"The Phantom Emirate of Ahwaz" Topic

"The Emirate of Ahwaz should join the Gulf Cooperation Council. Anywhere else, that headline would cap a boring story about regional integration. But in the Middle East, it's the kind of provocation that boils blood. For Ahwaz is the Arab, oil-rich southwest of Iran.

It's okay if you've never heard of Ahwaz. The region has a few aliases that are perhaps slightly less obscure. Herodotus and Xenophon called it Susiana, after its capital Susa. The region is mentioned about two dozen times in the Bible as Elam, often in the wrathy, smitey style typical of the Old Testament (Jer. 49:38: "And I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from thence the king and the princes, saith the Lord.")

Its oldest name still reverberates in Khuzestan, the official Persian name of the present-day Iranian province. Due to the continuous influx of Arab tribes, it has also been known as Arabistan since at least the 17th century. The Arabic name Ahwaz contains a reference to the area's original Huzi (or Khuzi, or Susi) people. That name has in turn been appropriated as Ahvaz, the Persian name of Khuzestan's capital, otherwise distinguished as the city with the worst air pollution in the world…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand