Khorramshahr خرَمشَهر (Persian) المحمرة (Arabic) |
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city | |
Coordinates: 30°26′23″N 48°09′59″E / 30.43972°N 48.16639°ECoordinates: 30°26′23″N 48°09′59″E / 30.43972°N 48.16639°E | |
Country | Iran |
Province | Khuzestan |
County | Khorramshahr |
Bakhsh | Central |
Population (2006) | |
• Total | 123,866 |
Time zone | IRST (UTC+3:30) |
• Summer (DST) | IRDT (UTC+4:30) |
Khorramshahr (Persian: خرمشهر [xoræmˈʃæhɾ], Arabic: المحمرة, also Romanized as Khorramchahre and Khurramshahr; formerly known as Mohammerah and also known as Khorram Shahr Ābādān and Khūnīn Shahr; formerly, Al-khoramshahr, khunin shahr, and khoramshahr) is a city in and the capital of Khorramshahr County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 123,866, in 26,385 families.
Khorramshahr is a port city located approximately 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) north of Abadan. The city extends to the right bank of the Shatt Al Arab waterway near its confluence with the Haffar arm of the Karun river. The city was a ghost town in the 1986 census, because of the Iran-Iraq War,but now it is a fairly big city again, as it was before the war.
In ancient times, the area where the city exists today was under the waters of the Persian Gulf, before becoming a part of the vast marshlands and the tidal flats at the mouth of the Karun River. The small town known as Piyan, and later Bayan appeared in the area no sooner than the late Parthian time in the 1st. Century AD. Whether or not this was located at the where Khurramshahr is today, is highly debatable.
During the Islamic centuries, the Daylamite Buwayhid king, Panah Khusraw Adud ad-Dawlah ordered the digging of a canal to join Karun River (which at the time emptied independently into the Persian Gulf through the Bahmanshir channel, to the Shatt al-Arab (the joint estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known in Iran as Arvand Rud). The extra water made the joint estuary more reliably navigable. The channel thus created was known as the Haffar, Arabic for "excavated," "dugout," which exactly described what the channel was. The Haffar soon became the main channel of the Karun, as it is in the present day.