ABSTRACT
The River Karun (Figure 1.1) rises in the mountain ranges to the west of Esfahan. On the way to the Shatt-ul-Arab (or Arvand Rud) and the Persian Gulf it touches or traverses the provinces of Lorestan, Bakhtiyari, and Khuzestan (Figure 1.2). In the official correspondence of the period under study, this region was referred to by the British as South-West Persia and roughly speaking its limits were Kermanshah on the north, Hamadan on the north-east, Esfahan on the east, Fars on the south, the Persian Gulf on the south-west, and finally the present-day Irano-Iraqi frontier on the west. The term South-West Persia, therefore, was a geographical and not a political concept, devised for the sake of convenience. Throughout this book, then, the term ‘region’ refers to this area as a whole.
