower has long provided roughly 20 percent of its electricity, but recent droughts have reduced the supply. Turkey’s has good climatological potential for solar and wind, and wind power is now growing, providing about 10 percent of the country’s electricity. In 2021 the energy think tank Ember reported that “it is now cheaper to build new wind or solar for power generation in Turkey than running even the most efficient hard coal power plant that relies on coal imports.” Ember’s analysts thus foresee an accelerating transition to renewable power, with a “win-win-win situation” resulting in “lower import bills, lower emissions, [and a] lower carbon levy by the EU.” Such hopes may be overstated. Energy intermittency and the lack of economically feasible storage still poses a major obstacle to solar and wind energy development in Turkey – as in the rest of the world.

Turkey’s Dependence on Russian Energy, and Its Recent Natural Gas Discoveries Read More »

Are the Kurds Linked to the Bronze-Age Hurrians? Is Tattooing Evidence of This Connection?

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Ethnicity, Historical Geography, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

The Kurdish national myth links the origin of the ethnic group to the ancient Medes, an Iranian people who supposedly carved out a large empire that was quickly supplanted by that of the much better-known (and closely related) Persians in the 6th century BCE. As the Wikipedia article on the Kurds notes:

Many Kurds consider themselves descended from the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, and even use a calendar dating from 612 BC, when the Assyrian capital of Nineveh was conquered by the Medes. The claimed Median descent is reflected in the words of the Kurdish national anthem: “We are the children of the Medes and Kai Khosrow.”

Few if any scholars give credence to this theory. The poorly documented language of the ancient Medes does seem to have been closely related to Kurdish, with both languages placed on the Northwestern side-branch of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language tree. But the Median language does not seem to be any more closely related to Kurdish that it is to any of the other modern languages on the same branch. More to the point, historians increasingly doubt whether the Medes ever created a coherent state, let alone a vast empire. What little is known about their political organization comes from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, with Assyrian cuneiform archives providing a little additional information. Herodotus certainly assigned a prominent position to the Medes, but otherwise evidence about their geopolitical role is essentially lacking.

The Kurdish emphasis on their supposed Median progenitors is not surprising. In ethno-nationalist discourse, powerful and illustrious peoples from bygone eras are often enshrined in an ancestral position to bolster feelings of national pride. Such self-serving stories usually have little historical support and are therefore regarded with suspicion or outright contempt by most impartial scholars.

But if there is no solid evidence that the Kurds are the descendants of the ancient Meads, that does not necessarily mean that they have no cultural, historical, or genetic roots in ancient ethnic formations. Scholarship on such topics is often precarious, however, as the evidence is generally murky and national ideologies tend to intrude. But as long as they are based on some reasonable evidence, such “primordialist” ideas should not be rejected out of hand. Many of them warrant further inquiry, regardless of whether they seem farfetched.

To my mind, the most intriguing thesis on ancient Kurdish roots is found in the early works of Michael Mehrdad Izadi, one of the world’s most preeminent historical and cultural cartographers (his map collection, found at Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 Project, is a cartographic treasure trove). Born to a Kurdish father and Belgian mother, Izadi has deep and abiding interests in the Kurdish people. Some of his early writings on this topic can be found at Kurdistanica.com. Here he expounds his thesis of partial Kurdish descent from the ancient Hurrians, a Bronze-Age people who were associated with a powerful state (or empire) called Mitanni. Although the Hurrians, unlike the Kurds, were not an Indo-European people, some of their leaders, experts in chariot warfare, evidently were; their personal names, and even some of their deities, link them to the Indic (or Indo-Aryan) branch of Indo-European language family.

If Izady’s thesis is correct, the Kurds would have originated from an amalgamation of the ancient Hurrians and more powerful, mostly male, Indo-European-speaking intruders (initially speaking an Indo-Aryan language and later speaking one or more Iranian language). In global historical terms, this scenario fits into a common pattern. The languages of more military powerful peoples often supplant those of less powerful peoples, but other cultural aspects of the original group often survive with relatively little change. This is what Izady sees when he peers into the distant Kurdish past:

The legacy of the Hurrians to the present culture of the Kurds is fundamental. It is manifest in the realm of Kurdish religion, mythology, material and martial arts, and even the genetics. Nearly three-quarters of Kurdish clan names and roughly half of topographical and urban names are also of Hurrian origins, ….  Mythological and religious symbols present in the art of the later Hurrian dynasties, such as the Mannaeans and Kassites of eastern Kurdistan, and the Lullus of the southeast, present in part what can still be observed in the Kurdish ancient religion of Yazdanism, better-known today by its various denominations as Alevism, Yezidism,and Yarisanism (Ahl-i Haqq).

Izady’s interpretation of Kurdish origins and religious beliefs, it must be noted, has been rejected by many experts in the field. The Wikipedia article on Izady includes some crudely dismissive comments, albeit made by some equally controversial scholars. In the long run, it is usually best to neither embrace nor dismiss evidence-based but non-mainstream interpretations of deep historical processes. Most of our key theories in both the natural and human sciences, after all, were once roundly rejected for contravening the established consensus.

When the language of an elite population replaces the language of a subordinated group, traces of the older language often persist in the form of vocabulary elements, sounds, and even grammatical structures. If Izady’s thesis is correct, one might expect to find such a Hurrian “substratatum” in the modern Kurdish language(s) (or, more precisely, a Hurro-Urartian substratum, as Hurrian’s only known relative was the language of the Iron Age Kingdom of Urartu in what is now eastern Turkey and Armenia). As it turns out, evidence does exist for such linguistic traces. Several years ago, the blogsite Within the Lands of Kurda ran a three-part series on this topic, entitled “The Hurro-Urartian Substratum in Kurdish.” Each of these posts is worth quoting:

It has long been shown by scholars that significant portion of Kurdish toponymy originates from Hurro-Urartian; examples are ”Barzani” which was name of a Hurrian god …

Indeed, there are hardly any cases where there is not a ”native” [i.e. Hurro-Urartian] Kurdish equivalent for the superimposed Irano-Kurdish words.

As can be seen, Kurdish language appears to be a creole language formed after an amalgamation of Hurro-Urartian and Iranic languages. The Hurro-Urartian layer, showing itself as an older substratum in which Urartian is stronger, while the Iranic layer, which began undoubtedly with the Scytho-Cimmerian invasion of Urartu emerges as a superstratum. The Iranic layer was further intensified with a wave of clearly identifiable Middle Persian loanwords under the Sassanid period, during which, Iranic aristocrats played a prominent role in local affairs

The author received some harsh criticism, however, in the comments section of the blog, particularly regarding the idea that Kurdish is a creole language. Linguists have very strict rules for determining such matters, and the author probably took a step too far. All that I can conclude from my own cursory investigation is that a major Hurrian-Urartian substratum in Kurdish as an intriguing possibility that deserves further inquiry.

Perhaps the most interesting line of evidence for the Hurrian roots of the Kurdish people comes from the realm of tattooing. Tattoos are haram, or forbidden under Islamic law, but Muslim Kurds – particularly women – have nonetheless maintained this ancient practice to this day, although it does seem to be slowly disappearing. Traditional Kurdish tattoos, primarily placed on the hands and face, are called deq. They are based on an elaborate symbolic system, sometimes deemed a “secret language.” Izady sees a clear Hurrian linkage here as well:

It is fascinating to recognize the origin of many tattooing motifs still used by the traditional Kurds on their bodies as replicas of those which appear on the Hurrian figurines. One such is the combination that incorporates serpent, sun disc, dog and comb/rain motifs. In fact, some of these Hurrian tattoo motifs are also present in the religious decorative arts of the Yezidi Kurds, as found prominently engraved to the wall at the great shrine at Lalish.

Regardless of any connections to the ancient Hurrians, deq tattooing is a fascinating topic in its own right. Several recent articles have focused on this endangered cultural tradition. I will  conclude this post with quotations from two of these publications. First, from The Bajer:

DEQ is a secret language, mainly among women. … In some cultures, tattoos stand for religion, power, and joy; others believe the practice of DEQ has therapeutic power. According to some women I have interviewed, DEQ is a reminder of loss, a way to immortalize their loved ones. They keep essential memories constantly in mind with powerful symbols on apparent parts of the body, such as the face, feet, arms, hands, and chest.

DEQ differs from the modern tattoo with its unique ingredients and recipe, which varies across different ethnic groups. DEQ tattoo ingredients include sheet metal soot or ash, coal dust, milk from a lactating mother who has weaned a female baby, which is believed to make the tattoo stick permanently, and liquid from an animal’s gallbladder. The application of DEQ includes embroidering the mixture into the skin through one to three needles.

Second, from Daily Sabah:

Deq symbols have different connotations but most of them are believed to protect women from evil forces. They are said to bring good health, cure illnesses and be associated with fertility and tribal affiliations. The figure of an eye is said to divert the evil eye, while an image of a gazelle brings luck. The figure of the sun or the moon refers to an endless and healthy life and an illustration of a millipede is associated with good housekeeping. For beautification, the figure of the moon or a star is preferred. The common “V” symbol is a tribal identifier. Certain geometrical figures or animal images refer to fertility. “Deq” is seen as an accessory, something that elderly women in Turkey’s southeast proudly show. Jodi Hilton, an American photojournalist, visited Syrians who have been displaced by the DAESH [ISIS] siege and now live at refugee camps in Turkey. There, she documented some of the last-remaining tattooed women from the Syrian town of Kobani.

Are the Kurds Linked to the Bronze-Age Hurrians? Is Tattooing Evidence of This Connection? Read More »

Iran’s Kurdish Population: Anti-Regime in the Northwest; Pro-Regime in the Northeast

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Elections, Ethnicity, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

Many maps of the current Iran protest movement have been published and posted, showing both cumulative and daily events. Although such maps are highly useful, the patterns that they indicate are not easily discerned. Protests have been happening in so many places that a map of their occurrences approximates a population density map of the country (see the excellent population density map by Michael Izady posted below). Close analysis, however, shows a distinct concentration of protests in the historically Kurdish region in northwestern Iran (see especially first map posted below). This is no surprise. Mahsa Amini was herself Kurdish, and Iran’s Kurdish population has long been noted for its relatively liberal and anti-regime sentiments.

Protests have been relatively sparse, however, in North Khorasan province in northeastern Iran, which is almost half Kurdish. North Khorasan is not part of historical Kurdistan; Kurds were deported from their homeland to this region in the early modern period by Safavid shahs who wanted their help in protecting their empire against Turkmen and Uzbek pastoral peoples from Central Asia. Evidently, pro-Kurdish and anti-regime sentiments are much less pronounced here than they are in the solidly Kurdish regions of the northwest. Population distribution probably plays a role. Although many of the Kurds in North Khorasan live in Kurdish villages, the province’s cities are ethnically mixed, counting many Farsi-speakers and Turkmens. This mixing has perhaps diminished ethnic identity among the region’s urban Kurds.

Electoral returns, however, indicate that deeper factors are at play. North Khorasan, like most of the rest of northeastern Iran, is a conservative area that gives most of its votes to hardline, pro-regime candidates. Reformist candidates would not do so poorly in this province if they received widespread support from the local Kurdish population. Posted below are three Wikipedia maps of relative fair Iranian presidential elections, all of which show moderate/reformist candidates winning in the historically Kurdish northwest yet doing poorly in heavily Kurdish North Khorasan. The 2001 map, which shows vote percentages at the district level, best illustrates this pattern. As can be seen, the most heavily Kurdish areas of the northwest gave more than 84 percent of their votes to Mohammad Khatami, the incumbent champion of relatively free expression, civil society, and a “dialogue among civilizations.” North Khorasan, however, gave Khatami fewer than 39 percent of its votes. Intriguingly, nearby areas to the south and east, with much smaller Kurdish populations, gave Khatami a significantly larger share of their votes.

The relative conservatism of Iran’s northeastern Kurds is an interesting phenomenon that has received little attention in the English-language literature. I can only wonder whether Iranian scholars, pundits, and political activists have examined it.

Iran’s Kurdish Population: Anti-Regime in the Northwest; Pro-Regime in the Northeast Read More »

Iran’s Striking Decline in Religiosity

Article-Grid, Protest Movements, Religion, Southwest Asia and North Africa /

The GAMMAN survey on religious beliefs in Iran, discussed in yesterday’s post, has some interesting and unexpected results. According to conventional sources, over 90 percent of Iran’s people follow Shia Islam; according to GAMAAN, only around a third of the Iran people actually believe Shia doctrine. Most of the rest are supposedly either non-religious or religiously heterodox in one way or another. If these results are accurate, Iran is much more similar to Europe in terms of religiosity than it is to most other Middle Eastern countries. Although the GAAMAN results may be exaggerated, it is clear that many Iranians have turned away from religion. They have done in part because of the brutality and incompetence of their country’s theocratic government. Tensions with the Arabic-speaking world also seem to play a role. Many Iranians stereotype Arabs as prone to religious extremism, and some blame them for politicizing Islam and thus contributing to the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution. This attitude puts pressure on Iran’s own Arab minority, and in turn pushes them to respond. As reported in the Wikipedia article on Iran’s 2016 pro-monarchical Cyrus the Great protests:

Despite the anti-Arab slogans chanted by some, a perception by many Iranians that Arab cultural dominance has entered Iran through the government’s political Islam, Iranian, Arabs, traveling from as far west as Khuzestan, gathered in support of the protest, chanting slogans in Arabic in support of indigenous minorities and the use of their native languages, which has often been repressed by the Iranian government in favor of Persia.

The GAMAAN survey puts Iran’s Sunni Muslim minority at five percent of the total population, which is similar to the conventional figure. If these figures are correct, Sunni religious beliefs in Iran have not appreciably declined, unlike those of the Shia community. As can be seen on Michael Izady’s map of religion in Iran, Sunni Islam is followed mostly by members of ethnic minorities: Baluchs in the southeast, Turkmens in the northeast, and Kurds in the northwest. Note also that Izady pegs Iran’s Sunni population at 11 percent. Other sources suggest that it could be as high as 25 percent, a figure that, if true, is concealed by the Shia establishment. If these higher numbers are accurate and if the GAMAAN figures are also correct, then Sunni Islam has also experienced a pronounced erosion of belief in Iran. If this is indeed the case, I suspect that the drop in Sunni religiosity is most pronounced in the Kurdish northwest. The Kurds in general are a relatively secular people who are also inclined to religious heterodoxy.

The most surprising aspect of the GAMAAN survey is the prominent position of Zoroastrianism. It found that almost eight percent of Iran’s people claim to follow this faith, which had been the predominant religion of Iran before the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. According to official statistics, Iran’s Zoroastrian community is tiny: roughly 25,000 people out of a national population of almost 87 million. It is inconceivable that millions of Iranians have converted to this venerable but dwindling faith, commonly regarded as in some danger of extinction. But increasing numbers of Iranians do express solidarity with, and interest in, Zoroastrianism. They do so both to distance themselves from the Shia clerical regime and to show their loyalty to a deeply rooted version of Iranian nationalism. Zoroastrianism has also seen something of a revival among the Kurds of Iraq, and perhaps in Central Asia as well.

The Iranian government is not happy about the revival of interest in Zoroastrianism. According to a recent article in Swarajya magazine, it is “the religion that the Iranian mullahs fear the most.” Iran’s theocratic regime is also worried about Yarsan, a mystical faith with some connection to Zoroastrianism that is followed by up to one million Iranian Kurds. As IranWire recently noted, “Official report calls Yarsan religious minority a ‘security threat.’”

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