Urmia

Urmia
Climate diagram
	Temperature in ° C , precipitation in mm
	Source: wetterkontor.de

Urmia
	Urmia, photo from an airplane (west is here in the picture above).
	Urmia
	Urmia
Basic data
Country:	Iran
Province :	West Azerbaijan
Coordinates :	37 ° 33 ' N , 45 ° 4' E Coordinates: 37 ° 33 ' N , 45 ° 4' E
Height :	1324 m
Residents :	736,224 (2016)
Area code :	441
Time zone :	UTC +3: 30

Urmia ( Persian ارومیه Orūmīyeh ; Azerbaijani Urmu, Urumiyə ; Turkish Urmiye ; Kurdish ورمێ Wurmê, Urmê ; Syrian ܐܘܪܡܝܐ), meanwhile also Rezaieh (رضائیه Rezaiyeh ) is a city in northwestern Iran. The capital of the province of West Azerbaijan is located on the west bank of Lake Urmia, around 800 kilometers northwest of the state capital Tehran .

At the 1996 census, Urmia had 435,200 inhabitants. In 2006 the number of inhabitants was estimated at 623,143 and in 2016 it was 736,224. The majority of the population consider themselves Azerbaijanis . There are also Kurds , Persians and Christian Armenians as well as Chaldo-Assyrians (also called Aramaeans), who belong to various Syrian churches , especially the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East .

The name Urmia is derived from the Syriac Aramaic words ur 'city' and mia 'water' and means 'city by the water'.

Urmia is a university location of the Azad Islamic University , whose Institute of Agriculture is internationally known. The city is located in a fertile area where fruits such as apples and tobacco are grown. Urmia Airport is 15 kilometers north .

history

The birthplace of Zarathustra , the founder of the ancient Persian Zoroastrian religion , was, according to some reports, near Urmia; but that is controversial.

For many centuries, Urmia belonged to the various Iranian dynasties until the Oghuz conquered the area in the 11th century. In 1184 the Seljuks conquered the city. The Ottomans also controlled the city several times.

Urmia has been the seat of Christian (arch) bishops of the “Church of the East” since the 12th century at the latest .

Later a 'Urmia Khanate' was established. In 1759 the Urmia Khanate attacked the Karabakh Khanate under Khan Fatali . With his 30,000-strong army he was able to subjugate the Armenian princes of Jraberd and Talysh . After a six-month siege of Panahabad, Fatali withdrew again.

In 1835 a Christian Protestant mission was set up by the Americans, later a Catholic one by the Lazarists . With their help, the regional New Syrian dialect became a written language.

The city was attacked by Kurdish leader Sheikh Ubeydallah in 1880 .

The Christians of various confessions made in 1900 more than 40% of the urban population. The East Syrian non-Catholics had three bishops in the district in 1913: Eliya of Tergawar (in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church), Dinkha of Tis and Ephrem of Urmia.

During the First World War, troops from the Ottoman Empire, with Kurdish and Iranian support, committed massacres of the Christian civilian population - the genocide of the Assyrians and Arameans . Bishop Mar Dinkha von Tis, who worked for the "Church of the East" in Urmia, which was independent of Rome, lost his life on February 23, 1915. In July 1918, the Catholic Chaldean Archbishop of Urmia, Thomas Audo , became the papal delegate Jacques-Emile Sontag and many more killed, kidnapped or forced to flee. Only a few returned or joined them, so that Christians today form a religious minority.

The Archdiocese of Urmia-Salamas of the Chaldean Catholic Church exists to the present day (approx. 4500 believers). The Urmia bishopric of the Assyrians united with the Russian Orthodox Church has perished.

traffic

The city is to the still 2,016 railway Maragha-Urmia be connected in Maragha from the railway line Tehran-Tabriz branches. The new route between Maragha and Mahabad was put into operation in 2015.

Climate table

Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Urmia

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Max. Temperature ( ° C )	1.7	3.7	10.2	16.5	22.0	27.4	31.2	30.6	26.9	19.5	12.4	5.7	O	17.4
Min. Temperature (° C)	-7.2	-5.8	-0.5	4.7	8.7	12.4	16.2	15.5	11.1	6.2	1.1	-3.4	O	5

Precipitation ( mm )	32	32	50	59	47	15th	4th	3	4th	31	37	33	Σ	347

Hours of sunshine ( h / d )	3.7	4.7	5.5	6.6	8.7	11.5	11.7	11.0	9.8	7.2	5.5	3.8	O	7.5

Humidity ( % )	76	74	65	60	58	51	48	48	49	60	70	74	O	61

Source: wetterkontor.de

sons and daughters of the town

Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930–1989), chairman of the Kurdistan-Iran Democratic Party from 1973 to 1989
Saeid Marouf (* 1985), Iranian national volleyball player

literature

Jean Maurice Fiey: Pour un Oriens Christianus Novus. Repertoire des diocèses syriaques orientaux et occidentaux . Steiner, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-515-05718-8 , pp. 141 f . (French).
HL Murre-van den Berg: From a Spoken to a Written Language. The Introduction and Development of Literary Urmia Aramaic in the Nineteenth Century (= Publication of the "De Goeje Fund" . Volume 28 ). NINO, Leiden 1999 (English).
Wilhelm Baum , Dietmar W. Winkler : The Apostolic Church of the East. History of the so-called "Nestorians" . Klagenfurt 2000 (English: The Church of the East. A concice history . London / New York 2000.).
James Farwell Coakley: Manuscripts for sale: Urmia, 1890-2 . In: Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies . tape 20 , no. 2 , 2006, p. 3-17 (English).
Martin Tamcke : A letter from Lazarus Jaure from the spring of 1916 about the events in Urmia . In: Martin Tamcke, Andreas Heinz (Hrsg.): The Suroye and their environment . Lit-Verlag, Münster 2005, p. 59-72 .