On Cultural Boundaries and Languages in Western Iran: The Case of the Zagros Gates

Abstract

This study examines the nature and history of the cultural, political and linguistic boundary that runs along the western side of the Iranian region, through the Zagros mountains. A long-term evaluation of that boundary, from antiquity through the modern era, shows how the boundary between the Zagrosian and Assyro-Babylonian worlds, and between later states, such as Safavid andQajar Iran, andthe Ottomanempire, has undergone change, such that sites and towns commonly thought of as being in one cultural sphere were, at times, in another. The significance of boundary zones, as opposed to clear-cut boundary lines, is examined.