Salmas

Salmas is a city in the Central District of Salmas County, West Azerbaijan province, Iran, and serves as capital of the county. It is located northwest of Lake Urmia, near Turkey.
At the 2006 census, its population was 79,560 in 19,806 households. The following census in 2011 counted 88,196 people in 23,751 households. The latest census in 2016 showed a population of 92,811 people in 27,115 households. According to the 2019 census, the city's population is 127,864. The majority of the population is composed of Azerbaijanis and Kurds with some Armenians, Assyrians, and Jews.
Name
The original name of Salmas was Dilman, which is probably related to the Daylamites who sometimes controlled the region. In the 19th-century, it was known as Shapur.
History
Salmas's archaeological relics, which date as far back as the Urartian kingdom (860 BC–590 BC), attest to its long human habitation. Salmas was part of the Armenian province of Nor Shirakan (also known as Persarmenia), which was inhabited by Armenians. A rock relief erected during the reign of the Sasanian monarch Ardashir I is located in the Khan-Takhti village near Salmas. This rock relief illustrates two akin scenarios in which a standing man receives a ring from a man riding a horse.
The standing men's names are subject to interpretation, but the horsemen are typically considered to be Ardashir I and his son and heir, Shapur I. The German orientalist Ferdinand Justi (died 1907) theorized that the relief is meant to show the Armenians' gratitude to Ardashir I and Shapur I, something which some later scholars supported. The Iranologist Ehsan Shavarebi considers this theory to be "logical" but stresses that "we need more investigations on the event depicted on the relief." He suggests that the rock relief is meant to illustrate the probable peace made between Ardashir I and the Kingdom of Armenia. When the Arsacid house of Armenia was abolished and the country was made a Sasanian province in 428, Nor Shirakan and Paytakaran were incorporated into the Sasanian province of Adurbadagan.
Two archeological sites showing inhabitation during the Sasanian era has been found near Salmas. One of them is known as Haftan Tepe, which contains Sasanian-era pottery akin to those found in Takht-e Soleyman. The other is called Qazun Basi, located to the south of Salmas. They were likely used as military and administrative hubs.
Salmas was held by the Kurdish Rawadid dynasty and frequented by the Hadhabani tribe in the 10-11th centuries. Al-Maqdisi described it as a Kurdish town who had built a wall around the city.
Another Mention of the city was made in 1281, when its Assyrian bishop made the trip to the consecration of the Assyrian Church of the East patriarch Yaballaha in Baghdad.
In the Battle of Salmas on 17–18 September 1429, the Kara Koyunlu were defeated by Shah Rukh who was consolidating Timurid holdings west of Lake Urmia. However, the area was retaken by the Kara Koyunlu in 1447 after the death of Shah Rukh.
In March 1915 Cevdet Bey ordered 800 Assyrians of Salmas to be killed. Mar Shimun, the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East was murdered by the Kurdish chieftain Simko Shikak in Salmas in March 1918.<ref>O'Shea, Maria T. (2004) "Trapped Between the Map and Reality: Geography and Perceptions of Kurdistan Routledge, New York, page 100, </ref>
Around the advent of the 1910s, Imperial Russia started to station infantry and Cossacks in Salmas. The Russians retreated at the time of Enver Pasha's offensive in the Iran-Caucasus region, but returned in early 1916, and stayed up to the wake of the Russian Revolution.
Geography
Salmas in early atlases
The atlases below are some of the earliest maps to have been ever sketched to show the territory and originality of the name of Salmas and are some of the strongest documents providing proofs to some basic facts about the city including its existence and identity.
Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, using the isotherm, Salmas features a continental climate (Dsa''), and is thus one of the few cities in the Middle East and one of the 6 in the country with this categorization.
Notable people
Stepanos V of Salmast (d. 1567) – Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church
Yohannan Gabriel (1758–1833) – Chaldean Catholic bishop of Salmas
Nicholas I Zaya (d. 1855) – Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans
Raffi (1835–1888) – Armenian novelist
Paul Bedjan (1838–1920) – Chaldean Catholic priest and orientalist
Abraham Guloyan (1893–1983) – Politician
Murad Kostanyan (1902–1989) – Actor
Hossein Sadaghiani (1903-1982) - The first ever manager and head coach of Iran national football team (1941-1951) and the first ever Iranian soccer player to play for foreign clubs (R. Charleroi S.C. and Fenerbahce SK) and in a European league
Ardeshir Ovanessian (c. 1905–1990) – Communist leader
Timur Lakestani (1915–2011) – aka Father of Iranian Electrical Industry
Jafar Salmasi (1918–2000) – weightlifter
Emmanuel Agassi (1930–2021) – boxer and father of Andre Agassi
Hadi Asghari (b. 1981) – football player
Gallery
See also
1930 Salmas earthquake
Nor Shirakan
Battle of Dilman
Assyrian homeland
Khoy Khanate
References
Sources
External links
Salmas famous people
"Salmas Map – Satellite Images of Salmas", Maplandia
Cities in West Azerbaijan Province
Populated places in Salmas County
Mass murder in 1915
Kurdish settlements in West Azerbaijan Province