Zanjan Province - History

History

Zanjan city was a major ciry in pre-historicAzerbaijan. The name of Azerbaijan derives from Atropates, an Iranian satrap of Media under the Achaemenid empire, who later was reinstated as the satrap of Media under Alexander of Macedonia. The original etymology of this name is thought to have its roots in the ancient Zoroastrianism, namely, in Avestan Frawardin Yasht ("Hymn to the Guardian Angels"), there is a mentioning of: âterepâtahe ashaonô fravashîm ýazamaide, which literally translates from Old Persian as "we worship the Fravashi of the holy Atare-pata". Atropates ruled over the region of present-day Iranian Azerbaijan.

In Ptolemy's Geography, the city is referred to as Aganzana. It is said that the Sassanid king Ardashir I of Persia, reconstructed the city and called it Shahin but later it was renamed to Zangan, of which the present name is the arabicized form of.

In past times Zanjan's name was Khamseh, which means "province with five tribes".

Read more about this topic:  Zanjan Province

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
    But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.
    Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)

    Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.
    —G.M. (George Macaulay)