Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
's counties (,
romanized
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...
as ''šahrestân'') are
administrative divisions
Administrative divisions (also administrative units, administrative regions, subnational entities, or constituent states, as well as many similar generic terms) are geographical areas into which a particular independent sovereign state is divi ...
of larger
provinces
A province is an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outside Italy. The term ''provi ...
(''ostan''). The word ''shahrestan'' comes from the Persian words ' (city) and ' ("place, land"). "County", therefore, is a near equivalent to (šahrestân).
Counties are divided into one or more districts ( ). A typical district includes both cities ( ) and rural districts ( ), which are groupings of adjacent villages. One city within the county serves as the capital of that county, generally in its Central District.
Each county is governed by an office known as ''farmândâri'', which coordinates different public events and agencies and is headed by a ''farmândâr'', the governor of the county and the highest-ranking official in the division.
Among the
provinces of Iran
Iran is subdivided into thirty-one provinces ( ''Ostân''), each governed from a local centre, usually the largest local city, which is called the capital (Persian: , ''Markaz (country subdivision), Markaz'') of that province. The provincial ...
,
Fars has the highest number of ''shahrestans'' (37), while
Qom has the fewest (3). In 2005 Iran had 324 ''shahrestans'', while in as of now there are 483.
Guide
The total population of a province is the total of its counties.
The total population of a county is the total of its districts.
The total population of a district is the total of its cities and rural districts.
To better understand these subdivisions, the following table for
Piranshahr County in
West Azerbaijan province
West Azerbaijan province () is one of the 31 provinces of Iran, whose capital and largest city is Urmia.
It is in the northwest of the country, bordered by Turkey ( Ağrı, Hakkâri, Iğdır and Van Provinces), Iraq ( Erbil and Sula ...
(as it existed in 2006, 2011 and 2016) is an example showing the hierarchy of a county's divisions:
List
The counties are listed below, by province, with the capital and the county containing the capital of the provinces in bold:
See also
*
Bakhsh
A (, also romanized as ) is a third-level administrative division
Administrative divisions (also administrative units, administrative regions, subnational entities, or constituent states, as well as many similar generic terms) are geog ...
References
* [] (
Gitashenasi Province Atlas of Iran')
{{Provinces of Iran
Iran, Counties
Iran geography-related lists