04/13/2012
City of the Day - Urmia, Iran
The city lies at an altitude of 1,330 m above sea level on the Shahar Chay river (City River). Urmia is the 10th most populated city in Iran. The population is mainly Azeri, with Kurdish and Assyrian Christian minorities.
Urmia is situated on a fertile plain called Urmia Plain, on western side of Lake Urmia; and eastern side of Turkish border and marginal range of mountains.
Urmia is the trade center for a fertile agricultural region where fruit (especially Apple and Grape) and To***co are grown. An important town by the 9th cent., Urmia was seized by the Seljuk Turks (1184), and later occupied a number of times by the Ottoman Turks. Urmia was the seat of the first U.S. Christian mission in Iran (1835). Around AD 1900, Christians made up more than 40% of the city's population, however, most of the Christians fled in 1918.
Urmia (Azerbaijani: Urmu, Urmiyə, ارومیه ; Persian: ارومیه; Kurdish: Wirmê; Syriac: ܐܘܪܡܝܐ), variously translitterated as Oroumiyeh, Orūmīyeh and Urūmiyeh, also formerly known (during the Pahlavi Dynasty, 1925–1979) as Rezaeyeh, Rezā’īyeh, Rezâiyye (Persian: رضائیه) [2] is a city in and the capita…