Khorasan

Khorasan is a historical eastern region in the Iranian Plateau in West and Central Asia that encompasses western and northern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, the eastern halves of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, and portions of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The extent of the region referred to as Khorasan varied over time. In its stricter historical sense, it comprised mostly of Afghanistan, the present territories of northeastern Iran and southern parts of Central Asia, extending as far as the Amu Darya (Oxus) river. However, the name has often been used in a loose sense to include a wider region that included most of Transoxiana (encompassing Bukhara and Samarqand in present-day Uzbekistan), extended westward to the Caspian coast and to the Dasht-e Kavir southward to Sistan, and eastward to the Pamir Mountains. Greater Khorasan is today sometimes used to distinguish the larger historical region from the former Khorasan Province of Iran (1906–2004), which roughly encompassed the western portion of the historical Greater Khorasan. In recent scholarship, Greater Khorasan refers to an extensive interaction sphere in Central Asia during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. The emergence of complex societies during this period is observed especially during 2400–1500 BCE in southern Central Asia. Thus, the rise of the Greater Khorasan Civilization (GKC) of Bronze Age is being considered. But this interaction sphere of Central Asia goes back even further as far as the early fourth millennium BCE, for example at important sites such as Tepe Hissar in northeastern Iran. The name Khorāsān is Persian (from Middle Persian Xwarāsān, sp. xwlʾsʾn', meaning "where the sun arrives from" or "the Eastern Province"). The name was first given to the eastern province of Persia (Ancient Iran) during the Sasanian Empire and was used from the late Middle Ages in distinction to neighbouring Transoxiana. The Sassanian name Xwarāsān...