Article: Introduction.(Iran)(Critical Essay)

THE "IRANIAN AREA" IS geographically cohesive, though its exact boundaries are rendered fuzzy by history and ethnology; conceptually, the term is vaguer, yet better merited. The highlands stretching across the Iranian plateau from the Zagros and the Caucasus to the Pamirs knot (spreading into the Hindu Kush, Karakorams, and Tien Shan), together with their alluvial plains (Mesopotamia, the Punjab, and especially the Oxus basin) have provided the grazing grounds of nomadic empires, the irrigated fields of city states, and above all the roads of merchants (traversed also by armies and refugees) linking Syria, India, Tibet, and China. The popular notion of the Silk Road is ...

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