Bushehr province

Bushehr Province

استان بوشهر
Bushehr Province استان بوشهر
Arabic and Turkic
HDI (2017)	0.812; very high · 9th

Bushehr Province (Persian: استان بوشهر, romanized: Ostān-e Būšehr) is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the south of the country, with a long coastline on the Persian Gulf. The city of Bushehr is the provincial capital. At the 2006 census, the province's population was 886,490 in 188,762 households.^[5] The following census in 2011 counted 1,032,949 people in 246,742 households.^[6] By the time the 2016 census was conducted, the province's population had risen to 1,163,400 inhabitants in 321,826 households.^[7]

The province was made a part of Region 2 upon the division of the provinces into five regions, solely for coordination and development purposes, on 22 June 2014.^[1]

Administrative Divisions

Bushehr Province Population History
Administrative Divisions	2006^[5]	2011^[6]	2016^[7]
Asaluyeh County¹	—	—	73,958
Bushehr County	216,087	258,906	298,594
Dashtestan County	222,226	229,425	252,047
Dashti County	71,285	77,530	92,319
Deylam County	29,079	31,570	34,828
Deyr County	48,488	52,523	60,612
Ganaveh County	82,937	90,493	102,484
Jam County	37,999	51,446	70,051
Kangan County	95,113	170,774	107,801
Tangestan County	63,276	70,282	76,706
Total	866,490	1,032,949	1,163,400
¹Separated from Kangan County in 2012^[8]

Cities

According to the 2016 census, 835,955 people (over 71% of the population of Bushehr province) live in the following cities:

Bandar-e Deyr 24,083, Bank 14,126, Bardestan 7,112, Borazjan 110,567, Bord Khun 5,333, Bushehr 223,504, Bushkan 2,135, Choghadak 18,702, Dalaki 6,436, Delvar 4,442, Dowrahak 4,852, Imam Hassan 2,731, Jam 31,436, Kaki 12,119, Kalameh 2,463, Kharg 8,193, Khormoj 60,942, Nakhl Taqi 18,837, Riz 3,282, Sadabad 8,248, Shabankareh 7,900, Shonbeh 2,747, Tang-e Eram 3,242, and Vahdatiyeh 11,222.^[7]

Demographics

Language

A vast majority of the population speak Persian (mostly the Fars dialect) as first language with a minority of Arabic speakers.^[9]^[10]

During the

Qajar, this part of Bushehr province was called Zanganeh bloc.^[11] The Zangeneh tribe have largely been assimilated and have adopted the local Persian and Turkic

languages and are city-dwellers.

Bushehr linguistic composition^[12]
language			percent
Persian			71.31%
Arabic			9.59%
Turkic			0.65%
Other, mixed			18.45%

Religion

The vast majority of Bushehr's population are Shia Muslims, with a minority of Sunnis comprising 8.5% of the province's population.^[13]

History

The Greeks knew of Bushehr by Mezambria during the battles of

Elamite Empire. A city there, known as Lyan

, contained a temple that was designed to protect the compound from naval attacks. Its remains can still be seen today 10 kilometers south of the present city of Bushehr.

Marco Polo describes this region as part of the Persian province of

Christ

Child.

A key turning point in the history of Bor event of significance is known to have taken place in this region until the arrival of the European colonialists in the 16th century.

The

Shah Abbas Safavi defeated and liberated the Persian Gulf region of their presence. By 1734, Bushehr had once again risen to prominence due to Nader Shah of the Afsharid dynasty

, and his military policies in The Persian Gulf.

Bushehr was selected by Nader to be the central base of Nader's Naval fleet in the Persian Gulf. He thus changed the name of the city to Bandar e Naderiyeh (Nader's Port). He hired an Englishman by the name of John Elton to help build his fleet. Dutch accounts report his naval fleet to have amounted to 8000-10000 personnel as well as several ship construction installations.

After Nader's death, the

Karim Khan of the Zand dynasty. By then, the city of Bushehr had become Iran's major port city in the Persian Gulf. By the Qajar era, Britain, Norway, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, and the Ottomans

had diplomatic and commercial offices there, with Britain steadily gaining a foothold in the area. Close to 100 British ships are reported to have docked at the port city every year during the Qajar era.

2013 Bushehr earthquake

A strong earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter magnitude scale struck the town of Shonbeh and villages of Shonbeh and Tasuj District in Dashti County of Bushehr Province on 9 April 2013, killing at least 37 people.^[14]

Bushehr today

Aside from the revived port city of Bushehr, which is the second main naval port of Iran after Bandar Abbas, Bushehr also has come back recently in the spotlight for three main reasons:

Kharg Island (Khark Island)

During the Iran-Iraq war, Iran's major petroleum exporting ports in Khuzestan sustained damages so severe that a second port in Kharg Island was selected to carry on the major responsibility of Iran's petroleum exports, though even Kharg was not immune from Iraqi air raids.

Bushehr Nuclear Reactor

The Bushehr Light water PWR

Siemens AG

, built by the Russians, is Iran's first Nuclear Power Plant reactor.

The industrial corridor of Assalouyeh

As many as 70,000 foreign engineers and technicians are currently working in this industrial zone 270 kilometers south of the provincial capital. This zone is where the nearby famous South Pars Gas field is located, where Iran has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure. The South Pars Gas field is the world's largest natural gas field.

The Assalouyeh industrial zone is deemed so lucrative that even American companies such as American Allied International Corp and Halliburton have bypassed American sanctions to become somehow involved in the zone.American Allied International Corporation - Assalouyeh