Persia

Over millennia, many territories and countries have been attacked, intruded, captured, or divided. In this research, we debate surrounding the territories that have been lost in Iran (then Persia) over the past. No effort has been made to investigate such territorial claims despite historical knowledge gaps and uncertainties. As such, this first-ever data-driven paper undertook such investigation by digitising two maps prepared based on historical documents by a few well-known Iranian geographical and historical scholars. While we did not check the correctness of the boundaries drawn at that time, we strived to digitise boundaries using GIS methods with high precision. Those boundaries delineated old territories lost during the Qajar dynasty. It was revealed that the country lost a total land area between 1,827,160 km2 and 2,119,349 km2 during the 19th century.