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Khorasan location

Khorasan is a historical region of Central Asia encompassing northeastern Iran, eastern Turkmenistan, southeastern Uzbekistan, southern Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and northern Afghanistan; it overlaps with Transoxiana. Its Persian name literally means "Land of the Sun", but can also be interpreted as meaning "Eastern Province". During the 6th century, Sassanid Persia established Khorasan as an administrative division, and major cities such as Nishapur, Herat, Merv, Faryab, Talaqan, Balkh, Bukhara, Badghis, Abiward, Gharjistan, Tus, Sarakhs, and Gurgan emerged in the region. It was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate following the Muslim conquest of Persia, with the Arab Muslims conquering the Turkic and Iranic peoples such as Tocharistan, the Sogdians, Khwarazm, the Turgesh Khaganate, and the other nomadic tribes of the region. Under the Abbasid Caliphate, these peoples were gradually converted to Islam from Zoroastrianism, Tengrism, and their other indigenous faiths. Following the collapse of central power in the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century, the region came to be ruled by the Saffarids (861-1003), the Samanids (875-999), the Ghaznavids (963-1167), the Seljuks (1037-1194), the Khwarezmians (1077-1231), the Ghurids (1149-1212), and the Timurids (1370-1506). From the 16th to 18th centuries, Khorasan was contested between the Persian Safavids and the Uzbeks, and the Afghan Hotaki dynasty conquered the region in 1722. Nader Shah of Persia conquered the region in 1729, but it was annexed by the Afghan Durrani Empire on his assassination in 1747. It was captured by the Persian Qajar dynasty in 1796, but the Anglo-Persian War of 1856-1857 led to the Persians withdrawing from Herat, which became part of the Emirate of Afghanistan. In 1881, Iran ceded the rest of Khorasan to the Russian Empire, and Russia (the Soviet Union from 1920) controlled the region until the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, upon which Khorasan's native peoples once again fragmented into their own post-Soviet republics.

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