IRANATION · KNOW IRAN BETTER

Six chapters. One country.
Nine thousand years.

A short reader for the curious. Each chapter is written to be read in four minutes and footnoted for those who want to go further. Everything here is free and licensed for academic reuse.

6 CHAPTERS · 24 MIN TOTAL
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
9,000
years of continuous settlement on the Persian plateau
88M
people — a young, literate, urban population
26
UNESCO World Heritage sites across the country
79
living languages spoken in daily life
CHAPTER 01 · 4 MIN

A land, older
than memory.

The plateau between two seas, ringed by the Alborz and the Zagros — inhabited without break for ninety centuries. Before empires, before the wheel, there was already a people here, cooking, counting, burying their dead.

Chapter 02 · A people, not a regime

The country dissolves
into its people.

Eighty-eight million Iranians, a diaspora of seven-plus million across every continent. Tehran alone is the size of New York, Chicago, and Houston combined.

TEHRANMASHHADISFAHANSHIRAZTABRIZ
All chapters

The reader.

  1. § 0104:00A land, older than memoryGeography, climate, the plateauREAD →
  2. § 0204:00A people, not a regimeCitizens, diaspora, everyday lifeREAD →
  3. § 0304:00A literature that taught the world to feelFerdowsi, Hafez, Rumi, ForoughREAD →
  4. § 0404:00A cuisine written in saffron & sourRegional tables from Tabriz to BandarREAD →
  5. § 0504:00A music built on the dastgāhClassical, folk, undergroundREAD →
  6. § 0604:00A century of protest and poetryModern history, in their own wordsREAD →
Further reading

Beyond these pages.

Shahnameh — A field guide
Ferdowsi’s epic in 12 entry points.
A kitchen atlas of Iran
Regional cooking, from Gilan to Bandar.
The dastgāh, explained
Classical Persian music as an audio primer.