Introduction
Urmia (Kurdish: Wirmê or Ûrmiye; Persian: Orumiyeh) is a large city in the north-west of Iran and the capital of West Azerbaijan Province. It is a famously mixed city — home to Azerbaijani Turks, Kurds, Assyrians and Armenians — set on a fertile plain beside the great salt lake that bears its name. While its population is predominantly Azerbaijani rather than Kurdish, Urmia lies within the wider region Kurds know as Rojhelat, and it has a significant Kurdish community and a long, sometimes painful, place in Kurdish history.
This is the latest entry in our geographic series profiling the cities and towns of the region — where they are, who controls them, who lives in them, and why they matter to the Kurdish story.
Quick Facts
Common Name: Urmia
Kurdish Name: Wirmê (Ûrmiye)
Country: Iran — capital of West Azerbaijan Province
Population: 667,499 in the city (2012 census); county over 1 million
People: Predominantly Azerbaijani, with Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian communities
Setting: On the Urmia plain west of Lake Urmia, near the Turkish border
Elevation: About 1,330 m above sea level
Known For: Its diversity, Lake Urmia, and a long Christian heritage
Contents
References and Further Reading
Location and Geography
Urmia stands on the broad, fertile Urmia plain in the far north-west of Iran, at about 1,330 metres above sea level, along the Shahar Chay (“City River”). To its east lies Lake Urmia, once one of the largest salt lakes in the world, though decades of drought and water diversion have shrunk it dramatically. To the west rise the mountains of the Turkish border, and the surrounding province of West Azerbaijan touches Iraq, Turkey, Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan. This position — on rich farmland, beside a great lake, at the meeting point of several countries and peoples — has made Urmia an important trading and agricultural centre for centuries, famous for its apples, grapes and tobacco.
People and Population
At the 2012 census the city of Urmia had 667,499 people, making it the tenth most populous city in Iran, while the surrounding county had grown to over a million by 2016. The city’s inhabitants are predominantly Iranian Azerbaijanis, who speak the Azerbaijani Turkic language, alongside significant minorities of Kurds and historic communities of Assyrian and Armenian Christians. It is, in other words, not a Kurdish-majority city — but it is a genuinely mixed one, and Kurds form an important part of its population and of the wider province around it. This honest picture matters: Urmia’s significance for the Kurds rests not on a false claim of Kurdish dominance, but on its place within Rojhelat and its entangled history with the Kurdish people.
A City of Many Peoples
Few cities in the region are as ethnically and religiously layered as Urmia. For centuries it was a major centre of Assyrian and Armenian Christian life — around 1900, Christians may have made up nearly half its population, and the plain around the lake held well over a hundred Assyrian villages. Azerbaijani Turks have long been the largest group in the city itself, while Kurds are strongly present in Urmia and across the rural districts and neighbouring areas of the province. The name Urmia is far older than any of these communities, going back to the ancient kingdom of Urartu. This deep diversity is the key to understanding both the city’s richness and the tragedies that befell it in the twentieth century.
History
Urmia is an ancient city, long contested between the Ottoman and Persian empires and occasionally occupied by Russia in the early twentieth century. Its most tragic chapter came during the First World War. Tens of thousands of Assyrians and Armenians fleeing massacres in the Ottoman Empire took refuge in and around Urmia, and the city changed hands repeatedly between Russian, Ottoman and local forces. In early 1918 the region descended into chaos; the Assyrian patriarch Mar Shimun XXI Benyamin was assassinated by the Kurdish chieftain Simko Shikak, and in the months that followed many thousands of Assyrians were massacred as part of the wider Assyrian genocide (the Sayfo), while others fled south to British-held Iraq. It is an episode in which Kurds were among the perpetrators — a painful part of the history that an honest account must not erase. Simko’s own revolt against the Iranian state, based west of Lake Urmia from 1918 to 1922, is itself a landmark in the history of Kurdish self-assertion in Iran.
Urmia Today
Modern Urmia is a prosperous provincial capital and university city, the commercial heart of a rich agricultural region and a meeting point of peoples and faiths, with mosques, churches and a notable Christian heritage still visible in its streets. Its great environmental challenge is the shrinking of Lake Urmia, whose retreat has alarmed scientists and residents alike and become a symbol of Iran’s wider water crisis. The city remains a place where Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian identities live side by side — sometimes uneasily, given the ethnic sensitivities of the region, but as a living example of the diversity of north-western Iran.
Timeline of Key Events
Antiquity — The name Urmia derives from the ancient kingdom of Urartu.
c. 1900 — Christians (Assyrians and Armenians) form nearly half the city’s population.
1914–1918 — WWI brings Assyrian and Armenian refugees, occupation, and massacre.
1918 — The Assyrian patriarch Mar Shimun XXI is assassinated by Simko Shikak; massacres follow.
1918–1922 — Simko Shikak leads a Kurdish revolt west of Lake Urmia.
2012 — The city’s population reaches 667,499, tenth largest in Iran.
2010s–20s — Lake Urmia shrinks dramatically amid Iran’s water crisis.
Debates and Controversies
Urmia sits at a sensitive ethnic crossroads. It is an Azerbaijani-majority city, and Azerbaijani Iranians regard it as a centre of their own culture and identity; at the same time it lies within the region Kurds call Rojhelat, and Kurds form a significant community in and around it. This overlap has at times produced friction between Kurdish and Azerbaijani communities, especially when nationalist feeling runs high. The history of the First World War — including the killing of Assyrians in which some Kurdish forces took part — remains a raw memory for the Assyrian people, and an honest Kurdish account acknowledges it rather than glossing over it. Written from a Kurdish perspective, this profile treats Urmia not as a Kurdish city but as a shared and contested one, in which Kurds are one important people among several.
Significance for the Kurds
For Kurds, Urmia matters as a major city of Rojhelat and as the setting for the revolt of Simko Shikak, one of the first great Kurdish challenges to the Iranian state in the twentieth century. It stands near the Kurdish heartland of West Azerbaijan Province, close to Kurdish-majority cities such as Mahabad, and its large Kurdish community ties it firmly to the wider Kurdish world. Its significance is not that of a Kurdish capital, but of a great mixed city on the edge of the Kurdish lands — a reminder that the map of Kurdistan shades gradually into the territory of neighbouring peoples, and that honesty about that fact is a source of strength, not weakness, for the Kurdish cause.
Related Places and Topics
Mahabad, the Kurdish city to the south, also in West Azerbaijan Province.
Saqqez, a Kurdish city of the neighbouring Kurdistan Province. The revolt of Simko Shikak, the Assyrian people of Iran, and the wider story of Rojhelat.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Urmia?
Urmia is in the far north-west of Iran, the capital of West Azerbaijan Province, on a plain just west of Lake Urmia and near the Turkish border.
Is Urmia a Kurdish city?
No — Urmia is predominantly an Iranian Azerbaijani (Azeri) city, with significant Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian communities. It lies within the wider Kurdish region of Rojhelat but is not Kurdish-majority.
Who lives in Urmia?
The city is mostly Azerbaijani Turkish-speaking, with important minorities of Kurds and historic Assyrian and Armenian Christian communities.
What happened in Urmia during World War I?
Urmia became a refuge for Assyrians and Armenians fleeing Ottoman massacres, then a scene of great violence: the Assyrian patriarch was assassinated by Simko Shikak in 1918 and thousands of Assyrians were massacred as part of the Assyrian genocide.