Zabol ( fa, , also transliterated as Zâbol or Zābul) is a city and capital of

Zabol County Zabol County ( fa, شهرستان زابل) is in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iran. The capital of the county is the city of Zabol Zabol ( fa, , also transliterated as Zâbol or Zābul) is a city and capital of Zabol County, Sistan ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. Zabol is near the

border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders ca ...

with

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...

. Referred to as Sistan until the late 1920s, the city was renamed Zabol by Reza Shah Pahlavi. At the 2006 census, its population was 130,642, in 27,867 families. Zabol is located near Lake Hamun and the region is irrigated by the Helmand River. Lake Hamun is a

seasonal lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

that is often dry. The people of Zabol are mixed of

Persians The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian. ...

who speak a variant of the

Persian language Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken an ...

and known as '' Sistani'' or Seistani which is very similar to

Dari Dari (, , ), also known as Dari Persian (, ), is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language,Lazard, G.Darī ...

, also known as Afghan Persian, and a small minority of Baloch who speak Balochi, a Northwestern Iranian language. The city is home to Zabol University, the largest university in the city, as well as the

Zabol Medical Science University Zabol University of Medical Science was established in 1960-61 (''Anno Hegirae'' 1380-81). It is a coeducational, public university, located in Zabol Zabol ( fa, , also transliterated as Zâbol or Zābul) is a city and capital of Zabol Coun ...

and the Sistan Museum of Anthropology. Zabol has a regional airport. Zabol is connected by road to Milak and Zaranj (across the border in Afghanistan). The Delaram-Zaranj Highway provides road connectivity to the rest of Afghanistan. Zabol thus provides Afghanistan access to the

Arabian Sea The Arabian Sea ( ar, اَلْبَحرْ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Bahr al-ˁArabī) is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channe ...

and

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The bo ...

via the

Port of Chabahar Chabahar Port ( fa, بندر چابهار) is a seaport in Chabahar located in southeastern Iran, on the Gulf of Oman. It serves as Iran's only oceanic port, and consists of two separate ports named ''Shahid Kalantari'' and ''Shahid Beheshti'', ...

Air pollution

Afghanistan-Iran border in Zaranj, Afghanistan, 2011

The Zabol area is well known for its " 120-day wind" (''bād-e sad-o-bist-roz''), a highly persistent dust storm in the summer which blows from north to south. The disappearance in the 2000s of the nearby Hamoun wetlands has exacerbated the dusty conditions in Zabol, leading the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level o ...

to name Zabol the most polluted city in the world in 2016. A 2017 study in the journal ''Preventive Medicine'' suggested that the harm from 30 minutes of cycling outdoors in Zabol's polluted air would outweigh the benefits of the exercise.

Climate

Zabol has a

hot desert climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk''), is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, nota ...

''BWh'').

Colleges and universities

250px, Presidential Building of Zabol University * Zabol University * Zabol University of Medical Sciences * Islamic Azad university, Zabol Branch * Payame-noor university of Zabol

References

External links

Populated places in Zabol County Cities in Sistan and Baluchestan Province {{SistanBaluchestan-geo-stub